Page 97 of The Sound Between Us

23

ex apocolypse

Harrison

Consciousness returns slowly. There’s warmth pressed against my chest, the soft tickle of hair across my ribs, the weight of an arm draped over my body keeping me tethered to something real.

Seren.

The name settles in my mind, and for the first time in years—maybe ever—I understand what peace actually feels like. Nothing manufactured, but genuine quiet. The kind that reaches bone-deep and makes you believe the world might actually be a place worth inhabiting.

My head is full of music.

Not the focus-grouped, committee-written nonsense that’s been choking Elementary for the past three years, but real songs. Honest words floating through my consciousness. Melodies that feel urgent and necessary, lyrics that taste like truth instead of marketing strategy.

Everything is startling and bright.

I can feel my mind working differently already, strategising around obstacles that seemed insurmountable yesterday. The Asia tour starts in two days, but maybe I can get Seren on the guest list for London when we circle back. Maybe I can convince her to come to New York. Maybe this doesn’t have to end just because geography says it should.

It’s going to be hard, I think, studying the curve of her shoulder in the morning light. She’s anti-everything I represent. But for the first time in years, I want to fight for something instead of just accepting whatever gets handed to me. This feeling—this rightness—is worth disrupting the careful machinery of my existence.

The dangerous hope unfurling in my chest is terrifying and essential in equal measure. I’m imagining a different future, one where this feeling lasts, where I get to wake up this way more than once. Where maybe I become someone worth keeping instead of someone worth forgetting.

This isn’t just attraction anymore, I realise with crystal clarity. This is the thing that could save me.

The recognition is followed immediately by its more terrifying twin: I need her more than she needs me. She’s got her quiet life, her record shop, her carefully constructed independence. I’m the one who’s been dying slowly in expensive studios, suffocating on my own success.

That’s when I hear it.

The sound of someone moving through my house with the confidence that comes from having keys. Familiar footsteps crossing expensive floors, the particular rhythm of heels that I recognise with a sick drop in my stomach.

The peaceful morning cracks.

“Please tell me you haven’t got a team coming to get you ready for the day,” Seren murmurs against my chest, her voice soft and trusting, still wrapped in the intimacy of what we shared.

My heart starts clanging. “No.” The word comes out tight because I know exactly who’s in my house, and I know exactly how this is about to go.

The footsteps are getting closer, steady and confident, and I want to bolt the door. Hide her. Wrap the moment we’ve created in something airtight before the world punctures it.

But there’s nowhere to run.

Time stretches, molasses-thick, until it doesn’t. Until Ruby appears in the doorway.

She stops, taking in the scene with the practiced eye of someone who’s perfected the art of destruction. Immaculate. Perfect hair, perfect makeup, dressed untouchably. Every detail screams control and calculation, and the moment her gaze lands on Seren—vulnerable and beautiful in tangled sheets—I see her shift. From surprise to strategy. She clocks the power dynamics immediately and makes a show of enjoying them.

“Well, well.” Ruby’s voice is honey over broken glass. “This is cosy.”

Seren flinches. She scrambles for the bedding, dragging it up over herself, but it’s too late—the spell has already broken. The warmth between us starts dissolving molecule by molecule, the trust unraveling in real time.

“What are you doing here?” My voice cuts sharp with panic and fury.

Ruby doesn’t blink, just leans casually against the doorframe. “I left my earrings. The diamond ones. Cartier, you remember.”

She smiles, and it’s weaponised. She’s lying, and she knows I know she’s lying, and she doesn’t care. There are no earrings. There never were.

“Get out.”

“I have a key, darling.” All saccharine ease. “We discussed this.”