Delete.
I’m coming back, I don’t care what you said.
Delete.
You don’t get to walk away without a fight.
Delete.
You don’t get to love me and ask me not to wait.
Delete.
I love you. I can keep you safe.
Delete.
Over and over, until the space is clean again, an empty screen that feels like her silence made physical. I set the phone face-down and sit there, the ache building in my throat, the kind that can’t make it to sound. My hand still hurts from the glass, every pulse of my heartbeat in thecuts. I think maybe I deserve it. Maybe this is the tax for being the kind of person who destroys everything he tries to hold.
I’ve been at the studio since dawn. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t even try. The others walk in one by one, slow, blinking, still mentally in bed. Rithy's first, eyes bloodshot behind sunglasses; then Kiri with his takeaway cup; Ronan's last, hair wet, towel around his neck like a prizefighter. They take one look at me, sitting at the piano surrounded by a scatter of crumpled notebook pages, and they know. No one says a word.
I start playing before they can ask. A few low chords, heavy as breath. The progression fromDon’t Waitspills intoArtemisia, the one she never heard, the one I wrote the night she fell asleep against me in the cabin. The others fall in almost instinctively, years of doing this together taking over before their minds catch up.
The sound fills the room, thick and alive. My throat burns as I start to sing. It’s not clean. It’s not careful. My voice cracks, stumbles, finds its footing again only to break once more. But it’s real. It’s the most alive I’ve felt since she said goodbye.
I can see Rithy choking up behind the glass, Kiri staring at the floor. Ronan’s playing softer than I’ve ever heard him.
Then I shift intoConnaught on Mayfair. The chords are softer, the melody an echo of that night—the chandelier light in her hair, her whisper against my throat. I almost can’t get through the chorus. My voice shakes, then steadies on the next breath.
You said you’d choose the quiet,
but the night disagreed—
turning your skin into sculpture.
I forgot to breathe,
afraid worship might sound too human.
I just watched the light
curve around you in communion.
The song collapses into silence. For a second, I can’t move. Then it hits all at once, every word I’ve swallowed, every note I’ve avoided because it hurts too much. The flood breaks. I start pulling sheet after sheet from the notebook:Glitter,Underworld,2AM,Persephone, ill-formed fragments that sound like love letters and obituaries at the same time. I play them all, back to back, no breath between. The air in the room changes, electricity, grief and catharsis bleeding into one another until even Rithy’s mouthingkeep going.
My voice starts to fray at the edges, a rasp I can’t fight. Ronan hits the talk button.
“Rafe,take a minute, you’ll shred your voice.”
I shake my head, eyes burning. “Not until I get it out.”
He doesn’t argue again. So I keep singing, through the ache, through the memories, through the sound of my own breaking. Sometimes I’m whispering. Sometimes shouting until the walls shake. By the time it’s over, I’m drenched in sweat, throat raw, hands trembling on the piano keys. The last note hangs in the air like a prayer no one believes in but everyone hears.
The intercom crackles. Ronan’s voice is quiet. “You done?”
I exhale, nod. “Yeah. For now.”
Kiri leans forward, voice barely a whisper. “That… that was an album.”
