“I was thinking you deserve to have fun up there. And if dancing isn’t fun for you, then maybe don’t dance. For one song. Let yourself perform like you did for me on that balcony. You looked so alive and happy.”
I turn this over in my mind. It’s not a bad idea. The show is tightly choreographed, every moment planned down to the second, but isn’t it stillmine? I can make a change. Isn’t it time I start running my own damn show?
“Go rogue,” I repeat. “I like it.”
“Just don’t tell Sage I suggested it. She already thinks I’m a corrupting influence.”
“Aren’t you?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he moves toward the massive stainless-steel refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of some green smoothie concoction that looks like a liquified lawn.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” he says, heading for the door to the guesthouse. “Maybe try to wash off the shame of the last fifteen minutes.”
“Is that an invitation?”
He stops. Turns. Looks at me with an expression that’s half exasperation, half something else. Something warmer like intrigue.
“Behave, Charlie.”
“Why?”
I’m pushing. I know that. But I want to hear him say it. I want him to admit there’s something here—this electricity between us, this pull that I feel every time we’re in the same room.
But Taio doesn’t cave. He just shakes his head, that guarded expression firmly back in place. “Let it go. You have a busy day ahead.”
I pucker my bottom lip. “Can’t resist me forever, Taio. I’m a solid seven! You don’t turn down sevens with a bubbly personality.”
“Text me the moment you need anything today.” And then he’s gone, the door closing softly behind him.
I sit in the empty kitchen for a moment, surrounded by marble and steel and the phantom beat of “Rodeo (Remix)” still playing through my mind.
The door opens again. Taio’s head appears.
He holds up both hands, all ten fingers spread wide. “And for the record, you’re a goddamn ten.”
Then he’s gone again.
I touch my face, feeling the heat in my cheeks, the smile I can’t suppress.
A ten. He thinks I’m a ten.
And he still walked away. Which means he’s either the most disciplined man on the planet, or he’s fighting this much harder than I am.
Either way, I’m screwed.
But maybe—just maybe—so is he.
chapter 11
Charlie
The paper heart sits in my palm like a tiny origami grenade.
I’m sitting in front of a three-panel mirror, in my dressing room at the FTX Arena, surrounded by enough hairspray fumes to piss off environmental activists. I’m wearing a bedazzled leotard and it’s clear the designer gave zero fucks about comfort. My hair has been teased, sprayed, and shellacked into submission. It might look nice but it’s crunchy to the touch. My makeup could survive a nuclear blast. I am, by all external metrics, ready to perform.
Inside, however, I’m unraveling.
I unfold the paper heart carefully, the creases soft from years of handling. My mother’s handwriting stares back at me—loopy and feminine, the kind of penmanship they don’t teach anymore.
