Page 61 of Silver Sweet

Ice Age in a chokehold (oh no)

Where nothing good grows

Tom stops singing the same time my pen stops moving. Our eyes catch, and he tells me, “The drums should feel as fast as ‘Motivation’ from Sum 41 but heavier, like lungs trying to burst.” It dawns on me; that’s the only song he’s heard me play on drums. I bet he’s watched my little brother a dozen times.

“It won’t be a light hi-hat.” I throw my head into the rhythm I hear in the silence. “I’m thinking a forceful driving beat, propulsive, but I’ll sit right on it, so it doesn’t feel like I’m gettingahead of you. Maybe a deep kick drum, hard snare on the twos.” I jot some notes down for when I get behind a kit.

“We’re not doing a kick drum on every beat,” he says aggressively, like he grabbed a shotgun expecting a fight.

“Did I suggest a four-on-the-floor?” I snap.

“It’s the first thing every drummer I’ve played with wants to do,” he defends.

“Again, I’m not every drummer you’ve had,” I force out.

Tom opens his mouth, then takes a big swig of an energy drink. I watch his left hand rub his thigh, and heat builds against my neck when I see that I turned him on.

It’s dialing up the temperature in the room.

In me.

Thick arousal gathers in my body, and I flex my abs to stop from getting hard.Fuck.I force my gaze on my journal. “Let’s lean darker with more reverb.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tom relents too quickly. I realize his attention has veered to his brother’s side of the room. Then he looks at his phone. “Fuck,fuck, it’s already one a.m.”

My stomach caves.

I’m not ready to leave. Not when we haven’t finished and we’re making actual strides.

Tom climbs off the bed in a rush. “Take five. I need to go check on Ben.”

“You can’t send him a text?” I frown.

“I need eyes on him.” Reaching the door, he whirls back to face me. “Don’t go anywhere. Seriously.Stay.”

“Not a dog.” Relief loosens my muscles knowing he wants me here for longer. “And I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

He exhales, then he’s out the door in a flash. He said Ben’s on the eighteenth floor hanging out in his cousin’s apartment, so I’m not expecting Tom to be forever.

I don’t take a break. I grab his guitar and fixate on the melody to the chorus. Less than fifteen minutes later, Tom returns.

By 3 a.m., he’s checked on his younger brother four times.

Apparently, they’re engrossed playing a horror video game calledUntil Dawndownstairs—one where their choices would affect who’d survive in the end.

“And I thought I had a sick sense of humor,” Tom mutters. He seems in his head about the video game.

I wonder what’s so sensitive that his brain is a fucking dam and not a sieve—when I have a feeling I’ve heard at least eighty percent of his internal thoughts.

“You want to talk about it?” I ask while I do a deep squat to stretch out my cramped legs.

He grabs a sky-blue Gibson off the wall. “Let’s pick up at the first verse. I think the tempo should be faster.”

“So that’s afuck no.” I straighten up.

“Glad you can read between the lines.” He plugs the electric guitar into the amp, then takes out some pedals. The deep slits in his black muscle shirt show off his ribs…his abs, and I snap my gaze away from him as my blood runs even hotter.

Tom is lean, over six-foot, and definitely my type. But like fuck was I going to tell him that. He bites down on his guitar pick while he untangles wires at his feet. I think about helping him, but I force myself to stay the fuck away.