34. Phase Shift （Wren）
PHASE SHIFT (WREN)
Ididn’t expect healing to come wrapped in strobe lights and off-key singing.
I was proved wrong. Larisa stood beside me at the Billie Eilish concert, clutching my sleeve and singing every song like a declaration of war against sadness.
When the lights went down between songs, she leaned in and whispered, “You’re the best cousin in the world. ”
After her concert high, I thought that peace would last longer than a day. But this morning, before I was even fully awake, Erin O’Connor’s name lit up my phone.
ERIN
Kieran says you’re probably in NYC for Billie Eilish
I don’t care what drama is happening with my idiot brother
If you’re in the city, you’re coming tonight
Two will-call tickets under your name
Radio City Hall 7pm
No excuses
Do not make me send Dmitri to collect you
He’s Russian
My stomach drops and soars at once.
The mental image of six-foot-four Dmitri Sokolov collecting me from Queens like I’m a delinquent package is too absurd not to laugh at. I snort into my pillow. No room for negotiation or hiding. Classic Erin.
Now it’s evening, and I’m pacing my room with my stomach in my throat when Larisa looks up from her phone, eyes bright. “Did you see my hoodie?”
“On the chair,” I say absently. My fingers tighten around my phone. “Also…I know you might be tired after yesterday, but I was wondering…” I clear my throat. “Would you want to come with me to a StringTheory concert?”
Her thumbs freeze over the screen. She blinks once. Twice. Then actually looks up. “StringTheory-StringTheory? At, like…an actual place?”
“At Radio City,” I add weakly.
“WAIT. Luka Havran? As in that Luka Havran? And Erin O’Connor? The cello girl from YouTube who looks like some kind of angelic warrior princess sent to destroy me emotionally?”
“Yes. Erin O’Connor and Luka Havran,” I confirm, aiming for calm. I realized Erin is a big deal after Kieran showed me a few of her YouTube videos. I just…didn’t realize she is this big a deal.
Her whole face goes supernova. “OH MY GOD.”
I flinch. “Please calm down—”
“How do you have tickets for this?” She clutches her chest like she’s been mortally wounded. “This is, like, literally the best weekend ever. Billie, then StringTheory? I’m ascending.”
I try to smile, but my stomach does a slow, miserable somersault.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. She’s getting annoyingly good at that—reading me. Or I’m getting worse at pretending I’m fine.
“It’s nothing,” I lie. “I just…know Erin.”
“Wait. What?” She says it like I just casually announced I’m in a group chat with Taylor Swift.
“We spent a long weekend at a cabin some time ago,” I say, way too fast. Then quieter, “She’s nice.”
Larisa stares at me like I’ve personally betrayed her by withholding this information. “You know the cello warrior princess and you’re only telling me now?”
I open my mouth. Nothing coherent comes out.
She bumps her shoulder into mine. “Well, I’m in. Obviously. What am I wearing? I cannot go meet your secret famous friend looking like a mess.”
“First of all, you are lovely in whatever you put on,” I mumble. “Second, we’re leaving in an hour.”
She squeaks. Actually squeaks. “Oh my God. Radio City, baby. Dress cute.”
She dives for her closet door like it holds the fate of the free world.
I wish I felt even half as excited as she does.
But mostly, I just feel like I’m walking into a concert with a bullseye painted on my chest.
Radio City glows in warm gold, marquee lights humming honey-bright across the sidewalk. Crowds surge toward the entrance, buzzing with anticipation. My synesthesia picks up the energy instantly—bright yellows and deep purples thrumming through the air.
Larisa practically vibrates beside me. “This place is insane.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
The ushers guide us through velvet ropes to orchestra seating. Erin made sure the tickets were good—too good. Part of me wants to be grateful. The other part wonders if she coordinated with Sophie…who probably coordinated with Liam…who definitely would have said something to Kieran.
I shake the thought off. No.
Erin invited me because she’s kind. Because she meant it when she said we’d be friends.
Not because of him.
We take our seats just as the theater darkens.
That’s when I see them, Sophie waving with her warm, genuine smile, Liam’s steady nod beside her, Dmitri’s towering presence softening slightly when he catches my eye.
And next to them, a woman with soft curls streaked with silver, navy dress elegant under the lights, who looks directly at me with kind eyes and gives a small wave.
I swallow hard and wave back.
Larisa’s jaw drops. “You know them?”
“Kind of,” I whisper.
“What kind of people go to BU?” she hisses. “I want to go there so bad.”
A snort escapes before I can stop it.
The stage drops to black. A single spotlight sweeps across the darkness.
Then Luka Havran walks out, black shirt, sleeves rolled, top buttons undone just enough for the front row to collectively lose structural integrity.
