Key Change: A Slow Burn Rockstar Romance (Common Threads Book 3)

by Heidi Hutchinson

  Johnny hit play and he heard Shawn inhale loudly.

  The track played and Shawn remained silent. Frozen in place.

  Johnny waited for a second and then glanced at Hannah, who was watching diligently by his side.

  Her lips twitched and she leaned over him to flip the intercom switch.

  “Shawn?”

  “I know, I know.” Shawn pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can we start again?”

  Johnny reset the track.

  “Shawn?” Hannah spoke with authority. “It’s okay to be scared. I live terrified every day. Be scared. Then do the fucking thing.”

  Shawn nodded and Johnny hit play.

  This time, Shawn opened his mouth and out came a voice more in control than Johnny thought the sweating teenager in the booth would be able to have.

  Hannah smacked Johnny on the shoulder and he caught her grin.

  “He’s better than he knows,” she said. “You’re going to have to have a serious talk with him about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Johnny asked.

  “I mean, he’s on the edge of everything.”

  Johnny studied her face as she watched his little brother, and he saw something there, but it was hard to identify. Excitement? Wistfulness? Sorrow?

  Shawn’s vocals increased in volume and energy as he belted out a chorus he’d sung a hundred times.

  And Johnny realized Shawn had been phoning it in.

  How had he not seen that?

  How had he let the little stinker get away with it?

  The song ended and Shawn came bursting out of the isolation room.

  “Oh my God!” he yelled. “What a rush!”

  Hannah was laughing when Shawn picked her up and spun her around the room. He put her down and then tackle-hugged Johnny.

  “If you touch me, you die,” Piper warned, holding up a finger.

  Shawn grabbed her finger and shook it anyway. The twelve-year-old remained mostly unimpressed. But Johnny caught her phantom of a smile.

  “What do we do next?” Shawn asked.

  “Now we make the music match those stellar vocals.”

  All the time Johnny had spent working with Shawn and teaching him as much as he could didn’t compare to what Hannah had brought out of him.

  But that was her real gift, wasn’t it?

  She could see to the soul of a person and draw it from them effortlessly. She demanded the truth out of a person’s heart, and they found themselves giving it happily.

  Just like she had done with Johnny.

  HANNAH

  What a long and wonderful day.

  Ten hours and way too much pizza later, they had several songs for Shawn to choose from if he wanted to release an EP.

  Which was what Hannah was lightly pushing him to do.

  As long as it was something he and Johnny discussed—really discussed.

  But she was positive he could release an EP without needing a big label, and the rest of the industry would start making calls.

  This kid had talent like she hadn’t ever seen.

  And she’d seen a lot.

  All he needed was to get out of his own way. And that’s where she had come in—to be the bad guy and tell him what he didn’t want to hear.

  And honestly, the huge day made for a decent distraction from her melancholy thoughts. It wasn’t like she was ignoring the truth anymore.

  She’d said it. It was out there.

  No takebacks and no second chances.

  That last thought hit her directly in the solar plexus, nearly winding her.

  Most of her life had been that way. Second chances were for suckers and idiots. People made their choices. If they couldn’t live with the consequences of those choices, they were shit out of luck.

  She knew that.

  She believed it.

  If she had a creed, it would be that.

  Consequences were part of living. Even if they were hard to accept.

  She’d torpedoed her musical career by choice. She’d fucked or fucked over all the people she’d wanted to. The outcome of those choices was just stark reality.

  Ashton James would never have a comeback.

  And Hannah Lee would never have a happily ever after.

  “All I can do is all I can do,” she repeated to herself as she put the mics away.

  Sure, maybe she wouldn’t get the hero in the story. But she could be his friend. And that was more than she’d ever had before.

  So, she’d take it.

  And eventually, she was pretty sure, this weird ache in her chest would diminish.

  Until then, she’d fake it.

  After all, she had always been a good liar.

  Hopefully crying herself to sleep at night wouldn’t become a regular occurrence. It had taken all the tricks she knew from her days of hangovers and hopelessness to get the puffiness around her eyes to diminish.

  When Piper had walked into the bathroom and saw her holding cold spoons from the freezer on her eyes, she didn’t say anything.

  Possibly she just thought it was something Hannah was doing out of vanity.

  How pitiful was that? That she actually preferred her sister to think of her as appearance-oriented instead of having to talk about how fucking sad she was.

  She turned around and stopped short as Johnny’s frame filled the doorway of the small supply room.

  Damn, he was gorgeous.

  He handed her a tidy bundle of cords. She took it and hung it on the only empty hook.

  “Shawn is trying to teach Piper how to play drums,” he said with a wince.

  “Is that what I hear?” Hannah replied. “I thought a marching band was falling down the stairs.”

  His crooked smile made her heart hurt just a little.

  Not too much.

  Just enough to remind her she had one.

  He opened his mouth like he was going to say something and then stopped. His dark eyes narrowed slightly and he opened his mouth again.

