Chapter 11 #2
I try to catch his gaze, so he has to look me in the eye when he tells me he doesn’t think I can do this. Instead, Marcus hangs his head. “Essentially, yes.”
“Sage?” I ask, helplessly. “Sage, look at me, please?”
She won’t. Not for a long moment.
Then reluctantly, she turns her head, watching my lips slacken into a heartbroken frown.
“I think,” she answers carefully, “that we should do whatever gives you the best chance of getting through tonight. And if that means having a safety net—”
“A safety net. Right.” I stand abruptly, my shins knocking into the coffee table in front of me. I rub the pain away until it’s a distant memory.
“Charlie—” Marcus starts.
“No, I get it. I really do.” I’m pacing now, my heels clicking against the floor like a metronome counting down to disaster. “I’m a liability. I’m a ticking time bomb. Better to just mute me. Put me on autopilot. Let the machine do its thing while I smile and wave like a trained monkey.”
Sage scoffs heavily. “That’s not what we’re saying—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying.” The words explode out of me louder than I intended. They both flinch. “You’re saying you don’t trust me. You’re saying I can’t be trusted to do the one thing I’ve been doing since I was sixteen years old. The one thing I’m supposedly good at.”
Marcus stands, hands raised like he’s approaching a spooked horse. “We trust you, we do. But we also have a responsibility to protect you—”
“From myself?”
“From the pressure. From the expectations. From the sold-out arena who paid good money to see you at your best.” He pauses. “And from the millions more who are waiting for you to fail so they can tear you apart.”
The fight drains out of me. Because he’s not wrong, is he? They’re all waiting. The hashtags are still trending. #CheaterCharlie. #FakeBarbie. The internet has decided I’m a fraud, and now my own team wants me to prove them right.
“Fine,” I hear myself say. The word tastes like ash. “Whatever it takes. Mute my mic.”
Marcus sits back down, sagging with relief. “Thank you, Charlie. This is the right call. You’ll see. Just go out there tonight and try to have fun.”
I don’t respond. I just turn to stare at my reflection in the mirror—the glittering, perfect, hollow shell of a pop star who’s starting to make lying her coveted brand.
Taio’s words echo in my head: You belong to yourself more than you belong to them.
But right now, I don’t feel like I belong to anyone. Not even myself.
The smoke is thick enough to choke on.
I stand on the platform beneath the stage, waiting for my cue, surrounded by fog and darkness and the muffled roar of the crowd above me. The bass thrums through the floor, vibrating up through my heels, into my bones. Thousands of people are already screaming my name in anticipation.
The jitters are crawling up my spine, making me want to stop, drop, and roll. But I stay frozen, ignoring the pinpricks of nervous energy stabbing me everywhere at once.
The platform begins to rise. Slowly at first, then faster. The smoke parts around me like curtains opening on a show I’m no longer starring in.
Light explodes.
The crowd erupts in cheers.
And a polished Charlie Riley takes the stage like it belongs to her.
The next ninety minutes pass in a blur.
I hit my marks. I move my mouth. I execute the choreography with mechanical precision, my body doing what it’s been trained to do while my mind floats somewhere above it all, watching from a safe distance.
“Summer Nights”—bounce, smile, shimmy, pretend this song about teenage crushes isn’t mortifying to perform at twenty-three.
“Electric Heart”—strobe lights, hair flip, the complicated footwork sequence I’ve practiced but certainly not perfected. My lips move. The recording fills in the rest.
“Dancing in the Dark”—this one has a key change that I always loved hitting live. Now I just watch my pre-recorded voice nail it while I stand here, powerless, voiceless, fake.
The crowd doesn’t know. That’s the worst part. They’re singing along, holding up their phone flashlights, screaming my name like I’m giving them something real. And I’m up here committing fraud, every smile a lie, every gesture a performance of a performance.
Between songs, I do the banter. The mic works for talking, just not for singing. So I tell them I love Miami. I tell them they’re the best crowd on the whole tour. I ask if they’re ready to party, and they roar back at me, and I feel nothing. Nothing at all.
“Midnight Confessions” comes and goes. No vocal runs. No octave showcase. Just me, mouthing words a different version of myself is singing, dancing steps someone else choreographed, being a person someone else invented.
The fish on the dock. The trained monkey. The perfect little pop star in her perfect little box.
