Page 23 of The Sound Between Us (Vinyl Hearts #1)

lightning in a bottle

Seren

This is exactly what I didn’t want. This is Dad’s life.

The thought hits me the moment we step through the studio doors.

Full-body assault of expensive equipment and the specific hum of creativity-for-hire.

The air smells like ambition dressed in cologne.

Polished wood, leather, that electrical buzz humming under high ceilings.

Technology waiting to capture lightning in a bottle for the right price.

I’m already cataloguing exits. Windows. Fire door. A polite British excuse about sudden food poisoning. Anything to escape Dad’s idea of hell—artistry sold by the hour.

“This is Seren.” Harrison’s voice holds a thread of uncertainty. “She’s going to sit in today.”

Silence. Just long enough to wrinkle.

Jamie and Dex flick their gazes between Harrison and me. Henry—Harrison’s manager, all sharp lines and sharper ambition—studies me. Cold-eyed. Calculating. Mentally totalling my potential profit margins and finding them wanting.

Harrison catches Henry’s expression and wags a finger at him. “Don’t. She’ll have us all signing NDAs if you start treating her like a business opportunity. ”

Henry’s eyebrow arches. Says nothing, but I can feel suspicion radiating off him.

“Just sit wherever you’re comfortable.” Harrison gestures toward expensive furniture that probably costs more than my yearly rent.

“I’m not comfortable anywhere in here.”

“None of us are,” Jamie says, bass hanging from his shoulder. “That’s the point.”

Dex snorts from behind his kit. Custom Ludwig, fully mic’d. “Speak for yourself. I’m always comfortable. It’s my natural state.”

I almost smile despite myself. Something refreshingly unpretentious about him, shoelaces untied, adjusting his hi-hat with casual precision.

“Right.” Henry claps his hands, all forced cheer and barely concealed panic. “Shall we make some magic?”

The way he says ‘magic’ makes it sound like a quarterly target.

The next two hours are a masterclass in elegant futility.

I sit in my corner, close enough to watch, far enough to ghost out if this becomes unbearable.

Harrison’s hunched over his guitar, a vintage Gibson Les Paul gleaming beneath designer lighting.

He keeps playing the same three chord progressions with increasing urgency, hitting them harder, willing them to bleed something meaningful.

“Try building from that E minor,” Jamie suggests, fingers finding harmonies that are technically flawless and emotionally vacant.

“We’ve done that. Three times.” Frustration bleeds into Harrison’s voice.

“What about sampling something? Layer it in?” Dex offers, but his heart isn’t in it .

“We’re not a remix act.”

Mark, the studio owner, tweaks levels compulsively from behind the SSL console. Adjusting EQ settings that don’t need adjusting, solving a problem that isn’t technical. The Pro Tools screen glows with waveform after waveform of half-formed thoughts, digital ghosts of songs that never arrive.

“The room sounds good,” Mark says during a silence too long to ignore. “Great natural reverb.”

But reverb can’t conjure soul.

It’s professional. Polished. Completely void of spark. They’ve been at it so long they’ve forgotten how to feel. This is artistry reduced to algorithm, creativity by committee, inspiration scheduled between lunch and Henry’s next panic attack.

“Fuck this.” Jamie drops his bass harder than necessary, the sound echoing off soundproofed walls. “I’m getting burritos. Anyone else?”

I expect Harrison to pass. He radiates health-conscious, time-optimising energy. But he’s already grabbing his jacket.

“Seren? You hungry?”

I am, actually. Ravenous. Though whether from hunger or nerves is debatable.

The Mexican place is everything the studio isn’t. Cramped, loud, unapologetically chaotic. Red plastic chairs that have seen better decades, fluorescent lighting that flatters no one but makes everyone look more honest. Food that smells like actual joy instead of manufactured ambition.

“You’ve got better taste than your old man,” Dex addresses me through a mouthful of carnitas. “No offence.”

