🩶The Reckoning (Book 5) {BTR Series}

November: 11months after The Breakthrough

It’s 5am and I’ve been awake for an hour, maybe longer, watching the ceiling go from black to the dull gray that means the sun’s coming out. Fifteen minutes until my alarm goes off for work. I could’ve gotten up already, but I haven’t moved.

Olivia’s breathing is slow and even next to me, the kind of breathing that means she’s actually under, and something about that gets to me more than it should. That she can be this close and this gone at the same time. I reach for her, my hand finding her hip under the blanket, and she comes to me before she’s even awake for it, turning into my chest like her body already knows, like it doesn’t need the rest of her to agree.

It should be enough. It’s never not been enough before. But I lie there with her breath against my collarbone and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m holding onto something that’s already halfway out the door. The last couple months, we’ve been saying the 'I love yous,' but something’s gone quiet between the lines.

So I pull her in tighter. Like I can solve it with proximity. Like if I just get close enough, she’ll stop whatever’s been pulling her away, even if I can’t name what it is.

She stirs when I pull her in, a small sound against my chest, not quite a protest, and I tell myself that’s permission enough. My hand moves from her hip up her side, slower than I feel, because some part of me is still trying to be gentle even while the rest of me is already past that. I find her jaw and tilt her face up toward mine before she’s fully awake, before she’s had the chance to decide anything, and I kiss her like I need her to answer a question I haven’t asked out loud.

She kisses me back, but there’s a half-second lag to it, a beat where she’s catching up to where I already am, and I notice it and I keep going anyway. My grip on her hip tightens more than it needs to. I feel her breath catch, and some quiet, clearer part of my mind tells me to ease off, tells me I’m handling her like I’m trying to prove something instead of share something. I don’t ease off.

I pull her leg over mine, pull her flush against me like there’s a version of this where being close enough erases the last few months, where I don’t have to ask her what’s wrong because I already fixed it with my hands.

It isn’t about her, not really, not in this moment, it’s about the quiet that’s been sitting between us like a third person, and I am done pretending I haven’t noticed it.

“Vivek,” she says against my mouth, and I don’t know yet if it’s my name as invitation or my name as a question.

I don’t answer her, not with words. I kiss the question off her mouth before she can finish deciding, and for a second I feel her hesitate, feel the small resistance of a body trying to catch up to a moment. Then she exhales against me, and something in her gives, and I choose to read that as the answer I wanted instead.

She studies me for a second, the way she does when she’s deciding whether to push or let something go, and I watch her choose to let it go, watch her decide that whatever this is, she’ll take it over the silence we’ve been living in. Her hand comes up to the back of my neck, and that’s all it takes for me to stop thinking about the why of it and just move.

“Tell me,” I say against her neck, and I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t know which version I want. Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me you still want this. Tell me I’m not the only one who’s been lying awake wondering if we’re already over and just haven’t said it yet.

She makes a sound, half question, half encouragement. My fingers slide under the edge of her underwear and I feel her tense, feel that small hesitation again. I find her slit and she gasps, her fingers tightening against my shoulder, and I tell myself that’s the sound I need. That’s proof we're still good.

I push into her with my hand and hold her there when she tries to shift, keeping her pinned exactly where I put her. “Don’t move,” I say.

She stays. Her head falls back against the pillow and I watch her face, watching for the moment when the hesitation clears and it’s just her responding to me, just her body answering mine without all the rest of it in the way.

My fingers work her until she is on the edge.

“Say you need me, Livy, say you need this.”

“Yes, yes.” Her breath is ragged, chest heaving. “I need you Vivek.”

My mouth crashes into her, and I bring her to climax.

“That’s right, Baby girl.”

We’re three songs into the run-through when Dre sets his sticks down and says it flat. “We need a Christmas song.”

Tavi’s fingers still on the keys. Alton doesn’t even look up from his bass.

“We’re playing a winter festival,” Dre continues, like he’s explaining something obvious. “Tinsel and Tone. That’s literally in the name. We can’t go through the whole set and not have at least one song that says Christmas.”

Anika leans back from the mic, eyebrows raised. “Okay. So we pick one. Something we can arrange. Something that fits our vibe.”

I’m already running through what we could possibly do with this. What our sound even is when it comes to Christmas. Soul Theory doesn’t do standard covers. We bend things, layer them, make them ours. But Christmas music is its own beast. It’s loaded. Everyone has opinions about it.

“Like what?” Tavi asks, and there’s amusement in his voice. “Mariah Carey?”

“Please god no,” Alton mutters, still not looking up.

“What about something less obvious?” Anika says, and I can already hear her thinking it through. “Like, not the radio hits everyone expects.”

Dre shrugs. “I’m open. But we need something.”

We spend the next twenty minutes throwing ideas around. Tavi suggests “Wonderful Christmastime,” which gets immediate pushback. Alton mentions “Feliz Navidad” like he’s testing the waters, and Dre actually considers it before deciding it needs the right arrangement to not sound like every coffee shop in December.

