"Great show!" Diane Martinez, his manager, was already at his elbow with a bottle of water and her phone glowing with notifications. "Radio wants you for a morning interview, and we've got three more venue offers for the fall—"
"Diane." Cody's voice came out flat. "He was here again."
Her expression shifted from business to concern in half a second. "The same one?"
"Third row. I'm sure of it."
Diane's jaw tightened. She turned to Marcus, Cody's assistant, who was hovering nearby with a towel. "Get hotel security on alert. And call Detective Morrison. Again."
Two hours later, Cody sat in his hotel suite while he listened to a bored-sounding detective—Morrison had instructed his partner to call instead of doing so himself—go through everything Cody had just told him.
"So, you saw someone in the audience who… looked familiar?" Detective Chen's tone suggested this was the least concerning thing he'd deal with all week.
"The same person has been at four consecutive shows in different cities." Cody kept his voice level and professional. He'dlearned that sounding emotional made people take him less seriously.
"I've received forty-three letters in the past few months. Graphic letters with descriptions of what this person wants to do to me."
"Do the letters contain explicit threats of violence?"
"They contain explicit descriptions of everything."
"But threats? 'I'm going to hurt you,' that kind of thing?"
Cody exhaled slowly. "Not exactly, no."
“Then what, exactly?”
Cody scrubbed a hand over his face. He was tired of this. Tired of explaining this over and over with nothing being done about it. Tired of people treating him like this was normal, or that he was imagining everything—that the letters were from some overzealous fan who wasn’t really a threat.
“He didn’t threaten me,” Cody said wearily.
"Then I'm afraid there's not much we can do. If you’re worried, perhaps you should increase security at your shows."
“I’ll get right on that,” Cody bit out, unable to hide the sarcasm in his tone.
"If you receive a direct threat, contact us immediately. Until then, you might consider hiring private security. You can certainly afford it."
After Chen hung up, Cody went into the hotel’s bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. Diane was in the suite’s living room, making calls. The silence pressed in on Cody. His shoulders felt heavy with two years of accumulated weight. He would have liked nothing more than to go out to a bar and drink the night away, but he couldn’t do that. He would run the risk of getting mobbed. Plus, with that crazy man out there somewhere, Cody wouldn’t have felt safe.
Fame had promised Cody everything but delivered isolation instead—a life hidden away in hotel suites in a string of citieshe’d never truly experienced despite having visited some of them more than once.
He’d often wondered why he’d had such a burning desire to be famous. He loved writing music and he loved performing, but it was more than that. He figured it might have been because he’d grown up in group homes, and going from one foster family to the next, but never staying anywhere for very long. That childhood had given him a burning desire to be known, and maybe even to be loved and adored, everything he didn’t get growing up.
When he'd come out publicly, two years ago, the response had been split. Some fans had embraced him fully. Others had vanished. Half his radio play had evaporated within weeks. Three sponsorship deals had quietly dried up. The intellectual part of him had anticipated it. His heart hadn't been as prepared for the actual cost.
Still, he'd do it again. Every word of that interview had been true. Every moment of vulnerability had mattered. He couldn’t go back into the closet even if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. He had been tired of living a lie and pretending to be something he wasn’t. He might be making slightly less money now than he’d been making before, but at least he was his authentic self. Besides, he had accumulated enough wealth to last several lifetimes, and he’d never been in it for the money, he simply loved performing. Or he had.
However, his personal relationships had been harder to navigate than the career fallout. A few men he knew in the industry had expressed interest, but only if the relationship could be hidden. They weren’t out and had no intention of ever coming out. Cody didn’t want to live like that so eventually, he had stopped trying to date altogether.
Cody was rarely alone and yet he was always lonely—it had become constant. A stalking presence that followed him throughevery arena, every green room, and every silent hotel suite. And now someone wasactuallystalking him. Someone real. Someone potentially dangerous.
What terrified Cody most, in the small hours of sleepless nights, was how much he'd stopped trusting people. Every kind gesture felt transactional. Every offer of support felt conditional. It felt as if everyone wanted something from him, and no one seemed to care about what he wanted. He’d built walls so high that anyone who tried to climb them eventually gave up.
The sound of Diane’s voice coming from the living room, talking on the phone, cut through Cody’s spiral. He gathered himself, smoothed his expression, and went to meet whatever came next.
Diane ended her call then paced the length of the suite's living room, unable to hide her frustration. "He's not wrong about private security. Not the rent-a-cop kind—real protection"
"I already have security at the shows," Cody pointed out.
