Gabe
TWELVE
The bar settles. The music has drawn a line through the noise and everything on either side of it has fallen away.
Julian has the room easily, as always. He leans into the next performance without ever seeming to push, letting people come to him instead of chasing them. It’s a skill that looks careless until you understand how precise it actually is.
Xander is the opposite. There’s nothing casual about him tonight.
He stands at the mic and I can see the song is a tune he’s pulling out of himself by force, voice rough and controlled in a way that suggests it could slip if he let it because it’s been too long.
He doesn’t look at the crowd. He doesn’t need to. The room adjusts to him anyway.
I’ve seen this before.
Built strategies around it. Negotiated contracts off the back of it. Watched entire rooms reorient themselves around the two of them without understanding why.
But that’s not where my attention stays.
It keeps drifting back to Willow.
She’s forgotten herself.
Not completely, not in a way she’d ever allow if she were aware of it, but enough that the edges have softened. The sarcasm isn’t there. The resistance isn’t front and center. She’s just watching.
And reacting.
Her hand is still in mine.
I don’t remember deciding to keep it there.
I’m aware of it now, though. The warmth of her palm, the way her fingers tighten during the chorus. The music caught her off guard, and she doesn’t know what to do with the reaction except hold on.
To me.
I shift my focus back to the stage, but it doesn’t hold. Not fully. Not when she’s this close, when I can feel the heat of her beside me, when I catch the faint scent of vanilla and coffee every time she moves.
It’s distracting in a way I don’t tolerate. I don’t let things distract me.
And yet…
She glances toward me for half a second, about to speak, then doesn’t. The moment passes, but it leaves a weirdness behind.
Because now I’m thinking about it.
About her.
About the fact that Xander took her out and hasn’t stopped watching her since.
About the fact that I understand why.
The final note hits, and the room holds it for a breath before everything breaks.
Applause rolls through the bar, loud and immediate, people shifting, talking, reacting all at once now that they’re allowed to again. Phones come up higher. Voices rise. The whole place comes back to life in a rush.
Willow turns toward me, a little breathless in a way she probably hasn’t noticed yet.
“Okay,” she says, “that was very good.”
I almost smile. “They’ll be devastated to hear it.”
Her eyes flick to mine, and the noise around us feels distant again.
That’s enough.
I step back, creating space before I stop myself from doing something I shouldn’t.
“It’s a bit hot. A bit much,” I say, more to give myself a reason than anything else. “I need some air.”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah. Okay.”
And then she comes with me. Still holding my hand.
I don’t comment on it. I don’t even acknowledge it. I just guide us through the crowd, out past the bar and into the night, the noise dulling behind us as the door swings shut.
Outside is cool enough to clear my head.
Or it should be.
She finally lets go of my fingers a second later, as if she’s only just realized we were still touching. There’s a flicker in her expression when she does, before she smooths it over.
“You seem worried,” she says. “What’s going on?”
I lean against the railing, forcing my thoughts back to structured ones I can control.
“The phones, the cameras,” I say. “We’re not ready for that kind of attention.”
Willow leans back against the railing, watching me more closely now. “You’re saying that like it’s a disaster. Cameras are good, right? The label will want attention?”
“Not if it happens too early.”
She tilts her head. “Too early for what?”
“For any of it,” I say, stepping closer without really registering that I’m doing it. “The label, the rollout, the artists we’re bringing in, none of it’s ready to handle that kind of exposure yet.”
She frowns a little. “Exposure to what? People seeing them play?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It kind of is,” she says. “People filmed a band playing in a bar. That’s not exactly a scandal.”
“No,” I agree. “But it becomes one if the narrative gets away from us.”
Her brows pull together. “Narrative?”
“Yes. Timing matters. Control matters. If something like that goes online now, it doesn’t stay contained. It turns into speculation, attention spikes, people start digging, and we’re reacting instead of directing…”
“Directing what?” she cuts in.
“The perception of it,” I say. “What this is. What we’re building here. If we don’t set that first, someone else will.”
She studies me. “You really think that far ahead?”
“I have to.”
“And you think everything just spirals if you don’t manage it?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It’s necessary.”
“For you,” she says. “Not for them.”
“It is for them,” I counter. “They just don’t…” I stop myself, exhaling once. “They don’t think about it the same way I do.”
“No,” she says. “They just go on stage and make a whole room forget how to breathe.”
I look at her then, and everything shifts.
