Page 13 of The Sound Between Us (Vinyl Hearts #1)

musical genius

Harrison

I wake up on the wrong sofa in the wrong room of my own house. My neck’s fucked; there’s a crick running down my spine like I got into a brawl with gravity and lost. One arm’s asleep and dead to the world, the other is clinging to an empty tequila bottle like we made vows in Vegas.

The house is too quiet. It’s a big place; too big. Clean lines, glass everything, some abstract monstrosity in the hallway that cost twenty grand and looks like a toddler had a tantrum with a glue gun. A view of the hills that would be impressive if I wasn’t dying.

There’s a cactus in the kitchen that someone said would “balance the energy.” It’s dead.

I stare at it. “Same.”

The clock reads 6:42 a.m. And I’m here, on a leather couch that smells of cow and expensive polish. With the taste of ash in my mouth and the phantom of her melody still echoing behind my ribs.

The song. Our song.

It’s there. A bruise; purple and hidden under the surface. Press it and it hurts. Don’t press it and it still fucking hurts .

And I can’t use it.

I mean—I could. But that would make me the kind of man who steals music from a woman who won’t even kiss him because he made her feel too much too soon.

And I might be a walking mess of impulse control issues, but I’m not a thief. At least not of her; not of that.

I peel myself off the sofa, muscles cracking, and stumble toward the espresso machine, hoping it will save me, or at the least, bring me back to life. It hisses at me. Judging my life choices. It’s probably right.

I’ve just lifted the milk out of the fridge when the intercom buzzes. Once.

Then again.

Then again. Long and insistent. The person pressing it thinks they’re the main character in a Netflix reboot of my actual nightmare.

“Fuck off.” At the wall.

But I already know who it is. Because hell doesn’t knock—it buzzes.

I ignore it because that’s what intercoms are for, but then freeze when two minutes later, she’s at the door, letting herself in. Tall, tanned, legs for days, and wearing leather trousers that might require a team of engineers and a crowbar to get into.

Ruby.

Because a tequila hangover isn’t complete without an ex to make your remaining brain cells hurt.

“Hi, baby.” She steps into my house. She still keeps a toothbrush here, apparently. She doesn’t. I tossed it, along with mascara and lip stain that she’d slipped into my bathroom cabinet.

“Don’t call me that.”

She pouts. “You’re still grumpy.”

“No. I’m just sober. ”

She hums. That’s a concept she doesn’t quite believe in. She tosses her hair back with the casual elegance of someone who’s been practising on red carpets since she was nineteen.

“I was in the neighbourhood. Figured we could catch up.”

“I figured we wouldn’t.”

She grins at me over her shoulder. “Still mean when you’re sad. I find it oddly hot.”

I’m about to respond, a scathing reply with teeth, but my phone pings.

A message from Henry: Car outside. Studio. 8am. Don’t fuck this.

Saved by the bell.

“I’ve got to go.” I grab my notebook and slide it into the back pocket of my jeans and fish a pair of sunglasses off the counter.

She watches me. Sizing up a vintage coat at a thrift store. “We could talk when you’re back?”

“We could. But we won’t.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but I’m already gone.

“Lock up after you.”

Out the front door and into a California morning that’s bright, smug and too much. I dive into the shade of the waiting car.

The driver, who isn’t Lee, doesn’t say a word, just glances at me in the mirror. He’s seen worse.

The studio’s downtown, in a building that smells of old records and broken dreams. We recorded the album here—the one that sold twelve million copies and ruined our lives.

Studio A smells of vintage wood and new failure.

Thirty-foot ceilings, sacred-feeling acoustics, warm lighting.

Platinum records on the wall. The space is trying to guilt us into genius.

And the SSL 9000 J Series console—smooth and steady, probably the only one of us that isn’t having an existential crisis.

Dex is already there when I arrive, lying flat on the Persian rug in the middle of the room, arms flung wide.

Ascending. Hair slicked back, shirt open, sunglasses on even though we’re indoors.

He looks like a man who got lost on the way to a GQ shoot, leaned into it, and then got spectacularly high.

Which, knowing Dex, is exactly what happened.

Jamie turns up ten minutes late with a protein shake in one hand and a vape in the other. His pupils are moons; his brain’s clearly visiting 2009. We’re all thirty, but we move as though we’re sixty.

Henry’s pacing in the control room behind the glass, mouthing words we’ll never write and pretending we’re still worth saving.

“We need something,” he says through the talkback. That’ll manifest a hit single out of the air.

I stare at the blinking lights on the console. They might deliver divine inspiration. Nothing happens.

“So,” I say, for what feels the sixth time in an hour. “Anyone got anything? A melody? A chord? A word?”

Nothing.

Jamie exhales a cloud of vape smoke. “Pancake.”

Dex groans from his rug-nest. “Don’t say food, man. I’m in space.”

“Got any lyrics?” Dex asks, not moving from his horizontal position.

Jamie shrugs. “I’ve got a half-finished poem about my last colonoscopy.”

I lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. I do have lyrics. I have a song. One with a line about wanting more and pretending not to; one with chords that feel like kissing someone for the first time and knowing it’ll ruin you.

But it’s hers.

So I say nothing .

“Come on, Harry,” Dex says, finally sitting up. “You’re the golden goose. You’ve always got one in the chamber.”

I shake my head. “Not today.”

Henry looks ready to throw me out the window. “We’ve got deadlines, Harrison. We’ve got producers, we’ve got fucking expectations.”

And I want to scream at him—I’ve got insomnia. I’ve got jet lag. I’ve got a song in my chest that isn’t mine and a girl in my head who won’t leave.

Instead, I close my eyes and hum the melody under my breath. Soft, almost nothing.

Dex tilts his head. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” I stand, pacing. “Just... I can’t use it.”

He watches me for a long beat. “You seeing someone?”

I bark out a laugh. “No. That would imply I’m emotionally available.”

Jamie stretches, finally sitting upright in one of the leather armchairs by the mixing desk. “You’re different, though. You’ve been weird since London.”

They’re not wrong. I’m fractured, and underneath the swagger and the sarcasm is a boy who met a woman who didn’t flinch when he stopped performing.

And that’s dangerous. Because she saw me, and I liked it. Too much.

Jamie gestures toward the piano in the corner with his joint. “Why don’t you start something? You’re the lyrics guy.”

I stiffen. Because I have. I did. But the words belong to someone else now.

“Can’t force it,” I say. “Doesn’t work that way.”

Henry clicks the talkback again. “It’s worked that way for you before.”

I shoot him a look. He shrugs. Don’t hate me, I’m just here to get you paid.

“We don’t need a whole song,” Jamie mumbles, tapping ash into a vintage teacup someone brought in as a joke. “Just a spark. One good line.”

One good line. Right.

I only meant to kiss you once, but it felt like coming home.

Or, You make me feel like I used to before the lights got too bright and I stopped sleeping.

Or the bridge Seren half-mumbled at me last week while barefoot on the piano bench, distracted, a tiny frown on her forehead as she searched for the right lyric. It owed her money.

All of it still lodged somewhere in my chest. A splinter.

But I can’t use it. I won’t.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Dex says from his rug-nest. “Let it come to you.”

I shoot him a look. “Dex, you haven’t spoken in forty-five minutes. You were singing the Teletubbies theme ten minutes ago.”

“And it was a vibe,” he mutters, proud.

Jamie’s now riffing nonsense chords on a Les Paul plugged into a vintage Marshall, the echo bouncing off the walls.

A mockery. I stare down at my notebook—the one I’ve had since tour started.

The pages are all half-scribbled, ideas never followed through.

I flip through them and find her handwriting.

One note, one phrase in her messy scrawl: Maybe less rhyme. More truth.

I close the book so fast I almost bend the cover.

“Right,” I mutter, standing. “Coffee. Or whisky. Or bleach.”

Henry glances over his glasses from the control room. “Try the Lounge. The piano’s tuned.”

Of course it is.

I leave Studio A before I start launching microphones. The Lounge is sunlit and high-ceilinged and smells of bergamot and subtle disappointment. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, downtown LA gleams—distant, glossy, and totally uninterested in my artistic suffering.

The Steinway sits gleaming under a beam of afternoon sun, mocking me.

I walk past it.

Pour a black coffee. Burn my tongue. Deserve it.

Sophie, the assistant engineer, appears out of nowhere. Audio witch.

“Rough day?” She tucks a pen behind her ear.

“We’ve written approximately one and a half ideas.” I hold up my fingers. “One was about breakfast foods; the other was a scream.”

She doesn’t laugh; just nods sympathetically. “Some sessions are that way.”

“Feels more some bands are that way.”

She shrugs. “Try sitting at the piano. See what happens.”

I glance at it.

I could . My hands already ache with the muscle memory of that melody; the one from the basement. The night that shouldn’t have happened; the girl who turned me into someone I don’t know how to be.

I sit, just for a heartbeat, and let my fingers brush the keys.

I play the first chord before I can stop myself. Then another; the intro that fell into place between us. Breath and rhythm. The one she adjusted mid-kiss because she said it felt a half-step off from honest.

It still kills me how right she was.

The melody hangs in the air. Quiet, private, almost raw.

I close the lid before it goes any further.

Stand.

“Nothing there,” I say, too quickly.

Sophie’s eyes flick to the keys. “Sure.”

Back in Studio A, Jamie’s passed out in the armchair and Dex is trying to record the sound of him laughing into a kazoo through a Neumann U87 .

Mark doesn’t look up as I enter; just slides a protein bar across the desk. Wounded animal treatment.

“Still nothing?” he asks, and I know it’s coming from a place of kindness. He’s a good sort.

I collapse into the nearest chair and bite the bar in half.

“Nope.”

He leans back, folds his arms. “Eventually something’s going to crack.”

I nod. “Yeah. Might be me.”