Then he moves, turning slowly away. He walks to the front of the room, near the steps to the stage, where a guitar leans against the wall. It’s his spare, the one he keeps on hand in case a student forgets his or hers or needs help without a scheduled session.
I barely register Tess sneak behind me, picking the quilt up off the floor.
He raises the guitar and secures it in place with the strap, instinctively adjusting it across his shoulder and chest, while he climbs the stairs and steps up onto the stage.
Not moving toward the mic.
The moment drags on, shedding its calm and creeping closer, thick with unspoken stakes, a shift in the air that tightens every sense. One more step, and something in both of us will change forever.
He rocks the guitar gently while he tunes it with a few quiet strums, each one echoing louder than it should in the silence that’s fallen. He’s commanding the town’s attention as though he’s done this all his life.
Then—only then—does he step to center stage, one pace behind the microphone.
The first few notes hush the hall completely. Even Jasper and Maribel go silent mid-laugh. Team Tune-Up stops arguing. I forget to breathe.
I know this song.
It’s the one he played for me on the porch just out front, haltingly at first, but with growing conviction as he went. I remember how the song stayed with me afterward, even though he barely said a word about where it came from. I thought I’d imagined how deeply it tugged at something inside me.
But hearing it now, in front of everyone, it becomes a revelation, the careful lifting of a lid from something long buried. He’s not hiding it anymore.
He’s offering it up and letting it be known.
It’s unvarnished. Bare-boned. Alive in a way I hadn’t understood before.
And suddenly, it clicks. There’s a reason it stuck with me that night on the porch. Why it felt like déjà vu. Ihaveheard this song before. Not just from him. I’ve heard it on the radio, slipped into playlists, drifting softly in the background of stores.
I’ve heard it sung by Sabi Vale.
I remember hearing the song once in a coffee shop in San Diego, about a week after Gray broke off our engagement. The lyrics held my attention, but the voice hadn’t matched the ache they carried. It resembled a toddler draped in her mom’s dress-up jewelry, all dazzle and embellishment, too carefully rehearsed to feel genuine. Now it makes sense.
The song Beau’s performing is “Beyond the Chords,” the breakout single that made Sabi Vale a star. But she didn’t sing it the same. This version—hisversion—that he’s playing right now is something else entirely. There’s roughsincerity in the way he shapes the melody, his delivery free of performance, stripped of polish, shaped only by instinctive truth.
Where Sabi’s version felt polished and studio-slick, this one feels lived-in, vulnerable. He sings every word with the passion of someone who’s been in each line. The lyrics strike deeper. The melody wraps closer, more intimate, as if this version has always needed to be heard.
People around me start whispering:
“Wait… isn’t this a Sabi Vale song?”
“That verse wasn’t in her version.”
“Did she change the lyrics?”
“Guys…maybe he wrote it.”
I already know the answer.
A pressure squeezes behind my ribs when he reaches the final verse about the words he never said, the ache he carried, the woman who touched that pain and still called him worthy. It’s as if my heart’s expanding too fast for the space it’s in. I sense something deep taking root in the core of me, not painful as some healing can be, but transforming. It’s not just that I understand what the song means. I absorb it from his tone and eye contact. From every word, every note.
I’m already moving toward the stage before I realize it, pulled toward him with the same unthinking urgency that draws a hummingbird to vivid blooms needled with color: red, orange, and pink, impossible to resist.
When the last chord floats off into the breeze through the open windows, Dr. Brooks’s niece, Bethany Gilbert, speaks up from the front of the room. “That was an amazing cover, but why did you choose a Sabi Vale song?”
Beau lowers his guitar gradually, adjusting the strap so the instrument settles by his side. He steps up close to themicrophone and stands tall. He clears his throat and his voice is quiet, but he’s not hiding.
“Sweetpines knows me as Beau Callahan. But when I was younger, I went by my stage name, Cal Rivers. I played in a folk-rock band called Northern Chord. We weren’t famous. We pretty much just played gigs in small venues, but Sabrina Vale was our lead singer. She recorded this song and called it hers. The polished radio-friendly version got her a record deal. It made her famous. But the song…it was mine. Always mine. It still is.”
A ripple moves through the room.
