Riven (Riven 1)

He was taller than me, broad and thick with muscle, but his fingers on the guitar were poetry. Intense dark eyes—brown or maybe a dark green—beneath expressive eyebrows, brown hair combed back, full mouth surrounded by a groomed beard. He looked like some half-mad sea captain who’d wandered ashore.

“Help you, bro?” he drawled.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d approached a stranger. Nowadays, people usually approached me and I tried to avoid them, and before…it wasn’t that I was shy, exactly, I just never assumed people would welcome my approach.

“Is that yours? The song.”

He nodded.

I’m obsessed with it. The expression dropped into my head, what I used to say about songs, books, movies I felt a kind of connection with that I couldn’t quite explain because it seemed in excess of the thing itself.

“I love it,” I said. It sounded trite and generic but I couldn’t have meant it more. The guy raised an eyebrow. Not unkind, just not very enthusiastic.

“Thanks, man.”

Then he started to turn away and I felt a dire need to prevent it. Because, after months on tour, with music feeling oppressive, the joy that song called forth in me was such a welcome relief—such a gift—I couldn’t let it go. And if he turned away, the tendril connecting me to this moment would snap, and I’d careen off into space. Back out into the dark night; back to my empty apartment; back on tour to day after day of nameless, interchangeable cities and night after night of nameless, interchangeable men.

I put a hand out, plucked at his sleeve. It was a red, waffle-knit Henley that fit him close to the skin, so what I’d intended as an impersonal touch instead let me feel the warmth of his body, the strength of his muscles, sinewy beneath the worn fabric. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“That part after the bridge, where it seemed like you were gonna go up but then you dropped into minor. How’d you choose that?”

After a pause that stretched long enough I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he shrugged and said, “Just tried it a couple different ways. Liked that one best.”

But I didn’t believe him. That unexpected key change—going down instead of up—it was masterful. Unique and haunting and…accomplished. No way was this guy just playing around for fun.

“It changed the whole mood of the song,” I ventured. “It was sad, longing. But then that one moment made the whole thing feel, like, eerie. Haunted and…”

I shrugged, irritated by how uncertain I sounded. I knew music. Music was the one thing I could talk about with anyone. So why did I feel like every sentence carried an incredible weight?

“Yeah, that’s right,” the guy said, voice warming slightly. “I didn’t want to let the listener just be sad. Too easy. Too comfortable. It had to spin them around a little. Make them question what they’d felt so far.”

His eyes burned into me as he talked, voice low and rumbling as thunder, catching at the lowest notes. I tried to think of something to say, but my brain and my voice were gone, lost somewhere in his eyes and his words, and I just looked at him. Finally, I forced myself to look down because I was probably creeping the guy out.

“I’m Theo.”

“Hey, Theo. Caleb.”

He reached for my hand as if the idea of an introduction without a handshake was unthinkable, even in a dirty bar. I could feel the calluses on the tips of his fingers, and his hand was rough and dry. He wore a ring on his middle finger, a thick, smooth band of metal that looked like the kind of thing you never take off.

The hand I was holding had strummed that beautiful song out of his guitar, and I wanted to squeeze it so tight that some of that magic leached into me. I wanted to pull its beauty inside me.

Chapter 2

Caleb

It was Theo fucking Decker, lead singer of Riven. In Huey’s dingy bar. And he’d just heard me play—something I only let myself do in Huey’s presence these days. Casually, and alone, no one listening who cared; no one around who remembered me. Or who I used to be, anyway.

I had no idea how long Riven had been on the scene. I’d been out of it long enough that I no longer knew the lay of the land. Rehab and a complete tactical withdrawal from everything that reminded me of being a touring musician would do that.

It had seemed like the band came out of nowhere—somewhere between my third stint in rehab and the most recent one, which ended a year ago—gaining the kind of popularity that was instantly divisive. Were they complex or overcomplicated? Great performers or too showy? Were they an organic band, or had they been engineered by the label because they were all young and attractive?