Page 26 of The Sound Between Us (Vinyl Hearts #1)

ex apocolypse

Harrison

Consciousness returns slowly. There’s warmth pressed against my chest, the soft tickle of hair across my ribs, the weight of an arm draped over my body keeping me tethered to something real.

Seren.

The name settles in my mind, and for the first time in years—maybe ever—I understand what peace actually feels like. Nothing manufactured, but genuine quiet. The kind that reaches bone-deep and makes you believe the world might actually be a place worth inhabiting.

My head is full of music.

Not the focus-grouped, committee-written nonsense that’s been choking Elementary for the past three years, but real songs. Honest words floating through my consciousness. Melodies that feel urgent and necessary, lyrics that taste like truth instead of marketing strategy.

Everything is startling and bright.

I can feel my mind working differently already, strategising around obstacles that seemed insurmountable yesterday.

The Asia tour starts in two days, but maybe I can get Seren on the guest list for London when we circle back.

Maybe I can convince her to come to New York.

Maybe this doesn’t have to end just because geography says it should.

It’s going to be hard, I think, studying the curve of her shoulder in the morning light.

She’s anti-everything I represent. But for the first time in years, I want to fight for something instead of just accepting whatever gets handed to me.

This feeling—this rightness—is worth disrupting the careful machinery of my existence.

The dangerous hope unfurling in my chest is terrifying and essential in equal measure. I’m imagining a different future, one where this feeling lasts, where I get to wake up this way more than once. Where maybe I become someone worth keeping instead of someone worth forgetting.

This isn’t just attraction anymore, I realise with crystal clarity. This is the thing that could save me.

The recognition is followed immediately by its more terrifying twin: I need her more than she needs me. She’s got her quiet life, her record shop, her carefully constructed independence. I’m the one who’s been dying slowly in expensive studios, suffocating on my own success.

That’s when I hear it.

The sound of someone moving through my house with the confidence that comes from having keys. Familiar footsteps crossing expensive floors, the particular rhythm of heels that I recognise with a sick drop in my stomach.

The peaceful morning cracks.

“Please tell me you haven’t got a team coming to get you ready for the day,” Seren murmurs against my chest, her voice soft and trusting, still wrapped in the intimacy of what we shared.

My heart starts clanging. “No.” The word comes out tight because I know exactly who’s in my house, and I know exactly how this is about to go .

The footsteps are getting closer, steady and confident, and I want to bolt the door. Hide her. Wrap the moment we’ve created in something airtight before the world punctures it.

But there’s nowhere to run.

Time stretches, molasses-thick, until it doesn’t. Until Ruby appears in the doorway.

She stops, taking in the scene with the practiced eye of someone who’s perfected the art of destruction.

Immaculate. Perfect hair, perfect makeup, dressed untouchably.

Every detail screams control and calculation, and the moment her gaze lands on Seren—vulnerable and beautiful in tangled sheets—I see her shift.

From surprise to strategy. She clocks the power dynamics immediately and makes a show of enjoying them.

“Well, well.” Ruby’s voice is honey over broken glass. “This is cosy.”

Seren flinches. She scrambles for the bedding, dragging it up over herself, but it’s too late—the spell has already broken. The warmth between us starts dissolving molecule by molecule, the trust unraveling in real time.

“What are you doing here?” My voice cuts sharp with panic and fury.

Ruby doesn’t blink, just leans casually against the doorframe. “I left my earrings. The diamond ones. Cartier, you remember.”

She smiles, and it’s weaponised. She’s lying, and she knows I know she’s lying, and she doesn’t care. There are no earrings. There never were.

“Get out.”

“I have a key, darling.” All saccharine ease. “We discussed this.”

We didn’t. Not really. Not in any way that gave her the right to waltz in. But that’s Ruby—she takes what isn’t given and calls it a misunderstanding.

“Now, Ruby. Get the fuck out. ”

But she’s performing now, loving the audience. Her eyes slide over Seren inventory-style, something to be assessed and dismissed. “Playing house with the record shop girl?”

“Don’t.” My voice drops low and dangerous.

But Ruby doesn’t back down. She never does. “What? I think it’s sweet. Very authentic. How refreshingly normal for you, Harry.”

