Page 85 of Cadence
Her breath hitches, her eyes widening as we hear Beau laugh from down the hall, the sound loud enough to remind us that what we’re doing right now, the risk, it could blow everything up.
But my hand finds the side of her face anyway, guiding her upward, my fingers sliding into her hair, kissing her in the dark. It’s rushed, filthy, and her hand grips my shirt as her lips part to let me in.
I swallow her whimpers, the muffled noises I know she’s trying not to make, each one a shot straight to my balls.
Footsteps creak somewhere behind her, and we jerk apart, Paige lunging for the empty popcorn bowl and shoving it in front of my now-hard dick.
“Go write your lyrics,” she mumbles, hair fanning out behind her as she spins to grab the blanket from the floor and fold it across the chair, her breaths uneven, her kiss-swollen lips glistening in the dim light.
This isn’t just lust anymore; I don’t think it's been that way for a while now. With our secret touches and these notes hidden between the pages in my book, we’re creating something different, a rhythm of our own, off beat and careless, and one I don’t want to stop playing.
I glance up at Paige sitting at her booth, nodding along to whatever’s playing in her headphones. Across the lounge area, Beau and Eli sit half-tuned into their instruments, lazily plucking chords with no real purpose, just a way to pass time on our way to the next city.
Returning to my notebook, I reread the chorus, Paige’s note bolder than any scribble I could have scored onto the paper.
There’s brilliance here, it’s just buried under the noise. Let me help before it gets too loud. I know what it’s like. I know how hard it is to shut up. But you have this. I promise.
The ink smudges where her hand rested, and I stare at it for longer than I should before reading my lyrics again, the words clicking almost immediately with her changes. The bones were solid before her help, and there might have been a line that needed more bite, a word that could’ve slice deeper, too, but she didn’t just fix a few cracks. She fleshed it out, let it breathe.
For the first time, I’m not writing what sounds good in my head. I’m starting to understand why it works. And it’s because of her.
She sees things I don’t, hears emotion between the syllables, and I’m learning from her.
And fuck, if that doesn’t feel like the first time I picked up my guitar and didn’t suck.
The sound of Paige humming catches my attention, quiet, soft, almost just for her. She swings her pendant on its chain, back and forth, watching Eli and Beau now, her headphones gone. It’s a small, familiar movement, one I’ve memorized. But it still tightens something in my chest. It’s that feeling again, the one I try to ignore. The one that screams what we’re doing is wrong.
More than she knows.
She shifts from her booth, moving to join the guys, dropping down next to Eli. I can’t hear what she says, but he nods thoughtfully, and then Beau plays the same chords again, this time in a different key. Her brow furrows, and she bites her lip, thinking, and then she looks at me.
“Maddox, this melody would work so damn well with the lyrics from weeks ago in your book,” she says, her eyes lighting up. “Quick, Beau, do that transition into the riff again.”
He plays it, and she sings my lyrics, words I hadn’t even shown her properly. She must’ve seen them in a glance, a flip of the page, and now she’s singing them out loud, her melodic voice filling the bus.
I knew she could write—hell, half of the tracks in the top fifty were hers at one point—but her voice…it catches me off guard. It’s not perfect, not rehearsed, but it might be my favorite track yet. The pacing’s different than what I imagined, but if anything, that makes it better, like a song that was always meant for her to sing.
I watch as she closes her eyes and leans into the chorus, imaging how she’d fit in with the husky tones of my voice and the scratch of Beau’s. Trained, real, perfect, creating a new layer that’s changed everything I thought I knew about our sound.
Her fingers tap unconsciously against her thigh, her lashes flutter, and a slight crease forms between her eyebrows as her mouth shapes the words like she’s tasting them.
And it hits me, hard and fast, right in the solar plexus. I rub the spot with my knuckles, unable to look away as the thought settles deep.
They say to draw from what’s around you for inspiration. But she’s becoming more than that.She’s the spark, the ignition for every lyric, every note, every song.
She’s my muse.
A silence falls over the bus as the last note fades, and Eli grins, clapping his hands in delight. “Okay, that was epic.”
“Could definitely be something,” Beau agrees, looking at me. “Whatcha think?”
I can feel her eyes on me, too, waiting. Not just for approval, maybe something else. But my heart’s beating too fast, and I can’t get the sound of her voice out of my head. My hands start to shake, fingers twitching, restless and useless.
“I—” I stand quickly, waving vaguely toward the back. “I’m gonna grab a shower.”
One of the guys calls my name, but I don’t look back. Ducking into the tiny bathroom, I flick on the faucet and brace myself against the sink. I’m not just in over my head with her anymore, I’m fucking drowning.
Now she’s the reason my lyrics are lighter, looser,better. She’s in my bloodstream, in every fuckup, in the damn set list I decided to change because shewasright. In the cues I miss because I’m too busy watching her.
