Chapter 5: The Booth

I opened the booth door myself.

Abel said "Linnea" behind me, once, low, and I walked out into the light anyway.

I was not going to be found crouching in a closet in a building I had paid for.

Dax stood in the middle of the live room with his jacket still on one shoulder.

Calla had pulled her headphones down around her neck and gone very still beside the piano.

"There you are," Dax said gently.

He said it the way he used to say it when I came home late from a writing session.

"I came for my reels," I said. "And my lyric files. They're mine."

"They're the company's."

"They're in my handwriting."

"Then we'll let a judge read it." He smiled at Calla without looking at her. "Go home, sweetheart. Get some sleep."

"But the vocal," Calla said.

"It'll keep."

She picked up her bag and her laptop.

At the door she glanced at me, and for one second I saw something raw and scared go over her face.

Then it was gone, and so was she.

Dax waited until the door closed.

"You broke in," he said.

"Abel unlocked a door. You can ask him."

"I will."

I stepped closer to the piano.

"Before you ask him anything, answer me," I said.

"I heard her headphones. Somebody is singing 'Paper Moon' on the track she's learning from."

"It's a guide vocal."

"Whose?"

"Mine."

"You've never sung that song for me," I said.

"You played it for me once, on the kitchen floor. I told you it was too sad to be a single."

"I sang it for her because she asked."

"I've asked you for six years."

"You never asked me to sing anything," Dax said, and his smile went flat. "You asked me to listen."

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