Seren reacts to that, just the smallest flinch—but I feel it. She hears the familiarity, the shared history in Ruby’s voice. The casual intimacy of someone who’s been here before, who knows which name to use to cut deepest.

And I see it, see something in Seren go still. Cold. Watching her worst fears play out in real time.

“I said get out.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your little experiment.” She purrs the words. “I’ll call you later, baby. When you’re done playing house.”

She walks away on her stilettos, every step punctuating disaster, and I turn back to find Seren already halfway dressed, hands trembling, breath shallow, eyes glassy with betrayal.

“She’s just an ex,” I say, the words scrambling over each other in their desperation. “She had a key. I should’ve changed the locks—I will. I’ll do it right now. Please, just?—”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Harrison.”

The full name is a knife. Meant to wound. And it does.

“Seren, please. Don’t let her ruin this.”

She freezes. Then turns, and the fury burning behind her eyes is magnificent and terrible. “Ruin what? This was always going to happen. Women like her, scenes like this. This is your life. It’s who you are.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” Her voice cracks, just once, and I want to die. “How many others have keys? How many others walk in like they belong here? ”

“Just her. I swear. And I’ll change the locks today?—”

“It doesn’t matter!” The words snap out of her. “That’s the point. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”

“What are you afraid of?” I step in front of the door, desperate now, physically trying to block her from leaving.

“Of becoming her! Of being another woman who gets devoured by your orbit. Who has to fight for space in a life that was never built to accommodate anyone else.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?” She laughs, and it’s soft and bitter and broken, and it makes something inside me splinter. “You’re Harrison Carter. You collect women. Rotate them out when the sound gets old. I’ve seen the headlines. Ruby. The model. The actress before her.”

“Those weren’t real.”

“And what makes this different?” She’s pulling on her jeans now, movements sharp with purpose. “Nothing. I was just the novelty. The normal girl who made you feel something for five minutes.”

The truth in her words makes me flinch. Because once, they were true. Before her. Before I understood the difference between wanting someone and needing them.

But this, she, isn’t that. And I don’t know how to make her believe it without sounding like every man who’s ever begged a woman to stay.

“Seren, listen to me?—”

“No.” She finds her shirt, pulls it over her head with jerky movements. “The thing is, Harrison... I don’t want this. I never did. I want my quiet life. My little shop. That’s all I need.”

She steps past me. Doesn’t look back.

But then she pauses at the door, hand on the handle, and turns back one final time. Her face is composed now, resolved.

“And Harrison? Don’t. Don’t call me, don’t show up at the shop, don’t send flowers or songs or whatever grand gesture you think will fix this. I mean it. Leave me alone.”

The door slams behind her with a finality that echoes through my chest.

The sound rings in the house—too loud, too final. It bounces off the expensive walls and settles into the silence.

I don’t move at first. Just stand there in the middle of the wreckage, blinking at the empty space where she used to be. Sheets tangled. Her scent still in the air. A hair tie she forgot on the nightstand, a memory I already can’t touch.

Then I’m sitting, no collapsing onto the edge of the bed. Elbows on knees. Hands in my hair. Breathing like I’ve run a marathon, but my legs haven’t moved at all.

And then the ache starts to bleed in. Slow at first. Then faster.

I hurt her.

Not just by omission. Not just by circumstance. I let her believe she was something temporary. I let another woman walk into the sacred space we’d built, and I didn’t stop it in time.

I made her feel like a side story in a life she never wanted to be part of in the first place.

God, the look on her face. When Ruby said “baby.” When she said “Harry” and owned it. All the softness in Seren went rigid at once. Standing in a room she suddenly didn’t recognise.

And I did that.

I didn’t mean to. But intent doesn’t matter when the damage is already done.

I remember how she looked last night, eyes wide with trust she didn’t want to give me. How she’d curled into me after, vulnerable and open, whispering fears she never let anyone hear. And I held it—I held it—and still, I dropped her at the first crack in the door.

She was right. I have made a habit of collecting women, letting them orbit, never really inviting them in. But she stepped through the atmosphere. She touched ground. She believed me, even just for a night.

And I destroyed it.

No scandal. No betrayal. Just carelessness. It’s quiet, the devastation. It’s forgetting to lock the door. It’s failing to protect the one thing that finally mattered.

I want to call her. I want to run after her.

