Page 33 of The Sound Between Us (Vinyl Hearts #1)

all the things she didn’t know she wanted

Seren

Leading Harrison down the narrow stairs to my basement flat feels different this time.

Less exposing secrets, more coming home with someone who already knows where I keep my vulnerabilities.

These walls have seen me at my worst, but now I’m bringing someone into this space who’s already seen me break apart and somehow still chose to fly across continents to stand in the rain for me.

“Come in,” I push open the door to my white-walled sanctuary. “Ignore any bras lying around.”

But Harrison isn’t looking at the mess. His eyes go straight to the piano, sitting in the same spot where we created something magical months ago.

“That’s where we started.” He moves toward it, drawn by gravity.

He sits on the bench, his fingers finding the opening notes of our song. The melody fills the small space, and suddenly I’m back in that night when everything felt possible and terrifying.

“I’ve been thinking about this room every day since I left. About how it felt to create something real with you.”

The vulnerability in his voice does something to my chest, makes it tight and warm and dangerous. I move behind him, my hands settling on his shoulders.

“Harry,” I whisper, and he turns on the bench, his amber eyes dark with something that makes my stomach flip.

His hands find my waist, pulling me between his knees, and suddenly we’re kissing again.

Not the desperate reunion from upstairs, but something slower, more intentional.

His mouth is warm and soft, tasting of wine from dinner and something that’s purely him.

When his tongue traces my lower lip, I open for him with a sound that’s half sigh, half surrender.

The kiss deepens, and I can feel myself melting into him despite every rational thought screaming that this is insane.

“I missed you. I don’t know how it’s possible to miss something you never really had, but I did.”

Instead of answering with words, I push him back slightly, just enough space to climb onto the piano bench with him, straddling his lap. The keys protest under my weight, a random chorus of notes that should be jarring but somehow feels perfect for whatever madness has taken hold of us.

His hands slide up my back, under my jumper, warm against my skin. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t ask me to think. I’ve been thinking for months. I’m tired of thinking.”

This time when we kiss, it’s with the kind of desperate hunger that comes from finally admitting you want something you’ve been denying yourself. His hands map the planes of my body, and when he lifts me slightly, the piano keys sing a discordant song beneath us.

“This is completely mental,” I laugh breathlessly as he kisses his way down my throat.

“Completely. Do you care?”

I answer by kissing him harder, teeth catching his bottom lip, hands fisting in his hoodie.

We’re all urgent breath and clumsy movements, my jumper disappearing somewhere between one kiss and the next.

His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, and I arch against him, gasping when his teeth graze the sensitive spot just below my ear.

He lifts me onto his lap properly, and I wrap my legs around his waist, the piano bench creaking under our combined weight.

My hands tangle in his hair as he kisses down my throat, and when I rock against him, the keys beneath us crash out a discordant chord.

We laugh breathlessly against each other’s mouths, but neither of us stops moving.

His hands slide under my thighs, lifting me slightly, and another cascade of notes spills from the piano.

The sound should be jarring, but right now it feels the perfect soundtrack to losing our minds together.

When release comes, it’s with his name on my lips and the sound of ivory keys singing around us.

Afterward, I stay collapsed against his chest, my legs still wrapped around his waist, both of us breathing we’ve run a marathon.

His fingers trace lazy circles on my bare back while I try to remember how to form words.

There’s a piano key digging into my shin and my neck has a crick from the angle, but I can’t bring myself to move.

His heart pounds against my cheek, and when I finally lift my head to look at him, his hair is completely wrecked and there are nail marks on his shoulders.

“Your neighbours are going to think you’re torturing a piano.”

“My neighbours think I’m torturing everything. They complained about my ‘aggressive dishwashing’ last month.”

He laughs, the sound rich and genuine in a way that makes me want to climb back onto his lap and forget about things such as clothing and rational conversation.

Instead, I take his hand and lead him to my bed, because if we’re going to have the talk I can see brewing behind his eyes, I want to be horizontal for it.

My bedroom is as white and minimalist as the rest of the flat, but it feels different with Harrison in it. More alive somehow, his presence adding colour to spaces I didn’t even realise were grey.

He settles beside me on the bed, his arm sliding under my shoulders and pulling me against his chest. I let myself sink into the warmth of him, my head finding the hollow of his shoulder where it fits perfectly.

His fingers find mine, threading together on top of the duvet. For a while we just lie there, listening to each other breathe.

“I watched you perform,” he says quietly. “In that little club in LA. You looked... free.”

I think about that night, how terrifying and right it felt to sing my own words. “I was scared out of my mind.”

“Couldn’t tell.” His thumb brushes across my knuckles. “You looked you belonged up there.”