“None taken. I agree.”

Jamie nearly chokes on his beer. “Did she just?—?”

“Trash her own father? Yeah.” I steal a chip from Harrison’ s plate, watching the way his gaze tracks the motion. “Shocking, I know. The industry darling has opinions about nepotism and artistic integrity.”

“Careful,” Jamie grins, beer foam clinging to his upper lip. “That kind of honesty could get you blacklisted.”

“What are they going to do, make me work in a record shop in Camden? Oh wait.”

The laugh that follows is unguarded. Real. For the first time since I walked into that studio, something loosens in my chest. These aren’t industry robots. They’re just people. Talented, disillusioned people trying to make something that matters and failing a little more quietly each time.

“You’re nothing like we expected,” Jamie says, signalling the waitress for another round.

“What did you expect?”

Dex shrugs, wiping salsa from his chin with zero ceremony.

“Honestly? Another industry princess. Daddy’s connections, mummy’s cheekbones.

The kind who thinks slumming it with the talent makes her interesting.

” He pauses, studying my face. “But you’re actually funny.

And you clearly hate this world as much as we do. ”

The words hit harder than they should. Being liked for who I am, actually liked, not tolerated or assessed for my potential utility, feels like drinking cold water after years of convincing myself I wasn’t thirsty.

“My dad and Uncle Vinny were like this once,” I admit, the words falling out too soft to be casual and far too honest to take back. “Before everything got complicated. Before success turned them into brands instead of people.”

The table stills. Conversations taper into silence. I can feel Harrison watching me with that particular intensity that makes the back of my neck flush.

“Is that what you think happened to us?” Jamie’s question comes quietly .

I don’t answer immediately. I let the weight of it hang in the fluorescent-lit air between us. I consider diplomacy, but what would be the point?

“I think you stopped remembering why you started.”

“Christ,” Dex mutters under his breath, but there’s no heat in it. “She’s brutal.”

“She’s right,” Harrison says, his voice quieter than the others, accepting the diagnosis he’s been too afraid to voice himself.

The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. It’s necessary.

“Tommie used to say we were the poets of our generation,” Dex says finally, his usual bravado stripped away. “Said we had something to say that mattered.”

“Before the machine got hold of us,” Harrison finishes. “Before we stopped being artists and became a product.”

I watch the way they look at each other, these three men bound by grief and success and the terrible weight of having lost someone who kept them honest.

“Who was Tommie?” I ask gently.

“Our original drummer,” Jamie explains. “Harrison’s best mate since they were kids. Died in a car crash three years ago, right before we really took off.”

“He’d fucking hate what we’ve become,” Harrison says, and there’s such raw pain in his voice that I want to reach across the table and touch his hand. “Everything we represent now. He’d hate all of it.”

The words settle in the air like smoke, curling and clinging and impossible to ignore.

“So change it back,” I say simply.

They all look at me like I’ve suggested something radical instead of obvious.

“It’s not that simple—” Harrison starts.

“Isn’t it? You know what’s wrong. You know what you’ve lost. So stop making excuses and go find it again. ”

Back in the studio, something’s different. Maybe it’s the tequila Jamie insisted on buying. Maybe it’s the brutal honesty we’ve just shared over cheap Mexican food. Or maybe it’s that I’ve stopped orbiting them and crash-landed in the centre of their gravitational pull.

Mark looks up hopefully as we re-enter, fingers already twitching toward the faders.

Harrison drops cross-legged onto the Persian rug, guitar across his lap. He’s not posing now, not performing for invisible cameras. Just settled. His fingers find the strings intimate, automatic, instinctive.

“What would Tommie think of what you’ve become?”

The question slips out before I can stop it. The silence that follows is surgical. Clean. Precise. Deep enough to wound.

Jamie’s fingers still on his bass strings. Even Mark freezes mid-adjustment, the emotional climate in the room shifting.

“We don’t really talk about—” Harrison starts.

