Chords & Courts #1
Rafe Ortiz should be focused on the music—on the gigs, the grind, and the industry eyes finally turning his way. Instead, every lyric he writes leads back to one person: Oliver Marshall, the golden-boy basketball captain with a body built for highlight reels and a secret smile meant only for him.
Behind the court and the stage lights, they burn.
In the shadows, they fall.
And no one can know.
Ollie has a reputation to protect and parents who expect perfection. Rafe has a band depending on him and a career poised to explode. Rules say they should walk away. Desire says they won’t survive it if they do.
When March Madness collides with a life-changing showcase opportunity, their stolen nights and breathless encounters become a crossroads—love or legacy, truth or secrecy, each choice carrying consequences that could break them.
Or bind them tighter than ever.
BREAKING STRINGS is an addictive, emotional, steamy MM romance about two men fighting for dreams, for each other, and for the life they’re terrified to admit they want.
CHAPTER ONE
The practice room smells like stale coffee, dust, and a thousand hours of ambition that went nowhere. It’s the kind of room where dreams either get sharpened or die. Half the fluorescent lights overhead buzz like they’re short-circuiting, but the acoustics are decent, and it’s ours for another hour if we keep the door locked and pretend we don’t hear anyone banging on it.
I sit on the amp, bass across my lap, pick balanced between my fingers. My voice is rough from the last run-through, and my throat still carries the burn of it. We’ve been chasing the same song all afternoon, but it keeps slipping sideways—like a shadow that disappears when you look at it straight.
“Again,” I say.
Eli groans but twirls his sticks, already tapping out the count. He’s all restless energy, blond curls damp with sweat, T-shirt dark at the chest. He lives for speed, loves it when the tempo gets away from us. “Fuck, Rafe. Okay. One, two, three, four—”
Drew slams into the riff, his sunburst Strat snarling through the cheap amp. He’s lanky, with hair too long in his eyes, the kind of guy who’ll play until his fingertips split and then keep going. Miles follows, steady as stone, dropping in the lead like he’s planting a flag. He doesn’t talk much, but his solos do.
We hit it hard, the sound bouncing off cinder block walls. It’s tinny as fuck, but still alive. Eli drives the beat like he’s trying to outrun something, Drew’s rhythm thick and grinding, Miles’s line cutting sharp above it. I push my voice into the cracks.
“I won’t wear your weather, I’ll outrun your rain…”
But halfway through the chorus, it falls apart. Drew misses the change, Miles winces, and Eli throws a stick that bounces off the wall.
“Fuck!” Eli yells. “That’s the third time.”
“No shit,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand over my face. My notebook sits open on the floor beside me, page half filled with scrawled lyrics. Black ink, jagged lines, angry smudges. None of it feels right.
“We need new material,” Drew says, dropping onto the floor, guitar balanced on his knees. “We’ve been hammering this one for weeks, and it still sounds like shit.”
“It doesn’t sound like shit,” Miles says quietly, adjusting a knob on his amp. “It sounds unfinished.”
“Which is the same thing when we’ve got a gig Saturday,” Eli says. “Nobody wants to hear half a song.”
I lean back against the wall, the bass heavy in my hands. They’re right. We’ve been circling the same track, and it still doesn’t land. The words aren’t there, not the way they should be. And that’s on me.
“I’ll figure out the lyrics,” I say, trying not to sound defensive.
Eli arches a brow. “You’ve been saying that for a month.”
“Yeah? You want to write them?”
He grins, sharky. “I’d just put fuck in every other line.”
“Could be a hit,” Drew says, deadpan.
I flip them both off, but there’s no heat in it. These are my guys. We’re four broke students with borrowed gear and duct-taped dreams, and somehow it feels like enough. Steel Saints—that’s what we call ourselves, because it sounds like the kind of band you’d pay to see in a shitty dive bar at midnight. It’s not nothing.
My family thinks it’s more than that. My mamá, especially—she swears we’re headed somewhere. She and my papá came here from Mexico with nothing but a suitcase and two kids, and somehow they built a life out of stubbornness and late nights. They don’t understand the music business, but they understand hustle. My scholarship pays tuition, my parents cover the scraps I can’t, and I cover the rest with gigs and shifts at a coffee shop.
I think about them sometimes when I’m sitting here, sweating under dull lights, trying to force lyrics out of my skull. About how much faith they’ve put in me. About how easy it would be to let that faith slip through my fingers.
“Let’s take five,” I say finally. My voice scrapes low. “I need air.”
