Page 101 of Hard Rock Muse

31

Iwandered back to the music room in a daze. I’d forgotten about the latte. I’d forgotten Julian had called the others. I was too preoccupied with Keith’s words.

I heard the sounds of guitar and drums echoing down the hallway before I saw Seth and Nathan. I walked in and saw Julian and Cerise also there.

I stopped in the doorway, watching them, waiting for Julian to notice me.

He didn’t. He was so absorbed with the music, giving the others instructions, explaining when he wanted the drums to come in, where the guitar solo was going to go.

Cerise had the music sheets with the lyrics in her hands, lips pursed in thought. She nodded her head along to the music, muttering to herself once and a while.

When there was a break in the song, Cerise spoke out loud.

“I like it,” she said. “It’s good.”

A frown line appeared between Julian’s eyes. “Just good?”

Cerise tilted her head, examining him.

“You’ve been working on this for a while,” she said. “It’s good enough for the album. That’s really all we need.”

“We don’t wantgood,” Julian pressed. “We want great. We want pure genius.”

“Do you think, if I gave you more time, you’d be able to do better than this?” Cerise said evenly, not accusing, simply asking the question.

Julian dropped his eyes to the ground.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We tried our best.”

“Then we run with it,” she said. “We don’t have that much more time.”

He nodded slowly, as if the motion was painful.

“Hey Ever!” Seth called out with a wave as he caught sight of me. “Didn’t know you were here.”

Julian cast his eyes up and saw me standing in the doorway.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought you’d taken off for the day.”

“Apparently not.” I folded my arms across my stomach, a defensive position, as if holding myself together through sheer will.

“Cerise likes the song,” he said, nodding to his lead singer.

“I heard,” I said. “Guess we’re done.”

“Yeah,” Julian said, eyeing me, as if confused at my tone. “We’re done.”

“Great.”

I knew I shouldn’t have been so short. I knew I shouldn’t have let Keith rattle me. But he’d gotten into my head. His words kept repeating in my mind over and over.

It wasn’t like he was wrong, was he? Julian had been getting impatient. He wanted to be done with this. And the minute we’d finished, he’d dismissed me.

I wanted to believe in Julian’s feelings for me. I wanted to believe he meant it when he said he cared about me. After all, he certainly acted like he did. Surely he couldn’t have been faking that.

But as much as he said he cared for me, he’d never said those three important words. He’d never told me he loved me. Not the way I loved him.

Had I been wrong about us this whole time?