2. The People are Starving #2
"Only when it's earned." I shrugged. "Tonight felt like someone swinging at shadows."
Skye let that hang, smirking. "Okay, but you saw how people lost their minds, right? Like, it's the top trending topic on Chattr."
"I'll take 'Things Skye Says When She's Fishing for Gossip' for five hundred, Ken." I said, deadpan.
She snorted, gum nearly flying out of her mouth. "Oh my God, Cam. You're in rare form."
We let the moment hover. Skye wiggled her foot against my calf, absent-minded or not; I couldn't tell if it was a move or her default setting. I almost forgot about the party, the whispers, the endless churn of opinion and ego. It was just Skye, back to stir up trouble.
"So, you and Romi," she said, quieter now, but with extra emphasis on the "and" like it meant something. "That's a whole lot of yapping about each other for two people who allegedly don't fuck with each other."
"I don't hate her. But she thinks I'm gunning for her spot, so…" I rolled my eyes. "Here we are."
Skye raised an eyebrow. "Mm-hmm. This is me you're talking to, Cam, right?"
"I'm just saying, when two people can't be in the same room without everyone expecting a cage match, maybe one of them is projecting."
"Projecting." She made a face like she'd licked a battery. "That's rich coming from you. And we were never that dramatic."
I side-eyed her. "You slashed my tires twice, Akasha."
Skye shrugged, unapologetic. "And both times, it was justified." She said it like someone who treated gasoline like lip gloss. Casual application, catastrophic results.
There was a pause, but it didn't get awkward.
That was the weird thing about Skye: no matter how long you went without talking, she slotted herself back into your life like a song you hadn't heard since high school but somehow still knew every lyric.
We came up together. Same girl group, same dreams. Same matching denim outfits.
Back when she was Akasha, before the label decided "Skye Bella" would sell better.
I thought going solo meant we'd both get to shine.
She saw it as abandonment. Never got over it.
Despite our history, I was grateful for her right now, honestly.
Her chaos pulled me out of the spiral I'd been in since stepping off that stage.
But I had caught phones angled our way, catching glimpses of her foot pressed against my leg, the easy way we fell back into each other's rhythm.
By tomorrow, the blogs would be spinning theories about round four of whatever this was between us.
She switched topics without warning. "You know what's wild? I heard—like, from someone actually in the booth—that Romi wrote that verse ages ago. Sat on it for months, waiting for the right moment."
I set my glass down, slow. "You believe everything you hear in the booth?"
"Only the fun stuff." Skye's lips curled. "But you gotta admit, it's kinda hot."
Of course she sat on it. That verse had my name etched between the bars, even if she never said it. She'd been planning this. Thinking about it. Thinking about me. Weird.
I didn't give her the satisfaction, just shrugged. "Course she did. Can't let the new girls get too comfortable."
Skye pursed her lips, looked me up and down, and for a second her expression got real. "You're taking this better than I thought," she said, almost admiring. "Most people would've posted a Notes app apology by now, or started a Pixogram war."
I laughed, sharp. "You want me to pop off? Sorry, not happening."
Then I tilted my head toward the far side of the room, where Bishop had disappeared into the crowd. "Though your girl did almost take my shoulder off earlier. That a message from you, or is she freelancing now?"
Skye's foot found my calf again. "She's not my girl, and you know it." She drew in closer, gum snapping. "And if I had a message for you, Cam, I wouldn't send it through her. I'd deliver it myself."
The only thing more predictable than a party winding down is the way it snaps back to life when the right person walks in.
Romi Dulce didn't just enter the suite. She stole all the attention in the room with a nasty walk that made sure every set of eyes got their fix before she crossed the threshold.
The ambient volume dipped a notch, then surged back as everyone scrambled to look without looking.
The heads that turned, the phones that angled up, the way two different clusters of VIPs tried to beckon her over with nothing but a raise of a glass.
It was beautiful to watch from the outside.
You could almost believe nobody here had ever said a single nasty thing about her.
All thighs and curves in a cutout dress that looked like it came with its own insurance policy, smooth chocolate skin catching every light in the room like she was born to be photographed.
Her hair fell in a perfect buss-down—not a strand out of place, which honestly was disrespectful at this hour of the night.
She looked like she'd stepped off a magazine cover that I'd never be cool enough to grace. The thought didn't sting. Much.
Those blackout dark sunglasses didn't come off, not even indoors.
Of course they didn't. Pure Romi: never let anyone catch you looking back, not once.
She kept her face blank, lips done up so dark they almost disappeared into the glare.
Like she'd made out with midnight and left some of it on her mouth, just to prove she could.
If there was a ripple of fear, it ran under the surface.
A few people stiffened their backs, suddenly remembering they had somewhere else to be.
The bloggers started texting furiously, probably some flavor of "Romi sighting" or whatever adjectives they could spell with their thumbs.
The DJ, sensing the shift, faded out the Lloyd and swapped in a low-key classic, almost paying respect.
I didn't expect her to acknowledge me.
But she did. Just a turn in my direction, sunglasses never moving, but her chin lifted with that particular brand of arrogance I knew by heart.
A smirk ghosted across those dark lips—barely there, but unmistakable.
She wanted the room to know she'd spotted something amusing and wanted me to know it was me.
I met her energy with a tug of my hat and a head nod.
The moment lasted less than a heartbeat, but it dropped the temperature in the room by a solid ten degrees. Romi turned away, gliding toward the balcony where three execs were fighting for her time. Someone passed her a drink, and she accepted it without a word, never breaking stride.
My pulse tripped, then settled, a runner catching their second wind.
Skye crowded into my space again. "If you're not gonna start drama, maybe you should at least start something else."
"Like what?"
She shrugged, eyes wide. "A fight. A rumor. A bar. People are hungry."
I almost laughed, but didn't. Instead, the words tumbled in my head, stacking themselves into rhythm, then rhyme. The first bar was easy: Queen in leather, act cold, talk slick /Freeze every room, gotta feel like she it
The second line coiled around it, then a third, each feeding off the one before until I was halfway through a verse and hadn't blinked.
I ain't even need to write it down. It lived in my gut, hot and restless.
Skye nudged me again, this time lighter. "You're in your head," she said. "Don't let her take up all the real estate."
I shot her a look. "She doesn't."
She grinned, not buying it but letting it slide. "Okay, poet. Let's get some air before you visibly combust."
Tomorrow, there'd be messages blowing up my phone. Some blogger would probably turn tonight into a whole think piece about "tension in the industry" or whatever gets clicks these days. And yeah, there'd be another verse eventually. Mine this time, because now I was on a clock, or something.
But for now, I had bars cooking in my chest. They could keep guessing what I was thinking.
Game was just getting started.