The room burst into laughter, light, easy, and chaotic in the way friendships always were. But beneath the laughter, I sensed a subtle shift since the last time I’d watched them rehearse. The guys still teased, still threw playful jabs across the room, but nowthey looked at Theo differently, maybe even more attentively, more aware.
Maybe they’ve noticed how he’s cracked open in small ways since I started hanging around.
Or maybe I was projecting way too hard.
I found a seat at the back, my sketchbook resting on my knee. I wasn’t planning to draw. It was more like a shield to hide behind.
Theo adjusted the mic stand with clipped efficiency. At first glance he appeared calm, but I could see the strain in the set of his jaw.
The others gathered around in a semicircle.
“‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ from the top,” Theo said. “Give me your cleanest lines. No drifting.”
And then they began.
The room filled with sound, warm, rich, and layered. It wasn’t perfect but damn, it wasalive. Julian and Elliott blended their tenors into something smooth. Oliver and Liam’s baritones grounded everything with thrum and weight. Finnley hovered in the upper harmonics, playing like a cat with a laser pointer. Max’s bass rolled through the floorboards.
And Theo?—
My breath caught.
Theo didn’t just sing. He inhabited the song, his deep, resonant bass steady, aching, and exquisitely controlled. I watched him lose himself, his guard falling away. It was as if the habitual storm inside him quieted for a moment.
When they hit the first chorus, Theo closed his eyes, and that was how I knew he wasn’t thinking or holding back.
He was simplyfeeling.
My chest was tight. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, not even in my art classes. Theo opened his eyes again and lookeddirectly at me. He faltered, just a slip in timing, a microsecond early on the next line, but it was there.
Max side-eyed him, Julian raised a brow, and Finnley grinned like the devil.
Theo didn’t lose control, but I knew he felt something. I could see it in the way his skin coloured beneath the collar of his shirt.
My heart thudded.
I did that.
Just by watching.
They finished the take, and Max exhaled. “Damn. Okay. I felt that.”
“I didn’t,” Theo muttered. “My timing was off.”
“Barely,” Oliver said. “Cameron blinked and you combusted. That happens.”
“Shut up,” Theo snapped, not sharp but flustered.
Flustered Theo was dangerously endearing.
Julian stretched, arching like a cat. “Theo, darling? Either stop staring at him or bring him into the formation. That middle-ground nonsense is killing your rhythm.”
Theo’s ears turned pink, and he fled toward the soundboard.
Max sauntered past me, murmuring under his breath, “You’re chaos incarnate, kid. Keep doing God’s work.”
I choked on a laugh. Then I looked at Theo standing there alone, his back turned, his shoulders taut. I had no idea what put the thought in my head, but it wouldn’t leave me.
He needs me.