Page 92 of Muse (Fighting Fate)

I looked at Aiden. She gave a fucking convincing case, but I was still scared to be away from her. I was petrified that if I didn’t show her I was here for her, she would slip further away and not come back. There was a part of me that felt like I needed to keep talking to her, keep singing to her, give her something to focus on, give her direction to make it back to me.

Aiden wore the same feelings in his expression. I could see he was torn. I thought about what Lillian said. How sometimes we had to make adult decisions – even when we weren’t ready to.

Mom cleared her throat. “We’ll let you know the second anything changes. We promise. Lillian’s organized with Sean to ring him the second there’s any change in Mia’s condition – good or bad.”

If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t trust they’d interrupt our recording to pass on the message, but I trusted Mr. Thomas. I gave Aiden a slight nod, letting him know I was on board. Lillian was right. I could channel these emotions into something fucking phenomenal.

Aiden inhaled then sighed. “Fine, but we start first thing, and we don’t stop until the album’s done. No fucking breaks.” The fact that Aiden swore in front of our moms without a trace of contriteness showed how strongly he felt about it.

I nodded. “I agree, but Mr. Thomas has to promise to give us any news he gets – even if he has to stop us in the middle of a recording. If he won’t agree to that, then the deal’s off.”

Aiden clenched his jaw, his eyes hardening. “Absolutely.”

Lillian expression grew a little more serious. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Chapter 44

Mia

The fogginess that had been looming inside my head was lifting. I no longer felt dazed, but I was still very, very confused.

I didn’t understand where I was.

The darkness was consuming. The silence, suffocating.

I vaguely remembered hearing music. Had I imagined it? No. I remembered it had made the darkness tolerable. I wished I could hear it again. It soothed me. Made the darkness seem not so frightening.

I didn’t want to be here anymore.

Chapter 45

Jace

My day started at five a.m. After grabbing a healthy breakfast and making a quick call to make sure Mia’s condition had remained stable overnight, I gathered my music and drove downtown to Leighton’s recording studio to meet the guys.

Aiden and I ran through the stipulations with Mr. Thomas before we started anything, making sure he understood what we expected when it came to Mia. We agreed if there was bad news, he’d stop the recording straight away, but if there was good news, he’d wait until the recording ended before letting us know. It seemed like a reasonable compromise in the end.

We started the session off with our usual jam to get us in the zone, but this time, all traces of humor were gone. We all knew we had a job to do, and it was a fucking big one at that.

In order to get as much of the album recorded in one day, the studio decided to use partitioning screens so we could record the music component all at once. As a garage band, it worked best for us to do it that way anyway, because we fed off one another’s intensity when we played.

Once we got into it, there was no stopping us. Aiden and I were like machines. The sound we created was unlike anything we’d ever done before. There was a power in it that I’d never heard. A slight desperation, an anguish that gave each song a deeper meaning than we ever thought could be possible. Matt and Dean soaked it up, and together, we amped it up to another fucking level.

I thought about Mia through every song. I saw her lying beneath me as we made love only a few days ago, I saw her tears when I’d told her I loved her, I saw her frightened face when I held her through her anxiety attack, I saw her crumpled body on the floor of the gym, and the blood that felt permanently stained on the walls of my memory, and I saw her fragile body, lying on the hospital bed, being kept alive by tubes and machines and wires.

After every song, I looked to Mr. Thomas, watching to see if he had any news. Each time I was met with the slight shake of his head, so I pushed forward, throwing myself into another song and another round of tormenting visions that now felt branded inside my head.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me we sounded good. I knew there wasn’t a time we’d played any fucking better. We hit each run through with perfection, and by the grin that was etched on the recording guys’ faces, I knew they thought so too.

It was somewhere just after lunch when we finished up. The relief was like a fifth person in the room. Its presence was rife.

“That was fucking phenomenal guys,” came Rick’s voice through the speakers. I looked at him through the glass, sitting behind the giant mixing board. “It’s going to be a little while until we’re ready to do the vocals. Why don’t you take an hour and grab something to eat.”

Dean put his guitar down and sat on the lounge along the wall. I slumped down on a stool.

Sitting there with the hardest part of our day behind us, I was suddenly hit with an urge to share. “Remember the song I wrote in Aspen?” I said quietly.

The guys all looked at me with confirmation.

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