Page 24 of Fractured Destiny

Ty lifts two fingers. The track rolls in my headphones.

Mason’s drums come in first, tight and nasty, all restraint until the chorus breaks open. Evan slips beneath him with a bass line so clean I almost grin. We recorded Static before lunch, then cleaned up a rough edge in Gravity, then spent forty minutes arguing over whether the bridge in Fault Line needed another guitar line.

It didn’t. I knew it. Evan knew it. Ty knew it too, but he made me prove it.

This is the last pass on Embrace the Silence.

I’m hoping it will be the title track.

It’s the song that broke through my writer’s block. Over a year ago, I wrote it in the back of a van on the road out of Wichita with the woman I wanted to forget still lodged under my skin.

I don’t think about her when I play now, which is strange.

For months, every chord scraped against the same question. Why her? Why couldn’t I go back to being a guy who could take what pussy was offered and leave without a second thought?

Then the songs flowed out of me. One after another.

Weight of Air in a motel bathroom in Boise while Mason pounded on the door yelling he had to piss. Northbound somewhere outside Missoula with frost on the van windows. Gravity was written after a show in Phoenix. Static in my apartment at four in the morning while the city blinked below the glass. Fault Line came out meaner than I expected and better than I deserve.

By the time Embrace the Silence evolved, it felt like the rest of them had cleared the way.

I pick the opening notes and the room disappears in pieces. The glass goes first. Then the console. Then the bodies behind it. My fingers move over the strings and every sound has room around it.

Ty’s been begging me to lose myself into the music for days. Don’t crowd the song. Feel what you’re playing. Make each note earn its place.

Normally, being told to play less would piss me off. From Ty, it’s gospel.

The man can wring blood from a vocal take. He knows when a song is hiding behind ego.

I hit the bend at the end of the first phrase and let it hang until the whole track seems to lean into it. The sustain thins. My wrist turns. The next run slides out clean enough to raise the hair on my arms.

Pure magic.

It wasn’t long ago I was digging through myself with a dull spoon, convinced I’d never write anything worth a damn again. Today, the music moves through me without asking permission. My hands know what’s up before my head does. My heart keeps time.

The guitar answers.

When the last section opens under my fingers, I pull back where I used to push. Leave air where I used to stack notes. I trust myself enough to let the silence do the heavy lifting.

The final note blooms and hangs there. I lift my hand off the strings until the sound dies on its own.

Ty doesn’t hit the talkback right away.

Good.

He heard it too.

The red light clicks off. A second later, his voice crackles through my headphones. “Get in here, brother.”

I set the guitar in its stand, roll my shoulders, and step into the control room. Nobody talks while Ty rewinds. He hits play.

The speakers fill with the rough mix. Drums, bass, rhythm guitars, the lead I just tracked, the vocal we cut yesterday when my throat was rough from too much coffee and too little sleep. Somehow it works.

More than works. It’s better than I could have ever hoped. No longer a scrap in my notebook or a melody on my phone.

Mason’s foot stops bouncing halfway through the second verse. Evan shifts his weight near the wall. Linus leans forward, elbows on his knees, phone face down on the console. Diego doesn’t move at all.

Ty watches the console until the final note fades, then tips back in his chair and rubs both hands over his face.