By the time we hit the final number—“Unbreakable,” the power ballad that’s supposed to be my triumphant closer—I’m running on fumes. My face hurts from smiling. My feet are screaming in these heels. And deep in my chest, in the place where music used to live, there’s nothing but static.
The last note rings out. The lights go down. The crowd erupts.
I stand in the darkness, breathing hard, waiting for the relief that’s supposed to come when a show ends.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, there’s just emptiness. A show completed. A fraud perpetuated. Another night of being everything everyone else needs me to be.
The crowd is still screaming. Encore, encore! They want more. Of course they do—they always want more. More songs, more spectacle, more pieces of me ready for the snatching.
Usually this is where I wave, blow kisses, and exit stage left while the house lights come up.
But tonight, something snaps.
Maybe it’s the paper hearts that failed me. Maybe it’s the lip sync that stripped away my last shred of authenticity. Maybe it’s the thought of going back to that dressing room and facing Marcus and Sage with their relieved smiles, their “see, that wasn’t so bad” platitudes.
Or maybe it’s Taio’s voice in my head: You belong to yourself more than you belong to them. Give yourself permission to perform for yourself.
I turn and walk toward the grand piano, which is really just a performance prop. My band plays on the keyboard; this piano is purely for aesthetics…until tonight.
The crowd goes quiet. Confused. This isn’t in the script.
I settle onto the bench. The leather is cool against my bare thighs. My fingers find the keys automatically, muscle memory taking over.
“Charlie.” Omar’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Charlie, what are you doing? The show’s over. You did it. Now exit stage left.”
I ignore him.
Instead, I look toward stage right, where the sound director is standing with his headset and his mixing board. I catch his eye and beckon him closer.
He approaches cautiously, like I might bite.
“I need a working mic,” I say.
“A—what?”
“A mic that’s not muted.” I hold out my hand. “Turn it on.”
“I can’t just—Marcus said—”
“Keep your eyes on me.” My voice is steady. Certain. I don’t know where this calm is coming from, but I’m not questioning it. “I’m calling the shots right now. Not Marcus. Not Sage. Me. Turn the mic on.”
He hesitates. The internal battle shows in his eyes—the fear of disobeying Marcus versus the fear of disobeying me, right here, right now, in front of all these witnesses.
“Turn. It. On.”
He clicks a button on his belt. Nods once. “All right. You’re live.”
The moment the mic goes hot, there’s a shift in my chest. My power, my voice, my purpose returning.
I adjust the microphone stand attached to the piano, angling it toward my mouth. Then I turn to face the crowd—all twenty-some thousand of them, phones raised, faces expectant, waiting to see what happens next.
“Hey, Miami.” My voice echoes through the arena—eerie against the sudden dead silence. “I want to end this show with something a little different, if that’s okay with you.”
A scattered cheer. They’re curious now.
“One of my sweetest memories as a little girl was sitting next to my dad, Nate, while he taught me to play the piano.” My fingers drift across the keys, not playing anything yet, just touching.
Remembering. “I was so impatient at first. I didn’t want to play the classics.
I was ready to be the next Hannah Montana, you know?
” There’s a low hum of laughter at the nostalgia.
“But he was so patient with me, teaching me the fundamentals, so when I started to create, I always had something solid to fall back on. I’ve been playing piano for over ten years, but I don’t think I’ve ever played for you guys live. No time like the present, right?”
The arena is dead silent. Waiting.
“I want to sing you one more song tonight. It’s not one of mine—it’s by an artist I really admire.
And the reason I’m singing it is because someone very special to me once told me that I sang it like an angel.
He was probably lying, but it lit me up the way he said it.
It made me believe in myself a little bit more. ”
The crowd murmurs. I can practically hear them thinking: Grayson. She’s talking about Grayson.
But my eyes find the wings, stage right, where a tall figure in all black is standing just out of the spotlight’s reach.
Taio. He’s watching me with that quiet intensity, that same look he had in the dressing room, and even from this distance, I can see the question in his eyes: What the hell are you doing?
I smile. Just for him.
“This one is for someone special,” I say into the mic. “But it’s also for me.”
I play the opening notes.
The song is “Stay” by Rihanna—the same song I was singing the night Taio first knocked. I was alone in that penthouse, having no idea that my life was about to come alive. The hero I didn’t want to need was already on his way.