Page 24 of The Sound Between Us (Vinyl Hearts #1)

if you let me stay

Seren

The drive back through the Hills feels like amber. Still and golden and dreamlike.

LA’s magic-hour haze filters through the town car’s tinted windows, washing the skyline in honeyed light that makes even the ugly things look like poetry.

The studio high is wearing off, and what’s left behind is quieter but far more dangerous.

It’s not adrenaline anymore. It’s recognition.

That what happened wasn’t just professional collaboration.

That something fundamental shifted in that room, and now we can’t unfeel it.

Harrison’s head leans against the window, curls flattened on one side, wild and defiant on the other.

He looks wrung out by real creation, the music physically pulling something from him and leaving him hollow.

Shoulders soft, posture slack, fingers still twitching against his thigh, playing silent chords on invisible strings.

The song isn’t done with him yet.

I watch him in the reflection, safer than staring directly. Sleep has erased the careful edges of the persona. No stage lights, no lenses, no curated angles. Just Harry. Just a boy with too much weight attached to his name and a scar near his hairline that his makeup artist usually hides.

When did he become Harry in my head?

The thought should terrify me. It’s the kind of intimacy that leads to destruction, this casual renaming, this claiming of the private self.

Instead, I’m too tired to be scared of feelings tonight, too wrung out by what we created together to maintain my usual defences.

So I let myself look. Properly. At the crooked slope of his nose, at how his eyelashes catch the last of the daylight, at the vulnerable softness of his mouth when he’s not aware of being watched.

This is what the fans never see. This version. The one who stops performing the moment no one’s watching.

Our hands rest on the leather between us, not touching, but close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin. Inches, and yet it feels like the edge of something irreversible. One movement, one brush of fingers, and we’ll tumble over a cliff we’ve been circling for days.

He still smells like the studio. Coffee and cigarettes and the faint ozone tang of expensive cables. That particular scent of late nights making something that might matter.

When did I start caring if he’s getting enough sleep?

The protectiveness hits me. It’s not lust, though Christ knows there’s enough of that to power half of Los Angeles.

It’s worse. It’s softness. It’s the want to tuck him in and make him tea and protect him from all the sharp things he throws himself against. It’s doomed tenderness dressed up as concern.

I’m so fucked.

“You’re staring,” he murmurs without opening his eyes, and there’s amusement in his voice, sleep-rough and intimate.

“I’m observing.”

“Same thing.”

“Categorically different.”

“Mm.” He shifts, settling deeper into the seat, and his knee bumps mine. The contact sends warmth shooting up my leg. “What are you observing?”

That you look younger when you’re not performing. That you have freckles. That I’m falling for you and it’s going to destroy me.

“That you need a proper meal and about twelve hours of sleep.”

“Very maternal of you.”

The word hits wrong, makes something uncomfortable twist in my stomach. “I’m not your mother, Harrison.”

His eyes open then, finding mine in the window’s reflection. “No,” he says quietly. “You’re not.”

The weight in his voice suggests he knows exactly what I am to him, even if neither of us is brave enough to say it yet.

By the time we reach his house, he’s so exhausted he can’t even hold his keys steady. He drops them, fumbles, tries again. I watch him struggle for a moment, this man who commands stages and interviews with effortless charisma, undone by basic motor function.

I take them from his hand before he can drop them again. The laugh that escapes is far too fond to be safe.

“Feel like you’re taking advantage,” he murmurs, voice thick with exhaustion and something like amusement.

“Of your compromised state? Absolutely.”

“Good. I like being compromised by you.”

The words hit me sideways, casual and loaded and dangerous. I fumble with the lock, suddenly clumsy myself.

“Just crash, Harry.”

The name slips out unfiltered. Familiar. Intimate.

He stops moving entirely. Not dramatically, just..

. stills. Something subtle shifts in the atmosphere.

I can feel him looking at me, and when I glance up in the entryway light, it’s not Harrison Carter staring back.

It’s the boy behind the myth. There’s something raw and startled in his eyes, hearing his own name crack a window in him and let the air in .

“Harry,” he repeats, testing the shape of it on his tongue.

“Yeah.”

