Our engineer, Max, is in the studio with Nice, finessing a track with him, when I get there to pick up my hard drive. The entourage are camped out on the leather sofa, watching some sci-fi show on a laptop. I mean to just grab the drive and go, but when I hear Nice riffing in the booth, I can’t help but get sucked in.
At the mic, Nice recites some lines he reads from his phone while Max cues up a new mix of the bridge.
“What do you think?” he asks, calling me into the booth with him. “Came to me last night while we were watching Farscape. You ever see that show? It’s a trip.”
“I like that slant rhyme,” I say. “But what if we moved it to the second verse and moved that first bit to the new bridge?”
Max ducks out for a minute while we dig into these lyrics. As always, Nice and I become absorbed in the process, until I notice a figure waving at us through the glass. At first I think it’s Max, but then I blink and realize it’s Garrett.
My boyfriend stands at the board, silently mouthing words I can’t discern.
“Garrett?” I blurt out. “What in the hell?”
He meets my eyes when he hears my voice come through the monitors on his side.
“You have to cue up the talkback,” I tell him, before realizing he has no idea what I’m talking about. “The red button next to the microphone. On the board.”
He glances door, frantically bewildered at the dozens of buttons and faders, until Gumby sidles up and points to it for him.
“Thank you,” I tell Gumby.
The big man leans down to the mic. “I got you, girl. You know this guy?”
“He’s my boyfriend.” I scowl at the window. “And he’s supposed to be at home.”
A sheepish Garrett takes over the mic. He’s wearing faded jeans, a black Under Armour T-shirt, and a Bruins cap, looking every inch the athlete and standing out among the hip-hop entourage behind him. “I came to say I’m sorry.”
Nice questions me with a look. My face gets warm as a result. This is beyond unprofessional, given that it’s his dime paying for the studio time. Well, his record label. But whatever.
I swallow my embarrassment and glance back at Garrett. “Can we do this at home? I was just on my way out, anyway—”
“Don’t leave.”
I blink again. “The studio?”
Rather than clarify, he keeps barreling forward. “I’m sorry I didn’t react better to the news. I know I was asshole. But we can work this out.” His husky voice cracks a little. “Give me another chance, Wellsy.”
“Ain’t you got flowers or nothing?” Gumby chides him in the background, shaking his head. “You gotta at least bring flowers. I got a flower guy if you need the hookup.”
Nice straightens to his full height, keeping a firm grip on my elbow. “This guy doing you wrong, Hannah?”
My cheeks are scorching now. “It’s fine. Don’t worry.” I address Garrett in an insistent tone. “We’ll talk about it later, Garrett. Please.” I’m growing uncomfortable with airing all of this at work.
Nice directs his suspicious eyes at Garrett. “What’d you do, man?” he demands, affecting a tough-guy voice that sounds much older than the kid standing next to me.
“I made probably the biggest mistake of my life,” Garrett says, now with the full attention of Nice’s entourage. “Hannah, please. Let me try. Don’t move out.”
“Move out?” The conversation takes a hard left turn and leaves me behind. “What are you talking about?”
The misery on his face is unmistakable. “I saw the number you wrote down from the call earlier. It was for a realtor.”
I release a sigh when the riddle starts to make sense. Then I narrow my eyes as indignation sparks. “Wait a minute, you thought I was moving out? You seriously have that little faith in me? I was calling the realtor for my parents, you dumbass!”
Nice snickers.
“I wanted to see about paying off their mortgage, so they could sell their house and get out of that town,” I finish in a huff. “I thought maybe we could use my royalty check to make it happen.”
Relief floods his expression. “You’re not leaving me?”
“Of course not,” I growl. Despite myself, I start to laugh. “Is that why you came all the way over here?”
“What the hell else was I gonna do? Let you walk away without saying a word?”
I bite back a smile. It’s sort of sweet, Garrett rushing over here to stop me from leaving. Seeing the panic in his eyes when he thought he was losing me. My heart clenches tight when I realize he was still prepared to fight for us, even with the bombshell I dropped in his lap.
“This guy cheat on you?” Nice asks.
“No.” The smile surfaces. “I’m having his baby.”
“Oh shit!” Gumby shouts from the control room. He throws an arm over Garrett’s shoulder and hugs him. “Congrats, bro.”
“Are we?” Garrett asks, entirely focused on me. “Having this baby?”
I shrug, playing it off cool. “I mean, if you’re into it.”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation. “Babe, I spent all night staring at that sonogram and sometime around three in the morning, it dawned on me—I can’t imagine not raising this kid with you. I know the season and traveling will make things more difficult, but we’ll get you whatever help you need. Hell, we’ll move your parents out here and buy them the house across the street if that’s what you want. Anything.”
“Yo, that’s decent right there,” Nice says, nodding his approval at Garrett. “Mad respect.”
My smile is so wide, it’s liable to crack my face in half. He is decent. The best, actually. And I realize that if I’d found a way to tell him sooner, it wouldn’t have come as such a shock to the system. Suddenly, seeing that he understands my concerns, makes the whole thing feel less daunting, like whatever challenges confront us, we can figure them out together.
Heart overflowing with emotion, I walk out of the booth and into the control room, where Garrett greets me with a tight hug.
“I am so fucking sorry,” he mumbles, burying his face in my hair. “I said some pretty awful shit last night.”
“You did,” I agree.
He pulls back, gazing down at me with pure remorse. “I need you to know—you’re nothing like my father. I think the only reason I said that was because I’d just come from the interview and he was still on my mind. I snapped at you because I was angry with him and you were right there. But I should have never, ever said that. I’m sorry.”
I nod slowly. “I know you are. And it’s okay. I also know you didn’t mean it.”
“Are we good?” he asks gruffly.
“Always.” I kiss him. With an unprofessional amount of tongue, ignoring the loud reaction of Nice’s friends.
Garrett’s fingers tangle in my hair. He pulls away for a moment to meet my eyes, staring at me with an expression I’ve never seen before.
My breath catches. “What?”
“I love you. Maybe more than I ever have.”
“We’re having a baby,” I say, grinning with both excitement and still a bit of trepidation.
“Bet your ass we are.”
