Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dean
Ocean Eyes
Billie Eilish
Orlando crowds don’t warm up. They detonate.
The arena is a living organism by the time we hit the first chord and the noise rolls over us in hot waves, lights slicing through haze, the bass thumping so hard it feels like it’s rearranging my bones.
I sling my guitar low, shoulder settling into that familiar weight, and the moment my fingers find the strings, the world narrows to sound.
This is the only place my head behaves. I step to the lip of the stage on the second song, letting the riff roar out across a sea of hands. People scream like they mean it. Like they’ve been waiting all day to break apart and be put back together by a song.
I get it. I live for it. Tonight though, there’s a thread running under the music I can’t ignore.
Sadie. I spot her in the pit between security guys, camera up, hair pinned back, eyes sharp in that way that makes me feel like she sees straight through my skin.
She catches me the moment I look down. Doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t look away. Just meets my gaze and holds it like she’s not afraid of the heat.
My fingers almost miss a note. I recover fast, shove the moment back into its box, but my pulse is already wrong.
The kind of wrong that has nothing to do with performance anxiety and everything to do with the fact that she’s still here after Memphis, after Graceland, after that almost-kiss in the hall today.
I try to focus. Solo on track four. Switch to the hollow body for track five.
Step to Luc’s side for the bridge. Smile when the crowd howls.
No one fakes normal better than me. Except every time Sadie shifts position, I track her without meaning to.
She’s a gravity well, and I hate that my body knows it.
Halfway through the set, I catch her laughing at something Mikey does onstage; some ridiculous hip thrust to the drumline rhythm, the crowd losing it. She throws her head back, teeth bright, and something in my chest loosens in a way that feels illegal.
Happy looks good on her. I should not be thinking that. I should not be thinking about her at all with twenty thousand people watching me bleed music into a microphone. I am, though. Because she’s not just in the pit. She’s in my head.
We hit the final song, the one that makes the room feel like it’s floating. Luc steps forward, voice rough and gorgeous, and I weave the melody around him with my guitar, letting the notes climb until they sting.
I look down again, just once. Sadie’s lens is trained on me. Not the show. Not the spectacle. Me. Her mouth curves, and it’s small, private, like she’s hearing something in the music that’s meant for her alone.
The last chord hits. The place explodes.
Luc throws an arm around Hayden. Mikey launches a stick into the crowd.
I lift my guitar in a lazy salute, letting the noise wash over me.
We leave the stage soaked and buzzing, adrenaline humming so hard it’s almost painful.
The hallway behind the curtain is chaos.
The crew is shouting, towels flying, water bottles popping open.
Someone slaps my back. Someone shouts my name. Someone else hands me a beer I don’t remember taking. And through all of it, I feel the second I’m not in line with Sadie’s orbit anymore. It’s like stepping out of sunlight. I don’t say it out loud, obviously, but I don’t like it.
Backstage cools down in phases. First the frenzy, then the laughter, then the low hum of exhaustion. We strip off sweat-soaked shirts, trade jokes, argue about a missed cue that only I noticed, and pretend we’re not all riding the thin edge between invincible and hollow.
Sadie slips in quietly half an hour later. No big entrance. No showy smile. Just camera bag, water bottle in hand, and that steady presence that makes the room feel a little less sharp.
I’m leaning against a counter, towel around my neck, when she walks past me toward Cherry to share a few shots. Her shoulder brushes my chest. Accident? Not sure, but my body reacts anyway. I hate myself for it, but I don’t stop it.
Mikey’s eyes flick to me and I know he saw the whole thing. He says nothing, just raises a brow and goes back to his drink. Luc catches me staring too long and smirks. A quiet get your shit together without words.
I pick up my guitar case, pretending I need to check something in the storage room.
I don’t. I just need air. I slip down the side hallway toward the loading dock, where the night breeze comes through an open door, damp and warm.
Orlando at midnight still feels like a sauna, but it’s quieter here, away from the hum of people.
I lean against the wall and exhale. Fuck me. This is getting worse. Not worse like bad. Worse like real. Footsteps echo down the hallway. Soft, measured, and I know who they belong to before I even turn.
Sadie leans her shoulder into the doorway, watching me like she didn’t come to trap me, just to see if I’m okay.
“Hey.” She offers me a small smile.
“Hey.” Silence stretches, but it doesn’t bite.
She steps closer. Not all the way. Just enough to stand in the same pocket of night. “You were really good tonight.” The compliment makes me feel more than it should.
“Yeah?”
She nods. “Yeah. The solo on ‘Wildfire’? You looked like you were somewhere else.”
I swallow. “I was.”
“Where?” Her head tilts with her question.
With you. In Memphis. On a rooftop. In a mansion full of ghosts. Your mouth. I don’t say that. I lie, and say, “In the music.”
Sadie holds my eyes with a quiet knowing that makes me feel naked. “Okay.” She chuffs. “I’m glad the music takes care of you.”
I don’t correct her. I want to tell her she does too. But I’m not ready for that.
She shifts, fidgeting with her water bottle. “You okay?”
There it is again. That question that’s starting to feel like a hand on the back of my neck, guiding me toward something I’m terrified to step into.
“I’m fine.” I tut automatically.
She doesn’t buy it, but she lets me have it.
“Okay, cool.” She pauses. “I was thinking, if you’re not dead tired, do you maybe want to grab food? There’s a place across the street still open.”
Across the street. Not a booth with the band. Not a green room with people around.