  But again, nothing came out.

  “What’s up, Johnny?” she asked, really hoping it wasn’t going to be some pandering nonsense.

  “You’re truly incredible. You know that, right?” His earnest tone and the specific words he’d chosen to say caught her off guard.

  Suddenly the supply room felt rather small.

  “So are you, weirdo,” she replied with a grimace.

  He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “No. You don’t get it.” He opened his eyes and pinned her to the spot with his intense stare. “I know you said you’ve left all this behind.”

  By “this,” she was pretty sure he meant the recording studio and all that it involved.

  “But…”

  He reached up and ran a hand through his hair.

  “But what?”

  At first she thought he was just going to thank her for not bailing on Shawn. But with the nervous energy rolling off him, she was beginning to think it was something else.

  “Ah, this is harder than I expected.”

  She frowned. Nothing could possibly be more difficult than what they had already worked through together.

  “You’re overthinking it,” she stated.

  His eyes darted to hers.

  “Just say it,” she encouraged softly, the ends of her mouth tugging into a smile.

  He stared at her lips for a beat and then relaxed his shoulders.

  “I would like you to work here. With me. Be my partner.”

  That…

  Was not anywhere in the realm of what she’d been thinking.

  “Seriously?” she blurted without meaning to.

  He rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Look, I know, okay? I know all the reasons you’d not want to do it. It’s a risk, it’s not something you’ve ever talked about wanting to do. But…” He huffed and fixed his gaze right on her. “You’re amazing as a producer. I’ve watched you squeeze gold from a ball of mud on multiple occasions. And, maybe this is the most important part, you see
m to really enjoy doing it.”

  Hannah stepped back, a little blindsided by the idea.

  Johnny rubbed his jaw with the hand that had previously rubbed his forehead. Yeah, he was nervous.

  She couldn’t blame him.

  He was basically asking her to come out of retirement when she had made it very clear how she was done with all of that.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot. You could use a pseudonym on everything. No one here knows anyway, and they’re used to producers having multiple identities to keep straight.”

  “How long?” she asked.

  He jerked his chin back. “How long? As long as you want.”

  “No, how long have you been thinking about this? You said you’ve thought about it a lot. How long?”

  Johnny’s face went carefully blank.

  “Why does that matter?”

  Because she needed to know if this was a real thing or if it had just occurred to him last night.

  Was this because he felt sorry for her?

  “How long?” she repeated, keeping her tone even.

  It was one thing for him to be disgusted with her. That, she understood. Fuck, she was disgusted with herself. It made sense, it added up.

  But being offered a part of his life as an act of pity was something she was not interested in.

  She was a big girl; she could hold her own rejections without someone needing to “soften” the blow.

  The longer he stood there not speaking, the faster her mind worked to getting her riled up.

  Oh no, ugly emotions were rising.

  Defensive, angry, disgusted emotions.

  Weren’t they friends? Hadn’t they just discussed how important they were to one another?

  If having friends meant they wouldn’t tell her the truth in an effort to “spare her feelings,” she didn’t want any part of it.

  Rock the boat, baby.

  “You could have just told me,” she threw out accusingly.

  His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to protest, but she was over it.

  Whatever.

  She’d told him something incredibly personal and difficult last night and he couldn’t even be straight with her about how it had made him feel.

  Pushing past him, she left the supply room in search of Piper.

  She followed the sounds of chaos into the live room.

  Johnny caught up with her.

  “Hannah!” he barked, grabbing her elbow.

  She whirled around, disconnecting them.

  “Don’t touch me, dude,” she warned.

  He blinked and shook his head. “O-okay. You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  To his credit, he really did appear gobsmacked.

  But she was too hurt and angry to stop, so she had one option before she said things she couldn’t take back—and that was to leave.

  “I think that if you use that big brain of yours, you’ll figure it out.”

  She turned around and used two fingers to motion at Piper to get going. “Time to head out.”

  “Hannah, seriously,” Johnny kept trying. “What the hell is going on? Just talk to me.”

  She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together, refusing to look at him again. She didn’t want to see his stupid handsome face, and his dark puppy dog eyes, and his stupid, stupid lies.

  “Is this because of what you told me last night about having h—”

  She whirled back around, ready to straight tackle him if he finished that sentence in front of Piper.

  He must’ve realized his mistake, because he faltered, eyes shifting nervously to Shawn and Piper watching silently at the drum kit.

  “Uh,” Johnny cleared his throat. “What you told me about the jalapeños?”

  Her lip curled and she crossed her arms over her chest.

  Really?

  Seriously?

  “Because I haven’t fully processed that information yet,” Johnny went on, his expression pained.

  “What’s there to process, Johnny?” Hannah shrugged. “You know what jalapeños are, right?” she asked, being a snot.

  He cocked his head to the side, unamused.

  “Yes, I know what jalapeños are,” he spat her attitude right back. “But I had to do some research last night about what happens when you have jalapeños on your taco!”

