Chapter 1 #2
Damon’s gaze returns to me. His tone shifts, turning sharp at the edges. “Is this about the gay thing?”
Heat flashes through my body so fast it makes my vision go black for a second. My hands tighten on each other beneath the table, knuckles pressing against each other until it hurts.
I stare at him. “What?” The word barely makes it past my lips.
Damon lifts his shoulders. “Malik is out. Loud. Public. He is a symbol. He is a whole campaign. Maybe you do not want to be associated with that. Maybe you are worried the jazz crowd will not like it. Maybe you are worried you will get asked questions you do not want to answer.”
My mouth goes dry. Every word a step closer to the precipice I’ve spent my life avoiding. Sweat forms at the base of my spine, cold and insistent.
Eli scoffs openly now, a short, sharp sound that cuts through the room. “Are you serious?”
Damon looks offended. His perfectly sculpted brows draw together. “It is a fair question.”
“It is a stupid question,” Eli says. There’s protectiveness in his voice now, the kind that comes from knowing exactly what’s at stake.
Damon’s eyes narrow. “I am trying here. . .”
My pulse beats like a war drum in my throat.
Damon’s words crawl under my skin, looking for something to expose.
He doesn’t know what he’s poking at. He doesn’t know how close he is standing to the edge of something that could ruin me.
He has no idea that the ‘gay thing’ isn’t just about Malik, it’s about me, about the carefully constructed facade I’ve maintained for years.
He watches me carefully. “Are you homophobic, Julian?”
The word lands like a slap. The air leaves my lungs in a rush, leaving me momentarily empty.
Homophobic.
The accusation is so wrong it makes my hands shake.
It makes my stomach turn and my ribs ache and my throat tighten, because if Damon knew anything at all, he would never ask it.
If Damon knew anything at all, he would understand the question is not an insult.
It is a threat. It is the worst kind of irony, an accusation that forces me to either reveal myself or accept a label that is the antithesis of who I am.
I keep my face smooth. I keep my gaze steady. Years of practice come to my aid, helping me maintain the mask when all I want is to shatter it.
“No,” I reply.
Damon nods once, as if he has proved a point. “Then what is the problem?”
I look at the folder again. I look at my name.
I look at the words co-headline and European leg and benefit tour.
I imagine Malik’s name beside mine. I imagine posters.
Interviews. Cameras. Questions. I imagine the scrutiny, the inevitable moments when people will search for connection, for history, for anything they can use to craft a narrative.
I imagine Malik’s eyes. Deep brown and unflinching, always seeing more of me than I wanted to reveal.
My chest tightens until it hurts, the physical pain radiates outward from my heart.
“You do not have to talk to him,” Damon says, softer now, like he is offering me mercy.
His voice drops to something almost gentle.
“You do not have to share a dressing room. You do not have to rehearse together. You can come in and out at different times. Like I mentioned before, separate everything, if you want. We can build the schedule so you rarely cross paths.”
He pauses, then adds more carefully, “It’s still a tour, though. There will be moments none of us can control. Press events, after parties, and interviews. We’ll build the schedule so you’re not forced into each other’s space any more than necessary.”
My fingers flex against each other, seeking control. The pressure grounds me, reminds me that I am here, now, not lost in memory or anticipation.
If I never cross paths with him, then the problem is solved.
Except it is not.
Because Malik exists in sound. He exists in memory.
He exists in the part of me that reacts before I can stop it.
He is woven into the fabric of my musical identity in ways I’ve never been able to fully untangle.
Even hearing him on the radio makes my fingers find phantom melodies, echo patterns we created together.
Damon leans forward again. “Four months. You get paid well. You gain new listeners. You look generous. You look modern. You look like a man who is not afraid of growth. We are offering you something you cannot manufacture in a studio.”
I keep my voice quiet. “I said no.” Unfortunately, my words don’t land strong enough.
Damon’s smile disappears. He sets the folder down, slow and deliberate.
The soft thud of it feels final, ominous.
“Julian, Reality Records has invested in you for a long time. We have built your brand. We have protected your image. We have given you space to be exactly as private as you want to be.”
My stomach drops. There it is. Protection. Space. Privacy.
The things that always come with a price. The implicit threat behind the courtesy. The reminder that my career exists within a system of obligations and expectations.
Damon’s tone stays mild, but his eyes sharpen. “Now we need something back. This is a moment. You do not get to refuse it because of old drama.”
“It is not drama.” The word is trivializing, reduces something profound to something petty.
“What is it then?” he presses. His eyes bore into mine, searching for weakness.
My mouth tightens. I do not speak. I cannot explain what happened between Malik and me without exposing parts of myself I’ve kept hidden for decades. The betrayal, the loss, the love, all of it tangled together in a knot I’ve never been able to unravel.
Damon taps the folder again, impatient now. “You can call it whatever you want, but the answer is yes. You will do the run. You will be professional. You will show up. You will play. You will smile. If Malik Carter wants to stand on the same stage as you, you will stand there too.”
The room hums. The arena is not even in this building, but I hear it anyway.
I hear the noise from the crowd in my blood.
I hear the piano that lives under my skin.
