Page 42 of Every Shattered Note
I press harder on the keys, letting the sound carry through the room.It vibrates in my chest, in my hands, everywhere.
I should sleep, but if I stop, I’ll lose it.
Whatever this is—this pulse, this ache—it’ll vanish by morning.
I’m afraid of losing this feeling because if I fuck it up, or if she leaves like everyone does, it won’t matter how much I pretend it doesn’t hurt.
She’ll live in these lyrics forever—in the melodies her soul inspires.That’s how I’ll keep her—trapped between verses and breaths, hidden in melodies no one will know were ever about her.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her at that doorway again—her fingers curling around the key, her voice soft, careful, her eyes saying what her mouth couldn’t.
And maybe that’s all songs ever are—things we were too afraid to say when it mattered.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her.She doesn’t know who I am—yet.She’s starting to see past Dexter Vaughn, the fuck-up who sells headlines and rehab gossip, into something closer to my true-self. She’s all order and control, color-coded schedules and rules that keep her world from slipping.
And I’m the opposite.Everything I touch burns too fast and too bright.
But fuck, she’s more than that now.
She’s become the pause between my verses.The reason I’m sitting here at three in the morning chasing a song that won’t let me go.
The last note fades, but it doesn’t leave me.It hums beneath my skin, quiet but alive.I lean back, exhale, and reach for Rosie.My girl’s been through everything with me—from dingy clubs to sold-out stadiums to nights I shouldn’t have survived.She sings effortlessly under my fingers, like no time has passed between us.
I start slow.A rough rhythm, low and searching.
Something that sounds like the moment before you say what you mean but stop yourself anyway.
The words come next, half-formed, clumsy:
I almost said it in the silence
when the night leaned close enough to hear.
You smiled like you knew it anyway
like the truth had been waiting between us all along.
It drifts off-key in spots.Misses a beat.But it still holds her rhythm better than anything else I’ve written.
I keep going—verse after verse, confession after confession—until the sky outside lightens to a dull, indifferent gray.My fingers throb, my throat’s raw, but I don't stop.I can’t.The melody keeps pulling truths out of me I didn’t know I still carried.
By now, I’ve written half a song and a hundred excuses to walk away from her.
None of those reasons holds up.Not under the sound of her laugh still echoing in the rests.Not when her memory hums through every chord like a promise I wasn’t supposed to keep.
The lyrics?They’re not polished.They wander and ache and trip over what I’m too scared to say out loud.
But they feel like her.
They feel like me if I let myself be seen.
They feel like what it means to almost touch something good and know you might ruin it just by holding on too tight.
When the city begins to stir—muffled footsteps, a distant siren, the hush before traffic really starts—I let the last note trail off and press my palm against the strings to quiet her.
Rosie’s body is warm beneath my hand, like she’s still holding everything I just poured out.Like she knows the ache in the chords wasn’t just for the song—it was for the girl, too.
I sit there for a moment, caught in the quiet.The kind that creeps in after you say too much and realize it was never enough.
