Page 31 of Cadence
Hiding a smile, I keep my head lowered, chewing slowly as I cut unnecessary footage from the recording, my tone playful as I ask, “So, you’re mad at a game for being too smart?”
“I’m mad at it for trying to fool me,” Eli says with a dramatic groan. “It pretends it’s just about word matching, but suddenly I’m questioning if ‘willow’ is a tree, a color, or a Taylor Swift song.”
“Willow’s a color?” Beau asks, twisting the tuning peg until the new string’s taut on the fretboard.
“It’s a shade of green,” Maddox says as he steps into the room, lips in a tight line, a laptop and notebook held under his arm.
My finger freezes over the screen, eyes bugging out as my head jerks up, nearly choking on the end of the Nerd Rope.
“What?” He catches my reaction before setting his things on a table and pulling out a seat.
Shaking my head, I hold up a hand defensively, unable to mask my surprise. “Nothing. Just didn’t think you’d know that.”
It’s been a few days since the blow-up—at least, that’s what I’ve started calling it—and since then, things have been…weird. Not icy or openly tense, just…different. Like he’s trying to reset everything without actually owning what happened and apologizing.
No, Maddox has his own brand of damage control.
My gear is always set up the way I like when I arrive. He offers feedback in a generous, albeit neutral tone. And he doesn’t argue over fill structure or tempo when I throw in something new.
It messes with me, the way he doesn’t say much but still somehow pays attention. Like yesterday, he swapped out my busted bass pedal before I even got here. Didn’t mention it, didn’t ask, just…fixed it. That’s not the Maddox I met on day oneand every day since. And it’s not the kind of thing you do unless you care, at least a little bit.
Which makes no sense.
It’s like he thinks if he’s helpful enough—hands me a cable without grunting, drops a random fact like it’s no big deal—that it’ll somehow even the scales.
And maybe it could. Maybe if he just said the damn wordsorry, this tension between us would finally crack and bleed out and we could move on. But he hasn’t, so instead, we tiptoe around it, pretending everything’s fine.
The staring still happens, except instead of the calculated gaze I’d gotten used to, I see what was hiding behind it; heat, smoldering in the depths of his dark eyes, and I don’t miss the way I like having them on me. That I like when I catch him looking, only to glance away, thinking he hasn’t been caught.
The too-long pause that makes my skin break out in goosebumps. The quiet tension he thinks he hides when I pass by closely and he stiffens, not from discomfort, but like he’s holding himself still on purpose.
It shouldn’t affect me like this. I’m a grown-ass woman who can keep it under control, especially when I’m around egotistical musicians like Maddox Knox. But it does, and it sparks that part inside me where nothing good could come from it.
Nearly three weeks of working beside him, and I still can’t figure him out. I’ve spent every day learning his rhythms, watching his moods shift like the weather; stormy, brooding, never still. He’s not exactly an open book. Hell, I’m not sure he’s a book at all.
“Helped paint my grandma’s kitchen that color before she passed,” Maddox answers the question I forgot Eli asked, flipping open his laptop and turning to a fresh page in his notebook. “Then her front door; she loved it that much.”
He says it like it doesn’t matter, like the memory doesn’t still sit in the back of his mind. But something in his voice, off beat and hollow, makes my smile falter. I expected sarcasm, an eye roll, not…that.
A heaviness settles in as I look at him,reallylook at him, and for a split second, he’s not Maddox the control freak, the sharp-tongued frontman. He’s just Maddox, a boy who once did something kind for someone he loved.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I whisper.
His eyes flick up, dark and unreadable, stirring emotions within me that sit just beneath the surface. For a moment, we stare at each other, and it almost looks like he’s going to say something, but just like that, his walls snap back into place.
“Thanks,” he mutters, attention returning to his screen.
“Fuck’s sake, Mad,” Eli groans. “Trust you to bring down the vibe.”
Maddox flips him off with a smirk, grabbing his pen and jotting something down.
“Paige, that guy who was getting my dragon tattoo had his final sitting today. Wanna see?” Eli announces and jumps to his feet, coming to stand in front of me, holding out his phone.
“Oh, yeah, show me.” I take it, zooming in and out on the image of the dragon tattoo spanning someone’s back, wings stretched over his shoulder blades, the tail curling along his spine. “Eli, this is… Wow.”
“Thanks.” The tips of his ears tint pink as he pockets his phone, rocking on his heels as he looks around the room before walking behind Maddox and peering down at the page. “Whatcha doing?”
“Jesus, do you have to stand so close?” Maddox nudges him back, shielding the notebook with his forearm.
