PROLOGUE
What’s the difference between the love of your life and your soulmate?
One’s achoiceand one isnot.
And our souls fell in love long before we ever knew.
CHAPTER 1
SEVEN YEARS LATER
NATE
The old barnholds sound the way I hoped it would.
Warm. Clean. No echo unless you ask for it. Wood that's been soaked in music long enough to know when to give and when to stay still. I stood here when it was nothing but beams and dust and a half-built roof, trying to imagine what music would feel like inside these walls.
Not sound—music. There's a difference.
Sound fills space. Music lives in it.
Right now, Julian's voice cracks on the note he's been chasing all night. Not enough to ruin it, but enough to tell the truth.
I don't reach for the talkback. Instead, I let the meters settle. Let the moment land where it needs to.
He's still wearing the headphones when he looks up through the glass, ocean-blue eyes sharp with that specific kind of panic young artists carry—the fear that whatever just happened might be the last time it ever does.
"Again," I say finally. Calm. Even. No edge. "Same spot."
He nods too fast, swallows hard, and sets his feet like he's bracing for impact.
Behind him, the rest of The Row goes quiet. They've been circling each other all night—no blowups, no raised voices, justtension threaded tight between them. Caring will do that. So will wanting the same thing and not knowing how to ask for it without taking something from someone else.
Julian—stage name Thatcher—is twenty-one, but carries himself older. Light brown hair refuses to stay where he puts it, and there's a weight in his eyes that doesn't belong to someone his age. Not sadness exactly, just experience. The kind you don't ask for.
He doesn't dress like a rockstar or act like one because he doesn't need to. The music does the talking.
I lean back in my chair, hands settling on worn armrests. No gripping. No fidgeting. Energy carries in rooms like this. If I'm tense, they feel it. If I'm steady, the space holds.
The room doesn't need my anxiety. It needs my calm.
Through the glass, Julian closes his eyes, shoulders rising with a slow breath. Not the sharp kind he's been using all night—the one that sounds like bracing for something to break. This one is quieter. Grounded.
He plants his feet like he's finally trusting the floor beneath him.
The track rolls.
This time, he doesn't push for the note. He lets it find him.
The sound opens instead of forcing its way through. Breath placed where it belongs, voice landing in the space like it knows it has a right to be there.
It's not flawless. There's a slight rasp on the tail end, a vulnerability he hasn't sanded down yet.
But it's honest.
And honesty always lands heavier than perfection.
I feel it hit somewhere behind my ribs and stay there. That's how you know. You don't think your way into moments like this—you feel them.
