Chapter 17: Louder

Hannah's POV

Declan played it for me from his phone, once, in the dark of the studio.

He had held the phone against the speaker in the vault, and the sound was thin and far away.

But the voice was Trent's.

"She's never going to be a problem."

Four years ago, to a room, with a tape running.

I sat on the arm of the couch with my coat still on.

"I was a problem," I said.

"Hannah."

"I was. He told me every week. My laugh was a problem. My singing in the shower was a problem."

"Hannah."

"I was too much. At parties, at his mother's table, in my own kitchen."

I looked at my hands.

"I got so I could feel myself taking up room, and I'd pull it back in."

I took a breath.

"I think that's why I believed him," I said. "I thought it was true."

"What was?"

"That I was too loud to be loved the way I was."

Declan put the phone down on the console.

He crossed the floor and stood in front of me.

"Say that again," he said.

"I was too loud to be loved."

"Louder."

"Declan."

"Louder, Hannah."

"I'm too loud to be loved!"

It came out of me in a shout, cracked down the middle.

It rang off the concrete and the foam on the walls.

He didn't flinch.

He took my face in both his hands.

"Four years in front of forty thousand people," he said, "and my best sound was a song somebody else wrote."

"Declan."

"I'd give every show for ten minutes of you at full volume."

"You don't mean that."

"Sit at the piano."

"It's out of tune."

"So is the whole city. Sit."

I sat at the burned upright.

I lifted the lid.

I played the first chord and sang the first line.

"No," he said, behind me.

I sang it again, a little bigger.

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