The track sounds horrible, the guitar chords are off and the melody unchained.

I rewind the bars, my unskilled producing hands fiddling with the machines in the studio. It was too late to be here, I wasn’t going to get any productive work done. But I couldn’t go home.

I couldn’t sit in that big empty house, which had never felt like that before Kara had come, but certainly did now. She’s only been gone a week and I can’t seem to function. I barely go out, haven’t seen my bandmates in days, I even had Patrick cancel two appearances and a gig I was supposed to attend.

She’d left me, again, and I’d just let her go. Hadn’t even fought for her. What the fuck was wrong with me? I just let history repeat itself, which was the exact thing I’d promised I’d never do.

But, I was trying to be the better man. Trying to respect her wishes and her space. Trying to love her enough that my selfish wants were put on the back burner, and the only thing that mattered was what she needed most.

“What are you doing here?” Patrick’s voice interrupts my thoughts.

I don’t turn around, glancing instead at the time in the top corner of the Mac desktop that houses the recording software. 12:16 p.m.

“Working on music, isn’t it obvious?” My tone is flippant, but I can’t change it.

“Yeah, seems like you’re getting in some quality stuff here.” His voice drips with sarcasm as he sits down in the booth next to where I stand.

“Do you need something?” I don’t want company, and I’m beginning to grow more irritated by the second.

“Yeah, I need to know why you cancelled three appearances next week?” Patrick scolds, and I hate when he treats me like a kid.

“Maybe I just don’t feel like being Dean Jacobs anymore. Ever think of that?” I head to the fridge, pulling out a beer because, why not? My mood couldn’t get any shittier than it is right now.

“Oh, cut the melodrama, superstar. So you lost your fuck buddy, you’ll find a new one. You always do.”

Fury ignites low in my gut. “What did you say?”

“Kara … she left. Isn’t that what you wanted anyway? The trial is over, no more engagement … you’re a free man!” He waves his hand as if to say “you’re welcome.”

“Are you fucking crazy? Of course that’s not what I wanted. I love her, Patrick. Are you fucking blind?” Where the hell had he been?

And how dare he judge me as if I was still the same playboy asshole I had been for the last few years. He had to have seen the change in me since Kara had been out here. Either that, or he was busier than I thought.

Patrick’s face goes white as a ghost. “You love her?”

I toss back more of the sudsy, throat-stinging beer. “Of course I do. She’s the best damn thing that ever happened to me, and now she’s gone. I dissolved the contract and she hopped the first plane out of here that she could.”

“But I thought … you said that you would play along until the charges were dropped but that after that, you couldn’t handle her back and forth anymore.”

Why is he harping on this? “Man, that was months ago. Since then, we had really made strides in forgiving each other. In getting to know one another again. In falling in love. Or so I thought.”

I slump into a cushioned desk chair, metaphorical storm clouds threatening to crack open over my head.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” Patrick whispers under his breath.

“What? Do you need to be here? Can I have some peace?” I wish he would leave me in my depression already.

“I think I might have done something … something bad.”

I had to turn and face him now, because I’d never heard Patrick so freaked out. One look in his eyes, and my stomach dropped to the floor.

“What did you do, Patty?”

He held up his hands. “Dean … from all the conversations we’d had, I thought this was how you felt, so I approached Kara. I was only looking out for your best interests. I thought that after the trial was over and the charges were dropped, that you’d want to be able to get back to your life without her.”

My ears begin to ring, and although I see his mouth moving, I can’t make out the words. “What? What are you saying?”

He wipes his hand over his face, his usual iron-clad demeanor crumbling. “I thought you wanted her gone. So that’s what I told her. That you didn’t want to be engaged, that you wanted to pay her off and have her leave.”

The puzzle pieces that have been floating around my brain, trying to figure out what went wrong, all click into place. She left because she thought I wanted her to. She didn’t fight for us, because someone had told her that I’d already given up. Her face, the way she couldn’t look me in the eye at the meeting … it wasn’t because she didn’t love me, but because she did and thought I wanted nothing more to do with her.

I slam my beer down on the studio board, beer splashing over the expensive equipment. I could care less in this moment. “I’m going to deal with you later. I can’t even see through the fury blinding me when it comes to you. But right now, I’m going out into that parking lot and getting in the car. You better get on the Goddamn phone and have my plane ready on the tarmac by the time I get there, because I’m going to get my girl.”

I don’t give my agent a backward glance as I stride out of the studio, a new purpose filling my loins.

The only thing I can see as I race toward the airport is Kara’s beautiful face in my mind.

My plane touches down four hours later, and I’m speeding down the highways I used to call home toward the O’Connor family home. The minute my rental screeches into the driveway, I’m sprinting up the stairs to the front door.

Kara’s mother answers, her expression full of shock and worry. She probably reads the sheer panic on my face, which, I think, is the only reason that she tells me they haven’t seen Kara for hours, but that she said she was going to clear her head.

I know immediately where she is. Now, hopefully, she doesn’t slap me square across the face when I get there.