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That caught me off guard. “Maybe. If you believe Sherman, and everyone else in this miserable city, my company is dead. A smart, talented singer like you wouldn’t choose a risk like me when you had a solid bet like Sherman Proud.”

“He said you were selfish,” she growled. “But he didn’t warn me that you were blind, too.”

My arms loosened on my chest. “What are you talking about?”

She strode out of the booth and to the studio door. I tensed up as the reality of her exiting my life finally hit me. She glared at me over her shoulder. “Are you sure you want to listen to me? A second ago, it sounded like you’d made up your mind that I was some blood-sucking, fame-hungry monster.”

“I’m just...” Running my hands over my hair, I let out a tired groan. “People are abandoning me left and right, Amina. Why else would you have his card if you weren’t at least considering working with him?”

“He said a lot of things about you. Made me worry you were using me to attract the kind of musicians you really wanted. And then when all those girls showed up to audition, and you and Violet weren’t letting me record anything, I thought Sherman was right.”

Pain curdled in my stomach; I clenched my hands, unsure what to do with this wave of anger. This sense of... regret. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you. At all. If anything, you were ignoring me.”

“I know. I wanted a smooth work environment, Bach. I was terrified if you got me alone we’d end up—”

“Like this,” I mumbled, remembering how good her lips tasted.

She blushed as she met my stare. “I’m a little pissed at you, and a lot at myself. I was probably being really confusing. I’m sorry, I really am.” She came back into the booth. “I shouldn’t have taken his card. I regretted it the second I did it. I swear, I wasn’t going to call him. Especially not after all of this.” She gestured at the mic, at my book of songs on the floor. “I don’t want to work with anyone else, Bach. Not even if it’s ‘best for me.’”

I took a steadying breath. “He really called me selfish?”

“He was definitely trying to paint you in a bad light. He also said... that you never believed in your own father.”

The muscles in my neck ached from how tight they became.

“Bach,” she said gently. “It’s not true, right?” She stood in front of me, her hands twitching at her sides. She wanted to comfort me but was unsure how to.

Reaching down, I linked our fingers together, but I didn’t look at her face. I couldn’t while I told this story. “I wasn't born as one of the ‘angels’ in this city. I grew up in a tiny corner of Connecticut. The whole area was rough, it shaped me into a young man who knew better than to dream. But my father, god. All he talked about was dreaming. He'd sit in our little one-bedroom apartment, practicing music, tuning his guitar — not paying the electricity so we'd be sitting in the dark.”

I didn’t have to shut my eyes to see him strumming at the kitchen table as the single streetlight outside illuminated him. It was a memory that burned bright.

“I told him constantly that he was a fool,” I said, my voice stony. “He'd tell me, ‘You are who you are in your soul, even if no one else sees it.’ Bullshit, right?” I lifted my eyes to hers, saw they were gleaming with emotion, and looked away quickly. “But sometimes... when I caught him sitting outside, looking at the stars, singing to himself... I almost believed he could make it big. Then, when I was nine, my father got his demo into the right hands.”

“Sherman,” she whispered.

I nodded sharply. “Overnight our lives changed. He became a star. All of that success, and he never once rubbed it in.”

“Never rubbed what in?”

It hurt to smile, but I did it anyway. “That I'd been wrong about him. That dreams could happen.” I stared at my book on the floor. “We were never close. I went from being angry at him as a kid, to barely seeing him as a teen. I became a shithead with money. I'd get into fights; my dad would pay people off. He had publicists chasing me all over. I still didn't care, why did my image matter? I know you saw all those articles online tearing me down.”

When she said nothing, I turned back towards her. Amina had her arms wrapped around her body, like she was trying to hold herself together, or protect herself. “Yes. I looked your name up before I got on the plane.”

“And you still came?” I asked cynically. “Five years ago, at my lowest point, Violet dragged me from the basement of some gambling ring in Vegas where I'd lost six days of my life and over one hundred grand. I thought she was there to shame me... knock sense into me... but she wasn't. She'd come to tell me my dad needed to see me. I knew it right away. It was all over her face... she couldn’t hide the pain, or her sympathy. Dad was dying.”

Amina had gone pale again. “Bone cancer.”

“Guess you read about that, too.” Inclining my head, I sighed into my fist. “He couldn't teach me how to keep his empire, his dream, from falling apart. There was no time for any of that. Honestly, a lifetime wouldn't have been enough. None ofthis,”I gestured wildly at the studio around me, “is who I am. He said it, you know? ‘You are who you are in your soul.’ He was a musician and it took years for someone to notice. Me? I'm a fuck-up, and the whole world's been aware of that since I was born.”

Her eyes shimmered, pupils so tiny they vanished in her clear-gray irises. Tiny leaves on a rain-flooded pond. I was ready, eager, to drown in them. “You’re not a fuck-up.”

“Don’t waste your time trying to soothe my ego.”

The lines by her lips deepened. “If you’re stumbling along, messing everything up, then what am I? Another mistake?”

My breath caught in my throat. “Of course not.”

“You said I had the most amazing voice you’d ever heard. You’re the one who brought me here, the one who made it possible for me to record my music. If that’s the only thing you didn’t fuck-up, it still counts.”