Chapter 3The Song She Stole for Him

“Ethan, wait! Please!”

Tristan caught up to me on the dark sidewalk outside the restaurant, his fingers wrapping tight around my wrist.

At that exact moment, his pocket flared. His phone automatically paired with the wireless earbuds in his pocket, and an audio file resumed playback over the tinny external speaker.

It was a solo piano demo. Just fifteen seconds.

The progression moved from a somber C-minor into an unresolved suspended fourth—a motif I would recognize if I were deaf and blind.

It was my unreleased piece. Heard.

I whipped around, grabbing the lapel of the coat he wore. “Where did you get that audio?”

Nora caught up to us, out of breath, and immediately lunged forward to hit pause on Tristan’s screen.

“I borrowed your iPad over the summer to study for my GREs,” she said, the words tumbling out in a frantic rush, as if she had finally found a technical glitch she could fix. “The project files must have auto-synced to my iCloud. I’ll go home and wipe them immediately.” She reached for my arm. “It’s just an audio leak, Ethan. Don’t take out your anger at me on Tristan.”

Tristan pulled back, staring at her in bewilderment. “What do you mean, an auto-sync? You gave it to me, Nora.”

Nora’s fingers froze against the glass of the phone.

Tristan unlocked the device, tapping open his local files and holding the screen up between us. “You told me this was just a throwaway draft Ethan abandoned in his desk. You said it was going to rot in a drawer anyway.” His voice rose, defensive and wounded. “I’ve spent two straight months scoring arrangements over this. I’m submitting it to the National Collegiate Music Showcase under the campus spotlight track!”

The file name on the screen was glowing under the streetlight:

Heard – Tristan Hayes (Original Demo).

I lunged to snatch the phone, but Nora stepped between us like a shield, her palms flat against my chest, pushing me back.

“The piece was locked in your drawer!” she shouted. “You were never going to do anything with it! Tristan poured his entire semester into adapting it. If he pulls out now, all his hard work goes down the drain!”

“That is my intellectual property,” I said, my voice shaking with a rage so absolute it made my vision blur.

“Nobody is saying it isn't!” Nora pinched the bridge of her nose, her voice laden with that unbearable, dismissive condescension. “Let him finish the campus showcase first. When it’s over, I’ll make sure he adds your name as an arranger. Or better yet, I’ll write you a check right now to buy out the rights. Will that satisfy you?”

I stared past her shoulder at Tristan, who had retreated another step. “Give me the master files. Right now. Every backup, every bounce, every project folder.”

Tristan cowered behind her. Nora braced her feet, blocking him completely.

“Ethan, can’t you be the bigger person for once in your life?” she cried out. “This showcase is his only shot at landing a spot in a professional program! It’s a departmental honor!”

“And what about me?” The words tore out of my throat, raw and jagged. “Every time I wanted to play my music for you, why couldn’t you give me sixty seconds? Why was my work just noise to you?”

Nora went dead quiet.

The wind whipped her dark hair across her face. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, cruel, and precise.

“Because Tristan is different from you.”

She looked me dead in the eye. “His love for music is effortless. It’s natural. With you, Ethan, it’s always this pathetic, suffocating performance—you write these heavy, pretentious pieces just to force me into a corner and beg me to stroke your fragile ego!”

Headlights from a passing sedan washed across her face, sharp and pale.

A searing, dry ache spread behind my eyes.

I had never asked her for an academic analysis. I never expected her to critique my counterpoint. I just loved someone, and I wanted to share the things I built with the person I loved.

To her, my vulnerability was just harassment.

I didn’t reach for Tristan’s phone again. I didn’t say another word. I turned on my heel, hauled my suitcase to the curb, hailed a yellow cab, and got in.

The moment the hotel room door clicked shut behind me, I flipped open my laptop and logged into my private cloud repository.

The folder was completely empty.

My raw MIDI files, my logic sessions, my voice memos, my tracked instrument stems—gone. The cloud recycling bin had been permanently purged.

I pulled up the account activity log.

The last batch deletion had occurred seventy-two hours ago, at 2:15 AM, originating from a MacBook Air registered to Nora Parker.

That was the night she had texted me: Sleep tight, babe. Miss you.

I immediately opened a ticket with cloud customer support, pleading for an archival server restore. The automated response arrived within minutes: Files subject to a secondary permanent purge cannot be recovered.

I sat in the dark for a long time, the hum of the mini-fridge the only sound in the room. Then I reached into my backpack and pulled out the physical, bound master score of Heard.

Tomorrow at noon, I wasn't going to crawl back to Nora.

I was going to reclaim what was mine before they ever stepped foot on that stage.