Raw Notes, Rough Nights (Rough Harmony #1)

Prologue

Four weeks ago

Cameron Walters

I hadn’t dressed for this.

I’d told Ben I’d go. Of course I had. Ben had been vibrating with nerves all week at the thought of a leather night, his cheeks blotchy, his hands clammy.

“You don’t have to like it,” Ben had said. “Just… make sure I don’t run away.”

So I’d pulled on my nicest jeans and a black hoodie that didn’t have paint on it and told myself confidence was mostly posture.

I could posture.

The second I stepped into the bar with its dark wood, low red light, the warm-sweet smell of sweat and beer permeating the air, I knew I was out of my depth.

The men here didn’t look dressed so much as put together. Harnesses framed chests like they belonged there. Boots had real weight to them. Leather looked worn in, like it actually meant something.

I felt like a tourist who’d wandered into the wrong part of town.

I leaned towards Ben. “Are you all right?”

Ben swallowed. “Ask me again in five minutes.”

I smiled, making it big on purpose. “I’ll be right here.”

I meant it. I also meant to breathe. I’d do one drink, keep Ben calm, and pretend not to notice the way my pulse kept jumping at everything.

It wasn’t exactly attraction, more like… awareness. I was twenty-two, still figuring things out and still, somehow, a virgin, which felt like both a secret and something to be embarrassed about. I was not here to have a grand revelation in front of some stranger in a harness.

I stood beside Ben, trying not to look like a gooseberry, and laughing way too loud at a joke. I gazed at the bar’s other patrons—and froze.

Theo Sinclair was at the table in the corner, with a whole bunch of guys.

Oh fuck.

For a second, my brain went blank.

All those years of trying to forget him—of telling myself I’d grown out of that stupid, aching teenage crush on Gary’s best friend—burned away the moment I saw him here.

Not a memory or even an Instagram scroll.

Here. Theo was taller than I remembered, his shoulders broad under a black shirt.

And he’d clearly attacked his hair with gel and a hairdryer, because it had finally given up its lifelong fight with gravity.

And he was staring right at me.

Theo’s mouth was set in the line it always fell into when he was guarded. He’d always had a serious face. Now it looked almost like armour. The five-o’clock shadow didn’t help. It made him look a little dangerous.

I knew the exact shade of Theo’s blue eyes. I still remembered the shape of his hands when he waved people into line without even trying.

None of that should still matter, but it did.

My eyes had to be like saucers, but I couldn’t do anything about it. My first instinct was to duck. My second was to grin like I’d just seen the sun for the first time.

The grin won.

“Hey, Theo,” I called out in an easy voice, as if my stomach hadn’t dropped through the floor.

Theo looked at me—really looked—and I swear I caught a flicker of shock in his eyes. Whatever it was, it sharpened.

My brother’s best friend.

The line I’d spent years telling myself not to cross.

You’re an adult now. Act like one. Don’t be sixteen in a choir room again.

The choir I’d only joined because it had meant being around Theo.

I touched Ben’s arm. “Give me a sec, okay?”

Ben froze for a nanosecond, then recovered. “Sure. I’ll be fine.”

I gave him a reassuring smile, then walked toward Theo’s table, amazed my legs didn’t shake.

I didn’t look too closely at what anyone was wearing until I was already too near to turn around.

Some of them wore leather, but there were no harnesses or collars like the ones I’d seen around the bar, so I figured they weren’t regulars.

Theo’s shirt was open at the collar, and he lounged in his chair in a way that felt instantly familiar.

The group with him looked like a chorus line of trouble: laughter that was too loud, glitter, smirks, and silent assessments.

“Small world, huh?” I said, aiming for cocky and landing somewhere shy of it. “Didn’t expect to find you in a place like this.”

My heart thumped, and my mouth did a great impression of the Sahara.

Theo’s throat moved. “You shouldn’t be here.”

That stung.