“That’s exactly why you can’t write anything real anymore.”

I know I’m pushing. Using my place as the outsider to say the thing none of them will. Wielding their grief and pretending I don’t feel guilty about it. But someone has to cut through the scar tissue.

“He’d fucking hate it,” Jamie says, his voice raw. “Everything we’ve become. Everything we represent now.”

“So write about that,” I say simply. “Write about losing him. Write about becoming something you don’t recognise. Write about wanting to find your way back.”

Harrison looks at me then. Really looks. Something inside him snaps back into place after years of being dislocated.

What happens next isn’t performance. It’s not strategy. It’s magic.

His fingers move. The melody he finds is aching, hope laced with grief, memory blurred by longing. Jamie’s bass threads through it, something alive and necessary. Dex doesn’t dominate; he breathes around it, creating pockets for the melody to live and grow.

Mark presses record with reverent fingers.

“There’s something different about today,” Jamie murmurs during a lull, not wanting to break whatever spell we’ve woven.

“Yeah,” Dex agrees, voice soft with wonder. “We sound like us again.”

I’m still in my corner, but I’m not watching anymore. I’m in it. Somehow. Not playing anything but playing all of them. Reading the room, following the current, shaping something invisible but vital.

“The dynamics are all wrong in the bridge,” I say, the words slipping out absently. “What if it’s not about losing yourself, but finding who you really are? Strip it back, just Harrison and the acoustic for four bars. Then bring everything back in, full force, on the chorus.”

Mark’s eyebrows lift toward his hairline. That’s not commentary. That’s arrangement. That’s production instinct speaking without permission.

Harrison shifts the chord progression instantly, fingers moving with new purpose. The space opens. The moment breathes. The song finds its lungs.

“Like this?” He plays it again, softer now, weightless with sudden clarity.

When the bass and drums crash back in, it hits like catharsis.

“Perfect,” I breathe.

Mark is grinning now. Full-on, open-mouthed, fuck-we’ve-got-something grin that transforms his entire face.

“Play it again,” Harrison says, his eyes never leaving mine. “But this time?—”

“I’m not playing anything,” I interrupt, but there’s no heat in it anymore .

“Yes, you are,” Jamie grins. “You’re playing all of us.”

Harrison catches my eye. The look he gives me isn’t collaborative. It’s something deeper. Reverent. Not Damon Rogers’ daughter. Not Faith Jones’ legacy. Just me. Just Seren. Just this moment of pure, unfiltered creative truth.

“You know what you are?” Dex sets his sticks down slowly. “You’re a producer.”

“I’m absolutely not.”

“Yes,” Harrison’s voice is low, certain, weighted with something that sounds dangerously close to worship. “You are. And you’re fucking brilliant at it.”

The words land deep. Not because they’re flattering—I’ve heard flattery before, hollow and calculated. Because they’re true. Because they see me, not the ghost of someone else’s success, not the careful facade I’ve built to stay safe, but the thing I’ve been hiding even from myself.

This isn’t Dad’s world, I realise, as the feeling settles.

This is mine.

Harrison reaches for my hand.

This time, I let him.

His fingers are rough, warm, callused with years of chords and heartbreak, and the contact sends a shock straight up my spine. But it’s not just chemistry, though Christ knows there’s enough of that to power half of Los Angeles. It’s more dangerous than that.

It’s artistic recognition. It’s shared breath. It’s knowing.

“I think I understand now why you couldn’t write without me,” I say softly.

“Why?”

“Because you forgot who you were trying to be.”

It hangs in the air like prophecy. Or warning.

Mark saves the session with a few precise clicks, already knowing he’s caught lightning in a bottle for the first time in months.

And I know, deep down in the part of me I’ve spent years trying to bury beneath record shop shifts and safe, small choices, that if this is real, if we truly need each other to create like this, then everything we’ve built to stay safe isn’t going to survive.

Maybe it’s not supposed to.