Willow
SEVENTEEN
Isit in my car outside the Hawthorne House for a full minute longer than necessary, engine off, hands still resting on the wheel like I forgot what comes next.
This is already a bad sign.
Normal people don’t have to psych themselves up to walk into someone’s house for dinner. They just go inside. Maybe bring a bottle of wine, pretend they didn’t spend the entire drive over replaying very specific lake memories they absolutely shouldn’t be replaying.
I stare at the house.
It’s quieter than the last time I was here. The lights are on, warm against the dark, soft enough that the place looks almost inviting instead of whatever it was before. Intimidating. Ridiculous. Like I accidentally delivered food to a crazy compound and then got ambushed.
Which, to be fair, did happen.
I scrub a hand over the back of my neck and exhale.
“Okay,” I mutter. “You’re just having dinner. That’s it.”
I grab my bag and get out before I can talk myself into driving home and pretending my phone died.
The gravel crunches under my shoes and a breeze brushes my legs under my skirt as I head up the drive. I feel it again. That weird shift, like I’m stepping from my world into theirs. A world I definitely don’t belong in.
I knock before I can overthink it.
The door opens, almost.
Julian.
He leans against the frame with a smirk playing on his lips, like this is normal, like I show up here all the time and not whatever this actually is.
“Hey,” he says, easy as anything.
I look past him into the house, then back at him. “Have you been standing there waiting?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s unsettling.”
“Only if you assume the worst.”
“I always assume the worst.”
He grins. “I know.”
I step past him before he can say anything else, because if I stay in the doorway, I might turn around and leave, and I refuse to be that predictable.
The house feels different tonight.
Last time it felt like I’d walked into something I wasn’t supposed to see. Too polished. Too controlled. Like everything had a purpose I didn’t understand.
Now, it just feels lived in.
Music playing somewhere in the background. Lights on in the kitchen. The smell of actual food, not takeout. Someone left a glass on the counter. A jacket’s thrown over the back of a chair.
It’s almost normal, which is probably the most dangerous thing about it.
“Willow.”
I turn.
Gabe’s standing in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, looking the human embodiment of a luxury watch advertisement.
There’s something different about him, too. Less intense, maybe. Like he’s not actively calculating the entire room right now.
“Hi,” I say.
Smooth. Effortless. Really nailed that.
“I’m glad you came,” he says.
The way he says it that makes it feel like it matters more than it should.
I don’t get a chance to unpack that, because—
“You took your time.”
I don’t look at Xander right away.
I know exactly where he is without turning. I can feel it.
Not helpful.
When I do look, he’s leaning against the counter, watching me like I’m the most interesting thing in the room, which is ridiculous.
“I have a life,” I tell him.
“Debatable.”
“Wow.”
“More important than coming to see us?” He wiggles his eyebrows playfully. “I doubt it.”
I look away first, because absolutely not.
“Is this dinner,” I say, glancing between them, “or did I walk into something where you all stare at me until I confess to crimes I didn’t commit?”
Julian snorts behind me.
Gabe shakes his head. “It’s dinner.”
“Good. I was worried I’d have to prepare a statement.”
“You look like you already did,” Julian declares.
“I like to stay ready.”
“Clearly.”
I roll my eyes and move toward the table before this turns into more.
The table’s set. Plates, glasses, food that looks like someone cooked it on purpose instead of ordering too much and calling it a day.
I pause. “Who made this?”
Julian raises a hand. “You’re welcome.”
“I haven’t eaten it yet.”
“Have a little faith.”
“I don’t know you well enough for that.”
Julian rolls his eyes. “That feels personal.”
“It is.”
He grins like I just proved his point.
I sit, because standing there feels like a mistake. Sitting makes this feel more real, and leaving now would be noticeable.
They sit as I pick up my fork, take a bite, and pause.
“Okay,” I say. “This is actually good.”
Julian leans back, satisfied. “I know.”
“I didn’t say great.”
He winks. “You meant it, though. Underneath the surface.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
Gabe watches us like he’s filing this away for later. Xander doesn’t look away from me at all.
I focus very hard on my food.
“So,” I say, because silence feels like a trap, “what was so important it required dinner?”
Gabe leans forward, hands resting loosely on the table. “The label.”
That I can work with.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s less ominous than expected.”
“We’re at a point where things are starting to move.
Faster than we planned. We have the infrastructure,” Gabe says.
