Chapter 2

The system, Dreamweaver, first blinked into my awareness when my own world had shattered. Eight years ago. I was Elara then, a cellist in Boston, my fingers insured for a sum that now seemed laughable. A rival, desperate for my chair in the orchestra, had "accidentally" spilled a corrosive cleaning agent on stage. My right hand, my lifeblood, was a ruin of severed nerves. Career over. Dreams dead.

That's when Dreamweaver appeared. A soft, insistent hum in the void of my depression. "A new composition awaits, Elara. A different kind of music. In New Orleans. His name is Liam. He's lost his melody."

The task: save a gifted, self-destructive guitarist named Liam from himself.

I found him in a dimly lit, smoky jazz club in the French Quarter, reeking of stale whiskey and despair. He was playing a battered acoustic guitar, his talent undeniable, a raw, aching beauty in his music that was being slowly choked by alcohol and hopelessness. He was surrounded by a rough crowd, the kind that feeds off misery.

That first night, I sat in a dark corner, listening. When he stumbled out into the alley, I followed. He was about to take another swig from a cheap bottle when I spoke.

"That song," I said, my voice raspy from disuse. "It's unfinished."

He glared at me, eyes bloodshot and suspicious. "Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who understands music," I replied. I didn't have my cello, but I had my voice, my understanding. I hummed a counter-melody to the piece he'd been playing, a harmony that yearned for resolution.

He stared, the bottle forgotten in his hand. For a moment, the haze in his eyes cleared.

I stayed. I pushed him. I dragged him out of bars. I made him eat. I listened to his drunken ramblings about a childhood spent in foster care, about the abandonment that had become the discordant theme of his life. I made him play, sober. We sat on the banks of the Mississippi, him strumming, me guiding, shaping, finding the lost notes.

Slowly, painstakingly, he began to heal. The music flowed, clearer, stronger. We started playing together on street corners, then in small, crowded bars. My voice, trained but different from my cello, found a new home alongside his guitar.

He once asked me, his eyes clear and searching, "Why, Chloe? Why are you doing all this for a wreck like me?" We were sharing a cramped, humid room above a noisy bar, the only place we could afford.

I smiled, taking his calloused hand. "Maybe the universe just knew we needed to find each other's music."

He'd looked down, a rare blush creeping up his neck. "Then you're the best damn song the universe ever wrote for me."

The day the Dreamweaver system pinged, signaling my mission was complete, Liam sensed it. He held me tight all night in our cheap hotel room, the rain lashing against the window. He'd written a song for me, a raw, desperate plea. "Don't leave me in the silence."

My heart, already tangled with his, broke. I couldn't leave him. Not then.

"Liam," I whispered, holding him back just as fiercely. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying."

The Dreamweaver went silent. For five years, it didn't make a sound.

We got married. We formed "Nightingale & Guitarist." And for a while, the music was everything.

Then, in our third year of marriage, the fifth year since I'd chosen him over my own world, he started his affair with Kendra. A young, ambitious tour assistant who looked at him with an adoration I hadn't felt in a long, long time.