Chapter 22 #2
And Roxy had reached into the exact same fire and done the opposite.
She'd refused to confirm it. She'd refused to deny it.
She'd stood in front of the whole world and said they didn't sign up for the lights and built a wall around Dani with her own body while everything Roxy had burned behind her.
She hadn't protected the brand. She had protected Dani.
She had taken the single thing Dani had spent seven years believing, that to be known was to be used, and she had stood at a podium and disproved it on national television, by being known herself, completely, on purpose, so that Dani wouldn't have to be.
Being known isn't the same as being used.
Roxy had said it to her in the dark months ago and Dani hadn't believed it, not really, not under the scar tissue.
And now Roxy had gone and made it true in front of a hundred cameras, at the cost of her whole career, and had asked Dani for nothing in return, hadn't called, hadn't pushed past the block, had simply put thirteen songs into the world where Dani could find them if she ever decided she wanted to, and left the door unlocked, and walked away from it so Dani would never feel chased.
There had only ever been one other person who'd held the private truth of Dani in their hands, and Marisol had sold it.
It was the shape her whole adult life had taken, built around that one fact, that the person you trusted with yourself was the person who'd cash you in.
For seven years it had been the only data she had.
And now there was a second data point, the exact inverse of the first. A woman who'd held the private truth of Dani and, given the chance to spend it for the biggest payday of her life, a tell-all that would have broken the internet, had instead lit her own career on fire to keep it safe.
Two people had ever known the real her. One had sold her.
One had burned for her. The lesson she'd carried for seven years had only ever been half the truth, and Dani sat in her gear holding a phone and felt the other half arrive, too late, too loud, exactly when she could no longer pretend it wasn't real.
Dani handed the phone back to Frankie. Her hands were steady, which surprised her. "Thank you," she said, and her voice came out almost normal. "I have to go home."
Frankie looked at her for a moment, and whatever she saw made her nod and stand and clear a path. "Go," she said. "I've got the room. Drive safe, you're not as okay as your face is pretending you are.”
She showered fast and got out before anyone could talk to her and drove home through the dark with the radio off and her jaw set, and she made it.
She made it through the parking lot, empty now of cameras, the story moved on to a bigger one.
She made it up the stairs and through her own door.
She made it all the way to locking the deadbolt behind her and setting her bag down in the dark apartment she'd never let another person into.
And then she didn't make it anymore.
She got as far as the middle of the room and then her legs simply stopped agreeing to hold the rest of it up.
She sat down on the floor with her back against the front door, in the dark, still in her coat, her bag toppled beside her, and she finally let it come.
There was no one to see. That was the permission.
For two days she'd been surrounded, watched over, handled gently by people who loved her, and a watched goalie didn't break, a watched goalie stayed competent, that was the job and the armor both.
Here there was no one. Just her, and the dark, and the apartment she'd kept empty her whole adult life so that no one would ever be in it to witness this.
She hadn't cried at the red light. She hadn't cried writing the text or blocking the number or lying awake all night at Lou's.
She hadn't cried through the best game of her life.
She'd held it as she held everything, in a closed competent fist, for two whole days.
And now in her own dark apartment with no one to perform stillness for, the fist opened.
She cried as she hadn't let herself cry since she was twenty-four, ugly and silent and shaking, the sobs coming up out of her chest in waves she had no say over, with her knees pulled up and her face in her arms.
She cried because it hurt, and because Roxy hadn't done this to her, Roxy had just proven it in front of the whole world. And she'd ended everything with one clean text that she was no longer at all sure she'd wanted to end.
Somewhere out there were thirteen songs from Roxy that she knew were about her that she was too frightened to listen to, and for the first time in seven years the door she'd kept locked her whole adult life had a hand on the other side of it that had refused, gently, to force the handle, and was just waiting, now.
Dani didn't know yet whether she was brave enough to be the one who opened it.
She cried for a long time, alone, on the floor of her apartment.
And when she was done, scoured out and exhausted and clear, she got up.
Dani didn't turn the deadbolt back, and she didn't yet know what that small thing meant, only that she'd noticed she hadn't done it.