The first verse comes out shaky, rusty from disuse. But by the chorus, something shifts. The tightness in my chest loosens. The words stop being words and become something else—prayer, confession, release. I’m not singing for forty thousand strangers. I’m not performing for cameras or critics or fans who might turnon me tomorrow. I’m singing for a man on a couch who showed up at my door by accident and stayed on purpose.
I’m singing for myself.Testing my vocal range, dancing through the octaves, leaping up to hit the high notes, and letting the low baritones settle deep in my chest.
I turn around to see the city glitter below me, eight million lives humming along in the darkness. The stars burn above, faint but persistent through the light pollution. And I pour everything into this song—the grief, the anger, the loneliness, the desperate hope that somewhere inside me is still a person worth knowing.
By the time I reach the final hallelujah, I’m shaking. Tears are streaming down my face again, but these feel different. Cleaner somehow. Hopeful release.
I let the last note fade into the night air. The silence that follows is terrifying. I turn back around, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid to see boredom, or pity, or worse—nothing at all.
“Charlie,” he says like a command, and I look.
Taio is staring at me like I just cracked open the sky.
His lips are parted. His eyes are bright. He looks…undone. Swept away. Like he’s seeing me—really seeing me—for the first time.
No one has ever looked at me like that. Not once in my entire life. I haven’t wanted them to. It felt like too much pressure.
“I was pitchy on the first verse?—”
“Stop,” he says. “Voice of a fucking angel. Don’t you ever doubt it. Sing it again? Please?”
“Again?” My voice comes out hoarse.
He smiles, slow and warm, and something in my chest blooms. “I could listen to you sing all night.”
So I do.
I sing “Hallelujah” again, because I’m not ready to let go of this feeling yet. And this time, as the melody wraps around me,something new starts to emerge. Fragments. Phrases. The ghost of a song I’ve never heard before.
Paper hearts and frozen time…
This stranger made his secrets mine…
The lyrics surface from somewhere deep, unbidden, unexpected—like artifacts washing up on a shore I didn’t know existed within me. They come complete: melody, harmony, bridge, and all. I file them away while my mouth continues forming the familiar words of “Hallelujah,” but my mind is already spinning in a new direction, chasing this sudden gift, this fragile thread of creation that appeared the moment I stopped performing for them and started simply singing for him. It feels like waking up after years of sleepwalking through my own career.
Taio is inspiring me. Just by being here. Just by listening. Just by looking at me like I’m worth his time even without a return on investment.
I finish the song, and the silence that follows feels sacred somehow. Like we’ve built this fragile, beautiful thing between us, and any sudden movement might shatter it.
I set down the microphone. Walk toward him on unsteady legs.
Taio stands, meeting me halfway. And then his arms are around me, pulling me into a hug I didn’t know I desperately needed. I melt into it, the way ice cream dissolves on a hot summer day, all the sharp edges softening. The warmth of his chest radiates through my thin shirt, a furnace against the night’s chill. The steady thump of his heartbeat against my cheek becomes a metronome, more reliable than any backing track I’ve ever sung to. His chin rests lightly on the top of my head, and I feel sheltered, like a small bird tucked beneath protective wings. How long has it been since I’ve been held like this? Not thequick, perfunctory embraces from publicists or the calculated hugs for photo ops, but likethis—this genuine connection of two bodies finding comfort in each other’s presence.
I understand now. It’s obvious I’m not having sex with Taio tonight. It’s why he hasn’t brought up the money. Like a tortured hero, it seems he’s trying to save me from myself. But we did take a massive step forward. Because this hug? It’s bigger than sex.
It’s intimacy.
We stand there near the balcony ledge, wrapped up in each other, the city sprawled beneath us like a blanket of stars. I close my eyes and breathe him in and think about paper hearts and frozen time and the beginning of a song I can’t name yet. I’m not ready. I just want to stay here, wrapped in his arms.
And then I see it.
A flash of light, bright and brief, from somewhere in the darkness beyond the patio.
Then another.
My body goes rigid. Taio feels the change immediately.
“What?”
