It must be Abel. The text caught me by surprise, given his abrupt departure from the studio after our first and only late-night session.
“Okay?”I texted him back. Was it an invitation? An FYI in case someone showed up at his house in the middle of the night and found that he wasn’t there? I wasn’t going to assume he was inviting me to come. No, if he wanted me there, he’d have to spell it out.
“You coming?”
I read out the response in his voice in my head, seeing the cocked brow and arrogant stance. A part of me was annoyed at how intently he’d pretended our last session had never happened. He’d shown me a glimpse of the pain he bore only to shut right down moments later. Maybe that was easy for him to do, but for me, writing together was pure intimacy. I couldn’t turn it on and off like it was no more than a bath faucet.
But he was still grieving, and yes, that did make me want to give him a pass. My muse hadn’t visited me since that one night, so I didn’t have high hopes I’d be able to write anything. But I could keep him company while he wrote if that helped him.
“See you at 10.”
* * *
I got to the studio before Abel. The motion-activated lights in the hallways clicked on one by one as I made my way to our recording room. Remnants of our earlier session—scattered guitar picks, empty coffee cups, snack wrappers—had been taken by the cleaning staff, and the control room struck me as unusually cold. I was only wearing a heather-gray T-shirt on top, and by the time Abel walked through the door, I was rubbing my arms to get rid of goosebumps.
His hair was twisted in a bun at the nape of his neck, revealing the full contours of his face. Beneath an unzipped hoodie, he wore a wrinkled white T-shirt, but neither this detail, nor the fact that he looked like he’d just woken from a nap detracted from his otherworldly beauty. When our eyes met, I sucked in a breath.
“Hey,” he said, running his gaze over me before shrugging off the hoodie and handing it to me.
“Oh, no, I’m okay,” I said, pushing his hand back.
“Just take it. You’re covered in goosebumps.” He tossed the item at me, and I caught it instinctively.
I blinked at him and pulled the hoodie on. It was still warm and smelled like him. “Fine. Since we’re making observations, you look tired.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well. Which is why I’m up doing this.” He opened his arms and gestured to the room.
The bags under his eyes seemed to grow more prominent. I had initially missed that detail, distracted by how undone he looked.
Seeing him like this was intimacy, I realized. However badly he’d been sleeping, he always looked collected and ready to go during the day. This side of him—part weary, part uncertain—didn’t come out around the guys, but he was making an exception with me.
My stomach fluttered at the thought. Fuck. I just slept with two of his friends in an attempt to exorcise these kinds of reactions, yet here I was, as affected by Abel as ever.
He studied me for a moment and then pulled out his guitar.
“I worked some more on the song from before.”
He began to play the familiar melody. I was surprised to hear he hadn’t changed much of what we’d written before, but he had filled in some of the gaps that had remained at the end of our last session.
I started to strum along, making mental notes of a few spots I thought could use some reworking.
“What do you think?” he asked me hesitantly when the song finished.
“I think it’s really good, Abel. It feels…honest.”
I thought I saw a flash of satisfaction on his face, but it was gone before I could be sure.
“It still needs work. What parts sounded off to you?”
I opened my mouth, then changed my mind and pinched my lips. “Look, it’s your song. Any further feedback from me would be just stylistic preference.”
The line between his lips tightened. “You wrote almost half of it. You are the song’s co-writer. If we release this, your name is going to be in the credits, so you better get onboard with all that quickly and cut the bullshit.”
My brows inched together. “I wish you would have told me that when we started on this.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m not thinking about shit like that when I’m writing. Neither should you. Are we making art here, or are we having a business meeting?”
“Fine. Let’s keep going,” I blurted out. What were the chances of them ever using this song? The rest of the band hadn’t even heard it yet. Still, I bristled at his sharp words. At how he seemed to have no patience for my concerns.