Eli collapses on the drum throne like he’s been shot. Drew lies flat on his back on the carpet, guitar still across his chest. Miles just nods, eyes closed, hands resting on the fretboard like it’s an extension of him.
I slide the bass back into its case, then stand and stretch. My shirt clings with sweat as I do so.
The hall outside the practice rooms hums with end-of-day noise. Students drag their bags, laughter bounces off the walls, somebody’s blasting EDM from a Bluetooth speaker. It’s December, which in LA means palm trees against a cold sky and students bundled in hoodies pretending it’s winter. The air smells like orange blossoms from the quad, sharp and sweet under the chill.
I’m halfway to the exit when I hear them.
Loud voices. Easy swagger. A cluster of guys in letterman jackets, moving as a pack. Basketball players. You can spot them a mile away: tall, broad, dripping confidence like sweat. Everyone knows who they are—the Panthers.
I should look away. I don’t.
My gaze snags on the captain.
Ollie Marshall. I’ve seen him around—posters plastered in the union, highlight reels on the TV in the cafeteria, his name in the campus paper. Up close he’s taller than I realized, shoulders squared under his jacket, stride clean like he was built for it. His hair is dark, cropped close, his face sharp with focus. He doesn’t joke as much as the others. Doesn’t shout. And from what I’ve noticed, when he talks, people shut up.
I’ve heard his voice once—low, steady, not the cocky bark you expect from a jock. It stuck.
And now his eyes catch mine.
It should be nothing. A glance in a crowded space. But it isn’t. His gaze holds for a beat too long, a string pulled taut between us. His cheeks flush, sudden and bright, the color blooming high on his skin—crimson, almost luminous under the harsh hallway light, like a lyric I didn’t know I was reaching for.
It fucking stops me.
He looks away first, back at his teammates. They laugh about something, voices echoing, sneakers squeaking against the tile. But I’m not hearing them. I’m tracking him. The way he moves, controlled but not stiff. The way his hands flex against the strap of his bag.
It’s the first time I’ve really paid attention to him. Definitely the first time he’s ever seen me. And yet something about that flush, that startled look—it sticks.
I lean against the wall, watching until they disappear around the corner. My pulse is faster than it should be. My fingers itch, not for the strings this time, but for a pen. For the notebook waiting back in the practice room.
Dark, serious eyes. The red flush of cheeks. A face that’s supposed to be carved out of confidence, caught off guard instead.
My muse walks away in a letterman jacket, and fuck if I don’t follow his every step.
I push off the wall and head back to the practice room before the feeling fades. The corridor smells like floor cleaner and someone’s cheap body spray. A trombone squeals from a room down the hall, then dies. My boots thud a steady pace that matches the new pulse in my head.
Inside, Eli’s doing a stick trick with the kind of concentration that should be illegal. Drew is flat on his back, phone hovering above his face, scrolling with the slack-fingered stare of a man forgetting he has a future. Miles is perched on an amp with his guitar silent in his lap, eyes half lidded like he’s meditating. He isn’t. He’s composing in his head. He always is.
“Break’s over,” I say, closing the door with my heel.
Eli drops the stick, snatches it before it hits the floor, and points it at me. “Well? Did the air give you a chorus?”
“Maybe.” I grab the notebook off the carpet and squat by the amp. The paper is freckled with old coffee stains and ripped corners. It looks like it’s been in a fight. It has. “Shut up for a minute.”
“Oh, Rafe the Artist is here.” Drew lifts the phone just enough to smirk, then goes back to whatever hole he’s doom-scrolling down.
“Give him sixty seconds,” Miles says, voice calm as a lake. “When his jaw is clenched like that, it means something stuck.”
I don’t argue. I anchor the notebook with my palm and let the pen touch down. The first line lands easy, like it’s been waiting.
Eyes like a locked door, I miss the handle twice
Captain with the quiet voice, steady as advice
Crimson catching high and hot, proof you feel it too—
I wasn’t looking, I swear I wasn’t. Then I saw you.
I stop and look at the words. Too on-the-nose? Maybe. But there’s a charge in my fingers I’ve been chasing for weeks, and now it’s here, steady and warm. I keep going.
You don’t talk loud, you don’t take up the space
But every hallway turns and looks to follow your face
I’m not a fan of your game, don’t know one rule
But I changed my day because you walked past school.
I scratch that last line, rewrite it cleaner.
But I changed my day because you walked past school.
But I changed my day because you crossed my line.
Miles leans forward. “What’s the tempo in your head?”
“Mid,” I say. “Not a sprint. Let it breathe.”
Eli taps the pattern on his knee without asking: soft snare, kick in a patient heartbeat, hi-hat open just enough to whisper. He is annoyingly good at reading my brain.