I hear the place where I used to be brave, before I learned fear was safer.
Before I understood what it meant to lose everything that mattered.
I turn to Eli, reaching out to him like he’s my only lifeline.
He finally looks at me fully. His expression is calm. His eyes are firm. I wonder again if he was aware of what was to come going into this meeting. If he calculated the moment, weighed the benefits against my resistance.
“You have to,” he says quietly. Three simple words that carry the weight of inevitability. The words land heavier than Damon’s.
I sit very still. The walls seem to close in, the ceiling lowering imperceptibly.
The controlled temperature of the room suddenly feels too cold against my skin.
Somewhere deep inside me, something recoils.
Something old. Something that has been asleep a long time.
A version of myself I thought I’d buried beneath layers of restraint and control.
I draw in a deep breath, the air fills my lungs completely. I exhale and make a decision. One I am sure I am going to regret.
“Fine.” The word tastes like dirt. Like surrender. Like falling.
Damon’s smile returns immediately, bright and victorious. “Good. That is good. I knew you would see sense.”
I do not correct him. I do not tell him I don’t see sense. I see Malik Carter’s name on a page. I see four months of proximity. I see the edge of a cliff I have spent my whole adult life walking around. I see the inevitable collision of past and present, of who I was and who I’ve become.
Damon flips to the last page and slides the folder toward me. “Sign the intent to participate. We finalize dates next week. Press announcement goes out after your PR team approves the language.”
My hand moves without feeling. I sign. The motion is mechanical, divorced from conscious thought.
The pen scratches. The ink dries. My name looks foreign to me, like it belongs to someone else.
Damon stands and offers his hand. I do not take it. The rejection is subtle but unmistakable.
He does not seem to notice. He is already talking about venues and ticket tiers and sponsor packages. He is already building the machine. His voice has the rhythmic quality of someone who has already moved on to the next phase, already counting the success before it happens.
Eli rises beside me, smooth and practiced, and nods like this is just another Tuesday. Like we haven’t just signed away months of my life to a confrontation with the past I’ve worked hard to avoid.
I stand too. My legs are steady. My chest is not, my heart beats faster than it should and the sweat gathers on my brow. The collar of my shirt is too constricting.
Damon’s voice follows us to the door. “You are going to love it, Julian. This is what you need to catapult your music higher. It will be good for you.”
I step into the hallway, thankful for the door closing behind us to drown out whatever else he is going to say. The solid click of the latch mirrors the closing of a trap.
The fluorescent lights in the hallway are too bright. The air smells like cleaning solution and nothing else, antiseptic and artificial. Eli walks beside me, already pulling his phone from his pocket, his thumb moving as if momentum alone might carry us through this.
“Eli.”.
He looks up immediately. “Yeah?”
“What did you tell him?”
He slows, then stops altogether. I stop with him. The hallway hums softly around us, empty except for our presence.
“I did not give him details, hence why he kept pushing you,” he says. “I never do.” His voice is steady, but there’s a defensiveness beneath it.
“That is not an answer.”
Eli studies my face for a moment, something careful settles into his expression. “I told him you would handle it,” he says. “I told him you always do.”
My chest tightens. The words carry years of history, years of Eli knowing exactly what I hide and why.
“That is not the same thing. This is not the same thing,” I say quietly. The restraint in my voice masks the accusation beneath it.
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”
“You should have warned me.”
He sighs, “You would have refused this meeting altogether if I had.” His expression softens slightly.
“You would never have walked in the door if you knew Malik’s name was in that folder.
” He slips his phone back into his pocket and turns fully toward me now.
His voice lowers. “I know this is not about a tour. I know who Malik Carter is to you. Damon does not need to know that. The label does not need to know that. But I do.”
I hold his gaze, my throat burning. Eli has been there since the beginning, since before I was who I am now. He’s one of the few people who knows the truth, who understands what Malik meant. After a few drunken nights, what he still means.
Eli continues, steady and unflinching. “I will keep the schedule clean. I will keep the press controlled. I will make sure you have space when you need it. I cannot stop this from happening, Julian, but I can make sure it does not destroy you.”
Destroy. Because this is bound to do exactly that. Because seeing Malik again means facing everything I’ve run from, not just him, but myself. The parts of me I’ve buried so deeply I sometimes forget they exist until something triggers their memory.
I nod once, because it is all I can manage. The simple movement feels like it takes all my remaining strength.
Eli’s expression softens just slightly. “You do not have to do this alone.”
I turn away before he can see my face change. Before he can witness the crack in the facade I maintain so carefully.
We start walking again. Our footsteps echo in the empty hallway, a rhythm that reminds me of time passing, of moments that can’t be reclaimed.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. A calendar alert I did not set. A flight. A rehearsal. A date too close to breathe around. My future, arranged without my consent but with my reluctant signature.
Four months.
Four months of rooms and stages and proximity.
Four months of pretending I am not being pulled toward something I buried a lifetime ago.
This is not an opportunity.
This is a reckoning.
I square my shoulders and keep moving. The muscles in my back tighten, bracing against what’s coming.
I have survived worse. Malik made damn sure of that.