I grab his hand—properly this time, fingers interlaced, the way we hold hands behind closed doors—and I turn us both to face the crowd. The jumbotron shows our clasped hands, zoomed in, undeniable. There’s no spinning this. No PR strategy that could explain it away. This is exactly what it looks like.
Charlie Riley, making a choice. Me, claiming Taio publicly, permanently, in front of the whole world.
The cheers don’t stop. If anything, they intensify. I scan the audience, looking for the anger I was so afraid of, the judgment, the disappointment. But all I see are smiles. Phones held high, capturing this moment. Hands waving, tears flowing, voices screaming their approval.
They’re happy for me.
These strangers who don’t know anything about my life except what they’ve read in headlines—they’rehappyfor me.
I didn’t need this. That’s the thing I understand now, standing here with Taio’s hand in mine and the love of my fans washing over us. I didn’t need their approval to make my choice. I would have chosen him anyway even against the advice ofevery publicist and manager and well-meaning friend. I would have chosen him even if the world hated me for it.
But God, it’s nice to know they don’t.
It’s nice to know that authenticity doesn’t have to mean isolation. That being real doesn’t automatically mean being rejected. That somewhere out there, in the masses of people who have the privilege of living simple lives with beautiful, simple things, are still those who cheer me on through my chaotic, public, messy, complicated…but beautiful life.
And at the end of the day, they’re rooting for joy. Theirs. Mine. We just need more of it, as much as we can get.
My mom would have loved this. She would have cried, probably. Squeezed my hand too hard and told me how much she loved me. Maybe…I was enough. Me and Spencer. Maybe that big, magical love I thought she missed was there all along. Through her daughters, who keep her memory alive every day.
I hope you’re watching, Mom. I love you.
Taio squeezes my hand, pulling me back to the present. The crowd is still cheering, still celebrating, but the energy is shifting—softening into something warmer, more sustained. They’re not just excited anymore. They’re witnessing something. They know it, and we know it.
I lean into Taio’s side, resting my head against his shoulder for just a moment. Tomorrow there will be headlines. Tomorrow there will be think pieces and Twitter discourse and probably a very long conversation with Sage about “re-managing the narrative.” Tomorrow, everything changes.
But tonight, I’m just a girl on a stage, holding the hand of the man she loves, finally free.
“Thank you, Atlanta!” I shout into the microphone, my voice cracking with emotion. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for…” I look at Taio, and he’s lookingback at me with so much love it makes my chest hurt. “Thank you for letting me share the best pieces of me.”
The cheers swell one final time as we walk offstage together. Hand in hand. Out of the spotlight, into the shadows, toward whatever comes next.
I spent my whole life performing. Pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Hiding the messy, complicated truth behind a practiced smile and a perfect image.
But the best performance of my career was the one where I stopped performing altogether.
The one where I just let myself be loved.
epilogue
Charlie
Five Months Later
The pizza is the size of a tire.
I’m barely exaggerating. Taio and I are sitting in a red vinyl booth at Gio’s, a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria three blocks from my Vegas apartment, and the thing taking up most of our table could double as a spare for a midsize SUV. Cheese bubbles in golden pools across the surface. The pepperoni has gone crispy at the edges, curled into little cups of grease. It’s the kind of calorie-dense masterpiece that makes my soul sing hallelujah—a hot, cheesy monstrosity that would make my nutritionist clutch her pearls. I want to propose marriage to this pizza after weeks of chicken breast, quinoa, and kale smoothies during tour rehearsals.
“This is obscene,” Taio says, lifting a slice that immediately begins to droop under its own weight. He has to fold it in half just to get it to his mouth. “I love it.”
“Gio’s doesn’t believe in moderation.”
“Gio’s believes in cardiac events.”
“Same thing.”
I grab my own slice and take a bite that’s probably too big, cheese stretching in long strings from my mouth to the pizza. Very dignified. Very pop star. If the paparazzi could see me now—sauce on my chin, hair in a messy bun, wearing shapeless cream-colored sweats—they’d have a field day.
Taio’s dressed in my favorite color on him—a hunter-green Henley and black pants. He looks handsome and sophisticated. Obviously he missed the memo where we were supposed to be bridge trollstogether.
