Page 31 of Stolen Harmony

I stood up from the bench, telling myself I was just getting some water. The music got clearer as I moved toward the door, and I could hear children's voices now, laughing and calling out questions. A kids' guitar class. Cute.

“Can we play the song about the dinosaur again?” a high voice asked.

“In a minute, Emma. Let's make sure everyone's got this chord down first.”

My hand froze halfway to my water bottle.

I knew that voice.

I moved to the gym's doorway, looking down the hallway toward where the music was coming from. The door to what was probably a multipurpose room was cracked open, spilling warm light and the sound of acoustic guitars into the corridor.

This was stupid. I should go back to my workout, finish my sets, and get out of here before I did something idiotic like walk down there and confirm what I already suspected.

Instead, I found myself moving down the hallway like I was being pulled by invisible strings.

The multipurpose room was bigger than I'd expected, with folding chairs arranged in a semicircle and music stands scattered around like someone had tried to impose order on chaos and given up. About eight kids, ranging from maybe six to twelve years old, sat with guitars that looked enormous in their small hands. And at the front of the room, crouched down next to a girl who couldn't have been more than seven, was Elias.

He looked different here. Relaxed in a way I hadn't seen before, wearing jeans that had actual wear marks and a flannel shirt that had been washed so many times it had achieved perfect softness. His hair was messed up like he'd been running his hands through it, and there was a genuine smile on his face as he adjusted the little girl's finger placement on the fretboard.

“There you go, Emma. See how much cleaner that sounds when you arch your fingers like that?”

The girl beamed up at him, plucking the chord again with obvious pride. The sound was still pretty rough, but Elias nodded like she'd just performed Carnegie Hall.

“Now everyone try it together,” he said, standing up and picking up his own guitar. “Remember, we're not racing. Just focus on making each chord sound as good as you can.”

The resulting sound was exactly what you'd expect from eight kids trying to play guitar in unison. A mess of missed notes, wrong timing, and at least two completely different songs. But Elias just nodded along like it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard.

One of the older kids, a boy with shaggy hair and an attitude that suggested he was too cool for everything, had stopped playing entirely and was just glaring at his guitar like it had personally offended him.

“Having trouble, Mark?” Elias asked, moving over to him.

“This is stupid,” the kid muttered. “I sound like crap.”

“You sound like someone who's been playing for three weeks,” Elias said, crouching down next to Mark’s chair. “Which is exactly what you should sound like. How long do you think it took me to get good at this?”

“I don't know. Like, a month?”

Elias laughed, and the sound made my chest do that weird fluttering thing again. “Try ten years before I could play anything that didn't make people leave the room. And that's with practicing every day.”

“Really?”

“Really. When I was your age, my neighbor's dog used to howl every time I picked up a guitar. I took it personally until my mom pointed out that the dog howled at sirens too.”

A couple of the other kids giggled, and even Mark cracked a smile.

“The trick is not to worry about sounding good right now,” Elias continued. “The trick is to have fun while you're learning. Because if you're not having fun, why are you doing it?”

Mark nodded and started playing again, his chord progressionstill shaky but more confident. Elias moved on to the next kid, offering the same patient encouragement, the same gentle correction.

I realized I'd been standing in the doorway for at least five minutes, just watching. Like a creeper. A creeper who was definitely developing feelings for his dead mother's husband, which was fucked up on multiple levels that I wasn't ready to examine.

I should leave. Go back to the gym, finish my workout, pretend I'd never seen this.

Instead, I leaned against the doorframe and kept watching.

There was a kid in the back row who hadn't played a single note. She was small, maybe eight, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and the kind of serious expression that suggested she was overthinking everything. Her guitar sat in her lap like she was afraid to touch it.

Elias noticed her too. He finished helping a boy with his strumming pattern, then made his way over to the quiet girl.