Chapter 27 Celeste #2
“Orion—stop,” Lucian snaps, and the sound of it slices straight through the cab. “You need to stay calm and listen; this whole situation is FUBAR’d.”
His words and the shift in his voice are enough to make Orion go silent. Lucian’s knuckles go white against the wheel.
“What happened?” Orion asks, and this time the chaos is gone. He sounds like he’s rushing around, there’s rustling like he’s packing a bag, and halfway out the door.
Lucian lays out the entire situation. Starting with the ad, then Alex, ending with the possibility that James isn’t involved.
I stare out the window, watching the world smear into streaks of green and gray, but all I can see is Alex’s face, that awful smirk, the way his fingers dug into my arm like he had a right to me.
Then, the look of horror once he realized what he had done.
Orion doesn’t say a word. The silence stretches so long I start to think the call dropped.
“Where are you now?” Orion’s voice is furious, then it softens. “Silly… are you okay?”
Lucian gives me a gentle look, telling me to answer first.
“No,” I say, and my voice sounds thin, scraped raw. “But I will be. It could’ve been worse.”
Lucian lets out a sound that’s half growl, half disbelief. “I’m driving her back to the rig. Rowan’s still at the park dealing with the police. She’s not hurt, but she is angry. No matter what, we need to take this seriously.”
“You said you think it’s connected to the vandalism.”
“Yes,” Lucian says. “We all do. It feels personal. But this—” he glances at me, jaw tight, “this feels like the violence is directed at Celeste, not Korbyn or Ara. Whoever’s behind this is clearly escalating. They used pictures from Celeste’s private social media.”
“Lucy, gimme a second, Ro’s calling.”
When Orion comes back on the line, his voice is clipped. “He just finished up with the police. They flagged multiple Craigslist ads from KC, and the rest of the tour stops in the cities the tour will be passing through. Police are opening a formal investigation. I merged Ro in on this call.”
My chest is a band of pressure, too tight to take a full breath without it hurting, and the rage that’s been humming under my skin all afternoon is still there, but fear keeps slipping in at the edges, a slick, cold thing that makes my limbs go light and my mouth taste metallic.
I can feel both of them at once: the animal heat that wants to hunt and the small, brittle part of me that wants to curl up and disappear.
“So what are we doing?” I ask, feeling like I’m trying to anchor myself with a question that demands an answer.
Rowan answers first. “The tour’s off, Celeste.” The sentence hits harder than Alex’s hands did. It’s not a postponement or a reschedule; it’s a full stop. The achievements I’ve been building toward for years go quiet in a way that feels like a loss before I’ve had time to grieve.
“No,” I say, because I need to know if there’s a way to keep moving, some compromise that lets me keep being what I am without handing myself over to fear. “We have put too much into this tour. I’ll be careful, I swear I won’t leave Lucian’s side. Can we not indefinitely postpone it?”
Orion’s answer is flat and final. “No. It is off the table until we can find the person behind this. Rowan, can you have a statement drafted and have it go out by this afternoon? Umbra’s world tour is canceled.”
“I’ve already spoken with the label about what happened today. We’ll frame it as an attempted abduction and let them know Ara is safe but shaken, and the band’s safety has been compromised, but we are actively investigating the threat. The plan is designed to stop the mob and the rumor mill.”
“Don’t make me sound fragile,” the words come out sharper than I expect. I am not fragile, and I’m not something to be wrapped in cotton and hidden away.
Rowan’s voice is firm on the other end. “You won’t. But we can’t be honest either. If Umbra’s fans find out someone tried to assault you, they’ll burn the whole internet down trying to figure out who. And if they get the wrong name—” He lets the sentence hang.
“They’ll ruin someone’s life,” I finish for him, because I know how this works.
Or worse, they’ll ruin the Alex, and I’ll carry that.
The thought tastes like iron in my mouth.
I can feel the edges of panic and fury sharpening at the same time: panic that the wrong person will be dragged into this, fury that anyone would think they have the right to map my life and use it against me.
Orion’s voice comes back. “Framing it as an attempted abduction is genius, that lets people know how serious it was, and we’re technically not lying. This gives us narrative control without inviting a witch hunt.”
I shake my head, but I don’t argue. I let them plan and spin while the rage and the fear trade places inside me, each one claiming the space the other leaves. I will not be made small.
“We go dark,” Rowan says, and the words land in my chest with the weight of a verdict. “We buy time to find whoever the fuck is doing this. And we keep you breathing long enough to get you back on that stage when you’re ready—not when we want you to be.”
The call is disconnected shortly after, and we pull into the lot. The drive back seemed to take hours, but it couldn’t’ve been more than six minutes.
The sun beats down on the gravel, making the air above it shimmer; it smells like hot metal and dust and the faint sweetness of cut grass. The rig sits in front of us, there’s movement behind the open curtains, and I see Linkin’s face through the window.
“What are they doing here?” I ask, quieter than I mean to.
He kills the engine, and the SUV goes suddenly, blessedly still.
The click of the cooling motor sounds enormous in the hush.
“Rowan texted them after he got the call,” Lucian says, thumb brushing across my knuckles.
“Alex didn’t tell us much, so Rowan just told them to wait in your rig.
You can tell them as much or as little as you want. I will handle the rest.”
I don’t answer. I’m watching the rig like it’s a living thing, like it might decide to close its doors and drive away without me.
I feel like I’m at a crossroads, before and after the attack.
“If you want, you can go shower,” Lucian adds, softer.
“I can talk to them. When you come out, they’ll already know. ”
I nod, the motion small and stubborn. He makes me wait in my seat as he walks around to the passenger side door. Lucian helps me down even though I don’t need it, and I let him because the contact steadies me. Our fingers stay laced as we walk toward the rig, the gravel crunching under our feet.
We barely reach the steps before the door flies open. Linkin stands there barefoot, hair a mess like he has been running his fingers through it since they got the text. He takes in my dirty and slightly torn clothes and the scrapes along my body, and his face goes pale.
“C’mere ‘Leste,” he says, voice low.
I step into him without thinking, and he wraps me in his arms as his chin rests on the crown of my head.
Lucian follows and shuts the door behind us, the sound a soft, decisive click that separates the inside from the outside.
Korbyn sits cross-legged on the floor, chewing her thumbnail so hard the skin is white.
Shiloh leans against the fridge with her arms crossed, watching me like I’m a fuse and she’s waiting for the spark.
I give Lucian a look that says I’ll be quick, and head down the hall toward the bathroom.
Linkin’s voice is tight when he asks, “What the hell happened?”