Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ezra
Fame smells of sweat and smoke and cheap champagne.
And I think, somewhere along the way, I started mistaking that for oxygen.
The new social media push is working, Sloane’s idea, her genius, her spark.
Wild Reverie is everywhere again, every post, every story, every glimpse behind the curtain. People are calling it “raw” and “authentic,” as if they’ve only just discovered we’re human.
Roman’s face is splashed across my feed, smirking, as usual. Creed’s in the background, pretending he’s not secretly amused. And me? I’m the ghost with a guitar, half-caught in the frame, pretending I don’t notice the camera.
It’s good.
It’s all good.
And yet my chest tightens every time the notifications roll in. Every ping is a pulse from the past.
Because I’ve been here before.
It comes back in flashes. The crowd. The sound. The light was so bright it burned.
Thousands of faces blurred together into one unending noise.
I remember standing on that stage, bass slung low, sweat dripping into my eyes, and thinking, is this what alive feels like?
It was electric. Addictive.
And then it was too much.
The shows, the interviews, the endless blur of airports and hotel rooms that all smelled of someone else’s perfume. Reporters asking about the lyrics, about “what it all meant.”
As if I knew.
As if I wasn’t just trying to find a way to breathe.
Somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I forgot how to listen.
To the music.
To myself.
Now the cabin is quiet, and it should be a relief, but sometimes I might as well be standing on the edge of something I can’t name.
I sit at the table, notebook open, coffee cold, the fire crackles in the hearth. I should write. I should want to write. But the pen rests between my fingers as a foreign object.
From the kitchen, I can hear Sloane’s voice. Low. Warm. Laughing. Roman must’ve repeated something stupid. His talent for that is unmatched. The sound curls through the air, settling somewhere under my ribs.
She laughs differently when it’s real.
Less polished. More breath than sound.
I glance over and catch sight of her through the doorway. She’s got her hair pulled back, a strand falling loose against her cheek. She’s stirring something on the stove, and Roman’s perched on the counter beside her, grinning as if he owns the world.
For a moment, I think, this is what fame should have felt like.
Not the noise.
Not the chaos.
Just this. The quiet pulse of something real.
Sloane looks up, catches me watching, and there’s a flicker, just for a second, of something I can’t name. She smiles, and I look away.
The page is still blank.
The thing about fame is no one tells you how loud silence can be when it’s gone.
We were never supposed to disappear forever. I knew that. But I didn’t expect the thought of coming back to make my stomach twist in this way. The pressure, the expectation… it’s all still there, waiting.
I flip the pen in my fingers, scrawl down a line before I can overthink it.
If the world falls quiet, will you still hear me sing?
I stare at it. The ink bleeds a little, breathing.
I should stop thinking.
But the mind’s a bastard… it never listens.
The line on the page stares back at me, waiting for something more, something truer. Instead, I reach for my laptop. Distraction feels easier than honesty tonight.
I type her name before I can talk myself out of it.
Sloane Katz.
The screen floods with results. Articles. Headlines. Photos of her in another life. Sleek hair, sharp blazer, eyes full of quiet fire. She looks like she belongs in the kind of rooms that decide the world.
Award-winning investigative journalist. Ruthless, they said. Brilliant, they said. The kind of person who didn’t just chase stories… she dismantled them.
And then there’s the other kind.
The ones that use words such as disgraced, reckless, and scandal.
I click one before I can stop myself.
It’s an old piece. Sensational. Messy. The kind of journalism she would have hated.
“Journalist Sloane Katz implicated in source manipulation scandal…”
I read every word. Once. Twice. The details twist in my chest. She got burned for chasing the truth. Trusted the wrong person, or maybe someone wanted her to fall. Either way, they made sure she did.
The comments section is still alive with ghosts.
People who don’t know her are dissecting her as they do.
I shut the laptop. Hard.
The sound startles even me.
There’s this ache in my chest I can’t quite name. It’s not pity, it’s something sharper. Recognition, maybe. That feeling of being gutted by the thing you love most. Of watching the world decide who you are without ever asking.
No wonder she flinches when someone says her name too loudly.
No wonder she hides behind those clever words and steady eyes.
She’s been burned by the same fire I’ve been running from.
From the kitchen, her laughter rises again. Soft this time, trying not to wake the ghosts.
I look toward the doorway, but she’s already gone. Just the faint hum of her voice lingering, a melody that never made it to the charts but somehow feels more real than anything I’ve played in years.
I sit back and exhale.
Maybe it’s not just the music pulling me back to life.
Maybe it’s her.
The fire’s burned low.
My coffee’s gone cold.
And I can’t stop thinking about her.
The story sits heavy in my chest. Her downfall, the way people twisted it into entertainment. There’s a part of me that wants to ask her about it, to tell her I know, that I see her. But I don’t. Not yet. She deserves to tell it in her own time.
