The stage is warmer than I expect. The microphone is a little sticky in my hand, and the overhead lights make it feel like there’s nowhere to hide. The opening piano notes ripple out, familiar and soft, curling into the space between heartbeats.
The words appear on the screen, but my voice comes out thin at first.
Tell me somethin’, girl…
I keep my eyes on the lyrics for the first line, but when I glance to Declan, he isn’t scrolling his phone or whispering to the person next to him like the rest of the crowd. He’s just…watching me. Steady. Still. The noise of the bar fades under that look.
Aren’t you tired tryin’ to fill that void?
My hand trembles around the mic, but my gaze doesn’t leave his. He doesn’t smile or wink or give me anything that would break the spell, just holds me there with that blue-eyed focus, as if the rest of the room doesn’t exist.
The bridge comes sooner than I expect. The space where the second voice should come in yawns open, lonely. My breath hitches. The band track swells.
And then I see Declan walking up onto the stage, saving me just like I planned, hoped. Needed. “You win,” he murmurs into my ear before taking the other microphone and sliding into the song like he was always meant to be there—low, warm, steady.
I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in…
He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t crowd me, but he’s close enough that I can feel the heat from his arm. Our voices find each other in the middle—his low and grounding, mine rising unsteady but steadied by him. For a second, it feels like we’ve always been singing together.
When we hitIn the sha-ha-ha-ha-ha-llow, the crowd actually cheers. I can’t tell if it’s for the song, the moment, or both. I’mlaughing into the next note, and it comes out breathless, like my ribs can’t hold everything in.
The final chord fades, and I realize we’re still looking at each other. He’s smiling now, small and private, like this was ours first and theirs second.
We step down together, the room bright and blurred around the edges. Declan presses a cold bottle of water into my hand and tucks a napkin into my fingers. “Hydrate. You’re pale,” he says. It should be bossy. It’s not. It’s…kind.
The emcee materializes. “You two did amazing. I’m sensing a duet in real life,” she sing-songs before dancing off.
“A duet in real life,” Declan repeats with a smile. When I look at that smile, there’s a quiet, steady thing humming under my sternum.
“I’m not looking for anything,” I blurt, because this is the part where a future version of me might need present-me to have said it out loud.
Declan nods like I told him the weather. “All right.”
“You’re not going to argue?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No,” I admit. I look to my right into a porthole. Sea and night pressed together like secrets. I catch my reflection in the glass—flushed cheeks, a mouth I don’t quite recognize because it looks a little reckless, a little sure. “I don’t know.”
“Then I won’t.” He stops walking. The hall light gilds his copper hair. “But what if you don’t have to look for it? What if I just give it to you?”
My pulse trips. “Give me what?”
“Do you want to find out?” he asks, sliding his room key out of his pocket. When I don’t answer, he murmurs, “Let me take care of you for a while. You like to be taken care of.”
It should make me bristle. It doesn’t. Maybe because he says it like an offer, not a verdict. Maybe because “take care” lands on me like soft cloth, not rope. He’s right. He’s taken care of me tonight, and I’ve very much liked it.
I swallow. “Okay.”
He doesn’t move until I take a step closer. Then he does something that makes my knees go loose. Nothing showy. He just lifts his hand—slow enough to be read—and cups the back of my head, thumb sliding just behind my ear. He waits for the lean-in that I give him. It’s all heat buried under the calm that is Declan.
Cheyenne’s warning flickers through me, not to chase one man to outrun another, but Declan’s mouth silences the thought. I’m not running. I’m choosing.
His room is neat in a way that feels instinctive rather than fussy. He locks the door, not loudly but decisively, and turns to me like we’re resuming a conversation interrupted by an elevator.
“Shoes,” he says softly.
I step out of them. He sets them side by side, an order that makes something in my chest unclench.
