“I needed it too,” I whisper, wondering if I should really be holding back right now.
“Darius,” she whispers again, and I look into her eyes. “Thank you for always being exactly what I need.”
My hand moves to her face, my thumb tracing her cheek.“I love you,” I tell her, no longer holding back. We’ve waited long enough to get here—and she deserves to know what my soul’s been singing all along.
Her breath catches, eyes widening slightly as my words settle between us. For a moment, she doesn’t speak. The silence stretches, but it isn’t uncomfortable—it’s full, alive with everything unspoken. Then she exhales softly, her fingers tracing lazy patterns across my chest.
“I think I’ve been trying not to fall for you from the day we met,” she admits, her voice barely audible over the rush of the falls. “And with the attack, it felt like someone pushed pause on my life.”
It’s like her words paint a picture for me, because I’m instantly transported back to that time, to her days of endless depression, of not being able to talk. She’s not simply referring to me; she means all of us.
“I wanted to give us time to go through the phases of falling in love, but the truth is, it already happened.” She glances up at me with so much emotion written across her face. “I’m sorry for making you wait, and for all the times I wasn’t able to show it back, but I love you too, Darius.”
The new studio smells like fresh wood and ozone. The walls are dark and clean, panels of soundproof foam layered like scales. Even the silence feels different up here—dense, alive, holding its breath with me.
We came to the mountains for a new beginning, but standing here, I feel the weight of every note I haven’t sung.
Cables snake across the floor, gleaming under low amber lights. The mic waits at the center of it all, sleek and cold, the pop filter hovering like a question.
I haven’t attempted to record since before the attack. Since before my voice broke.
The guys are already behind the glass. Tristan leans against the console, arms crossed, eyes steady on me like he’s afraid to blink. His lips curl upward in a way that tells me he believes in me. That’s all the encouragement I need right now. Especially from him. He was my rock at the start, and now he’s my rock again.
The others hover nearby, pretending to adjust levels, but I know they’re watching. No one says anything. They don’t have to.
I step up to the mic, and my hands won’t stop shaking. The pop filter brushes my lips as I adjust it. My throat tightens on instinct, remembering what it felt like when I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound. I swallow against the phantom ache.
Tristan’s voice comes through the headphones, low and careful. “Take your time, Lexi. No rush.”
I nod, though my pulse is already racing faster than the metronome ticking faintly in my ears.
The first line of the song rolls through my mind—words I wrote when I still sounded like a ghost. I inhale, deep and slow, the way the therapist taught me. Diaphragm, not throat. Support, not strain.
My pulse thrums so hard I can feel it in my fingertips. Every breath feels too big, too sharp, like my lungs forgot how to hold sound. But my body remembers—how to stand, how to draw air, how to trust the quiet before the first note.
And then I sing.
The note comes out raw, cracked right down the middle. I almost stop. But I push through it, letting the imperfection live. The rasp that used to make me cringe now gives the words weight—grit and grief tangled together.
I close my eyes and keep going. The studio fades away. It’s just me and the sound in my chest, broken but burning. Every scar I’ve earned hums in the edges of my voice. Every inhale feels like defiance.
When the last note fades, the silence hits hard. I lower my head, heart pounding. I don’t dare look up.
Then the intercom clicks.
“That,” Tristan says, his voice rougher than usual, “that’s the take.”
For a moment, I can’t move. The words don’t register. I simply stand there, the headphones heavy around my neck, the ghost of the last note vibrating in my chest. And then his voice cuts through it, rough and certain.
I glance up. Through the glass, he’s smiling. Not the careful kind he used to give me when he was worried—this one’s real. Wide. Proud.
Something in me loosens. My exhale leaves in a shaky laugh.
It’s not the voice I lost.
It’s the one I rebuilt from the ashes.
And for the first time since the night everything went dark, I don’t hate how it sounds.
