Morning started with Aiden in peak form.
I was in the kitchen reviewing the day's schedule on my phone when he walked in, took it out of my hand mid-scroll — just plucked it from my fingers like picking fruit — and read my notes aloud in a mock-serious voice.
"Eight a.m., client breakfast. Nine a.m., client medication. Ten a.m., client studio session." He looked at me over the screen. "Client. That's cute. You write about me like I'm a dentist appointment."
I reached for the phone. He held it higher — almost a foot on me and he knew it, the corner of his mouth curling at the stretch I had to make.
"Give it back, Aiden."
"Say please."
My spine went rigid. The last time he'd said those words to me I was seventeen and holding a journal against my chest. "I'm not seventeen anymore."
Something shifted in his eyes — a flicker, quick and buried, gone before I could name the shape of it. But his voice stayed light. "No. You're not."
He handed the phone back. His fingers brushed mine on the transfer and the contact lasted half a second longer than it needed to. I stared at the place where his hand had touched and my skin hummed like a wire someone had flicked. Stop it. Stop it right now.
He walked out with his coffee. I pressed my thumb into the center of my palm until the humming stopped.
He skipped breakfast. I made him eat anyway — carried a plate into the studio where he was sitting with the guitar across his lap doing nothing, just holding it like a prop, like a man who'd forgotten what the instrument was for.
"I'm not hungry."
"Your nutritionist says you've lost eleven pounds since rehab." I set the plate on the amp beside him. "Eat."
"You gonna spoon-feed me, Calloway?"
"If that's what it takes."
He picked up the fork, took one bite, set it down. "Happy?"
I pushed the plate closer. "Thrilled."
He ate. Not because I asked — I could see that in the set of his jaw, the way his teeth worked like he was chewing on something other than food. He ate because fighting me about it would require more energy than the meal was worth. I counted it as a win. Small, stupid, barely a win. But in this house, with this man, I took what I could get.
Around noon Otis called. The rest of the band was arriving for final rehearsal — last practice before tour. Aiden's mood shifted at the news. Not worse exactly, but tighter. He showered, changed into a black t-shirt that probably cost three hundred dollars, and I caught him in the hallway mirror with an expression I couldn't read — somewhere between armoring up and checking for cracks.
Even rock stars get stage fright. Even ones who'd rather die than admit it.
The doorbell rang. Two men walked in carrying the particular confidence of people who belonged in houses like this.
Jude Navarro — drummer, tall, dark-eyed, easy grin — dropped a bag in the hallway and immediately spotted me. "Oh, you're the new one. I'm Jude." He shook my hand with both of his, warm and genuine. "How long has it been?"
"Four days."
"That's already a record. Respect." He said it like he meant it, which was disorienting after four days of someone who meant nothing he said.
Tommy Park — bassist, quieter, a calm that felt deliberate, earned — nodded at me from behind Jude. "He hasn't made you cry yet?"
"Not yet."
Tommy half-smiled. "Give it time."
I felt myself smile. First time since I'd walked into this house. My face almost didn't remember how.
They set up in the villa's rehearsal space — converted living room, amps, drum kit, soundproofing that cost more than my education. I sat on a stool near the back wall while they tuned up and argued about the setlist. Then they played.
And everything I thought I understood about Aiden Blackwell rearranged itself in my chest.
He was — I didn't want to admit this, fought it the entire way — extraordinary. The voice that had tortured me from a kitchen radio at midnight was a different animal live. Raw, enormous, vibrating through the floor and into my bones. He moved like the music was something physical he was wrestling with, and the arrogance that made him unbearable in conversation became something else entirely behind a mic. Authority. Conviction.
He sang a song I knew — built on a lyric I wrote at fifteen about drowning in a room full of people — and my throat closed. The words were mine but the feeling coming off him was real. He meant it. However he got those words, he meant them when he sang them, and that contradiction — thief and believer in the same breath — made my chest ache in a way I had no language for.
You stole my voice and you're using it better than I ever could. I don't know whether to scream or cry.
After rehearsal Jude dropped onto the stool next to me, pushed a water bottle into my hand, and started talking like we'd known each other for years. Where was I from. What did I do before this. Was Aiden eating. I answered carefully — the NDA made me cautious — but Jude was disarming in a way that felt unperformable, and within minutes I was laughing at a story about their first tour van breaking down in Nebraska.
"The transmission fell out. Just — fell. In a Walmart parking lot. Aiden tried to fix it with duct tape and a YouTube tutorial." Jude shook his head. "The man can sing but he cannot operate machinery."
I laughed again. Actual laughter, from somewhere I hadn't accessed in months.
I didn't see Aiden look over. Didn't see his hands go still on the cable when Jude leaned close to say something that made me laugh a third time. What I saw was Aiden crossing the room and interrupting mid-sentence.
"Jude, she's not here to be your fan. She's the keeper."
His voice was casual. Bored, even. But he set his guitar case on the table between me and Jude like a wall and turned to me.
"I need water. And the schedule for tomorrow. And actually, while you're up, the studio needs cleaning — cables everywhere, I almost tripped twice during the bridge of 'Threadbare.'" He pointed toward the back corner. "Start there."
A list designed to remind me what I was. Staff, not company.
Jude's face hardened. "Dude. She's not your maid."
Tommy, from behind the drum kit, didn't even look up. "Can you not be an asshole for one single day? She's been here four days and she's the first keeper who hasn't cried. Maybe try not ruining that."
Aiden shrugged. "I'm helping her prioritize. She's got a job. I'm the job. Not —" he gestured at Jude "— whatever this is."
I stood. My face was calm. "I'll get your water."
Flat. No heat. I walked toward the kitchen and behind me I heard Jude's voice go low and hard: "What the hell is wrong with you?" And Aiden, quieter, stripped of the performance for just a half-second: "Drop it."
I got the water. Brought it back. Set it on the amp next to him without a word.
Our eyes met. His jaw tightened and I could see it — the thing behind the cruelty that looked, from this close, less like arrogance and more like a man standing in a burning room pretending he couldn't feel the heat. Something in his face shifted when Jude's name hung between us, something raw and involuntary that he buried the second he caught me looking.
I walked back to my stool. Jude caught my eye and mouthed sorry.
I shook my head. It's fine.
It wasn't fine. But I was learning the shape of this war, and something about today — watching him sing my stolen words like prayers, watching him panic when another man made me laugh — told me the armor had seams. I didn't know what to do with that yet.
But I knew it was there.