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’s instinct, 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.
“That felt unreal,” she gasps against my neck. “Taio, your advice. It was everything—”
And then she kisses me.
Her mouth crashes against mine with such force our teeth nearly collide.
It’s graceless and desperate, and exactly the way we need to be kissing.
She tastes like salt and adrenaline and something forbidden I’ve been starving for.
Her hands don’t just fist in my hair—they pull, sending sparks of electricity down my spine that pool hot and urgent in my groin.
When her mouth opens, her tongue slides against mine with deliberate, devastating intent.
There’s no hesitance, no hint at the fact that Charlie’s inexperienced.
She’s kissing me like it’s the only thought in her head from sunup to sundown.
I kiss her back like a man equally possessed.
My hands grip her ass hard enough to bruise it, lifting her higher against me as I press her into the wall.
The heat of her body burns through her sweat-soaked costume, and when my thumb grazes the sliver of bare skin at her lower back, she arches against me with a gasp that turns into a moan so raw it makes my blood roar.
I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my chest, or maybe it’s mine, thundering out of control as her legs tighten around my waist.
Our gasps and rustling clothes bounce off the bare walls, transforming this stolen moment into something that sounds obscenely public in the empty corridor.
This isn’t just crossing a line. This is obliterating it completely.
This is real, and it’s dangerous, and God help me, I’m no longer in control.
Her tongue slides against mine and I go weak.
My will is completely, utterly useless. I press her harder against the wall, securing her so my hands are free to explore.
One hand bracing beside her head, the other cupping the curve of her ass through her tights.
My senses are on overload, it’s all warmth and sugar, and pressure in the best way.
Her hips are locked into mine, she has to feel my growing erection.
She doesn’t shy away. Instead her fingers are tugging at my hair, and the way she keeps making these tiny desperate sounds—
Voices.
Distant, but approaching. Footsteps echoing down the corridor.
Reality crashes back like a bucket of ice water.
I pull away. Set Charlie on her feet. Step backward so fast I nearly trip over my own legs.
She blinks at me, dazed, lips swollen, chest heaving. For a moment she just stares, like maybe I got hurt or caught on fire. But then I watch understanding dawn, followed immediately by disappointment.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice is raw, wrecked from singing and kissing and God knows what else.
“I heard someone coming. I don’t want to get caught.”
The words land wrong. I know it the second they leave my mouth. Her face shutters, that vulnerability hardening into something defensive.
“Get caught,” she repeats flatly. “Like I’m something to be ashamed of—”
“That’s not what I—”
“There’s nothing wrong with me liking you, Taio.” She steps toward me, closing the distance I just created. Her hand lands on my chest, right over my heart, and I know she can feel it hammering. “We’re just two people. That’s it. That’s all this has to be.”
“Charlie—”
“Don’t.” Her eyes flash. “Don’t you dare stand there and pretend there’s nothing between us. I felt it. You felt it. I don’t easily connect to men, Taio. So sorry if I’m coming on too strong. If you don’t feel the same, I’ll—”
“I’m not saying I don’t feel…the same,” I manage. “I’m saying it’s complicated.”
“So uncomplicate it.”
“Charlie, your celebrity status and public boyfriend are just the massive cherry on top of that already impossibility that is us. Have you forgotten who I am and what I actually do?”
She’s not backing down. If anything, she’s getting closer, her hand still pressed to my chest, her eyes demanding answers I don’t have. “I don’t care, Taio. You’re not some dirty little secret to me. You make me feel…good. So what’s the problem?”
The problem. Where do I even start?
“The problem,” I say slowly, “is that the only reason I’m here is to cover up a lie. Your lie about Grayson. My lie about being your bodyguard. Lie upon lie upon lie. Who wants that?” I shake my head. “That’s not how happily-ever-afters begin, Charlie.”
The fire in her eyes dims. I watch her shoulders drop, her defensive posture crumbling into something smaller. Sadder.
“Don’t I know it,” she whispers.
And I understand, with sudden awful clarity, that she’s not just talking about us. She’s thinking about her mom and eighteen years of believing in a story that turned out to be fiction.
Lies upon lies.
Her whole life has been built on them.
“Charlie.” I reach for her, guilt clawing at my chest. “I didn’t mean—”
But the corridor door bangs open, and Sage and Marcus come barreling through like a two-person hurricane.
“Charlie!” Sage’s yell echoes off the industrial walls.
She’s practically running, tablet abandoned somewhere, her carefully composed expression completely shattered.
“Charlie, oh my God, actual tears. I had actual tears running down my face. I was standing there sobbing like a baby. I couldn’t—when you started singing, I just—”
She reaches Charlie and pulls her into a fierce hug, squeezing like she’s trying to physically transfer pride through osmosis. Over Sage’s shoulder, I see Charlie’s face—confused, guarded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Marcus hangs back for a moment, and when Sage finally releases her grip, he steps forward. His expression is strange. Soft in a way I haven’t seen from him before.
“Charlie.” He takes her by the arms, gentle but firm. “I’m an idiot.”
She blinks. “What?”
“I’m an idiot,” he repeats. “I was wrong. I was so focused on protecting the investment that I forgot what I should’ve actually been protecting.
” He shakes his head. “When it comes to following my dumb business advice or following your heart? Always trust your heart. Always. I should have trusted it from the beginning.”
Charlie looks like she doesn’t know what to do with this information. Like she’s been bracing for a fight and instead walked into a surrender.
“Marcus—”
“No, let me finish.” His grip tightens on her arms. “From here on out, we’re building your vision.
Not the other way around. You want to sit at a piano and sing covers for twenty minutes?
We’ll restructure the whole show. You want to write new music that sounds nothing like the old stuff?
We’ll figure out how to market it. It’s time for you to take back what’s yours.
Your voice. Your career. Your life.” He pauses.
“I’m sorry it took me this long to see it. ”
Charlie’s lip trembles. For a moment I think she might cry again but instead she throws her arms around Marcus, hugging him with the kind of desperate gratitude that makes my chest ache.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
Marcus hugs her back, one hand patting her shoulder awkwardly. Sage is beaming, already tapping at her phone, probably drafting press releases about Charlie’s triumphant return.
It’s a victory. A real one. The kind of moment that changes trajectories.
But over Marcus’s shoulder, Charlie’s eyes find mine.
She doesn’t look triumphant.
She looks broken.
A single tear slides down her cheek—silent, almost invisible in the harsh fluorescent light. She doesn’t wipe it away. She just holds my gaze while Marcus murmurs reassurances into her hair, and I watch that tear trace a path down her face like an accusation.
You did this, her eyes say. You kissed me like you wanted me and then you pulled away. You told me our foundation was cracked with lies. You reminded me that nothing in my life is solid. That I will always be a girl caged by others’ criticisms and expectations.
My feet ache to move toward her, to brush away that tear with my thumb, to whisper something comforting against her ear.
I want to be honest that when she’s close, everything else falls away and I feel something I thought I’d forgotten how to feel.
And when we kissed, I was reminded what it was to ache for someone.
But I don’t. I remain rooted in place.
I’m just the hired muscle. The human shield collecting six figures to blend into the wallpaper and never, ever touch the merchandise.
Seems I’ve failed spectacularly at the one job I was actually supposed to do.
Charlie finally looks away, burying her face in Marcus’s shoulder, and I stand there in that bland corridor feeling the weight of every bad decision I’ve ever made pressing down on my chest.
I watch silently as our first kiss dissolves into a distant memory far too fast. Like it didn’t even happen.