“What about something from the Jackson 5 Christmas album Anika offers. “My dad used to play all those old school Christmas songs all holiday season when I was growing up.”

The room goes quiet for a second.

“That could actually work,” Alton says slowly. “Maybe we could do “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” but I think we should slow it down instead, make it less... holiday-commercial and more like, I don’t know. Intimate.”

Dre nods. “Yeah, I could see that.”

So we pull up the lyrics on someone’s phone and start running it. And immediately, it’s a mess in the best way.

I start playing through a basic arrangement, and Anika’s watching, waiting to see where I’m going with it.

“You should do a harmony,” she says, pointing at me. “Like, not leading, but present. Make it a conversation. What if you took the first verse? Like, solo. And then I come in on the second one and we trade off?”

I blink. “Me singing lead?”

“Why not?” She shrugs like it’s obvious. “You’ve got a good voice. It’s warm. It fits the vibe.”

Dre grins. “Yeah, let’s hear it.”

So I’m suddenly trying to figure out how to carry a song I’ve never sung, with lyrics I’m reading off my phone screen, while the band watches.

I run through the first verse, and it’s rough. My timing’s off. The phrasing feels stiff. Tavi’s nodding along, but I can tell he’s listening hard, waiting for me to settle into it.

By the third run-through, I’m finding pockets. The melody sits differently when I stop thinking about nailing it and just let my voice live in the song. Anika comes in on the second verse and suddenly there’s space between us. I’m pulling back, she’s pushing forward, and the arrangement opens up like we planned it this whole time.

“See?” Anika says when we finish. “That works.”

“It’s good,” Tavi agrees. “But we need to lock the harmony on the bridge. Right now it’s all over the place.”

We spend another ten minutes mapping out where the bridge sits, what the chord progression does, who comes in when. Alton keeps adding these little bass flourishes that shift the whole feel of it, and Anika keeps stopping to say “Wait, do that again,” because she’s already thinking about how to weave her voice around his lines.

It’s chaotic and messy and nobody’s quite sure what we’re building yet. But there’s something there—the bones of something that could actually work.

Dre sets his sticks down again. “Okay. I think we’ve got a song.”

We’re packing up when Tavi’s the one who says it, casual, like it’s an afterthought. “So what hotel are we doing for Savannah?”

Dre’s already zipping his stick bag. “And who’s driving? Because it’s a four-hour haul.”

“I can drive there,” Alton says, coiling a cable around his elbow.

“Yeah, we’ll figure out the driving,” Tavi says. “But Anika, did you book the hotel already?

I’m halfway through unplugging my amp, but I catch the half-second where Anika’s hands go still over her bag before she picks the motion back up.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” she says, and her voice is doing the thing it does when she wants a conversation to end. Light. Quick. Already moving past it.

Tavi shrugs like it doesn’t mean anything, because to him it probably doesn’t. “Cool. Just don’t forget, four hours is a long way to find out we’re sleeping in the van.”

Dre laughs at that, and the moment folds itself back into the noise of everyone breaking down their gear. Cables getting wound, cases snapping shut, someone’s phone buzzing with a text.

I’m still watching her.

I’ve heard her dodge things before. Just whatever’s not urgent enough to deal with in the moment. This has a different weight to it.

I’m talking to Marco, the Backstage Cafe’s manager, about next week’s slot when I catch Anika heading toward the back. She’s got her bag, her laptop tucked under one arm. Not leaving, but disappearing into the dressing room like there’s work still waiting.

Marco’s still talking about something, but I’m only half-listening now, watching the dressing room door close behind her.

I tell Marco I’ll see him later then head in the dressing room. Anika’s at her laptop, forehead resting on her palm, eyes tracking the same line of text like it might change if she stares hard enough. The contract’s pulled up on screen. She doesn’t look up.

“Hey,” I say.

She blinks, lifts her head. There’s a tightness around her eyes I recognize. The kind of tired that comes with a migraine pressing at the edges, making everything feel heavier.

“I’m fine,” she says, which means she’s not.

I move closer, glance at the screen. “Hotel’s not booked yet?”

“No,” she says quietly. “And I haven’t even looked at the van rental situation, and the contract’s got stuff I don’t understand, and—” She stops, presses her fingers to her temple. “There’s just so much to do.”

I can see it then—not just the tiredness, but the weight of it all stacking up. One thing would be manageable. All of it at once, with a migraine eating her focus? That’s different.

I reach over and turn the laptop toward me. Pull up her email, find the contract attachment, and send it to myself. The click of the trackpad is loud in the quiet room. Then I close the screen.

“Go home,” I say.

She stares at me.

“I got the hotel, the van, all of it. I’ll get the contract read and turned in.”

“Vivek—”

“Anika, let me help.”

“It’s been a rough week,” she says quietly, like she’s answering a question I didn’t ask. “Bad flare up. This chronic fatigue just fucking sucks.”

I nod. “Anika, stop pushing yourself. You’re going home. I got this.”