Page 25 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

The halls were quiet when he let himself inside. Cerys’s board talked about moonboots, totally Cinderella vibes. Maybe she meant it as an apology, he wasn’t sure. He leaned back to look down the corridor and saw no one around. Quickly, he removed all the letters and replaced them with his own.

Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.

At the sound of clipped heels coming towards the corridor, he quickly shoved the unused letters into the box on Cerys’s desk and hurried to their studio.

When Cerys entered, he was seated by the window, texting his nan.

“Hey, just the man I need to talk to,” she said, cheerfully. She’d obviously not noticed her quote board then.

“Yeah?”

“Jimmy’s asked that I give you some vocal lessons. It’ll only take about twenty minutes a day.”

Vocal lessons? Jimmy had a problem with his voice.

Jase shook his head. “No can do. My voice is fine as it is.” His words were confident, but inside, his heart raced as blood rushed through his veins.

“Well, this is to help—”

“I’m too busy, Cerys.” He ignored the way her smile flickered before disappearing completely.

“This is a request of Jimmy’s, so it—”

“What are you going to do? Force me to sing?”

Cerys placed her hands on her hips. “There’s no need to be unreasonable. Jimmy has asked that it happen. Now, I can make us both look totally foolish and go back to Jimmy and say you refused, and I can’t persuade you. At which point he’ll get off his chair, and some combination of Parker Moseley and Jimmy will come in here and make you. Or you can just agree.”

Would he fold though? If Jimmy came in and told him? What if Parker threatened to end their deal if he didn’t?

Fuck.

He stood so quickly he accidentally kicked the chair over. “Let me think about it.”

“Fine.” She looked at the chair, and he was suddenly embarrassed. Silently, he righted it as she turned and left the room.

“Fine,” he muttered, as he watched one of the brightest parts of being in Detroit leave the room. Why was he always the biggest fucking idiot around her?

And what did Bexter think was wrong with his voice?

* * *

“Now you’re just being a twat,” Matt cursed, and Cerys cringed at the set of Jase’s shoulders that braced at the harsh words.

“Only because you seem to have lost the ability to tell a good song from a fucking bad one. We need to drop this one. We’ve worked on it on and off since Monday, it’s now Wednesday. We aren’t getting anywhere with it. I know how much it hurts your ego to hear it, but this isn’t your best.”

Cerys hadn’t naturally thought of herself as an empath, but as she watched the band interact, as she listened to what was said and what wasn’t, she felt something a lot like pain.

Sure, there was shouting, and cursing. And at one point in the day, she’d thought Luke and Jase were going to get into a physical altercation that had simmered from some comment Jase had made about the pace of the song. And sure, when they’d played it back, with a metronome Jase downloaded on his phone to prove the point, the beat had sped up. But that didn’t mean Luke was going to let the insult pass.

Matt jumped down off the stage. “Still better than your fucking best song, Jase. Oh, wait. Yeah. We don’t have any to compare it to.”

“Says the guy who wouldn’t listen even if I did because he wants all the songwriting credit,” Jase shouted.

Luke shoulder-checked him on the way by. “Not factually true.”

Ben put his hands on his head. “Will the lot of you just shut up and focus? I’m sick of this shit today. Can’t decide if you all need a nap, some food, or a fist in the face. Jase’s right. We need to move on. This song isn’t working. And, Matt, it’s a lot easier to fix a song than write it. Nobody should be shitting on your songs.”

She wondered what the glue was between them. Was family, when you had one, really that strong?

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