Chapter 9
Charlie
The windows of the SUV are tinted pitch black, a shield between me and the frenzy outside.
I press my fingertips to the cool glass, feeling the subtle vibration of bodies moving beyond it.
Probably for the best I can’t see clearly.
There was a time when I craved those camera flashes—each burst of light like a hit of something addictive.
Click. Click. Click. Little dopamine explosions that told me I mattered, that I was doing something right.
God, how I lived for that validation. Each flash a confirmation: Yes, you’re worthy. Yes, you’re talented. Yes, you matter.
Now my stomach tightens at the thought of stepping out there.
When did it change? When did those same flashes start to feel like tiny daggers instead?
They don’t capture me anymore—they capture versions of me.
Versions that get picked apart, dissected, judged.
A wrinkle here. A blemish there. Too thin. Too fat. Too much. Not enough.
I draw my hand back from the window, examining my own reflection in the dark glass instead. The cameras don’t just document; they contradict. They take the self I’ve carefully constructed and they twist it, distort it, until I barely recognize myself in the headlines the next day.
But blaming cameras is like blaming a knife for a stabbing. They’re just tools—cold, mechanical things with no will of their own. They point where they’re told to point. They capture what they’re aimed at. They’re extensions of the people who wield them.
And people…
People are the real problem.
The driver clears his throat, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “I’ve counted twelve of them so far,” he says. “And more arriving.”
I inhale deeply, my ribs expanding against the tight fabric of my top. Ready or not, those cameras are waiting. I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re the ones who tipped them off.
What I can see is bad enough—a wall of bodies pressing against the vehicle, camera flashes strobing like a rave from hell, faces contorted into shouts I can’t quite decipher through the bulletproof glass.
This is my life. Trapped in a rolling panic room, watching strangers try to capture my worst moments for profit.
“Charlie.” Sage’s voice is calm, measured, the tonal equivalent of a weighted blanket. “We’ve seen worse. Everything is okay.”
I drag my gaze away from the window. Sage is sitting across from me in the spacious back seat, her tablet balanced on her crossed legs, looking as put together as she always does.
I don’t know how she does it. I’ve been stress-eating room-service pasta and crying into my pillow, and she looks like she just stepped out of a board meeting.
Seeing my anxious expression, she adds, “Just breathe.”
“I’m breathing.”
“You’re hyperventilating.”
She’s not wrong. My chest is doing that thing where it feels like someone’s sitting on it, and my hands won’t stop shaking no matter how hard I press them against my thighs. The black leggings I’m wearing are already damp with palm sweat.
“And you said Taio’s here?” I ask.
“Yes. He’s two cars ahead, he’s already loaded his cat onto the plane.”
I cock my head to the side, the sweet detail distracting me from my borderline panic attack. “Aww, he’s bringing a cat on tour?”
“Yes, let’s find that charming and sweet, and not wildly inconvenient and gross,” Sage tsks. “Private jets are not supposed to smell like cat restrooms.”
“Cat restrooms?” I chuckle to myself. “You mean litter boxes.”
“I mean cat ass,” she grouches out.
“I love animals,” I muse. “Did you know up until sixteen, Claire and I always had a gaggle of guinea pigs? At least four at a time, and we wouldn’t travel without them.
This one time we accidentally let two out in Dad’s favorite jet that they just renovated.
” I belly-laugh at the memory. “There was so much guinea pig crap on the floor. He was livid.”
Nate was a good sport with the guinea pigs, but the moment I left to pursue my dreams of stardom, and Claire moved out for college, he took them to a farm. An actual farm, not a metaphorical kill house. They live in a small, temperature-controlled barn. Happy as clams. Multiplying by the second.
“Charlie…I think Taio is a very nice man. But there’s no version of this that ends with you two starting something—”
“Sage,” I whine. “Stop. You’re being judgmental. He told me why he’s an escort and—”
“The escort part is not the issue.” She clears her throat. “Well, not my only issue. Charlie, what Taio’s dad did—”
“Is what his dad did. Not what he did.”
“You know better than anyone what it means to live with the consequences of your parents’ choices.”
A sad reminder sweeps over me. “I didn’t tell you about my bio dad’s letter so you could use it against me in one of your cautionary TED Talks, Sage. That’s not fair.”
