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Luke’s firm voice echoes through the room as he covers the distance between us. I look up to see a storm of emotions on his face. I can’t begin to sort through them, and I’m not surprised when he closes his eyes. I feel like doing the same. No one wants to witness chaos like the internal mess we just threw at each other in that single glance.

After a long, painful pause, he opens his eyes to deliver the crushing blow.

The apology.

The rejection that will somehow makemefeel like the villain for having hope in something better.

“Can you run through it with me a few times first?” His voice is almost a whisper.

I go numb.

There’s no way…

“I only heard it that once, and I know you changed some of the melody anyway,” he explains.

I can’t speak. Can’t move. I just stare at the screen until tears obscure my view. I blink them away, my ribs aching beneath the weight of what’s happening.

“Um, yeah, of course. Just...”

Fuck, I can’t even get words out.

This can’t be real. I have to be dreaming, and I’m going to be heartbroken when I wake up and realize I’m alone on a plane with my laptop and a lifetime of charred memories.

But the sudden pressure squeezing my shoulder feels so damn real, and when I dare to look up, so does the man standing beside me.

My best friend.

My brother.

My lead singer.

His eyes scream everything I’m feeling as he pulls me in for a tight embrace. His arms constrict around me, suffocating the darkness. I hear everything he wants to say in the way he holds on, and my cheeks are wet with tears I’ve been needing to cry for so damn long.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers in a choked voice. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I know,” I return softly.

And for the first time, it’s the truth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Hello, hello. Greetings from the inside. Hello, hello framed in all your lies…”

I pivot my chair further from Luke, grateful he’s staring at the lyrics on his phone. He can’t see my face right now. The way my soul is spilling out in barely tempered emotion as his familiar voice cuts through every part of me.

“Hello, hello. How you love to see me cry…”

More tears slip down my cheeks, and I discreetly wipe them away.

I never thought I’d hear him sing again. I never thought my melodies and his words would twist together in the magical formula that shot us to the top. I thought we lost the future of our music, but here it is, pouring out and filling a crowded room that’s much too small to contain it.

His voice needs to be heard. The raw emotion only he can bring to a song takes me back to the basement of his aunt’shouse, where two troubled teens found healing and purpose. Bonds were formed that seemed impossible to break.

Until they did.

Until the night they tore apart and were left hanging as severed shards of what they should have been.

“Always so…Hang on, stop it for a sec?”