His dark hair catches the stage lights with a smug kind of shine.
He takes his cello as if it’s an extension of his body, settles into the chair in one fluid motion, and scans the audience with a slow, deliberate sweep.
When he pauses on a cluster of women in the front row, his mouth curves—a private joke that sends screams across the hall. He lifts his bow toward the balcony in a mock-salute, and the roar spikes into electric thunder.
Erin O’Connor follows, elegant and fierce in black, her gown catching light. The slit reveals toned leg and heels that make half the hall sit up straighter. She moves with the kind of command you can’t fake—precise, composed, dangerous in the way only real talent is.
She takes her place beside Luka, adjusts her endpin with precision, and the atmosphere tightens as if the entire room inhaled at once.
Next to us, a low sound rumbles—half exhale, half growl.
Dmitri.
“That’s my girl,” he mutters. Not loud, but with the weight that makes the hairs on my arms rise. Pride. Awe. Possession.
Liam huffs under his breath. “Easy, Sokolov.”
Sophie bumps his shoulder, smiling. “Relax. He’s fine.”
Dmitri doesn’t bother with them. His hands are clenched on his massive thighs, shoulders tight, focused entirely on Erin.
Larisa leans into me, whispering, “Is he…okay?”
“He’s in love,” I whisper back, unable to suppress a smirk.
Erin settles her cello between her knees, lifts her bow, and something aches in me. For a second, I’m eight years old again, watching my mother play Debussy on her golden flute. The hush before a downbeat. The way the air seemed to thrum before the first note.
My parents are gone. The life where I belonged to something beautiful is gone.
And Kieran took the part of me that believed I could have it again.
The stage drops into blackout, then a single spot snaps onto Luka Havran, bow raised. A heartbeat passes.
His cello growls the opening bassline of “Bad Guy”—dark, sinuous, liquid mercury. The crowd gasps as the sound ripples through the hall, heavy enough to vibrate in my ribs.
He shoots Erin a sideways grin, a slow, wicked curve that says, “watch this,” the Havran brand of charming arrogance, and the audience loses its mind for a full three seconds.
Erin doesn’t flinch. She just lifts her bow with that warrior-princess poise and launches into the counterline, her sound flaring ruby red threaded with cobalt, sharp and wicked and impossibly clean.
The hall erupts.
Larisa grabs my arm with a silent, ecstatic scream.
The house lights flash neon—too bright, too much—and something shifts at the edge of my awareness.
I turn instinctively.
Kieran is standing halfway down the row, ticket in hand, waiting for the usher to let him through.
My whole body jolts. Pulse spiking. Every nerve ending suddenly aware of the six rows of floor between us.
The light brushes over him for one impossible moment. His hair is damp from the cold. His jaw is tight. He looks…exhausted. The sort of tired that comes from not sleeping for days, not from winning games.
When his gaze finds me, steel blue threaded with white static, a thin halo of gold flickering at the edges—everything in me locks, waiting.
I snap my gaze back to the stage.
No. Not tonight. Not here. Not while Erin is about to pour her heart out through gut strings and Larisa is clutching my hand like I hung the moon.
The music swells, but the colors blur.
Part of me hoped he wouldn’t come.
The other part—the part I hate—scanned every face in the lobby looking for his.
When the lights rise for intermission, Radio City exhales. People stand, stretch, buzz about the performance. Larisa looks like she’s about to levitate.
“OH. MY. GOD,” she whisper-shouts. “He’s a wizard. A cello wizard. And she—whoever arranged that counterline is a menace to society.”
I laugh, breathless. “Accurate.”
Before I can gather myself, a voice cuts through the crowd.
“Wren?”
Sophie weaves through the aisle with Liam at her shoulder, then breaks into a full smile and drags me into a hug before I can brace.
“I’m glad you came,” she says against my shoulder.
I freeze, then melt. “I…yeah. Me too.”
She pulls back to look at me properly, hands light on my arms. Her brows soften, and she gives the tiniest nod, like she’s saying, “I see you. Don’t worry.”
Behind Sophie, Liam O’Connor gives me a genuine smile, the kind you’d expect from a captain who knows how to read a room. “Good to see you, Wren,” he says, steady.
Next to him stands a woman in her fifties, elegant in a winter wrap, pearl earrings glinting. She has the same eyes as Kieran—blue, observant, gently sharp.
“Oh, hello,” she says, stepping forward with easy confidence. “You must be Wren. I’m Kieran’s mother.” She laughs gently. “And Erin’s. And Liam’s.”
My stomach drops and soars at the same time. “Hi, Mrs. O’Connor.”