Page 32

“Mara! My favorite fashionista! Love, Echo,” Sienna sings as she signs the poster.

The mother snaps three quick shots of Sienna and Mara cheek to cheek with the jacket between them. Mara is shrieking before the shutter even goes off. The mother folds her daughter into her side and thanks Echo repeatedly as they shuffle off toward the exit.

Sienna laughs after them, settles back onto the stool, lays the leather jacket carefully across her lap, and looks up.

Her eyes find mine in the crowd like I yanked her on a string.

I shift my weight from one foot to the other. My pulse is in my throat.

Four years since I’ve been in the same room as Sienna Rhodes, and she is looking at me like she did at sixteen across my mother’s kitchen with flour on her cheek.

The next girl steps up, and the routine starts again. Sienna does the cupped face. The signed poster. The lean over the desk on her toes. The autographed hug. Every few seconds her eyes flick up over the shoulder of whoever is in front of her and land back on me, like she is making sure I haven’t moved.

Time picks up and starts running. Five bodies. Four. The mother and the twelve-year-old in front of me get their photo and shuffle off, and then there is only one person between me and the table, and then there are none.

Sienna’s eyes catch on a woman with a slicked-back bun and an all-black suit standing against the wall, clipboard tucked under one arm. She leans up and whispers something fast in her ear. The woman nods.

Sienna slides off the stool and launches herself at me, up onto her toes, both arms tight around my neck, her face buried hard in the side of my throat.

“Birdie,” I murmur into her wig, wrapping my arms around her waist.

It’s the first time in four years that I’ve had her against me, and those years collapse in on themselves like they never happened. Every five-minute FaceTime, every missed birthday, every Christmas Eve I got a handwritten letter instead of her. None of it matters anymore. None of it was close to this.

I forget how small she has always been, how easy it is to lift her off her feet without trying. She is shaking a little as I lift her higher, a squeal leaving her lips.

“I can’t believe you’re here right now,” she gasps into the curve of my neck.

She is so cute it almost hurts. The crop-top riding up against my forearm. The little gold stars on the front of it pressing into the cotton of my shirt. She doesn’t feel different at all, fitting into me perfectly all over again.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” she whispers, low and breathless.

“I told you I wanted to see you,” I murmur into her hair, my hand spreading flat between her shoulder blades.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d come.” She sniffs as I slowly lower her back onto her feet.

I pull away, my thumb wiping the tears falling down her face.

“Are you staying for the show?” she breathes, her hands sliding down to the front of my shirt and fisting in it. “Do you have a backstage pass? You can wait until after the show, right?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” I chuckle, smoothing out her shirt from where it bunched up while she was hugging me. “I am wherever you want me to be, Birdie.”

She blinks up at me like I am the only person in the room, hazel eyes blown wide under the false lashes, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

“Echo,” the woman with the bun hisses.

Sienna flinches, looking behind me at the line of at least twenty-five more people.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Okay. Wait, here.” She turns her head, still holding the front of my shirt with one hand, and waves the woman in the black suit over with the other. “Nicki.”

Nicki crosses the room. Up close, she is younger than I clocked at a distance, mid-thirties, hair pulled back so tight her face looks surprised by it. The blazer is sharp at the shoulders and the heels are taller than they need to be. The smile she has on for me is the kind that has been rehearsed in a mirror, and the second it lands on me a low hum starts up the back of my neck that I don’t enjoy.

“Nicki,” Sienna says, her hand still flat on my chest. “This is Grayson. This is the Grayson. I need you to take him back to my dressing room. Make sure he is completely taken care of.”

“Of course,” Nicki agrees, extending a hand to me, the corner of her mouth lifting. “I’ll take extra-good care of the Grayson Douglas.”

Sienna squeezes the front of my shirt one more time.

“I have to finish up here, and soundcheck, but then I’ll have like twenty minutes,” she whispers, going up on her toes and pressing a quick kiss to the corner of my mouth without looking at me. “And then the two-hour show, but…”