She puts her tablet aside and yanks me into a hug, kisses the top of my head over and over.
“Sweetheart, that is not what I’m doing.
I am just warning you, as someone who cares deeply about you, Taio is never going to be a man who wants to be in the spotlight for you, okay?
He has too much baggage to see this as anything other than a job.
I don’t want you to fall in love with something that isn’t there. ”
I pretend like her words don’t cut me to the core.
I’ve had a lot of time alone to create plenty of fictitious happily-ever-afters in my mind.
Lately, Taio is the star in all of them.
I don’t like Sage reminding me that I need to live in the world and not in my mind.
Not with the monsters I can’t escape, and the heroes I conjure up to fight them away.
“I’m not in love, Sage. He’s basically a stranger. I’m not even into him.”
She flutters her lashes at me, her sarcastic smirk indicating she doesn’t believe me. “Well, good. I want us to end this tour strong, empowered, energized, and without child.”
“How feminist of you,” I deadpan. “I’ll get on birth control.”
“Or just don’t sleep with your staff.” She shrugs. “Your call.”
“No promises,” I mutter just to spite her.
Sage doesn’t sigh, but I can tell she wants to. “All right, I’m about to give the signal. Taio will exit first and approach our car. He’ll open your door, help you out, and escort you and me through the little paparazzi crowd to the tarmac. The whole thing should take less than two minutes.”
“Should I pull up my hood?” I nestle deeper into my sweatshirt, like a turtle retracting into its shell.
“No, we want you photographed. We want clear footage of you and your bodyguard doing his job. Protecting you. Being professional.” She taps something on her tablet.
“We need more organic images of you two together before we release the official statement. The more normal this looks, the more ridiculous the cheating narrative becomes. We’re poking holes in all these trolls’ credibility. ”
“By giving them more pictures?”
“By feeding them the pictures we want them to release. They’ll be chomping at the bit, thinking they found more incriminating evidence of your affair, and all we need is for someone to use some common sense and ask, wait…
does it look like that guy is just Charlie’s bodyguard?
Thank goodness for Taio’s physique. Had you hit it off with the Danny DeVito type, this would’ve never worked. ”
I nod like this makes sense. It does make sense, intellectually.
Sage is brilliant at this—at spinning narratives, at turning disasters into opportunities, at making the machine work for us instead of against us.
But right now, all I can think about is the fact that in approximately ninety seconds, I’m going to see Taio again.
Taio.
Truthfully, I haven’t stopped thinking about him since he left my penthouse four nights ago.
I’ve been sitting cross-legged on my bathroom floor until three in the morning, writing lyrics on the back of room-service receipts with a half-chewed pencil.
My hair’s been in the same messy bun for so long it’s now a biohazard that dry shampoo cannot assuage.
For two entire days after Taio left that night, I locked the penthouse doors, ignored Sage’s increasingly panicked texts, and survived on nothing but gummy bears and LaCroix.
Not because I was having a breakdown like everyone thought—well, maybe a little—but because I was having a breakthrough.
Something raw and powerful inside me cracked open.
My fingers found melodies on the piano keys that were buried so deep inside, it took an excavator in the form of a six-foot-four, half-Japanese escort adonis to reveal.
God, he’s interesting. For once, I find my life interesting.
I wrote a real song, the first in over a year, and it spilled out like I’d punctured an artery.
My label is going to hate it. It sounds nothing like the Charlie Riley they’ve invested millions into. Instead, it sounds like…me.
Paper hearts and frozen time
This stranger made his secrets mine
And I returned the favor
Just so I could claim him later
Hero in disguise
A prize that can’t be mine.
I keep playing that night in my head like it’s a movie I can’t stop rewatching.
The way he cleaned the mascara off my face with a warm washcloth.
The way he listened—really listened—when I told him about my mom and the letter and all the lies I’d been living inside.
The way he asked me to sing, and then looked at me afterward like I’d given him something precious.
Then there was the hug. That stupid, perfect hug that ruined everything and also might have been the best moment of my entire year.
I felt safe in his arms. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months. And then the camera flashes started, and my whole world collapsed. Sneaking him out the service elevator like he was contraband, I honestly thought I’d never see him again.
“Charlie.”