Just us. My first instinct is to say no. My second instinct is to say yes before she decides I’m still a coward.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “Okay.”
She smiles. Not bright. Not teasing. Just pleased.
“Ten minutes?” she checks.
“Ten.”
She heads back the way she came. I stare at the empty doorway with my heart thudding like I’m about to go onstage again. What the hell is wrong with me?
The diner is half empty, neon-lit and faintly sticky, the kind of place that smells like old coffee and fryer oil and comfort you can’t afford to trust. We slip into a booth in the far corner.
Sadie slides in across from me, kicks off one sneaker, tucks a leg under herself like she’s been doing this with me forever.
I don’t hate it. We order grilled cheese and fries because it’s midnight and neither of us is pretending to be healthy. I try to make small talk and fail. Thankfully, she makes it easy. Memphis things. Orlando heat. Mikey being unhinged onstage. Luc’s obsession with perfect setlists.
Sadie laughs at my dry comments like she likes this version of me. I keep waiting for the moment to sour. It doesn’t. At some point she goes quiet, stirring ketchup with a fry.
“What?” I narrow my gaze at her.
She lifts her eyes. “Nothing.”
“Sadie.”
She makes a face at me that’s half annoyed, half soft. “Okay, fine. I was just wondering. You asked me to come today. And you didn’t have to. You could’ve stayed doing your thing and ignored me completely. And you didn’t.”
I swallow. My hands tighten on my soda glass.
“Why?” she asks quietly. Not accusing. Just curious.
Because I want you near me. Because I don’t feel right when you’re not. Because you walked into my life and my self-preservation skills went out a window.
I shrug, and then lie through my teeth. “I don’t know.”
She watches me, patient in that dangerous way.
“I’m trying,” I add, trying for a bit of the truth.
“Yeah?” Her voice dips soft.
“Yeah.”
She nods, like that matters more than a promise. It does. We order pie, we eat some more, and we talk. Time does its stupid slippery thing, and before we know it, it’s after 2 a.m.
I pay and we step back into the Florida night, but now something in the air feels charged. The streetlights cast honey pools on the pavement. The arena looms behind us like a sleeping beast.
Sadie walks beside me, shoulders relaxed, eyes a little tired. I want to reach for her hand. I don’t. Because I want to too much. And I know I need to figure this shit out. We cross the street toward the hotel.
The lobby is quiet now, almost empty. The elevator opens fast. We step in.
The doors glide shut. The silence is different in here.
It’s not a comfortable-quiet, it’s an alone-quiet.
Sadie leans against the wall opposite me, arms loosely crossed, looking up at the ceiling like she’s trying not to look at me.
I can’t stop looking at her. The elevator hums upward. I clear my throat. “Thanks for tonight.”
She glances at me. “You’re welcome.” A beat. “Also,” she adds, voice low, “I wasn’t just trying to be nice when I said you were good tonight. I meant it.”
I nod, my throat tight. Sadie’s gaze drops to my mouth without thinking. Mine drops to hers. The air goes thin. The elevator dings at our floor, and it’s like the sound slices through us. The doors open. We don’t move for half a second.
Sadie blinks first. Steps out. I follow. The hallway is dim, carpet plush under our shoes, quiet except for the ice machine buzzing at the far end. Her room is two doors down from mine.
She stops outside her door. Turns to face me. “You good?” she whispers, like the question belongs only to this moment.
I don’t answer with words. I step closer, slow enough to give her every chance to stop me. She doesn’t. Her breath catches. Her eyes soften. I lift a hand, tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyelids flutter closed for a heartbeat like she felt it everywhere.
“Sadie,” I whisper, and my voice is wrecked.
“Dean,” she breathes.
And then I kiss her. Not like Graceland.
That was hunger. This is choice. I kiss her slow and deep, letting myself feel every inch of it; her mouth opening, her hands sliding up my chest, pulling me closer until she’s backed against the door and I’m there, pressing into her like I forgot how to be anywhere else.
She makes that soft sound again, the one that knock-out punches straight through my chest. I kiss her harder, needier, a little reckless. She kisses me back like she’s been waiting all day. Maybe she has. God knows, I have.
The hallway disappears. Orlando disappears. The tour disappears. There’s only her mouth and my hands and the way my heart is doing something bright and terrifying. When I finally pull back, her lashes are dark against her cheeks, her lips swollen, her breath uneven.
She looks at me steadily. Not uncertain. Not fragile. Present. Her thumb brushes my jaw. “Hey.”
I rest my forehead against hers. “I don’t want this to be something we rush.”
Her breath hitches—not hurt. Thoughtful. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she admits quietly.
I pull back enough to look at her. “You were?”
She nods. “Last time was… intense.” A small smile curves her mouth. “And I don’t regret it. But I don’t want us to keep colliding just because we can.”
Something in my chest loosens. Relief, sharp and unexpected. “Yeah,” I admit. “Me neither.”
She exhales, slow. Grounded. “I want more time. Not distance. Just… intention.”
The word lands like a promise.
“I can do that,” I say, and I mean it. No panic. No urge to run. Just truth.
She smiles then—soft, real. “Good.”
We stand there for another second, breathing each other in. Then she reaches for her door. Pauses. Looks back at me. “Goodnight, Dean.”
“Goodnight, Sadie.”
She goes inside. The door closes with a quiet click. I don’t feel shut out. I feel… steady. And for the first time in a long time, the thought that stays with me isn’t what am I doing?
It’s I want to do this right.