But somehow, something about him…
All I know is I want him to stay.
chapter 12
Taio
I watch Charlie play the final note from the wings, my chest so tight I’m not sure I’m breathing.
The arena is silent for one impossible moment—tens of thousands of people holding their breath in the dark—and then the moment Charlie lifts her hands from the keys, the crowd’s response crashes over me like a tsunami. The roar vibrates through the floorboards and up into my bones. Their screams pierce my eardrums from every direction at once. Wave after wave of thunderous applause and foot-stomping that makes the metal scaffolding around me tremble. The kind of deafening, all-consuming noise that jumbles your brain and rewrites reality, leaving nothing but goose bumps and adrenaline.
And Charlie just sits there at the piano, tears streaming down her face, looking like someone who just discovered fire.Her fire.
It’s been there all along, dormant, waiting. She just had to light that match. To claim a little piece of her life for herself.
She glances my way and I don’t know what to do except slam my fist against my chest twice, then thrust it skyward. It’sinstinct, the kind of gesture that bypasses language entirely.I see you. I’m proud of you. You fucking did it.
She holds my eyes across the chaos, and what passes between us—I don’t have words for.
Then the lights shift, the stage crew swarms, and reality reasserts itself. I’m pulled backward by a meaty hand on my shoulder.
“Sir, we need to move you to the secure corridor.”
The arena’s security team—actual professionals in actual uniforms with actual earpieces—surrounds me like I’m a package that needs delivering. They’re efficient, coordinated, operating from a playbook that involves hand signals, code words, and years of training.
I’m a guy in a black T-shirt and worn shoes who follows Charlie around like a lost puppy.
The contrast is not lost on me.
“We’ll escort Ms. Riley to you once she’s cleared the stage,” the lead guard explains as they usher me through the maze of backstage. “Private hallway, no public access. You take over from there until vehicles are ready.”
Take over. Like I’m part of some security relay race, except everyone else is an Olympic athlete and I’m a guy who showed up in ten-year-old sneakers.
They deposit me in a corridor that looks like it’s been triple-coated in epoxy. Shiny tile floors, clean, white walls, not a shred of decoration except a sad-looking analog clock mounted on the wall, displaying the wrong time. There’s a fire exit at one end, a heavy door at the other. No windows. No cameras that I can see.
No witnesses.
The guards vanish toward the stage, leaving me alone with nothing but the distant thunder of the crowd vibrating through concrete. I press my hand against my chest where my heart hammers like it’s trying to escape. My shirt sticks to my back.The corridor suddenly feels too small, too empty, like the calm before some inevitable storm.
Like I might actually combust if I don’t see her in the next thirty seconds.
Like suddenly infatuation has turned to unwelcome possessiveness, because I’ll admit, I don’t like it when she’s farther than arm’s reach from me.
The heavy door swings open on the opposite side of the hallway.
And there she is.
Sweat-drenched, hair a frizzy halo around her face, chest heaving like she just ran a marathon. Her stage makeup is smeared. Her bedazzled boots are in her hands as she walks barefoot into the hall. She looks wrecked. Unpolished. Completely undone.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Our eyes lock. I watch the recognition hit her—me, here, alone, waiting… Her expression shifts. Something wild and reckless and beyond reason moves in.
She runs.
Full sprint, heels abandoned against the tile, stocking-covered feet slapping so hard against the floor it sounds painful. And before I can think, before I can prepare, before I can do anything remotely sensible, she launches herself at me.
I catch her. Of course I catch her. My arms wrap around her automatically, hauling her up against my chest as her legs lock around my waist. She’s breathing hard, laughing and crying at the same time, and she smells like sweat and hairspray and something underneath that’s just sweetly…her.