“I like how you say it.”

That shift—from Harrison to Harry, from icon to person—hangs between us. I guide him through the house, my hand ghosting over his back, not quite touching but steadying. He’s different here. Less curated. The walls recognise him in a way the outside world never could.

In the bedroom, he collapses onto the bed fully clothed. Converse still laced, jeans twisted, hair absolute chaos. The bed is pristine white designer linens that probably cost more than my monthly rent. The boy in it is decidedly not pristine.

It breaks something in me, the contrast. This man who fills arenas, undone by a day of being real. Exhausted and boyish and so completely unguarded it feels intrusive to look at him.

I move toward the door, toward safety, toward the guest room where I can pretend my chest isn’t tight with wanting. But his hand finds my wrist before I can escape.

His fingers wrap around gently. Warm. Loose enough that I could step away if I wanted to. Tight enough that I don’t want to.

“Stay.”

It’s just one word, but it’s everything. Not a question. Not a demand. Just an offering. A quiet plea from someone who never lets anyone stay long enough to see the mess underneath the magazine covers.

The word hangs between us. My heart pounds against my ribs, every rational thought screaming caution—danger ahead, heartbreak imminent. But his voice isn’t polished this time. It’s not stage-ready or wrapped in charm. It’s raw. Unsure. Human.

“Harrison...”

“Harry,” he corrects softly. “When it’s just us, I’m Harry.”

The distinction hits me. Harrison belongs to the world. Harry belongs to this moment. To this room. To me .

I settle beside him anyway.

Not because it’s wise. Not because I’ve thought it through or weighed the consequences. But because whatever’s pulling me forward is stronger than self-preservation, stronger than every lesson I’ve learned about protecting myself from beautiful boys who could destroy me without even trying.

He doesn’t try to kiss me. Doesn’t reach for my hand or slide closer or murmur something soft to fill the dangerous silence. He just exhales, long and slow. His eyes drift closed, and he breathes in that deep, even way that only comes with real exhaustion. And trust.

That’s what hits me hardest. Not the closeness. Not the way his presence seems to take up all the oxygen in the room. The trust.

This is intimacy, I realise. Not grand gestures or cinematic declarations. Not breathless encounters on marble countertops. Just this—the quiet surrender of letting someone see you when the armour’s off and the cameras aren’t watching.

I lie there beside him, staring at his face as late afternoon light drifts lazily through the windows.

Soft, golden, blurred around the edges. I catalogue what the cameras never catch.

Tiny freckles dusted across his nose, faded now but probably prominent when he was a child running wild through Manchester streets.

A scar on his chin, small and pale. A barely-there gap in his left eyebrow where the hair refuses to grow—some genetic imperfection a stylist probably spends a fortune trying to fill in with makeup.

His lips are parted slightly, breath even and unguarded. And I remember—too vividly—how they felt against mine in London. Not just the kiss, but the way he kissed me. Like I mattered. Like I was Seren, not a legacy or a surname or a media headline waiting to happen. Just me.

I’m falling for him.

The realisation hits sudden and shocking and completely undeniable.

Not Harrison Carter, global pop icon with a marketing team behind his every breath.

Not the curated version of a man with publicists managing his every decision.

But Harry. The boy who writes songs about council estates and escape routes.

Who cooks dinner with his sleeves rolled up and flour on his hands.

Who collapses fully clothed when the music wrings him out completely.

This version of him—the one that exists when no one’s watching, when the stage lights are off and the performance ends—might be the most real thing I’ve ever seen. And he’s buried it so deep under years of packaging and expectation I wonder if he even knows it’s still there.

It should scare me. Should send me running back to Camden and my small, safe life where no one expects anything from me except showing up and not breaking the till.

Instead, I let the exhaustion catch up with me.

The exhaustion of fighting this, of denying how far I’ve already fallen, of pretending that what happened in that studio was just professional collaboration when it felt more like communion.

My eyes drift closed, and every instinct screams that this is how people get hurt—falling for someone who belongs to the world before they belong to you.

But sometimes, something real is stronger than fear.

When I open my eyes, his are already on me. Watching. Unapologetically.