9. Boone
BOONE
I wasn't expecting to see the ring.
It sat on the edge of the mixing board when I walked into the studio that morning, a plain silver band catching the overhead lights.
My hand froze halfway to the coffee I'd set down.
The world narrowed to that small circle of metal, and my chest went tight like someone had pulled a cord around my ribs.
Carly's wedding ring.
I picked it up, turning it over in my fingers. The metal was warm from sitting under the lights all night. She'd been here. She must've come back after I left, after our conversation yesterday when I'd been distracted with the new track. My stomach dropped. When the hell had she taken it off?
"Boone?"
My mother's voice cut through the fog. I looked up. Diane stood in the doorway with Savannah right behind her, both of them staring at me like I'd grown a second head. Jesus. How long had they been standing there?
I closed my fist around the ring. "Morning."
Diane came into the room, her heels clicking on the hardwood. She had that look on her face, the one that meant she was already three steps ahead of whatever conversation we were about to have. Savannah followed, quieter, her eyes flicking between me and my closed hand.
"What's that?" Diane asked, even though she obviously knew.
I opened my palm. The ring sat there, accusing. "Found it on the board."
Savannah sucked in a breath. My mother just looked at it, her expression unreadable. The silence stretched out until I wanted to throw something just to break it.
"What happened with Carly?" Diane's voice was careful, measured. She crossed her arms and waited.
"Nothing happened." The words came out sharper than I meant them to. I set the ring down on the board, harder than necessary, and it made a small metallic sound that seemed too loud. "We talked yesterday. She was fine."
"Fine." Diane repeated the word like she was tasting it. "Boone, fine women don't leave their wedding rings in recording studios."
Savannah shifted her weight, and I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. She had her hands clasped in front of her, worrying at her own fingers. "Maybe she just forgot it," she offered. "You know how she gets when she's working. She probably took it off to play and then?—"
"She wasn't working." The sentence came out flat. I remembered yesterday clearly enough. Carly'd been here, yeah, but she hadn't touched the piano. Hadn't touched anything. She'd just stood there while I talked to Savannah about the arrangement, and then she'd left.
God, I was an idiot.
"Well." Savannah tried again, her voice taking on that helpful tone that grated on my last nerve. "Maybe she's just overwhelmed. She's been struggling lately, hasn't she? I mean, with everything going on, the tour coming up, your schedule. It's a lot for someone like her to handle."
I looked at her. "Someone like her?"
"You know what I mean." Savannah's cheeks colored, but she didn't back down. "She's not used to this world, Boone. The pressure. The attention. Some people just aren't built for it."
My jaw clenched. Heat crawled up the back of my neck, and I had to remind myself that Savannah was just trying to help. She didn't know Carly the way I did. Nobody did. Carly was the strongest person I knew. She'd been handling my world just fine for ten damn years.
Savannah kept going, digging herself deeper.
"I've seen this before with other artists' partners.
They get in over their heads, they start to feel like they don't measure up, and then they pull away.
It's textbook, really. She probably needs space to figure out if she can actually handle being married to someone at your level, or if she'd be happier going back to?—"
"Stop." The word came out hard enough that Savannah's mouth snapped shut. My hands had curled into fists without me noticing, and I forced them to relax. "Just stop talking."
Savannah blinked. Her eyes went wide and hurt, like I'd slapped her. "I'm just trying to help."
"Well, you're not." I turned away from her, running a hand through my hair. My heart pounded hard against my ribs. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Boone," my mother said, her tone carrying a warning.
I ignored her. I kept my eyes on Savannah, watched her shrink back half a step. "Carly's fine. She doesn't need diagnosing. She doesn't need you picking her apart like she's some kind of problem to solve."
"I didn't mean?—"
"I know what you meant." My voice came out rougher than I intended, frustration burning hot in my chest. This whole conversation was wrong.
Standing here talking about Carly instead of to her, like she was some puzzle we needed to work out between us.
Like she wasn't my wife. "And I'm telling you to drop it. "
Savannah's mouth opened, then closed. She looked at my mother, probably expecting Diane to step in and smooth things over like she always did. But my mother just watched me with those cool, assessing eyes, the same way she used to watch me when I was a kid trying to talk my way out of trouble.
"Out," I said to Savannah. The word dropped like a stone.
"What?"
"Get out." I pointed at the door. My hand was steadier than my voice. "I don't need you here today. Take the morning off."
Savannah's face went pale, then red. "You can't be serious."
"Dead serious." I met her eyes and held them until she looked away.
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on, uncomfortable and sharp.
Finally, she grabbed her bag from where she'd dropped it by the door and left without another word.
The door clicked shut behind her, and the sound echoed in the sudden quiet.
I turned back to the mixing board. The ring was still there, sitting exactly where I'd left it. My mother hadn't moved.
"That was unnecessary," Diane said.
"No, it wasn't." I picked up the ring again, felt its weight in my palm. Too light. Something that small shouldn't feel this heavy. "She was out of line."
"She was trying to help."
"She was talking shit about my wife." I looked at my mother. "I don't need that kind of help."