  She waved her arms to the sides. “You’re either okay with jalapeños on the taco or you’re not. It’s not that difficult of a concept. Most of the time there are no jalapeños, and they’re pretty easy to avoid. But I get it if even being in the same room as the jalapeños is something you want to avoid. I just wish you’d say that.”

  “I don’t want to say that because that would be a lie! I was up all night long, Hannah! I haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours. You can’t just drop something like that on a guy and expect him to already have all the answers!”

  “I asked if you had questions!” she retorted.

  And yes, they were both shouting, but not angry shouting. It was more loud speaking. A detail that Hannah noticed and it only fueled her…excitement?

  Oh geez, she was really screwed up if having a passionate argument with Johnny thrilled her instead of making her want to run for the hills.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Yes, but I had questions that I didn’t think you’d be able to answer.” He held up a hand and counted on his fingers. “One, what if jalapeño juice gets in my eye? That doesn’t sound great, does it? Two, if I ended up with jalapeños on my burrito, what would that be like and what are the next steps? Three, how the hell am I supposed to tell you that I really don’t give a shit about the jalapeños when you are so very obviously sensitive about it?”

  She jerked her head back, silent.

  Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Shawn hustling Piper out of the live room.

  Yeah, that was probably for the best. Their metaphor was pretty transparent.

  She rubbed at the center of her forehead with her fingertips.

  “What?”

  Johnny’s head dropped back and so did his shoulders. “C’mon, Hannah. It’s not like you make any of this easy.”

  “Excuse me?” She bristled. “I am very direct. You’re the one who sidesteps things.”

  He glowered at her.

  “You want me to be direct? Is that it?”

  “As long as it doesn’t kill you,” she said, just throwing the sass around like confetti.

  “Okay.” He ran his tongue over his teeth and bobbed his head. “You make it impossible to not love you.”

  Her heart stopped.

  And her mouth went slack and also dry.

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Then he turned those honest eyes on her and continued casually.

  “And believe me, I tried.” His lips twitched as he scanned her face. “You keep trying to throw these little grenades at me, like it’ll make a difference. You call it being direct?” He scoffed. “Nope. You’re cagey and guarded with that heart of yours, and I get it. Because I’ve seen it. I know what it’s capable of.”

  He ran a hand over his mouth and she braced for more.

  “When did I start thinking about asking you to be my producing partner? Um, like day three of recording with Sunshine.”

  Her stomach wobbled and she tried to swallow, but her mouth was still too dry.

  “What did you think I was trying to tell you last night when I sang you Sir Paul fucking McCartney?” The exasperation on his face had her heart beating heavy.

  The fact that he’d used the f-word wasn’t lost on her either.

  “I thought that’s just what we do. We use music to communicate what we’re feeling…” She trailed off as she heard the words out loud.

  Oh, shit.

  “Yeah. We do. We both do it. You put your heart into music and I have been right there, ready to catch every single drop.”

  Oh, fuck! Shit, fuck.

  “You love me?” she asked, not sure she was
understanding what he was saying. What if she was misinterpreting this entire thing?

  He nodded, eyebrows lifted. “Kind of a lot, if I’m being honest.” He licked his lips and took a small step toward her, then stopped. “But I wasn’t planning on telling you.”

  “Why not?” she asked, truly confused and curious.

  “Because, Hannah, people have been telling you bullshit your whole life to get something from you. I wanted to show you. I didn’t care how long it took. I had faith we’d get there.”

  Her heart was murmuring its own devotion to Johnny through her chest and she flexed her hands at her sides, trying to keep her head on straight.

  This was dangerous.

  He was saying a lot of things and she liked them. But he was right, she’d learned that words couldn’t be trusted.

  But…” His eyebrow arched as he went on. “You brought up the herpes last night, and I realized our heads were in different places.”

  He slowly closed the gap between them and stopped a foot in front of her. He reached for her hand and she let him. He held it in both of his, and the connection warmed her, bringing that now familiar security she felt when she was close to Johnny.

  He studied her face seriously.

  “I thought you wouldn’t want me,” she said, her voice raspy with shame.

  “I know,” he replied. “I didn’t know how to tell you that was ridiculous.”

  “I’m broken, Johnny,” she said with a small hiccup, sounding pitiful and weak, and she hated that.

  He cupped the side of her cheek and ran a thumb over her jawline.

  “Nope.”

  “I could hurt you.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay? He was just fine with that? Who was this man?

  “You’re not the villain you think you are, you know.”

  He just dropped that little bomb. So casual, like he was remarking on the weather.

  “I will do anything to capture that wild heart of yours. I don’t care how long it takes or what ways you try to push me away. I see you. And I’m coming for you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  That’s Where You Take Me

  HANNAH

  “So…” Piper drew the word out and Hannah braced for what she knew was coming.

  She was kind of surprised that it had taken the entire drive across town for Piper to say something.