Theo wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t joking either. That single word—shouldn’t—sent a hot wave of humiliation up my neck to my cheeks and ears. I heard it the way I always did, as judgment. As a door slamming shut.

This place is not for you.

I smiled anyway. I had a thousand smiles. I could put one between myself and anything. “Why not?”

Theo’s gaze was too steady. I wanted to read it and couldn’t.

This is a mistake.

I shook myself. I wasn’t here for a drama. I was here because Ben needed a wingman.

“It’s not exactly your scene,” Theo said.

There it was again. No welcome in his voice at all. My chest tightened, that familiar squeeze I got whenever I didn’t know what box I was supposed to fit into.

I considered telling the truth.

I’m only here to keep a friend from bolting.

I have no idea what I like yet.

I haven’t done anything, not really.

I saw you and forgot how to breathe.

Instead, I flicked the smile down a notch and said, “Maybe it is. Maybe you just don’t know me yet.”

Defence by flirtation. Better to be arrogant than raw. Better to be the guy with the easy laugh than the kid standing there with his heart in his hands.

A guy who looked as if he belonged on a firefighter’s calendar introduced himself. “I’m Oliver.” His warm smile took the edge off the moment. “It’s my turn to buy a round, and seeing as you’re a friend of Theo’s, do you want to join us?”

Friend. I wasn’t sure I’d earned that or if I even wanted it. I turned back toward Ben, to find him gazing with rapt attention at an older guy in leather pants and a harness. I signalled, and when Ben met my gaze, I mouthed Are you okay?

Ben smiled and gave me the thumbs up.

I followed Oliver to the crowded bar because standing there under Theo’s disapproval felt like drowning in slow motion.

As we waited to be served, Oliver told me what had brought them all to the bar.

I half-listened, catching something about a singing group Theo was forming, together with his friend Max.

Ah. That name rang a bell.

I glanced back at the table. Yeah, that was Max, another of Theo’s close friends. I recalled seeing him when I visited Gary in college one time.

Now there’s someone who looks as if he belongs in this place.

“Cameron?”

I blinked.

Oliver pointed to three pint glasses standing on the beer mat. “Think you can manage those?”

I nodded. I followed Oliver back to the group, focusing on carrying three full glasses without dropping them, on breathing through the weird shake in my hands so I didn’t slosh beer on strangers. Smile, damn it. I told myself my face remembered how.

Back at the table, I slipped into a gap as if it had been made for me, shoulder-to-shoulder with men I didn’t know. If I looked at Theo, I’d fall through the floor, so I didn’t.

I looked anywhere else.

The trick was to be interested in everyone. If you paid attention to people, they usually didn’t look too closely at you.

I asked the quiet one—Sebastian—about songwriting. The guy’s eyes were haunted, the way artists’ eyes sometimes are. When Sebastian answered, his voice was careful and precise, as if he was lining his words up before he let them out. I listened. I liked listening.

I teased the preening one—Julian—about his glitter eyeliner, and Julian smirked and preened harder.

I threw a line at the serious one—Milo—about chord changes, and we bickered in a way that didn’t require me to be good at anything but timing.

Liam leaned in with that open, earnest curiosity some people never lose; I let it anchor me.

Laughter found me the way it always did if I let it.

I didn’t look left to where Theo sat.

I knew Theo noticed. Or at least I thought he did.

The space where he sat pulled at my attention like a tide. I was aware of Theo’s knee under the table. I could feel him there without looking, the way you can sense a storm building even with the windows shut.

Max kept watching me, not in an unkind way, but as if he was measuring me up. There were questions in the way he rested his chin in his hand.

Who are you to Theo? What do you want?

I wanted to be seen without being gutted. I wanted Theo not to look at me like I was a problem.

I hated wanting that so badly.

Leather creaked somewhere under the music, and the air between us tightened until my skin prickled.

Theo didn’t turn his head. He didn’t move away either.

I kept the conversations spinning because if I stopped, I’d start thinking.

You shouldn’t be here.

