Page 187 of Before You Fell

Jax and Jett argue over something pointless and Cruz tells them to pull their fucking heads in.

Between takes, Phoenix comes to me. He leans over my shoulder to read the notebook, one hand resting on the back of the couch behind me, the other taking my pen without asking. He reads what I wrote, what I crossed out, and then writes one word above a line I’d given up on. He hands the pen back without a word.

I look at the word. He’s right. He’s always right about this, which is annoying, but I would never tell him.

He bends and kisses my temple, smug as hell, then goes back to the mic.

By the time the song finally sounds right, I can feel it in my bones. It belongs to the band now. It is no longer just the thing Phoenix and I made in the quiet. It’s bigger than just us now. Louder. It has been handed to four people who know how to make a room feel it and they have done exactly that.

The door opens on the fifth clean run.

Damon walks in wearing a black coat, with a phone in one hand, and the expression of a man who believes rooms should rearrange themselves around him on arrival.

The song falls apart. Jax stops first. Cruz lets a final note ring out. Jett lowers his guitar and says nothing. Phoenix doesn’t move from the mic.

Damon looks at him, then at the band, then at me on the couch with my open notebook in my lap. His eyes linger on me a beat too long.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Phoenix’s hand rests on the microphone stand. “Practice.”

Damon’s eyes narrow. “That song isn’t on the set list.”

“It will be.”

“Who approved this?” Damon steps further into the room.

There it is. The old chain of command, where Damon approved, polished, shaped, softened, cut, and sold.

“We did,” Phoenix says.

Damon’s gaze sharpens. “We?”

“Yes, the fucking band. Keep up, Damon.”

“That’s not how this works.”

Phoenix looks at him for a long moment. The corner of his mouth tugs up, the old arrogant asshole peeping through. “It is now.”

Damon laughs. “You don’t make changes to the set list without me. Not three weeks before a tour. Do you understand what goes into production? Lighting cues, press, pacing, rehearsals, and the live mix.”

“We do when the song belongs in the set.”

Damon’s eyes flick to me and the room shifts before he speaks.

“So that is how this works now?” Damon says. “She disappears, comes back with one song, and the whole tour bends around her?”

Nobody moves.

I don’t look at Phoenix. I don’t need to. I can feel him from across the room, the way the air shifts around him when something trips the wire. And right now, every single wire has been tripped.

Jax stands so fast that his stool scrapes across the floor. “Watch it.”

Cruz sets his guitar down slowly. “Choose your next fucking sentence with your survival instincts, Damon.”

Jett doesn’t raise his voice. “Don’t make her the problem.”

“I am talking about business,” Damon says, lifting a hand, as if he is dismissing this whole conversation.