I flip to a fresh page and write faster.
I’ve loved boys, I’ve loved girls, I’m not a secret to my friends
But I never planned for you to happen, never planned the way it bends
The light when you look over, the heat you try to hide
That red that climbs your cheekbones like I caught you from the side.
The pen pauses on cheekbones. I cross it out, write skin. It’s simpler and sits better.
“Okay,” Drew says from the floor, voice muffled by apathy. “Who is this about?”
“No one,” I say too fast, even though he can’t actually see the words I’m scratching down.
Eli barks a laugh. “So defensive.”
I keep writing.
I don’t do poster boys, I don’t do varsity pride
But you blush like you mean it, and it shoots right through my spine
I’m not here to join your section, I don’t paint myself in blue
I’m here because a chorus woke up at the sight of you.
That one makes me swallow, which I hate. I cap the pen, uncap it again, cap it—a nervous tic I can’t kill.
Eli rolls the stick along his knuckles and eyes me. “You just—very casually—wrote a coming-out verse. You know that, right?”
I shrug. “I’ve been out since sophomore year of high school, man.”
“Yeah, but you never write it like that.” He tips his chin at the page. “It’s usually more ‘the world is a setlist and we’re gonna burn it.’ This is… personal.”
“Do you want me to go back to swearing for three minutes?” I deadpan.
“No,” Miles says before Eli can answer. “Play it.”
Drew sits up with a groan like gravity is morally offensive. “We don’t know the chords.”
“C minor,” I say. “Verse walks down, chorus lifts to E-flat minor. Keep the progression simple. The lyric’s the point.”
“Look at Mr. Pop Structure,” Eli says. “Who are you, and what have you done with my grunge goblin?”
“Play,” I say, and lift the bass.
We ease in. I keep it spare—root notes under a steady pulse, a slide into the pre-chorus to set the hook. Drew finds the shape fast because he’s a savant when he isn’t an idiot. Miles tucks a high line above it, clean and patient, refusing to crowd the vocal. Eli gives me that heartbeat and leaves space on purpose, which is his love language even if he’ll never say it.
I sing the verse low to see if the words hold up without tricks.
“I’ve loved boys, I’ve loved girls…” I let the phrase sit. No coyness, no wink. Just truth. “I never planned for you to happen…” My throat goes tight for a second, and I push through it. I hit the end of the verse and look at their faces.
Eli’s grin is gone. He’s listening like a drummer and a friend. Drew’s mouth is a thin line, that concentration face he gets when he’s pretending not to feel something. Miles nods once, the muscle in his jaw jumping.
“Again,” Miles says.
We run it twice without stopping. The second time I find a better vowel on crimson, less sharp, more open. I adjust the melody on crossed my line so the note lifts at the end instead of dying on the floor. The chorus arrives with more weight, the lyric clicking into place like a door finding its frame.
By the third pass, I know this isn’t a sketch. It’s a song. We don’t have a title yet, but that will come.
We finish and let the last chord fade. The room is quiet in that particular way that happens when sound drains out and leaves a different kind of noise behind. Eli clears his throat and then ruins the mood like he always does when he feels too much.
“So,” he says, sticks ticking against each other, “you want to talk about varsity boy?”
“No,” I say.
“Is he hot, though?”
I hate that I laugh. “Unfortunately.”
“Basketball?”
“Yep.”
“Tall?”
“Stupidly.”
“Jerk?”
“No.” I surprise myself with the answer. “Quiet. Kind of serious.”
Eli leans back. “You’re not into the chest-thumping types anyway.”
“I’m not into the types who scream their name at parties,” I say. “They’re loud in all the wrong ways.”
Drew tucks his hair behind his ear. “What is this, then? You’ve seen campus jocks before. You’re not exactly the blushing kind.”
I glance at the notebook and then away. “I don’t blush.”
“True,” Eli says. “You smirk. So what’s special?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and the honesty feels like swallowing a battery. “He looked right at me. And then he went bright red like… like he wasn’t expecting to get caught being human.”
Drew’s eyebrows tick up. “That’s weirdly specific.”
“Shut up.”
He holds up a hand in peace. “I’m not making fun. I’m observing. It’s new watching you write about an actual person you saw twelve minutes ago. Usually you need to brood for at least three days and then ask us to pretend to be impressed by your process.”
Miles’s mouth moves just enough to count as a smile. “It’s best when you don’t pretend.”
Eli taps the snare head with his fingertip. “So you’re adding him to the roster.”
“There’s no roster,” I say.
