Until the Last Note: Chapter Four - The Final Measure

The morning light brings a moment of truth. Brooks faces a choice: keep the tether tight or give Rey the freedom she’s been screaming for. In the heart of the French Quarter, they have to decide if their song is truly over or if the best part is yet to come.

Chapter Four

The Final Measure

Brooks

The light in New Orleans doesn’t just wake you up; it interrogates you. It creeps through the heavy velvet curtains in thin, uncompromising gold blades, illuminating the wreckage of the night before. My shirt lies on the floor, a ghost of white linen. Her violin case rests on the luggage rack, dark polished wood gleaming like a silent witness.

And Rey… is a tangle of limbs and dark hair in the center of the bed, her breathing deep and steady.

I stay still for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of her shoulders.

In the five years we were apart, I forgot how small she looks when she sleeps. On stage, she’s a titan—ten feet tall, wrapped in fire and music, a goddess who doesn’t need anyone to breathe for her. But here, in the gray-gold light of Sunday morning, she’s just the girl who stole my heart in a dive bar.

My gaze shifts to the vanity across the room.

The manila envelope sits there in a dried puddle of scotch.

The papers. The ending.

A sharp wave of self-loathing hits me.

I spent five years clutching those papers like leverage. I told myself it was love. I told myself it was fighting for us. But standing here now, I see it clearly.

I was holding her hostage to my grief.

I waited for her to fail. I waited for the world to tire of her so she would have no choice but to come back to the version of me she’d outgrown.

I wasn’t the man she needed five years ago.

I wanted to be her anchor.

Instead, I became her cage.

I slip out of bed, careful not to wake her, and pull on my slacks. I walk to the desk and pick up the papers. The signature line remains blank. It has been blank for one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days.

I look at her name.

Audrey St. James.

I remember the fight the night before she left. I said things that still twist my stomach. I called her music a hobby. I told her a real life was built in a house with a lawn, not in a dressing room in London. I tried to shrink her world until it was small enough for me to control.

She was right to run.

She was right to choose the music, because the music is truth.

And I was just a man terrified of being left behind.

I pick up the silver pen from the hotel stationery set.

My hand doesn’t shake.

I sign it.

Brooks Garrett.

The ink looks dark and permanent against the page.

It doesn’t feel like a death.

It feels like a release.

I’m not just freeing her. I’m freeing myself from the man who stayed in that house in Charlotte, waiting for a call that was never coming.

I slide the papers back into the envelope and leave it on the nightstand beside her hand.

I’m standing on the balcony overlooking the French Quarter when the bedsheets rustle behind me.

I don’t turn around.

I don’t want to see the moment she realizes I finally gave her what she asked for.

“Brooks?” Her voice is small, thick with sleep.

“I’m here, Rey.”

I hear her sit up. I hear the faint sound of paper as she picks up the envelope.

Silence stretches.

I brace for relief. For gratitude.

Instead, I hear her feet cross the room.

She steps onto the balcony, wrapped in the hotel robe, the signed papers clutched in her hand. Her eyes are rimmed red. Her face looks pale in the morning light.

“You signed them,” she whispers.

“I did.”

I look at her, and for the first time in five years, I don’t see an opponent.

I see my wife.

“I saw you play Friday night,” I continue. “I really saw you. And I realized that if I keep you tied to me through a legal loophole, I’m just another person trying to mute the sound. I don’t want to be the reason your music stops.”

She looks down at the papers, her thumb tracing my signature.

“I thought this was what I wanted. I’ve been screaming for it for five years.”

“I know.”

“Then why does it feel like I just lost my place in the score?” Her voice breaks. She steps closer, humidity curling her hair around her face. “Why don’t I feel free, Brooks?”

“Because we were never just paper,” I say, lifting my hand to her face. My thumb brushes her cheek, and she leans into it without thinking. “We’re the music. The harmony. The discord. Everything in between. You don’t need a divorce to be free of me. You just need to know I’m not going to hold you back anymore.”

I inhale deeply, the sweet, heavy scent of the city filling my lungs.

“I’m staying in New Orleans. I already told the board I’m moving the regional office here. I’m done with Charlotte. I’m done with the ‘Good Son’ act.”

Her eyes widen.

“You’re staying?”

“I’m staying. Not because of the papers. Not because I’m trying to force you into some suburban kitchen. I’m staying because this is the only city where I ever felt like myself. And because I want to be in the front row for the rest of your life, if you’ll have me.”

I take the envelope from her and set it on the balcony railing.

“They’re signed. You can file them tomorrow. You can buy your house. You can be Rey St. James, the solo act. I won’t stop you.”

“And if I don’t file them?” she asks quietly.

Something sparks in my chest.

“Then we rewrite the contract,” I say. “No cages. No ultimatums. Just the music. We figure out the tours. We figure out the house. We play it until the last note. Together.”

She looks at the papers.

At the city.

Then at me.

A slow, beautiful smile spreads across her face—the one I haven’t seen since the Marigny.

“I have rehearsal at ten,” she says.

“I know.”

“And Berlin next month.”

“I already checked the flight schedules.”

She laughs, bright and clear. Then she takes the envelope and rips it cleanly in half. Then again. And again.

She lets the pieces scatter into the New Orleans wind like confetti.

“I think I’d rather keep the name,” she whispers, stepping into my arms.

I pull her close, burying my face in her hair.

The five years dissolve.

The silence breaks.

The music begins again.

“I love you, Audrey St. James Garrett,” I murmur.

“I know,” she says, fisting my shirt. “Now be quiet and kiss me. I have a very long tour ahead of me, and I’m going to need something to remember.”

So I kiss her.

I kiss her until the world narrows to breath and heartbeat and heat.

The song isn’t over.

It’s finally reaching the part we were always meant to play.

The End. Come back next week for another story.

Copyright © by LS Phoenix

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Published by LS Phoenix

New Hampshire, USA

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First Edition: February 2026

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