His spirits sank as he entered the practice room. Only Tony was there, and he was freaking out with someone over the phone. Their eyes caught. Tony flicked his fingers in a wave, and Pax busied himself in setting up his shit.

His gaze kept jerking to the drums though, where Cliff had stepped in and confronted Blake. A rush of tenderness clashed with the anger simmering at his bandmates.

It felt too hot in the room, too small and confining. His limbs were restless, and he tapped his foot as he tuned his guitar.

The other guys trailed into the room in a burst of marijuana smoke and Pax choked on the wretched stink. Awkward, tense hellos were exchanged, and the guys turned their conversation inward, focusing extra hard on laughing at Blake for burning the back of his hand.

The conversation felt like a wall to subtly keep Pax out. Well, not so subtly.

Surprisingly, Pax felt relieved. He didn’t want to join their banter. Didn’t care to laugh. Numb ambivalence unfurled in him.

Pax rested his guitar against the wall. He drew out his phone and texted Cliff, asking him what he’d said as he’d left.

His phone vibrated with an answer almost immediately.

Pax smiled at his phone and typed another message.

Pax stirred at the thought, tapped his foot faster. His fingers bounced over the buttons.

Six songs Cliff had made him write as bargaining chips.

He’d thought them a random task to tease Pax, because Cliff got off on making him work. He’d thought Cliff was being a control freak and trying to wind Pax up.

But it wasn’t, was it?

Cliff cared.

Right from the start, he’d foreseen the band breaking up. He’d planned how to help him through it. He’d set up a cushion for him to fall on.

Pax reread their texts.

Cliff had been running circles around him. Right from the beginning.

His chest seized with a gulping breath. Boy, he had more than met his match.

Pax reset his guitar in its case. He clapped the lid shut and clipped the buckles.

“Bro, we haven’t even started yet,” Tony said.

Pax’s gaze jumped over Blake’s impassive face to the other three setting up their instruments. Tony had a microphone in his hand, but it wasn’t switched on.

“You guys don’t need me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’ve practiced and played without me before. You’ll do it again.”

Pax slung his guitar over his shoulder and opened the practice room door. A shaft of sunlight and fresh air swooped inside.

“If you fucking step out of this room, we’re not inviting you back in. Ever.”

Blake looked hopeful. Tim and Ted didn’t look too torn up at the prospect, either.

Tim shrugged. “Maybe throw this fit after the gig tonight?”

Pax held the heavy door open. Sunlight warmed his back, and the band remained in the shadows.

“I gotta do what fulfills me. What makes me happy.” Pax whipped the guys his middle finger and backed out the practice room. “I’m outta here.”

No taxis were waiting around, and the bus would take too long. It was already quarter to six. Fifteen minutes until Bianca’s production started.

Pax adjusted his guitar case strap and ran.

His combat boots slapped over sunbaked concrete, the impact jarring his legs. His lungs burned, thighs chafed, and his guitar pummeled his back.

He raced down streets and hit the base of the hill. Fuck him dead. He was going to show up drenched in sweat and rocking a nice wheeze.

He’d buy himself a car for Christmas. He’d never run again. Not a single day in his life.

He charged up the hill. Skirted around cars pulling out of driveways, bowled past a pedestrian picking up after her dog, leaped over a felled branch. The bright pavement blinded him, and he cursed the terrible timing of his realization.

If he’d figured it out, say, that morning, he would never have had to kill himself running.

In the distance someone was caroling “Jingle Bells” out of tune, and the birds hopped along powerlines like they were dancing to the beat.

Pax muttered about this being the last music he heard before he died. That, and the sounds of his strained puffs.

He kept running.

When he caught sight of the church, he slowed to a jog and rounded the property to the back. At the steps where he’d sat teasing Cliff, he paused and caught his ragged breath.

The blue door shimmered in the evening light, beckoning him forward. A chorus of muffled laughter sounded from inside the church. Pax scrambled up the steps and quietly parted the door into the backroom. The play had already begun.

He was a little late.

But better late than never.