Eli squints. “There’s definitely a roster.”
I sigh. “There’s a history. Men, women. I didn’t fall out of the closet yesterday.”
Drew nods like he’s writing a thesis. “Rafe Ortiz, bisexual agent of chaos.”
“Sounds like a Marvel character,” Eli says.
“Sounds like our press bio,” I say dryly, and they all groan because they know I’ll put anything in a press bio if it sounds like it’ll sell three more tickets. That, and between our jumbled mix of sexualities—some labelled, some definitely not—I think I could totally make it work.
Miles’s gaze tilts to the notebook. “Do you think he’ll end up in more than one song?”
“I think I don’t plan songs,” I say. “They happen or they don’t. This one happened.”
“Is he going to hear it?” Drew asks.
“I don’t write to get heard by one guy,” I say, then shrug because I can’t help myself. “If he does, he does.”
Eli waggles his sticks. “You’re going to go stare at a basketball in a gym, aren’t you?”
“We have a gig Saturday,” I say, because that’s true. “If I happen to walk past a scoreboard on the way to the venue, that’s called cardio.”
“Cardio?” Drew laughs. “You smoke weed every other night and complain about stairs.”
“I complain about everything,” I say. “It’s my charm.”
Miles sets his guitar aside. “Run it again.”
We do. This time I mark a second verse that digs a little deeper.
You walk like the room is a promise you made
I move like a fuse, and I’m tired of the fade
I don’t speak your language, but I hear your name
Booming off the rafters from a different kind of stage.
I keep the vowels simple, the consonants clean. I’m not hiding in poetry today. It feels good. Like the shape I’ve been trying to hold for weeks finally stopped slipping.
Eli drags the kick a hair behind the beat in the pre-chorus, and it makes the whole thing roll forward. Drew adds a small hammer-on in the verse that warms it. Miles lands the kind of bend that feels like turning your head to listen when someone finally says the thing out loud.
We stop, breathing hard in the stale room like we sprinted. Nobody schedules sprinting, but it still counts.
Eli points at me with a stick. “You’re seeing him again.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I want the bridge,” he says. “And if he looks at you like he did in your head, the bridge will write itself.”
“That is the worst reason to involve a stranger in my art,” I say.
“It’s the most honest reason,” Miles counters.
He’s right. I hate that he’s right and I love that he’s right, because it means we still know how to tell each other the truth without flinching. Bands die when they start lying about small things. We are not dying. Not this year. Hopefully not ever.
Drew leans back against the wall and tilts his head. “What’s the title?”
I look at the notebook. The words sit there like they’re daring me to commit.
“‘Crimson High,’” I say, and everyone nods like we all heard it land.
Eli taps the rim of the snare. “Okay. ‘Crimson High’ after ‘City Static’ in the set. We’ll test it Saturday. If they don’t look up from their cheap beer, we kill it. If they scream, it stays.”
“Fair,” I say. “Let’s be brutal.”
“I was born brutal,” Eli says.
“You were born loud,” Drew says.
Miles lifts a shoulder. “Same thing for drummers.”
Eli flips him off with a flourish. It’s almost elegant.
I write the set order along the margin. We’re always making lists, printing flyers, hunting for five-dollar strings on Craigslist, bribing the campus radio kid with pizza to do a ten-minute feature. People think the music is the job. The job is all of it.
“Rafe.” Drew’s voice is gentler. “You good?”
“Yeah.” I mean it. The coil of frustration that’s lived behind my ribs for a month has loosened. “I’m… good.”
He nods, and his mouth curves. “Cool. Because we’re going to be late for that open mic if we sit here and talk about your varsity boyfriend.”
“He’s not my anything,” I say.
“Yet,” Eli sings under his breath.
Miles stands and stretches, back cracking like a knuckle. “Pack it. Run ‘Crimson High’ twice more tomorrow. Then we don’t touch it before Saturday so you don’t overthink it.”
“Bossy fucker,” I say.
“Effective,” he answers.
We move. Cables coil. Cases close. The room cools from the heat of four bodies and a new song. I tuck the notebook into my backpack like it’s fragile. It isn’t. It’s a weapon if I aim it.
On the way out, Eli flanks me. “So, you’re bisexual, the campus captain is beautiful, and you’re writing about his face. Do we need to prepare for chaos?”
I snort. “I’m always prepared for chaos.”
He grins. “True that.”
Drew holds the door with an elbow. “What did your ma text you?” he asks, because he knows my phone has been buzzing in my pocket for ten minutes.