Because she’s not talking about strategy, she’s talking about what she felt, and suddenly the conversation isn’t where I left it.
“You felt that,” I say.
Her eyes flick up to mine. “I mean, yeah. Everyone did.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She huffs a breath. “You’re very persistent.”
“I’m precise.”
“Same thing,” she mutters.
I take another step closer, not planned, not calculated. “What did you feel?”
She hesitates. “Like it was real.”
That’s it.
That’s the break.
Because I’ve spent the last five minutes talking about control, about timing, about managing perception, and she’s standing here talking about something I can’t manage at all.
Something I can feel slipping.
“That’s exactly the problem,” I say, but it comes out rougher than intended. “People respond to that before they understand it. Before we can—”
“Before you can control it?” she says.
“Yes.”
“And what if it’s not supposed to be controlled?”
“It always is,” I reply.
“Maybe that’s why people don’t trust it,” she shoots back.
I should let that go. But I don’t.
“Trust isn’t the issue,” I say, stepping closer again, close enough now that I can see the shift in her breathing. “Sustainability is. If we don’t build this correctly, if we don’t—”
She shakes her head, cutting me off. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Turning something real into a business plan.”
I don’t have a response, which is rare. Dangerous. Because now I’m not thinking. I’m just reacting.
“You think that’s what I’m doing?” I ask.
“I think,” she says, holding my gaze, “you’re trying very hard not to feel anything you can’t control.”
That’s not wrong.
And the fact that she sees it, that easily, that clearly, that’s what does it, because all the control I’ve been holding onto feels thin.
Fragile.
Temporary.
“And what if I don’t want to control it?” I ask.
Her breath catches. “You do. You just said—”
“I said I have to,” I correct, stepping into her space now without stopping myself. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Gabe—”
My lips crash against hers. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, cutting her off in a way that has nothing to do with control and everything to do with losing it.
Her breath catches against my mouth, and for a fraction of a second, I feel the exact point where this could stop.
It doesn’t, because she kisses me back.
My hand comes up to her face without permission from the part of me that usually runs things, fingers sliding into her hair, pulling her closer in a way that’s instinctive and far too rough to be considered careful.
The other hand finds her waist, solid and warm under my palm, anchoring her to me as the kiss deepens without restraint.
She makes a small sound, barely there, and it hits in the part of my chest that I don’t have a name for.
The world narrows. I walk her back against the rough wall of the bar, deep in a shadow.
The bar, the noise, the entire structure of the night disappears until there’s nothing left but the way she responds to me. The way she shifts closer instead of pulling back. The way her hand comes up.
She needs something to hold onto, fingers catching in my shirt, grounding herself in the moment the same way I am.
It’s not controlled. It’s not careful. It’s immediate and consuming and far too intense for something that should’ve been a mistake.
I kiss her because I’ve already gone too far to pull back.
And that’s the problem.
Because I don’t stop when I should. I only stop when I have to.
It takes effort. Actual effort to pull back, to break the contact before it turns into something I can’t justify at all. When I do, it feels abrupt. Incomplete.
Wrong.
She looks up at me, visibly shaken, lips parted, eyes searching my face, trying to understand what just happened and why.
I don’t have an answer I can use.
I drag a hand back through my hair, forcing distance between us, forcing my breathing to calm.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” I say.
The words come fast.
Too fast.
Her expression shifts, confusion intensifying. “Right…”
“I didn’t mean…” I stop, because I don’t have a clean way to fix it. “I meant that I shouldn’t have let it happen like that.”
“Like what?” she asks.
I lost control, I forgot every reason not to, I wanted it more than I should.
I exhale. “Xander took you on a date.”
Her brows draw together. “And?”
“And that matters.”
She stares at me, clearly not satisfied with that answer. “It matters to you. It wasn’t really a date. More of a disaster. So, what, that was just… what? A moment?”
No.
It wasn’t just anything.
That’s the problem.
I shake my head once. “It was a mistake.”
Even as I say it, I know it’s the wrong word.
I don’t regret the kiss. I regret losing control of it.
“That didn’t feel like a mistake,” she says.
No.
It didn’t.
I meet her gaze, steady this time, even if everything underneath it’s anything but.
“It felt like one I didn’t think through,” I correct.
She looks at me for a long second, a look of confliction settling into her expression, and I realize I’ve just made this more complicated instead of less.
She turns first, pushing the door open, the noise from the bar spilling back out around us. I follow a second later, more aware than I want to be of the fact that nothing about that moment was contained.