Still, it leaves something restless in me. Something that doesn’t want to stay quiet anymore.
It’s not just her story that’s gnawing at me, it’s mine. The part I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist. The way I’ve been looking at her, thinking about her.
Roman deserves to hear it from me before it turns into something unspoken and ugly.
I push back from the table, and before I can think too hard about it, I grab my jacket and head down the hall.
Roman’s door is half-open, the low hum of his guitar leaking through. He’s always playing, always pretending it’s just practice when really, it’s confession.
“Hey,” I say, leaning against the doorframe.
He looks up, eyebrows raised. “You good, man?”
I shrug, trying to play it casual, but my pulse betrays me. “Fancy a drink at The Hollow?”
That gets his attention. Roman loves a crowd. And noise. But he studies me for a beat, as if he knows this isn’t about a casual pint.
And he’s right.
Then he grins. “Sure. Sounds good.”
The Hollow is warm and dim, the kind of place that feels alive even when it’s nearly empty. Arlo’s behind the bar, wiping down glasses, a familiar nod our only greeting. Roman orders whiskey; I stick with beer.
For a while, we sit there, the jukebox muttering something bluesy in the background.
“So,” Roman says, swirling his glass. “What’s this about? You look like a man who’s about to confess to a crime.”
“Not a crime,” I say, watching the amber light shift through my beer. “More like… something I probably should’ve said sooner.”
He raises a brow, waiting.
“It’s Sloane.” The words land heavier than I mean them to. I speak clearly, ensuring nothing is misconstrued. “I think I…” I stop. Try again. “I care about her. More than I meant to.”
Roman goes still. The easy grin slips a little. Then he lets out a low whistle. “Well, shit.”
I frown. “What?”
He looks down, then laughs under his breath, the sound equal parts awkward and rueful. “Guess we’ve got a problem, mate.”
It takes me a second to catch up. “What do you mean?”
He sets his glass down, spins it once on the bar. “I care about her too.”
My stomach drops. I blink, not sure I’ve heard him right. “You?”
He smirks, but it’s softer than usual. “Yeah, me. The ‘playboy,’ right? The guy who doesn’t do feelings.
” He shakes his head, eyes distant. “Didn’t plan on it.
Hell, I didn’t even see it coming. But she’s different.
I think I knew about it a decade ago. I think I was really attracted to her then.
But now… now that she’s back, I can’t get enough of her. ”
Fuck.
I wasn’t expecting this.
I sit back, trying to find words that don’t exist. The silence stretches between us, taut and uncomfortable. The jukebox changes songs. Someone laughs across the room.
It’s a slow-motion punch.
Roman sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “Look, I didn’t mean for it to happen. You know me. I’m not good at…” He gestures vaguely, as if the word love might choke him, “all that. But she gets under your skin, doesn’t she?”
I nod before I can stop myself. “Yeah. She does.”
We sit there, two men circling the same gravity, both pretending it doesn’t pull.
I take a long sip of beer, the taste suddenly bitter. “So, what do we do?”
Roman gives a small, crooked smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hell, if I know. But we need to figure it out, right? Before things get too awkward.”
“I mean, she works for us too…” I trail off, because even saying it feels wrong. It reduces her to a role she never really fit in. “It’s not fair to her.”
Roman nods slowly, eyes fixed on his glass. “Yeah. She’s been through enough shit without us turning it into some… competition.”
The word hits me harder than I expect. Competition. It’s not what I want. Not what this is. But I don’t know how to explain that without sounding hypocritical.
“I didn’t plan on it,” I say quietly. “Any of it. I, she makes things feel…” I search for the word, something that doesn’t sound cliché. “Real.”
Roman lets out a soft laugh, but there’s no amusement in it. “Yeah.”
The jukebox hums an old Springsteen song in the background, something about truth, highways, and second chances.
Roman exhales through his nose. “Look, man, I’m not gonna make this ugly. I care about her, but if she…” He stops, shakes his head. “If she feels something for you, I’m not gonna stand in the way.”
The words catch me off guard. They’re generous, but they don’t sound easy.
I nod, unsure what to say. “Same goes for me.”
Roman’s mouth twitches into a grin that doesn’t quite hide the tension beneath. “Damn. Look at us. Who would’ve thought we’d be having this kind of talk?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Wild Reverie: the emotionally evolved era.”
He laughs, really laughs this time, and the sound eases something in my chest. But it doesn’t last. Because under it all, I know this isn’t over.
We’ve only just drawn the lines.
When the laughter fades, there’s a strange quiet between us, the uneasy knowledge that we’re both standing on the same edge, waiting to see which way she’ll lean.
Roman finishes his drink and sets it down with a soft clink. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” he says.
“Yeah,” I reply, barely above a whisper. “I guess we will.”