The lights drop for the transition, and I turn my back to the sea of faces.
My hands tremble so hard I tuck them into my skirt as I try to catch my breath through tight lungs. My ribs feel too tight, my pulse sharp and fast under my skin.
Lucian Sterling is here.
Here.
After seven months of silence that ripped away at my heart one day at a time. The cruel words that he hurled at me, and how they cut clean and stayed lodged in my heart. Lucian pulled himself out of my life so abruptly that I’m still finding the empty spaces he left behind.
He’s the man who told me I deserved better while deciding—withoutme—that he couldn’t be it. He selfishly took the future from my hands like I wasn’t strong enough to choose for myself.
The next beat hits, and I bring my heel down hard enough to feel it in my bones. Every movement sharpens as my anger andresentment build; precision replaces softness. Control replaces hurt. I pour everything I can’t say into the song and let the music carry the weight.
Each lyric lands with intention, and each breath burns clean.
The crowd eats it up, oblivious to what they’re taking in.
But I can’t stop seeing him.
He’s enjoying the concert. Fucker. Every time I accidentally look his way, he’s singing with me. I can’t help but take in his face as it subtly changed in the past seven months, but the core of him is unmistakable. The same man who once held my heart like he knew how easily it could break.
And broke it anyway.
He has no idea.
No idea that the woman commanding this stage, wrapped in smoke and light and noise, is the same one who kissed him in the dark. Who traced his jaw with shaking fingers, and made promises shemeant.
The spotlight cuts across the pit again, and I force my face toward the heavens, letting the emotion read as devotion instead of devastation. The crowd screams, thinking my tears are theirs and that this moment belongs to them.
They have no idea I’m bleeding under the glitter.
When the lights drop for the transition, I turn my back to him.
The next cue hits—floodlights blaze white, then ignite into molten gold.
And whatever softness I had left?
The tiny, stupid, traitorous hope I hadn’t been able to kill?
It incinerates.
Once I reach the final song, a new energy takes over—a battle cry, our signature anthem—and I lean into the mic like I’m baring my teeth.
Let him watch; he’s never coming to another concert.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
The flames explode behind me, heat licking my skin as the chorus erupts. My body moves on instinct, the months of training, discipline, and building Ara from my own bones.
By the time I hit the final note, there is nothing left of me but raw nerve and shaking breath. As soon as we drop through the trap doors in the stage, the roar of the crowd filters through above me.
They’re losing their minds. I can feel the stomp of their feet shake the ground under me; they’re screaming our names.
I should feel powerful, invincible; instead, I feel like I’m standing on a fault line seconds before it breaks. I stumble through the walkway under the stage, breath still ragged, body slick with sweat.
My hands are shaking so badly I nearly drop my in-ears. The noise behind me is deafening, an ocean of people who think I just gave them the best performance of my life.
Maybe I did, but it doesn’t matter.
