Mael set a folder on the kitchen island the next morning.
I was on my second cup of coffee. The cheek still ached when I chewed, but the swelling had gone down. I'd been pretending not to notice the folder for ten minutes.
"Open it," he said.
I opened it.
A contract. Maybe six pages. My name was at the top in clean black type. ELISE RYAN. Not a pseudonym. Not a credit buried in fine print. My name, the way it appears on a driver's license.
I read the first paragraph twice before the words made sense.
"Your debut EP," he said. He was leaning against the counter, arms folded. Watching me. "I produce. You write. Your songs, your voice, your name. Publicly. No ownership transfers to me. No strings."
My throat tightened.
"Mael—"
"Read it."
I read it. I read all six pages while my coffee went cold. The terms were almost embarrassing in their generosity. He was offering me the kind of deal artists wait twenty years for. He was offering it like he was passing the salt.
I closed the folder. My fingers stayed on the cover.
"The old songs," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "They were really collaborations. Damien had input. He shaped them."
The words came out fast. Automatic. Eight years of muscle memory.
Mael didn't move. He just looked at me, and the look was so steady it felt like a hand on my shoulder.
"Elise."
I didn't look up.
"Every manuscript is in your handwriting," he said. Quiet. Almost gentle. "Every voice memo is your voice. Every demo file has your timestamp."
I swallowed.
"Stop protecting someone who never protected you."
The kitchen was very quiet. The Hudson kept doing its thing thirty stories down. Somewhere a kettle was cooling. I could feel my pulse in the cut on my lip.
I didn't say anything for a long time.
Then I picked up the pen he'd left on the counter and signed.
---
The studio sessions started the next day.
I thought I knew what working with a producer looked like. I'd watched Damien do it for years from the cheap seats—half-listening through earbuds while I finished the lyrics he'd take credit for the next morning.
This wasn't that.
Mael sat behind the board for ten hours straight. He didn't compliment. He didn't comfort. He listened with his whole body, head tilted, eyes half-closed, and when I finished a take he'd say, "Again. Don't perform it. Mean it."
The first day, I cried in the bathroom for fifteen minutes during a break and came back with my mascara redone like nothing happened. He didn't mention it. He just queued up the next track.
The second day, he made me sing the bridge of track four eleven times.
The third day, I broke.
It was past midnight. The bridge was the most honest thing I'd ever written. It was about waking up alone in a bed you'd shared for eight years. I'd buried it under a wall of harmonies in the demo, the way I always did—pretty it up, soften the edge, make it palatable.
"Strip it," Mael said through the talkback. "Just the voice. No harmonies. No reverb."
"It won't work bare."
"It only works bare."
"Mael, I'm telling you, it needs—"
"Elise." His voice through the speaker was calm. Immovable. "Sing it like you wrote it."
I put the headphones down on the stool. Walked out of the booth. Walked out of the studio. Walked out of the penthouse. Stood in the hallway by the elevators with my arms wrapped around myself, breathing like I'd run somewhere.
I didn't go anywhere. I just stood there for forty minutes and then I went back inside.
The studio door was open. The light was on. Mael was at the board exactly where I'd left him, scrolling through something on his laptop. He didn't look up when I walked in. He didn't say anything about where I'd been.
A cup of jasmine green tea was sitting on the small table next to the piano bench. Steam still rising.
I sat down. Picked it up. Wrapped both hands around it.
"Ready when you are," he said quietly.
I sang it bare. Just the voice. The bridge cracked in the middle and I let it crack. When I finished, the room held the silence for a long moment, the way a room holds a held breath.
Then Mael, very softly, said, "That's the take."
---
That night I found the note on my pillow.
The headphones were on the bed beside it—noise-canceling, the good ones, still in their case. The note was on a square of cream paper, folded once. His handwriting was sharp and angular, the kind of script that didn't waste a single stroke.
The bridge in track four made me stop breathing.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, holding it.
Then I folded it carefully, slipped it inside the cover of the manuscript on the nightstand, and turned off the light.