I check it. A photo of my little sister at the kitchen table back home, hair messy, colored pencils everywhere, a plate with two tortillas and beans shoved to the side. Mamá’s caption: Tu tía says hi. We love you. Don’t forget to sleep. A string of heart emojis that would get me roasted if anyone else saw them.
“Family,” I say, pocketing the phone with a smile I don’t have to practice. “They think I’m a genius. I’d like to live up to it.”
“You will,” Miles insists.
We spill into the hallway. It’s dimmer now. Outside, the early December sun is tilting toward that gold that makes the palm fronds shine like someone polished them.
As we head toward the exit, a pack of jocks laughs somewhere behind us, that big open sound that turns heads. My neck prickles, but I keep my eyes forward. I do not scan for a captain with a face I already put in a song. I’m not that obvious.
We go through the door to the outside steps, and the light slams into me. I blink into it and see the city stretching out beyond the campus—the low sweep of buildings, the grid of streets, the distant stain of smog on the horizon like a line somebody refuses to erase. It looks like possibility if you squint right.
“Open mic?” Eli reminds me, bouncing on his toes.
“Open mic,” I say. “We test ‘Crimson High’ acoustic after the third comic bombs. We own the room. We make them care.”
Drew salutes with his pick. Miles checks the time and nods, already crafting the set in his head.
We climb down the steps, four men who feel like a band again. I touch the leather bracelet at my wrist, a habit. I think about the sudden heat on a stranger’s cheeks, the steady way he carried himself, the way he looked surprised to be seen.
I’ve never had a type beyond “interesting.” People who make the air feel different. I didn’t think a campus captain would do that for me. But he did. It hit fast. It hit true. It made my hand move on a page like someone turned the lights on.
I won’t say a word to anyone who doesn’t need to know. I won’t chase something that isn’t mine. But I will write the hell out of what it did to me. I will put it in a room with bad lighting and dirty carpet and see if strangers feel the jolt I felt.
We cut across the quad. A girl with purple hair strums a guitar by the fountain and butchers a chord. I fight the urge to correct her. There’s a time for teaching. This isn’t it. This is for taking what just woke up and giving it a name.
“Crimson High,” I say under my breath, testing the shape of it again.
“What?” Eli asks.
“Nothing.” We step onto the street.
The air outside carries a bite it didn’t have at noon. Somewhere downtown, a siren threads through traffic. A busker bangs a drum near the corner store and sings off-key about rent. The city sounds like a rehearsal. We’re ready for the show.
I give a shit about three things: my family, my band, the music we’re making. Tonight, a fourth thing tapped me on the shoulder and turned red under bad lights. I won’t pretend it didn’t happen. I won’t pretend it’s more than what it is either.
I am bi. I am out. I am not stupid.
But I am curious. And curiosity is a good way to make a song better.
We head toward the bar that lets undergrads play for free if they promise not to break anything. I walk faster than usual. My fingers itch for the strings and the pen in equal measure. I’m not a fan of basketball. I don’t plan to be. I plan to write. I plan to sing. I plan to take whatever the hell today was and turn it into something worth shouting over a room.
If a captain with quiet eyes walks past the door while we’re doing it, that’ll be a bonus. If he doesn’t, I still have a chorus. Either way, we’re going to make someone look up from their cheap beer and feel something again.
That’s the job. That’s the only job that’s ever made sense.
A rock star who burns bright.
A basketball phenom taught to stay silent.
And a love that refuses to fit inside the rules.
Rafe Ortiz turns chaos into music and ambition into noise the world can’t ignore. Ollie Marshall dominates the court with quiet precision—while hiding the parts of himself that could cost him everything.
A blush brings them together. Pressure tries to pull them apart.
Across three books, this trilogy follows two men building a life in the shadows of success—balancing careers that demand everything, love that asks for honesty, and the question neither can outrun forever: How much of yourself are you willing to risk for the person who knows you best?
A story of secrecy, devotion, separation, and the long road back to each other—set against sold-out arenas, roaring crowds, and the kind of love that never really lets go.
Becca SeymourBecca Seymour is the #1 gay romance best seller of the True-Blue series. Known for “steamy and endearing” and “emotionally profound love stories” (InD’tale Magazine) her books have been nominated for multiple RONE Awards.
Becca lives and breathes all things book related. Usually with at least three books being read and two WiPs being written at the same time, Becca’s life is merrily hectic. She tends to do nothing by halves so happily seeks the craziness and busyness life offers.
Living on her small property in Queensland with her human family as well as her animal family of cows, chooks, and dogs, Becca appreciates the beauty of the world around her and is a believer that love truly is love.
Breaking Strings #1
Chords & Courts Trilogy