But her last words echo in my head: “Leave me alone.” The finality in her voice when she said it, the way she wouldn’t even look at me. She’s not just angry—she’s done. Completely, irrevocably done.

So I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, my chest tight with the weight of what I’ve lost.

This is what love looks like when you ruin it.

My phone buzzes. Henry.

“Car’s on its way. Nearly out of studio time and still no album. The label’s breathing down my neck, the tour starts in forty-eight hours, and we need something to show them. Please tell me you’ve got material.”

The pressure of being Harrison Carter crashes back down, a weight I’d forgotten I was carrying. Tour. Album. Obligations. The machine that never stops, never cares about broken hearts or ruined mornings.

“I’ll be there,” I say, my voice hollow.

“Good. Because if we don’t deliver something today?—”

I hang up. Stare at the ceiling one more time.

Maybe this is who I am. Maybe this is all I get.

Still, the car arrives exactly on time.

Life doesn’t pause for heartbreak. Studio booked. Tour imminent. Everyone expects me to show up. And so I do.

The band is already there when I walk in. Mark waves from behind the board. Jamie lifts a coffee cup in greeting. Dex is tuning, lost in his own world of rhythms and precision.

I sit in silence, expecting the hollow ache of creative paralysis to return. Expecting to retreat back into the nothing that’s defined us for the past three years.

But then the music comes.

Not polished. Not planned. Raw. Sharp. Bleeding.

I reach for the acoustic, and the song writes itself.

The melody pours out, naked, desperate, unfiltered. My voice breaks on certain words, catching on the jagged edges of what I’ve done. What I’ve lost.

It’s about golden light and broken trust. About promises I’ll never get to make and locks I should have changed. About the difference between collecting people and actually letting them in.

When the last chord fades, the room goes still.

No one speaks.

Not even the equipment hums. The studio itself holds its breath.

I set the guitar down carefully. My hands are shaking.

Jamie’s the first to move. He doesn’t speak. Just slowly lowers his head into his hands, elbows braced on his knees.

“Jesus Christ,” he says finally, his voice thick, almost hoarse. “That wasn’t a song. That was a confession.”

Dex stares at me. “Where the fuck has that been?”

He’s not joking. He’s not even mad. He’s just... stunned. Unsteady.

“That’s not Elementary,” he says, quieter this time. “That’s not... us.”

Mark exhales audibly, a sound somewhere between awe and heartbreak. “It’s you, though. That’s the thing. I’ve never heard you in your music before. Not like this.”

He’s already reaching for the talkback mic, his producer brain trying to catch up to his heart. “I want gospel singers on the bridge. Maybe St. Jude’s. Strings, too. Let it breathe. We’ll build it slow, give it space to ache. Harrison, this is—” He swallows. “This is heartbreak made audible.”

Henry—predictably—sees dollar signs first.

“We get this polished and to the label by end of week, this could kill as a comeback single. The narrative alone—Jesus. Heartbreak, redemption, raw talent re-emerging. Do we have photos from this session? Video? We could?—”

“No.” I cut him off sharply, the word ricocheting through the silence.

Henry freezes. “Harrison?—”

“No one uses this song. Not yet. Not without her.”

The band glances at each other, suddenly tense again.

Jamie watches me carefully. “This one’s personal.”

I nod. Barely. My throat’s too tight to speak.

Because this isn’t content. It’s not a product. It’s not a PR angle.

It’s Seren.

It’s everything I couldn’t say when she was still here. Everything I ruined, pressed into melody because I don’t know how else to hold it.

Dex looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t. Just places a hand on my shoulder. Solid. Wordless.

“I’m serious,” I say, softer now. “If this song goes anywhere... it has to mean something.”

Mark nods. “We’ll protect it.”

I believe him.

But I still walk out, leaving them with the track and the silence and the knowledge that—for the first time in years—I wrote something real.

Outside, LA keeps performing its endless act. The sun shines. The palm trees sway. Everything pretending to be perfect.

But all I can think about is her—probably already booking a flight back to London, or at least trying to.

The tour starts in two days. The machine rolls on .

Maybe what we had was a dream. But the song proves it was real.

Real enough to wreck me.

And I’ve written the best thing of my life with the worst part of my heart.

Some victories, I’m learning, taste exactly like defeat.