Page 208 of The Song We Lost

The music comes flowing out of me. Maybe easier than it ever did before. Not because life is easier now. Because we stopped pretending it needed to be perfect.

Luke doesn’t avoid hard conversations anymore. That might be the biggest change of all. If something hurts him, he says it. If something scares him, he says it. If he sees me pulling away emotionally, he notices. And instead of shutting down or reacting… He reaches for me.

The first time it happens I nearly cry.

We’re sitting on the back deck late at night after everyone else goes to bed when I make some offhand comment about the label eventually ruining this album too. Old Luke would’ve gotten defensive immediately. This Luke just looks at me quietly and says, “You’re scared this is going to stop feeling safe.”

Just like that he sees straight through me. The scary part? He’s usually right.

There are still hard days. Days where trust feels fragile. Days where I look at him and grief and memory and love all crash together painfully inside me. But there are more good days now.

Moments like Luke singing Iris to sleep against his chest while she stares at him like I hung the moon. Him carrying tea into the studio for me every morning exactly the way I like it without asking. My hand automatically finding his when we walk anywhere together now. Little things. Big things.Us.

Noah starts helping in the studio almost immediately once we begin recording. Mostly because, according to him, none of us should be left unattended withhisequipment.

He sprawls across the sound booth couch eating chips and making sarcastic comments while Luke and I work through old songs from years ago. We decided together to include some of our past in this album. Songs we wrote when we were kids. Before everything got complicated.

Before fame and addiction and grief carved pieces out of us.

One afternoon Luke starts playing an old melody softly while I flip through notebooks scattered across the piano and suddenly I remember it.

“Oh my god.”

Luke glances up immediately. “What?”

“This song.” I laugh softly. “We wrote this in the trailer park.”

“We did.”

Noah looks between us. “You two are disgustingly adorable."

We ignore him and Luke starts playing again, slower this time, while I quietly sing the lyrics we wrote at seventeen sitting on the tailgate of his truck sharing gas station beer and talking about Nashville like it was another planet.

The song is rough, simple and honest.

And somehow… It’s good. Like really good.

Luke watches me carefully as I finish the chorus.

“You wanna put it on the album?”

Emotion catches unexpectedly in my throat.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I think I do.”

Because this album doesn’t feel like proving something anymore. It feels like finding ourselves again. Rachel comes up a week later with cameras, Jackson follows shortly behind her with pastries from the bakery in town.

“You both look like you are about to jump each other," she announces walking into the studio.

Noah groans dramatically from the sound booth. Luke laughs under his breath beside me while I flip Rachel off without looking up from my notebook.

The promo she films feels different this time. It’s us. Luke and I writing. Laughing. Arguing over lyrics. Me curled sideways across the studio couch with my feet in his lap while Iris sleeps nearby.

Real.

Stripped bare and the response online somehow feels different too. Less obsessed with scandal and more connected to us and the music. People talking about honesty, the emotions threaded through the lyrics. I don’t feel like I’m performing a version of myself people expect. I just feel like me. The realization terrifies me almost as much as it heals me. Because now I actually have something real to lose again.

A few nights later Luke and I stay in the studio long after everyone else heads to bed.