The swing creaked in slow, rhythmic arcs, the chains moaning faintly with each shift. It was the only man-made sound breaking through the evening—a gentle counterpoint to the soft chorus of crickets and the occasional whisper of wind through the trees.
Alex climbed the familiar flagstone path to the O'Connell's front porch with the gait of someone too tired to pretend otherwise. He wasn't here to talk shop. Not really. He wasn't even sure what he was here for, except maybe to stop. For just a moment. To be somewhere that didn't demand anything from him.
The day had been an endless stretch of calls. One to a lawyer about the legalities of trademarking The Echo Chamber logo—his ghost's idea, of course. Another to a photographer's agent, who was suddenly "deeply concerned" about image licensing for the SPIN cover. Negotiations. Contracts. Edits. Strategy. He had spent the day talking to people who cared very much about how he looked, but not one who remembered how he sounded.
He was fraying. The ghost could hold him together during the day, could slap on the grin and pick apart contracts with precision, but it couldn't fix the fact that he hadn't touched a melody in four days.
He saw her before he reached the steps.
Billie was curled into one end of the porch swing, knees drawn up, sketchbook propped against them. A single bare foot tapped against the floorboards every few seconds, keeping the swing in its soft, pendulum sway. The warm light spilling from the living room window caught in her hair, outlining her in gold.
She didn't say anything when she saw him.
Didn't wave. Didn't smile. Just watched.
Alex hesitated on the bottom step. Then, as if his body had decided for him, he climbed the rest and sank into the other side of the swing. It groaned under his weight, shifting them into a new shared rhythm.
Billie studied him in silence. Her pencil hovered, unmoving now.
"Your 'I'm fine' face is getting really good," she said quietly.
The words weren't sharp. Weren't teasing. They were offered like a soft observation, something she'd simply noticed and was handing back to him.
"You almost look like you believe it."
Alex let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The scaffolding he'd built to hold himself up all day—the posture, the tone, the performance—cracked a little under her gaze. He slouched into the swing, elbows on knees, hands dangling uselessly.
"Crazy week," he murmured. "We locked the video treatment for 'Halflight.' Claire's pushing for a premiere on a major blog. Spin wants the final concept shots by Friday. Legal's asking about the merch line. It's… it's good stress. Right?"
He glanced sideways at her, hoping that framing it as success would validate it. Make it feel worth it.
Billie didn't say anything at first. She let the quiet settle between them again, uninterrupted this time by movement. Then, with deliberate care, she closed her sketchbook, slid her pencil into the spine, and set it down beside her.
She turned to him fully.
"That's not what I'm talking about."
Her voice was different now—steady, serious, stripped of its usual sarcasm or casual irony. It was the voice she used when she really wanted to be heard.
"All of that—blogs, magazine shoots, meetings—it's noise, Alex. And it's getting really loud."
She paused, giving him a second to process that. When he didn't respond, she went on.
"I'm not worried that you're tired. I'm worried that you're drifting. You're not making music. You're managing it. Managing everything. Like you're afraid if you stop for one second, it'll all fall apart."
Her words didn't pierce like accusations. They settled like weights.
"You used to talk about the sound. About how a song felt. You used to get excited about a melody, or a weird chord you found at 2 AM. Now it's just… deadlines. Strategy. You talk like someone running a company, not like someone making something. And I know how good the ghost is at running things. But I miss you."
Alex didn't answer. He couldn't. He stared at his shoes, the porch railing, anything but her.
Because she was right.
He hadn't played just to play in weeks. Every note he touched had a deliverable attached to it. A timeline. A goal. The joy had been dissected into tasks. There was a time when music was the only thing that silenced the static in his head. Now it felt like the static had taken over.
"Don't forget," Billie said, softer now, "how to just sit and listen to a song. To get lost in it. Don't forget why we started. In your garage. With Leo yelling off-key in the background and that cheap mic we taped to a broomstick. That mattered, remember? That's what we were trying to protect."
There was no anger in her voice. Just concern. Not for his career. Not for the brand. For him. For the boy behind the brilliance, behind the machinery he'd built to keep himself from falling apart.
"I know it's a lot," she added, more gently still. "And I know you think you're holding it all together. But you're allowed to let something drop. You're allowed to just… breathe."
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. Not in agreement, not yet. But in acknowledgment. That she saw him. That he heard her.
And it was a relief, sitting there, next to someone who didn't need him to perform. Who didn't ask for updates or metrics or plans. Just presence.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The swing creaked in its slow, hypnotic rhythm. The stars blinked into the darkening sky above them, and the hum of summer insects filled in the spaces where words didn't go.
It wasn't a solution. It wasn't a fix. But it was a pause.
A place to be still.
And beneath it all, Billie's words lingered. A quiet plea, tucked between concern and memory. A reminder of a promise made not just to her, but to the part of himself that hadn't been buried by success yet.
A promise he would have to choose to keep.
Or forget.