Page 56 of Siren

He grinned. “Amaya plays your songs on repeat like they’re scripture. If I’m gonna ask her to be my forever, I want your voice in the background.”

I didn’t say anything. Just held his gaze. Let the weight of his words sink in.

He didn’t know it, but in that moment, he gave me something back. For the first time in days, I didn’t feel reduced.

I didn’t feel reactive. I feltrealand … whole again.

EIGHTEEN

Iknew she’d gone in without me.

Her scent still lingered—sweet, rich, and feminine—woven into the air like harmony after a final note. Jasmine and amber, maybe. Something soft and intentional. I closed the door behind me, slow, quiet, like walking into a space alreadysacred.

Amir didn’t say a word at first. Just looked up from the console with that steady, unreadable calm he always wore when something real had happened.

“She singing solo now?” I asked, setting my bag down against the wall.

He didn’t flinch. He shrugged and said, “She needed the booth.”

That was it.

“She use it?” I asked anyway, even though I already knew.

“She did. You’ll hear it later.”

I didn’t press. I just nodded, taking in the way the air still carried her. Thick with the ache of something she left behind.

Later that night, I drove with no destination in mind. Just kept going. The city lights flashing across the windshield like they were trying to keep up with my thoughts. A track played low from the speakers—the one we’d been working on together. The one she kept rewriting, saying the second verse didn’t feel true yet.

She was right. It didn’t.

But it had been looping in my head ever since. Just like her. The way her voice curved around a note when she got lost in it. The warmth of her laugh when she finally let herselfbesoft. The press of her palm on my stomach when she thought I was sleep. The taste of her. Like honey and heat and something I wasn’t ready to live without.

I’d been with women before. Plenty. But this thing with her? It wasn’t about sex anymore. It was the way her silence filled up a room. The way her absence echoed louder than most people’s presence.

The way I scanned every crowd for the shape of her curls and didn’t even realize I was doing it. That kind of feeling could break a man in two. Or put him back together. Maybe both.

I pulled into the garage, parked, and took the elevator upin silence. My place welcomed me with dim lights and clean lines. Everything in its place. Everything still.

Except me.

I walked to the kitchen, poured two fingers of Jack, leaned against the counter, and thought about her.

Three days back and not a single call. No text. No knock. And not a word since the photos started circulating.

I thought we were past all that. Past pretending. Past caring about the noise. I knew what I felt. Knew what I wanted.

A man don’t touch a woman the way I touched her—don’t give her the parts of him he’s never named out loud—and expect to walk away like it didn’t mean something.

We didn’t just fuck. Wefused.

But maybe she didn’t feel it the same. Maybe I was in this deeper than I realized.

But… we fell asleep on the floor, the sound of Chante Moore still floating above us. Her legs tangled in mine. My hand resting on the small of her back like it had always belonged there.

And now? She was quiet again. Protecting something. Her peace. Her image. Her heart.

I couldn’t be mad at that. Not when I knew the cost of this industry. Not when I knew how easily a woman like her could get reduced to background noise in somebody else’s story.

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