Diane studied me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she sighed, the sound carrying something I couldn't name. Resignation, maybe. Or calculation. With my mother, it was hard to tell.
"Let her cool off," Diane said finally. She moved to the leather chair in the corner and sat down, crossing her legs at the ankle. "Carly, I mean. Whatever this is, she probably just needs some time to work through it on her own."
I frowned. "I should call her."
"Tonight." My mother's voice was firm. "Call her tonight, after you've both had space.
Right now, you have work to do." She gestured at the studio around us.
"You have a session booked in an hour, and the label is expecting those vocals before the end of the week.
Sitting here worrying about a fight you don't even understand isn't going to fix anything. "
She wasn't wrong. I hated that she wasn't wrong.
The track needed finishing. They were waiting.
The label was breathing down my neck about deadlines, and I'd already pushed this session back twice.
But standing here with Carly's ring in my hand, the whole thing felt wrong.
Like I should be doing something, fixing something, instead of just getting back to work like nothing had happened.
My mother watched me wrestle with it. "Boone," she said, softer now. "Get to work. You can't solve this by standing around staring at a piece of jewelry."
I closed my fist around the ring. "Yeah."
"Talk to her tonight. Really talk to her. Figure out what's going on." Diane stood and walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. "But right now, you need to focus. Can you do that?"
Could I? I didn't know. My head was full of Carly—the way she'd looked yesterday, quiet and distant, like she was watching me from somewhere far away. The way she'd left without saying goodbye. The ring she'd abandoned here like it didn't mean anything anymore.
"Yeah," I said again. The word came out rough. "I can focus."
My mother nodded and left, pulling the door closed behind her. The latch clicked home, and I was alone.
I stood there for a minute, maybe longer, turning the ring over in my hand.
The metal caught the light with each rotation, a small bright circle against my calloused palm.
This was the ring I'd put on her finger ten years ago.
The ring she'd worn every single day since.
And now it was here, in my studio, instead of on her hand where it belonged.
What the hell is going on, Carly?
But I knew I wouldn't get an answer standing here.
My mother was right about that much. I needed to work.
Needed to get through the day so I could go home tonight and sit down with my wife and actually figure out what was wrong.
Really talk to her this time, without my phone in my hand or Savannah in the next room or a dozen other things pulling my attention in every direction at once.
Just me and Carly, the way it used to be.
I slipped the ring into my pocket. The weight of it settled against my thigh, a small constant reminder that something was off.
Something I'd missed. But I'd fix it tonight.
I'd go home, and we'd talk, and whatever this was, we'd work through it together.
That's what we did. That's what we'd always done.
I pulled up the track on the board and fitted the headphones over my ears. The opening notes filled my head, familiar and grounding. I adjusted the levels, focused on the sound, and pushed everything else aside. The ring pressed against my leg through the fabric of my jeans.
Tonight. I'd fix it tonight.
The vocals needed work. I could hear it in the second verse, where the melody dropped but the words didn't quite land.
Carly would've caught it immediately. She always did.
She had an ear for the places where the music and the words didn't line up, the tiny gaps that nobody else could hear until she pointed them out. God, I needed her for this.
But she wasn't here. She was wherever she'd gone when she left the ring behind.
I hit play again and listened closer. The track rolled through the speakers, and I made myself hear it the way she would have heard it.
Technical. Precise. The chorus came in too bright, too eager, and the bridge needed something underneath it to carry the weight.
Maybe another guitar line. Maybe strings.
My phone sat on the console next to the board, screen dark.
I could call her right now. Ask her what she thought about the bridge.
Ask her why the hell her ring was sitting in my studio instead of on her finger.
Ask her if we were okay, if she was okay, if I'd done something wrong that I was too stupid to notice.
But I didn't pick up the phone.
Tonight, I told myself again. I'd call her tonight, when I wasn't on the clock and trying to finish a track that should've been done two weeks ago.
When I could actually pay attention to what she said instead of half-listening while my brain stayed on the music.
She deserved better than that. She deserved all my attention, not just whatever scraps I had left over at the end of a recording session.
I pulled up a new track and started laying down a guitar line for the bridge.
The strings hummed under my fingers, and the sound filled the room, familiar and good.
This was what I knew how to do. This was the part that made sense.
Music had rules. Chord progressions. Structures you could follow.
You put the notes together in the right order, and they made something beautiful.
Marriages should work the same way, shouldn't they?
You put in the work, you showed up, you loved each other, and it held together.
We'd been doing that for ten years. Ten solid years of building something together, of making it work even when it was hard.
One ring left in a studio didn't change that. It couldn't.
Could it?
The guitar line sounded wrong. I stopped, adjusted, started again. My fingers found the right notes this time, and the sound layered into the track better, fuller. Yeah. That was it. That was what the bridge needed.
I recorded it, played it back, nodded. Good enough for now. They could work with this.
The ring shifted in my pocket when I stood up to grab my water bottle. A small movement, barely noticeable. But I felt it anyway.
Tonight, I promised myself. Tonight I'll make it right.
I sat back down, pulled the headphones on tighter, and got to work.