“So, then why audition in the first place… if you’d been warned?” I asked. It was not an accusation but a real and valid question. I wanted to know why a man as talented as Quinn had apparently set himself up to fail.
“Because I have the listening skills of a scurrying rodent.”
I chuckled. He didn’t.
Okay, then.
“I don’t know.” Quinn sighed in clear frustration. “I think I just let the promise of fame cloud my better judgment.”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
“No. But I might be the most pathetic. I almost sold my soul to the devil.”
“But you didn’t.”
He paused a moment before admitting, “But I wanted to.”
I caught his eye and corrected him. “But you didn’t.”
Quinn stared long and hard with an expression I couldn’t read before leaning his head back on the seat and closing his eyes. “No, thank god. I didn’t.”
A breath caught in my throat. His regret was real, and the vulnerability he displayed damn near blew me away. It was rare indeed for a man to open himself up for all to see. I felt nothing but empathy for this lost soul who’d chosen honesty over lies. Behind his perfect façade, Quinn was lost and searching, just like the rest of us.
“Why is fame so important to you, anyway?” I asked.
He turned his head, opening one eye. “Why does anyone want to be famous?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to be famous.”
Everybody had starlit dreams of some sort, of course, but only the very lucky ever got to live them.
He narrowed in on me. “So, you’re saying if someone came up and offered you fame and fortune, you’d say no?”
“I mean, maybe if I had your talent, I’d go for it. But I wouldn’t want to be famous just for the sake of being famous.”
“I don’t want that either. I just want…”
I waited for the rest of his sentence, but in the end, I had to coax it out of him. “What do you want, Quinn?”
His reply was slow to come, but when it did, his sincerity nearly broke me. “To be seen.”
Silence fell over the two of us. This guy… damn. Something in the way he said those three little words tore at my heartstrings. If a man with all his talent and beauty felt invisible in this world, what hope was there for the rest of us?
“By who?”
“By…” Quinn hesitated. “By everyone, but mostly by the hero of my story.”
“Wait—you’re not the hero of your own story?”
Quinn replied with nothing more than a tempered laugh. So the story of his life was being narrated by someone else. But who was this hero to Quinn? His father? A sibling? Whoever it was had cast a shadow so wide that my runaway rock star couldn’t seem to find his way out from under the cover.
“Explain to me how you’re not the star of your own show,” I asked.
“How much time do you have?”
“Depends on how much cash you have in your pocket.”
“Not nearly enough.” He chuckled.
