Rafael snorts. "High praise from a label suit."
"Right? I'm basically ready to frame it." I grab my water bottle from the couch, draining the last lukewarm inch. "Where's Rex?"
"He left," Phoenix says. "Like, right after you went into the hall with Carmine. Didn't say anything. Just packed up his guitar and walked out."
I sigh. "What else is new?"
"Yeah, but..." Phoenix straightens up, rubbing the back of his neck. "He's not answering texts."
I want to brush it off and chalk it up to Rex being Rex. Brooding somewhere, licking wounds I don't understand. That's his MO. Disappear, sulk, emerge eventually with renewed hostility and maybe a sick new song.
The rehearsal was good. Better than good. The kind of session that makes you remember why you got into music in the first place.
So why does my stomach feel like it's trying to digest itself?
"Let's head back to the penthouse," I say finally. "He'll surface eventually. Always does."
Phoenix doesn't look convinced, but he starts breaking down his kit anyway. Rafael zips his bass case closed. I gather my shit—water bottle, phone, the hoodie I shed three songs in when the heat became unbearable since I had on a binder and a loose enough t-shirt beneath it.
The drive back is quieter than usual. Phoenix is behind the wheel of his SUV, Rafael riding shotgun, me sprawled across the back seat trying not to think about why my nerves are buzzing like someone ran an electric current through them.
We're almost to the penthouse when our phones start going off.
"What the fuck?" Rafael twists in his seat, pulling out his own phone. His face goes slack. "Oh. Oh,shit."
Phoenix glances over. "What?"
"Pull over."
"We're like three blocks from?—"
"Phoenix.Pull the fuck over."
The tone in Rafael's voice makes Phoenix jerk the wheel toward the curb so fast I slide across the back seat. We're barely stopped before Rafael is shoving his phone toward Phoenix, and I'm finally looking at my own screen.
The notifications are a blur. Every social media app I have is hemorrhaging alerts, the numbers climbing in real-time like some kind of nightmare stock ticker.
I tap one at random.
And my heart stops.
It's a photo.
Rex.
Not Rex in a mask. Not Rex half-shadowed in a tunnel, glimpsed for a fraction of a second before he turned away from me with a snarl.
This is Rex in surgical lighting, every detail captured in merciless high-definition. This is the kind of clinical documentation that belongs in a medical file, not splashed across the Internet for the entire world to consume.
I can't look away.
The damage is...
Extensivedoesn't cover it. The right side of his face is gone. There's no other way to describe it. Pink and white scar tissue webbed across melted flesh like lightning frozen mid-strike, his right eye open even though it shouldn’t be, and I see teeth on the right side of his mouth but I scroll past it fast because I feel like I’m betraying him by looking at this.
I see enough to know what I saw in that tunnel was nothing.
A glimpse. A shadow. The barest hint of what actually lies beneath the mask he guards more fiercely than his own life.