Page 39 of One More Made Up Love Song (Midnight Rush #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Freddie

Considering how late we were up the night before, I don’t expect to make it to Leo’s studio until after lunch. But when he texts me just past ten and says I’m welcome to show up whenever, I don’t waste any time getting there.

I’ve had lyrics running through my brain all morning, and I’d love to get it down on paper.

As soon as we show up, Wayne heads to the lounge area at the back of the rehearsal space while I unpack my guitar.

Leo looks up from where he’s sitting at the piano and immediately grins.

“What has you smiling?”

I shrug as I connect to Leo’s amp. “Nothing. Just happy to be here. Ready to make some music.”

“I don’t believe you,” Leo says.

“Why don’t we believe him?” Adam says as he and Jace walk into the room from the booth situated opposite the sound stage .

“Because he’s got a weird grin on his face,” Leo says. He plays a few chords of the song we worked on the last time we were here, and goosebumps break out across my skin. Sometimes when a melody finds me, something happens on a visceral level, some recognition of a good, true, creative thing.

I can’t explain it, and I don’t always find it. But knowing it’s out there—it’s enough to keep me chasing it every time I write.

“That’s why I’m grinning,” I say to Leo. “We wrote a good song.”

When Leo bought the space that now houses South Hollow Sound, it was a crumbling shell of a building, the former location of Lamplight Studios.

Lamplight was a Nashville icon back in the sixties, with some of country music’s greatest artists coming through to record.

But then it went bankrupt in the early nineties, and the building was shuttered and probably would have been condemned and torn down had Leo not stepped in when he did.

He had to basically gut the entire space and start over to make it functional and up to code—new wiring, new plumbing, that sort of thing—but it’s obvious he worked hard to honor the vibe of the original studio.

There are two isolation booths at the back, plus a state-of-the-art control room with everything Leo needs to mix and master tracks like the professional he’s become.

I could work with just about anyone in the industry, but using Leo to produce my albums is an easy choice.

“You wrote it,” Leo says. “I’ve just been your sounding board. Either way, I still think there’s something else making you happy.”

“Maybe someone else?” Jace says, and I roll my eyes .

“Stop.” I lift the strap of my guitar over my head and position myself on my stool. “Are we working or what?”

Adam pulls up a seat next to the piano. “You’re working. We’re just here to watch.”

“And make fun of you,” Jace adds as he sits down beside Adam.

“That’s why I’m here too,” Wayne says from the opposite side of the room.

I roll my eyes one more time. “Fine. I get it. So happy to be your entertainment.” I strum my guitar and reach for the tuning pegs. “Give me an E?” I say to Leo.

The last time we were together, we worked on two different songs.

One is mostly finished but the other still needs a chorus and everything past the first verse.

For all their talk of only being around to watch, Adam and Jace were genuinely helpful the last time we were here.

They probably deserve a writing credit as much as Leo does.

We didn’t do much writing when we were Midnight Rush. Not at first. We were too curated, too much a product of a record label who picked us individually to turn us into their vision of what a boyband should be.

But we’ve come a long way since then. And I’d argue we’re writing better music than anything the label executives picked for us when they were in charge.

“Which one are we doing first?” Leo asks. “You want to pick up where we left off last time?”

“Let’s play through ‘Golden Eyes’ first,” I say. “I was messing around with the bridge last night, and I think it’ll work better in a minor key. And I wrote a final verse too, so, let’s start there.”

Leo nods and plays through the opening chords. I sing through the first verse. When I hit the chorus, Jace starts humming a harmony line that sounds really great, so I motion for him to keep it up, and he joins in, singing through the rest of the chorus with me.

“That sounds good,” I say. “You know the second verse?”

Leo lifts one hand off the keyboard and slides a sheet of paper across the top of the piano toward Jace. “If you can read his handwriting,” Leo says.

Jace picks up the paper and nods. “Geez, man,” he says and Adam leans over his shoulder to look.

“Does that say heart or herd?”

“Or head?” Jace asks.

“Come on,” I say. “Context clues.”

“I guess a pounding head would be a very different kind of song,” Adam says dryly.

“I want to hear the bridge,” Leo says, hands still playing through the interlude between verses. “Are we doing this?”

I wait another measure, then I join in with the second verse, and by the end of the first line, Jace is singing too.

After the second verse, we sing the chorus again, then I sing the bridge, followed by a key change that circles us back to the chorus a third time.

By the time we finish, my instincts are telling me I’ve got a hit on my hands, and it’s making me buzz with a new kind of energy.

Sometimes writing feels like work. Sometimes it feels like magic. And this song—it’s magic. I can tell by the look on Leo’s face that he feels it too.

“Okay, this is where it changes,” I say.

“You lead and I’ll follow,” Leo says.

He pauses as I shift my hands and change keys, then he jumps in. “Yes,” he says, nodding his head. “That’s it.”

“And then the lyrics,” I say, pausing before singing,

“There’s no thunder, no big sign ,

Just the slow undoing of the lines?—

Where one thing ends

And something else begins?—

Something better wins.”

We play through the chorus one more time, and I lean into the lyrics about a woman with gold in her eyes and a promise in her smile and a shifting world I’m seeing for the first time.

It’s good. I know it’s good. So when the song ends and I look at my friends, I can’t figure out why they’re all staring at me. Maybe it’s not good? Maybe I’ve forgotten how to make music and I need to find a new job?