“Artist development, recording schedules, investor backing, distribution, rollout timelines. The business side is solid.” His gaze settles on me.
“What we’re trying to avoid is becoming another label that feels manufactured before people even hear the music. ”
Xander cuts in. “We’re ready. But we need to be really ready.”
I glance at him briefly, then back to Gabe. “So, you’re trying to get ahead of it?”
“Yes.”
“And you think I can help with that?”
“You see things differently,” Gabe says. “And I’m quite sure you said you studied PR, right?”
I widen my eyes. “I did? I don’t remember that.”
Xander smirks. “When we first met. Before you even told us your name.”
I swallow hard. “Alright. What exactly are you doing now?”
Gabe explains. Strategy. Timing. Control. The way attention builds, how quickly it can get out of hand if you don’t manage it early.
It all makes sense, which is the problem, because it’s also exactly how people end up distrusting something before it even launches.
“I think you’re approaching it from the wrong angle,” I say.
Gabe doesn’t react. “Explain.”
“You’re trying to control how people see this before you’ve given them anything real to attach themselves to,” I say. “That’s backwards.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he says.
“It does if you lead with branding before trust.”
That gets Xander’s attention. He goes still in that way he has, like all the air in the room has just aligned itself around him.
Gabe just watches me. “Go on.”
I set my fork down. “Right now, you’re thinking like people who already understand the industry.
But audiences don’t care that you’ve built a beautiful compound and have a five-year plan.
They care whether the music feels real, whether the artists feel interesting, and whether any of this looks like it exists for a reason beyond rich men deciding to build a kingdom in the woods. ”
Julian chokes on a laugh.
I ignore him.
“You already have the structure. What you need now is emotional entry points.” I continue, “You need people to feel connected to it in stages. Local trust first. Then curiosity. Then identity.”
Gabe’s focus narrows. “Break that down.”
“Fine. First, take my advice from before. The town has to feel included before the internet does.”
Julian leans back. “How?”
“Show up without making it a production,” I say.
“The farmers' market, the bookstore, local fundraisers, whatever. No paparazzi-looking nonsense, no security guys making everybody nervous, no acting like you’re blessing the locals with your presence. Just be around. Quietly. Let people form their own opinions.”
Xander’s gaze doesn’t leave my face. “That handles the town. Not the label.”
“It handles the foundation,” I say. “Which matters, unless you want the first online narrative to be three former rockstars invade small town and build a vanity compound.”
Julian winces. “That does sound like a headline.”
“Because it is one.”
Gabe folds his hands loosely in front of him. “And after local acceptance?”
“You seed curiosity,” I say. “Not with press releases. With fragments.”
His brow lifts. “Fragments.”
“Yes. Studio photos that feel candid but not sloppy. Short rehearsal clips. Snippets of lyrics on a whiteboard. A producer talking in the background. Somebody carrying in gear. A voice memo clip that disappears in twenty-four hours. Enough to make people ask what’s happening here without giving them the whole answer. ”
Julian points at me with his glass. “That’s good.”
“I know.”
Gabe’s already somewhere else in his head now, organizing it. He nods. “A phased rollout.”
“Exactly,” I say. “But one that feels organic instead of engineered. You don’t dump ten posts in a week and then vanish.
You build momentum. One post from the compound that introduces the atmosphere.
A few days later, something artist specific.
Then a town-facing thing. Then back to the music.
The point is to make it feel like a world people are discovering, not a marketing calendar they’re being marched through. ”
He nods once. “You’re building environment before product.”
“I’m building emotional buy-in before asking anyone to care,” I correct. “There’s a difference.”
That shuts him up for half a second, which is satisfying in a way I probably shouldn’t enjoy quite so much.
“Okay,” he says. “Say we do that. What about the artists?”
“That depends on the artist,” I say. “If you market them all the same, you’re dead.”
Julian grins. “Morbid. I like it.”
I look between them. “You need a profile for each one. Not a fake personality, an actual lane. Who they are, what people latch onto, what they sound like, what feeling they leave behind, and what visual world fits them.”
Gabe tilts his head. “Examples.”
“Fine. If you’ve got an artist with a raw, stripped-back sound, don’t introduce them with overproduced glossy photos and some dramatic mission statement.
Give them live room clips. Messy notebook pages.
Midnight recording snippets. Make people feel like they’re seeing the song before it’s finished. ”
Xander says, “And if the artist is polished?”