I study his face, noting the lines of exhaustion that makeup used to hide, the way his eyes have lost some of the polished gleam that made him look perfect on magazine covers.

“Did you really walk out of the tour?”

He’s quiet for a moment, and I can feel his chest rise and fall beneath my cheek. “Yeah. Couldn’t get through another show pretending to feel things I don’t feel for people who deserve better.”

“How many dates did you have left?”

“Ten more dates.”

The number sits between us. Ten dates probably represents millions of pounds, thousands of disappointed fans, contracts that carry penalties I can’t even imagine. He threw all of that away to stand on my doorstep in the rain.

I stare at the ceiling, processing the magnitude of what he’s sacrificed, and feel something heavy settle in my chest.

“You can’t drop them, Harry. They’re your brothers. ”

His arms tighten around me, and I can feel the tension that runs through his body. “I’m not risking this.”

“You aren’t risking anything. I’ll come with you.”

His fingers still against my skin, and for a moment he just stares at me as if I’ve spoken in a language he doesn’t understand.

“Seren... I don’t expect that of you. I know what the business means to you, how hard you’ve worked to do things on your own terms.”

The thing is, the number sits heavy in my chest. Ten dates. About Jamie and Dex, who’ve been his brothers for fourteen years. About the fans who’ve bought tickets and made signs and probably spent money they couldn’t really afford for the chance to see Elementary one last time.

But mostly I’ve been thinking about Uncle Vinny, and how even when Dad was at his most impossible, even when the industry nearly destroyed both of them, they never stopped being family.

“One day you might have a daughter who calls Jamie ‘Uncle Jamie,’ just the way Vinny and me. And I don’t want you to risk losing that for me.”

His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb brushing across my cheekbone with devastating gentleness. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying maybe you aren’t the only one who needs to change.

” The words come out steadier than I feel.

“I’ve been hiding my whole life, Harry. From the industry, from fame, from anything that might hurt me or use me or turn me into something I’m not.

But maybe... maybe running away isn’t the same as staying safe. ”

He’s watching me with an intensity that makes my chest tight. “You hate everything about this world.”

“I hate what it did to my family. But you’re not my family’s mistakes. And maybe it’s time I stopped letting their failures dictate my choices. ”

The silence stretches between us, heavy with possibility and terror in equal measure. Then Harrison kisses me, slow and thorough and full of something that feels dangerously close to gratitude.

“Are you sure? Ten dates across Asia, cameras everywhere, everyone wanting to know who you are and why you’re there. It won’t be easy.”

“I’ve never done easy. Besides, someone needs to make sure you don’t have any more cigarette-related breakdowns on stage.”

He laughs, the sound vibrating through his chest and into mine. “Fair point.”

When we kiss this time, his mouth is soft against mine, unhurried.

His hands trace the curve of my waist, my hip, fingertips skimming across my skin until I shiver.

He kisses my collarbone, the hollow of my throat, working his way down my body.

When he settles between my legs, his eyes find mine, and something in his gaze makes my breath catch.

His hands slide down my back, pulling me closer as I rock against him.

I bite down on his shoulder to muffle the sound I make when he hits exactly the right spot, and his answering groan vibrates through his chest into mine.

Our rhythm builds slowly, deliberately, my fingers digging into his biceps as he moves beneath me.

When we’re both spent and lying in the tangle of my white sheets, Harrison traces patterns across my collarbone with the tip of his finger.

“Is it too soon for ‘I love you’?”

His voice cracks slightly on the words, and my chest goes tight. I trace the line of his collarbone with my finger, buying time. Tokyo. Stages. Hotel rooms. Cameras. All the ways this could shatter into pieces.

But mostly I think about how it feels to be lying here with him, skin against skin, planning a future that terrifies and thrills me in equal measure .

“Ask me again in Tokyo,” I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart.

He’s quiet for a moment, and then his arms tighten around me. “Tokyo it is.”

I close my eyes and let myself imagine it, stepping off a plane in a country I’ve never seen, watching him perform songs that actually mean something, being brave enough to choose love over safety.

It should terrify me. Three months ago, it would have sent me running back to my vinyl shop and my safe, small life.

But lying here in Harrison’s arms, planning to follow him across the world, I realise that sometimes the scariest thing you can do is exactly the thing you need to do.

Sometimes brave looks such as saying yes when every instinct tells you to run. Sometimes it looks such as choosing love, even when you don’t know how the story ends.

And sometimes it looks such as a girl from Camden deciding to join a world tour with ten dates left, just to see what happens when you stop hiding from your own life.

“Tokyo,” I whisper against his skin, and it sounds such as a promise.