Six months after Lost Cause dropped, the label did not look like the same place.
The suite had expanded into the floor below it. There were A&Rs now, two assistants, a full PR team, a sync coordinator who had already placed one of Imani's demos in a Netflix trailer. The whiteboard in June's office had so many names and dates on it that she had bought a second one and put it next to the first. It was loud in a way it had never been before, not chaotic, just full. Like something that had been small was finally taking up the space it was always supposed to.
Claire noticed the difference every time she came in. She had been here since before any of it, back when it was just her and Jordan and a notebook on a table in Studio B. Now there were people in the hallways she was still learning the names of. It should have felt impersonal. It did not. Jordan had been careful about who he hired and it showed in how the place felt.
She had been working on the second song for a month.
* * *
Hannah was the one who made it possible.
She was one of the new writers Jordan had brought in, twenty-three, quiet in a way that was not shyness but focus. She wrote like she was trying to say the exact right thing and would not stop until she got there. Claire had worked with two other writers before her and both sessions had been fine, professional, nothing wrong with them. Then she sat down with Hannah and inside twenty minutes they were somewhere real.
Hannah wrote vulnerable without making it soft. That was the thing Claire could not always do on her own. She could feel everything, always had, but putting it on paper in a way that did not collapse under its own weight was harder. Hannah had that instinct. She knew when to hold back and when to let it go and her ear for melody was the kind of thing you could not teach.
They worked on it every day for a month. Not always in a studio, sometimes at Hannah's kitchen table with a laptop and two coffees, sometimes late at night when one of them texted the other a line she could not get out of her head. The song kept changing as they went, tightening, finding its shape. It was not a ballad. It was slower than that, lower, intimate in the way a secret is intimate, like something you were only saying because you finally trusted the room.
Claire knew when it was done. She did not have to think about it. She just knew.
* * *
She played it for Jordan on a Tuesday afternoon.
Just the two of them in Studio B, same couch, same table. She played it off her phone through the room speaker, sat back, and watched his face.
He listened to the whole thing without moving. When it ended he was quiet for a second. Then he looked at her and smiled, not the professional one, the real one, the one that meant something had gotten through before he thought to keep it contained.
"Whenever you're ready," he said.
She let out a breath. "Okay."
"I mean it. This is the one."
"I know." She looked at her phone for a second. "I just wanted to hear you say it."
He laughed. She smiled and put her phone in her pocket.
She texted Hannah on the way out.
he loved it. we're doing it.
Hannah texted back in about thirty seconds.
i'm literally shaking
* * *
She went live on Instagram three days later.
No announcement beforehand. No countdown. She just opened the app at eight in the evening, hit go live, and waited for people to find it. They found it fast. By the time she picked up her guitar there were already fourteen thousand people watching and the number kept climbing.
She did not say much at the top. Just that she had something she wanted to play. Her red curls were down, no makeup, the diamond choker catching lamp light. She looked exactly like herself, which had always been her best quality.
She started playing.
The song opened quiet. Just her voice and the guitar, nothing underneath it yet. The words needed the space.
I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
Not what you'd think
And if I'm being honest
It might've been a nightmare
To anyone who might care
Thought I could fly (fly)
So I stepped off the Golden, mm
Nobody cried (cried, cried, cried, cried)
Nobody even noticed
I saw them standing right there
Kinda thought they might care (might care, might care)
The comment section had already gone quiet. That happened sometimes when a song hit a certain way. The chatter just stopped because nothing anyone could type was going to be bigger than what they were hearing.
(Everything I wanted Billie Eilish)
I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me
And you say, "As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you
Don't wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change
The way that you see yourself
You wouldn't wonder why you hear
They don't deserve you"
She closed her eyes on the chorus. Stayed there for a beat after it resolved, fingers still on the strings.
I tried to scream
But my head was underwater
They called me weak
Like I'm not just somebody's daughter
Coulda been a nightmare
But it felt like they were right there
And it feels like yesterday was a year ago
But I don't wanna let anybody know
'Cause everybody wants something from me now
And I don't wanna let 'em down
I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me
And you say, "As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you
Don't wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change
The way that you see yourself
You wouldn't wonder why you hear
They don't deserve you"
If I knew it all then would I do it again?
Would I do it again?
If they knew what they said would go straight to my head
What would they say instead?
If I knew it all then would I do it again?
Would I do it again?
If they knew what they said would go straight to my head
What would they say instead?
She let the last note ring out and then lifted her hand from the strings.
For a second she just sat there. Seventy-one thousand people watching, the comment section moving so fast it was basically unreadable. Just names and hearts and the same things typed over and over because people did not know what else to do with what they were feeling.
Claire looked into the camera and tucked a curl back behind her ear.
"That one's called Everything I Wanted," she said. "Available now wherever you stream your music."
She smiled once, small and real, and ended the live.
* * *
Hannah watched it from her kitchen with her knees pulled to her chest.
When it ended she sat there for a second and then started crying. Not sad crying. The kind that comes when something you poured yourself into gets to be real in front of people and they take it the way you hoped they would. She had been writing for other people for two years and nobody had ever sung her words like that.
She texted Claire.
That was magic
Claire texted back fast, probably still sitting in the same spot she had been when she went live.
we did it. you and me.
Hannah set her phone down and looked at the ceiling.
Outside the city was doing whatever it always did. Inside her kitchen it was quiet and warm and something had just started that neither of them fully understood yet.
But it had