Jiro looked at the finished song on his phone. The hallway felt longer than it should have.
Voices thinned at the far end. A door clicked shut somewhere out of sight.
He hadn’t stayed present.
He saved the file.
Then he slipped the phone into his pocket and started walking.
Not toward the stage.
Toward wherever she'd gone.
TWELVE
All Dressed Up and Alone
April
April stood alone in the corridor for one breath too long. Then she turned toward the sound, heading toward the music and the kind of money that pretended it didn’t have teeth. The air tasted like champagne and ambition. Chandeliers dripped light the way rich people dripped consequences: beautiful, expensive, and aimed at someone else.
She was alone in the crowd. And rethinking every choice she had made that brought her to this moment. She needed a drink, or five, or five minutes where she wasn’t the center of someone’s crisis, especially not her own.
Her phone buzzed in her clutch.
April pulled it out, half-expecting another Chad-shaped disaster, another reason to wonder whether she’d survived the day or postponed the breakdown.
JAX:She walks in beauty, like the night.
A breath she hadn't realized she was holding slipped out.
Her mouth curved for the ghost in the machine who'd been pinging her all day with poetry and surveillance, offering protection that didn't need credit.
She slipped the phone back and let the steadiness settle.
The men had dressed her for this. Killian’s emerald silk catching light like a claim, Liam’s wrap and shoes finishing thesentence her body was trying to start, the heirloom necklace resting at her throat like it had been waiting for her.
The armor was perfect. She just had to let it do its job.
April lifted her chin.
If she was holding something—a glass, a prop, anything—she’d look like everyone else. Like she belonged.
She headed for the bar. There was something grounding about having a destination, a place where standing still looked intentional instead of lost.
And then she saw him.
Caleb Hart was leaning against the bar like he'd been posed for an editorial on effortless charm, America's Most Beloved Christmas Bachelor in his natural habitat, proving charisma was, in fact, a renewable resource. White shirt, tailored jacket, that smile that had probably caused at least three Heartland Christmas movie-induced breakups when women realized their boyfriends would never look at them like that while holding cocoa.
He saw her at the same time, and his whole face lit up.
“Hello, pretty lady,” he said, straightening and adding a wink that should’ve been illegal. “Fancy meeting you here.”
April felt her mouth curve in relief at seeing a friendly face. Someone who wasn’t evaluating her lineage or her portfolio or whether she knew the difference between old money and new money. Just Caleb, who’d met her earlier and hadn’t run screaming.
“Caleb,” she said, and it came out steadier than she felt. “Surviving the evening?”
“Barely.” He gestured to the bartender with the ease of someone who’d never worried about whether he belonged anywhere. “Can I get you something? Champagne? Water? Something stronger?”