But then Leo mutters a quiet, “Damn, Freddie,” and I let out the breath I’m holding.

“It’s good, right?” I say, and he nods.

“It’s better than good.”

Adam clears his throat. “I just have one question.”

I run a hand through my hair. “Okay.”

“Are you going to tell Ivy it’s about her? Or just let her figure it out on her own.”

I frown. “It isn’t about Ivy.”

“Come on,” Jace says. “You know it is.”

“It’s not,” I repeat.

Leo lifts an eyebrow. “Freddie.” He reaches for the sheet of paper I used to write out the lyrics the last time I was here, then reads, “You laugh, and I forget my name. Same joke, but it doesn’t land the same. The truth was there but too close to see, you’ve rewritten my world and set me free?”

“It’s about finding love generally,” I argue. “It isn’t about Ivy.”

“Because Ivy doesn’t have gold in her eyes?” Jace asks.

Adam reaches for the paper. “And you aren’t slowly undoing the lines where friendship ends and something better begins?”

I don’t answer. I can’t answer. I didn’t intentionally set out to write a song about Ivy, but when I close my eyes, it’s definitely her eyes I see when I’m singing.

I lean to the side and prop my guitar against a nearby stand, then drop my elbows onto my knees and stare at the floor.

“We’re not saying it’s a bad thing,” Adam says.

“We like Ivy,” Jace adds.

“Honestly, we weren’t surprised when we heard the news you were together. It was more surprising when you told us it was a publicity stunt. We all kinda assumed this is where you were headed.”

I finally look up. “Really? You all thought that?”

They nod in unison.

“You’re good together,” Adam says. “And she’s great.”

I let out a little chuckle, thinking about our interview at the premiere last night and the way things seemed to shift after that.

“She, uh…” I hesitate, suddenly unsure if I want to relay the entire story she told to Vivica Rose last night.

“Last night she answered an interview question about when she knew I was the one for her. And she told a story from a long time ago. Like, three years long.”

“Was she pretending?” Leo asks. “Like, just making it up for the sake of the interview?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” I say. “But it didn’t really seem like it. I know Ivy. And there was something about her tone. It felt like she was telling the truth.”

“How do you feel about that?” Jace asks.

“Like an idiot,” I say. “Like I’ve been missing out on something amazing because I couldn’t see past the nose on my own face.”

“So you want a relationship that’s real,” Leo says, matter-of-factly, and I nod.

“Yeah. I do.”

Wayne coughs on the other side of the room. I can’t be sure, but the cough sounds an awfully lot like the words, I told you so.

“Then why not tell her?” Jace asks.

I lean back and run a hand through my hair. “I want to. I’m going to Knoxville with her tomorrow,” I say. “I just have to figure out how.”

“You could just play her the song,” Adam suggests.

I nod. It’s not a terrible idea, now that I realize it’s about her. Which, honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t notice. I was too close to the process, maybe.

“I just don’t want to screw things up,” I say. “I don’t have a ton of experience with real relationships. If I do this thing with Ivy, I want to do it right. But what does right even look like when my life is…what it is?”

“Because of the fame?” Adam asks.

“The fame. The paparazzi. The never-ending scrutiny. Why would anyone want any of that?”

“But Ivy already knows all that. She’s been working with you for years,” Leo says.

“Just tell her, man,” Adam says. “Give her the opportunity to decide for herself.”

“You don’t think I should wait until all this faking stuff is behind us?” I ask. “I don’t want her to question my motives. Or feel trapped—like she has to go along with it even if she doesn’t feel the same way just because of all the publicity stuff. ”

“Uh, have you met Ivy?” Leo says. “She won’t go along with anything unless she wants to.”

I chuckle, and my heart expands the slightest bit. That’s one of the things I love most about Ivy. She knows her mind, and she definitely won’t let anyone push her around. Especially me.

“That’s fair,” I say. “But…what if she doesn’t feel the same way? What if I tell her and ruin everything, and then we can’t even be friends anymore?”

“What if you never tell her, and then you never know and you miss out on the opportunity to love her?” Adam shoots back.

Of the four of us, he’s the only one in a committed relationship, so he’s probably the most qualified to ask the question.

But then Jace adds, “Sometimes you have to take the risk and hope for the best. If we only focused on the worst thing that could happen, we’d never do anything.

Take my marriage, for example. It ended.

And it sucked. But I still don’t regret it.

I have my kids, and I learned a lot about what I want my next relationship to look like. ”

In every other aspect of my life, I’d fully embrace Jace’s philosophy. It’s a huge part of why I’ve built the career that I have. Sometimes making it in this business means acting first and thinking later. But this thing with Ivy—there’s so much at stake if it doesn’t work out.

“Listen,” Adam says, running a hand over his beard.

“I’m not saying I know something. If I did know something, it would be wrong for me to say something, especially if someone asked me not to.

” He looks at me pointedly, and I get the sense he does know something and he’s trying his hardest to talk around it.

“But in this hypothetical situation where I am not betraying anyone’s trust, if I thought you were going to get yourself hurt by admitting your feelings, I would definitely figure out a way to warn you. ”

I narrow my gaze at him. “But you aren’t warning me now?”

“I’m not doing anything now,” he says. “Because I’m a man of my word.”

I smile and let the hope growing in my chest shoot out a few more roots.

Tomorrow, I think, then I tap the side of my guitar. “All right. Let’s do it again.”