I’d taken it like an order even as I’d joked it off.

What filled my head were memories of the choir room at sixteen, the way Theo had laid a harmony above my shaky melody and said breathe, and the world had widened.

I remembered how that had felt, and I didn’t want that feeling back here, where everything smelled like sweat and new leather.

I didn’t want to be reminded of choices I wasn’t ready to make.

Come on. You can do this.

I was good at this. I could be bright and a little shameless and exactly as cocky as people liked in a stranger. It was armour that looked like flirting.

It worked fine until someone who mattered saw through it.

I felt Max’s gaze again, curious, and that stubborn streak in me surfaced. I took another sip of beer I didn’t want, laughed at a story I’d only half heard, and let the room carry me.

When it was time to go—when I could feel my nerves starting to fray and knew if I stayed much longer I’d say something I couldn’t take back—I stood and thanked them all as if I’d only meant to stay an hour.

“It was great meeting all of you,” I said. Truth, mostly.

I let myself look at Theo then because it would have been rude not to. Up close, Theo’s eyes were darker than I remembered. Or maybe it was just the light.

I ignored my pounding heart. “Still all rules and routines, Theo?” I managed a grin to lighten the words. “Or do you ever let yourself break curfew?”

Theo smirked, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Someone has to keep order.”

For a second I saw how this might have gone if life had been kinder, or if I’d been braver. I saw myself as the sixteen-year-old who used to do his homework in the quiet corner near where Theo sat.

I saw all the years in between.

Years of wanting someone I couldn’t have.

“That someone doesn’t have to be you all the time.” I don’t know where the next words came from, some part of me that felt it was okay to take a risk. “You’d look good out of order.”

Something flickered across Theo’s face then, as though he’d heard the meaning under my words. I felt that look all the way through me and pretended I didn’t.

“Enjoy your night, Cameron,” Theo said, his tone as smooth as a closed door.

“Always do,” I lied, and turned before the heat in my chest could climb my throat and steal my breath.

I didn’t go far. I didn’t bolt, but found Ben by the bar, flushed and thrilled, a boy who’d just realised he wasn’t going to break if someone touched him. I let that happiness tug me back to myself. I laughed, genuinely, because Ben’s joy was easy to carry.

But later, when I stepped outside into the wet dark of a London night that smelled like rain and petrol and chips, I leaned against the brick wall and sucked in cold air. I put a hand over my mouth and realised I’d been shaking ever since Theo had said You shouldn’t be here.

I wasn’t part of this scene. I hadn’t come for that. I’d come for a friend.

I could still remember the shape of Theo’s shoulder blade under his shirt when I’d leaned in to read the menu, as if my body had noticed it before my brain did. I thought about the way my own words had tried to protect me—and how badly they’d failed.

I texted Raquel, my confidante since high school, the keeper of my secrets, the only one who knew.

Cameron: Saw Theo tonight.

Where?

A leather bar.

Something you wanna tell me?

I rolled my eyes. I was helping a friend. But I survived. Barely.

So did you make a move on Theo?

I snorted and typed He doesn’t even know I’m gay.

Then it hit me.

You shouldn’t be here.

My chest tightened. Did he mean in a gay bar? That kinda made sense.

Her text pinged in. You okay?

I stared at the neon reflected in a puddle and made myself type.

Yeah. I will be.

Then, because some stubborn part of me insisted on honesty even when it hurt, I added:

He looked at me like I shouldn’t be there. I don’t know how to be somewhere he is and not want to stay.

I didn’t send it. I deleted the last sentence and sent the first.

If the night had taught me anything, it was that I could stand in a room with the man I’d once built my teenage universe around and not collapse. I could be cocky and bright and not look. I could survive it.

It didn’t mean it hadn’t taken something out of me along the way.

It did mean I’d think about seeing Theo again later, alone in my bed, my mind running through every version of how it could have gone—Theo kissing me, pulling me closer, finally taking the virginity I’d spent the last six years imagining he might.