My eyes keep catching on him when I’m supposed to be focusing on the screen. The way his fingers move over the frets, long and sure. The small crease between his brows when he’s thinking. The faint shadows beneath his eyes, like sleep keeps losing a fight with whatever’s clawing him up inside.
He looks exhausted. Not rockstar-party exhausted though. It looks more bone-deep, soul-level, haunted exhausted. The image of him in the rain after the wreck flashes through my head; the way his hand hit the side of the bus, the way his breath went ragged, the wild panic in his eyes that had nothing to do with fame and everything to do with something else.
My chest tightens. You’re not here to care, I remind myself. You’re here to capture. There’s a difference.
He hits a sour note and scowls down at the guitar like it offended him personally. “Maybe the guitar needs coffee too,” I suggest before I can stop myself.
His gaze flicks up, surprised. “Maybe the photographer needs to keep her opinions to herself.”
“Maybe she’s trying,” I counter, “but the guitarist keeps making noise.”
He tugs one corner of his mouth up. “You’d miss it if I stopped.”
Would I? my traitorous brain asks. I roll my eyes as I answer. “Trust me, silence is underrated.”
He studies me for a beat too long. It feels like being held under a microscope. “You haven’t shut up since you got on this bus,” he observes. “You don’t strike me as someone who likes silence.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who knows me,” I shoot back. For a second, something flashes in his eyes. Hurt? Offense? It’s gone before I can name it.
The bus hits a series of bumps in quick succession, jolting us. The table rattles, and our knees knock together under it, hard. I slam my hand down to keep my laptop from sliding.
His thigh stays where it is. Solid. Warm. Impossible not to notice.
“Sorry,” I mumble again, not trusting my voice.
“I told you,” he clips, “it’s fine.”
The words are softer this time. Less barbed wire, more bandage. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. I focus on cropping a photo of Luc mid-scream, hair flying, mic cord wrapped around his wrist like a tether to sanity.
Time stretches. The bus eats miles. The sky outside shifts from bright to blazing to that late-afternoon haze that makes everything look like a memory. At some point, Hayden slips off to his bunk. Mikey disappears into the back with his phone and a pair of headphones, muttering about catching up on messages.
It’s just us. I don’t realize it until the silence changes flavor. The background noise of the boys drops out, and suddenly I can hear smaller things; him shifting in his seat, my own breathing, the slide of his thumb along the guitar’s neck. My knee is still close to his. Close enough that if either of us moves the wrong way, we’ll touch again.
“About the other night-” The words are out of my mouth before my brain approves them.
Dean glances up. His hair has fallen forward over his forehead; he pushes it back with a quick, impatient sweep of his fingers.
“I’m not drunk now,” I bumble out, picking at a nonexistent thread on the leg of my shorts. “So, if you’re waiting for an altered-state confession or apology, you’re out of luck. But,” I swallow. Why is this suddenly hard? “I was an idiot,” I admit. “Ya know, with the drinking, the tequila and the… words.” I gesture vaguely at the air between us.
He just looks at me. No snide remark. No mocking smile.
“Don’t get used to this,” I spit out. “It’s not a habit.”
One corner of his mouth curves, slow and genuine this time. “Didn’t think saying sorry was in your vocabulary, camera girl.”
“It’s not. I didn’t,” I retort defensively. “This is just me taking accountability. Don’t make it weird.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, looking down at his guitar. “Too late.”
The sound warms something in my chest. I hate that it does. I shift in my seat, pulling my camera bag closer, like a physical barrier will somehow help. We lapse into a different kind of quiet after that. Less sharp. Less full of land mines. The kind of quiet that feels like sitting in a truce. Or a waiting room.
I pull up a shot of the crowd in Salt Lake, a sea of faces and hands and devotion. In the front row, a teenage girl with eyeliner smudged down her cheeks clutches her chest like Luc just rewrote her DNA with a lyric. It’s a good photo. Maybe even a great one. But my cursor drifts down to the next image.
Dean in side profile, on the edge of the stage. Backlit in gold, head bowed, hand braced against the wall. The exact same posture he had on the side of the highway when the world cracked open under someone else’s wreckage.
My thumb hovers over the trackpad. I zoom in unconsciously. I can see the tiny lines at the edge of his mouth, the tension in his jaw, the rawness in his eyes. This is the story. The real one. Not the glossy legend, not the curated version.
The truth. I should keep it. My editor would salivate over this. Instead, I press delete. The confirmation box pops up. Are you sure? I hit yes. The image disappears.