Pax waited with a few actors in the backroom. They recognized him, and when he pulled out his guitar, gave him the thumbs up. Pax had messed around with a guitar in yesterday’s rehearsal and the director had begged him to join the show. He’d shrugged it off, but now he wished he’d had his fucking epiphany then.

Gripping his guitar neck, he rested against the solid wall beside the parting curtain and tried to steady the thrashing in his chest. Voices rose and fell, and Pax had practiced this scene with Bianca enough to recognize it was winding to a break.

A short burst of the piano emphasized a comedic line, and when the audience swelled with laughter, Pax and two other actors stole onto the stage.

Pax glided to the corner of the stage, half-hidden by the giant sail, right where the director would want him. The building’s acoustics were top notch and carried the music beautifully.

Actors strutted about the stage in colorful costumes and wonderfully exaggerated prose, while in the background, stagehands were moving props for the next scene.

Henry and Luca were grinning from the front seats. Behind them was a sea of faces.

His step stuttered. The Lions’ running group filled a middle row. It felt right, being here. Like Pax was meant to be here all along.

He planted himself next to the piano. Cliff glanced over at the movement, and his surprised, tender look had Pax’s heart on turbo.

“Apollo?” Cliff mouthed.

But there was no time to talk. To explain.

He winked, and when cued to play, Pax accompanied Cliff, harmonizing with plucks of his strings.

Cliff’s fingers danced over the keys with an energy that swelled Pax with deeper joy than he’d ever imagined. A hopeful spark twinkled in Cliff’s eyes.

The play whisked on, and Pax absorbed every one of Cliff’s looks; questioning, energizing, breathtaking.

He was shaking when the play ended.

They continued to watch each other as the audience left and actors dispersed. The director clapped him on the back, ordering him to arrive on time for the next show.

Then Cliff and Pax were alone onstage.

The sail billowed out the smell of the damp church. Pax readjusted the guitar with trembling fingers. His boots sounded loud as they shifted over old boards. The yard of space between them felt loaded.

Cliff clunked against high piano keys as he twisted on his stool and faced him like he had a few hours earlier. “Apollo—”

Pax held up a finger, stopping Cliff from asking what he was doing here. “I have a song for you,” he said, voice a whisper.

“For me?”

Pax nodded. He was used to playing for an audience. Thousands of eyes on him filled him with poise and swagger.

Now, only one pair of green eyes beheld him, and Pax had never felt so nervous.

He flustered and hit the wrong chord. Stopped, closed his eyes, drew in a breath, and started again.

Soft strokes of the guitar strings. Music lifted between them. Cliff clasped the edge of the stool between his thighs as he listened.

Cliff’s head bowed as he soaked in his song, a gentle smile dimpling his cheek. Pax’s strumming grew more confident.

Pax’s voice broke, and he sang through it.

Cliff looked up and their gazes chimed together.

Pax sang the chorus again, so softly it whispered between them.

Pax’s crooked breath sounded loud over the gentle stretch of the last notes. Cliff pushed off his stool and cut the distance between them, eyes never straying from Pax’s.

Cliff gently pried the guitar from his clutch and rested it atop the piano.

“You’re really here,” Cliff said. A question. A statement.

“I’m here,” Pax confirmed.

Their breaths tangled, and Cliff stood so close every hair on Pax’s body stood at attention.

“What about the performance of your dreams?”

Pax lifted his chin. “I think I just did it.”

Cliff slid his arms around Pax’s waist and lifted him against his chest. His lips pressed against his, warm and firm, and Pax hooked his arms around Cliff’s neck and drank him in. Their kiss was a breve, a double-long note, the longest used in music today.

They pulled back and their noses bumped. Pax used his to push Cliff’s glasses up the bridge of his nose, and Cliff skimmed kisses over his chin.

The lock of their bodies tightened, and Pax smirked.

“Cliff,” he said, “we’re in a house of God.”

Fingers threaded up the back of his hair. “Turns out I don’t give a damn.”

Cliff fused their lips together.