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“I’m not going anywhere,” I murmur. “I’m here to watch you do your thing.”

“Watch me?” she purrs.

“Always,” I murmur, my voice dropping lower than I want it to in front of Sienna’s manager.

And just like that, my body decides four years of celibate self-discipline has been more than enough. The blood drops south of my belt in a single fucking second. The only saving grace is that my jeans are loose enough no one can see my hard-on without looking too hard.

Sienna’s eyes drop. Her gaze catches on the tent forming in my pants and stays there for half a beat too long, and she drags her bottom lip in between her teeth.

“Echo,” Nicki snaps, her clipboard tapping against her hip. “We need to move the line.”

Sienna jerks her chin up. The Echo smile snaps back into place like a switch flipped.

“Right.” She nods once. “Gray. Go with Nicki, okay? I’ll be there after mic check. Promise.”

“Alright, Birdie,” I murmur.

“You mean Echo,” she corrects, stepping back, the heat of her leaving the front of my body in one cold rush.

She crosses to the stool and slides back onto it, and the next girl steps up, and Sienna’s whole face splits open for her like the last sixty seconds didn’t happen at all. A security guard guides me away from Echo to where Nicki is waiting with a plastic smile. She gestures down the corridor.

“Mr. Douglas. Right this way.”

I follow. Past two more security guys, down a corridor lined with rolling cases and headsets, and the second the meet-and-greet door closes behind us, the temperature of the air around her drops about ten degrees.

“It is sweet that you came down tonight, Mr. Douglas,” she begins, the smile painted on but the eyes gone flat. “Echo loves seeing familiar faces. But I will tell you what I tell everybody from her old life, just so we are on the same page.”

There it is. The careful and patient voice my father uses on a vendor he is about to fire and dressing it up as a friend. Nicki is telling me my place.

“And what is that?” I ask, my jaw tightening.

“Echo is no longer a small-town girl,” she answers smoothly. “She has a very full life now, Mr. Douglas. A very demanding one. We protect that life carefully, we manage the people around her carefully, and I trust the people who knew her before to understand that.”

I almost laugh.

She is going to have to get used to me. I came to Boston to tell Sienna I’m in love with her, and that I’m done sharing her with the rest of the planet five minutes at a time, and that whatever this looks like after tonight, the woman with the clipboard is not going to be the one deciding it.

“Trust away, ma’am,” I clip, my hands going into my pockets, the tips of my fingers messing with the velvet box in the right one.

Her smile pulls a quarter-inch tighter.

She stops at a door with a gold star painted on it. “Here we are,” she announces, pushing the door open. “Make yourself comfortable. There’s water in the fridge. Please don’t touch the champagne. Echo will be by when she can.”

“Thank you, Nicki.” I step past her and into the room.

“Of course,” she answers, the smile not reaching her eyes. The door closes behind me.

The dressing room is bigger than I expected. A long white vanity with the lights cranked, six wig heads above it, false lashes on a tray, a half-drunk green juice sweating onto a coaster. A black couch under a framed gold record. A small fridge with a bottle of champagne on the second shelf. On the corner of the vanity, a framed photo of me and Iris on Mary’s porch the Christmas Sienna was twenty. The last one she made it home for. She took the picture.

I run my fingertips along the corner of the frame and sit down. The velvet box is heavy in my right pocket.

It isn’t a ring for marrying. Not yet. I had it made almost three years ago when she didn’t come home for Easter, a small promise ring with a single stone the color of her eyes when she laughs at me. I plan to give it to her tonight when I ask her to be my girl in the open. No more five minutes a week. No more handwritten letters at Christmas. No more flying into Bangor on a redeye under the name Mary Walsh. Mine. Out loud. In front of the world if she wants it.

I’ve been in love with her since I was sixteen. Iris’s freshman homecoming.

She came down the stairs in a deep-purple dress and lace-up sandal heels with the ribbons wrapped around her ankles, her curls pinned half-up, a smear of gloss on her bottom lip, the same golden hazel eyes under a smoky eye. She didn’t see me until she hit the landing. She turned to look at Iris over her shoulder, and the line of her throat caught the hallway light, and something in the bottom of my chest came loose and rolled.

I didn’t know what it was. I had a girlfriend in my chemistry class whose name I couldn’t remember today if you put a gun to my head. I didn’t know I was looking at love. I only knew I couldn’t stop finding her for the rest of that night. My eyes kept ending up on her in the rearview mirror without my permission. My ear kept catching her laugh under Iris’s louder one. My whole body kept turning toward her like a compass needle every time she shifted in the seat.