Chapter 52 Sawyer
FIFTY-TWO
Sawyer
A couple of weeks after everything came out—Ben being the real father, Lauren killing her son, and the discovery that my house had been a murder scene for years—there was still fallout.
But all of that was behind us now.
Ellie was preparing for her final concert. The last one on her tour. The last one…probably for a while.
She didn’t call it a retirement. Maybe she’d perform again someday, she’d said—maybe in a smaller venue, maybe at a festival if the mood struck—but definitely not like this. Not with a tour bus and stylists and people shouting in her ear every hour of the day.
She wanted something quieter, and tonight, she was getting her goodbye.
I watched from the VIP tent with her parents by my side, just like I had a few months ago.
Tonight felt different. The energy was heavier. Electric.
Final.
The whole arena was going nuts, fans screaming her name, glitter signs bobbing above their heads. They were chanting for her before the countdown started. The floor vibrated beneath my feet. Then the platform rose, the spotlight hit her, and the moment the music dropped, the place went feral.
Fans screamed like crazy. Everyone stood. Phones shot up. The opening chords blasted through the sound system. Ellie came up from beneath the floor into the spotlight like she was born for it.
The moment she started to sing, the crowd joined in, thousands of people shouting every word back to her like they belonged to them too.
It was unreal.
She moved through the first song effortlessly, all energy and presence, as if nothing could touch her up there. When it ended, she pulled her mic closer and took a step back, letting the guitar hang at her side as the music faded.
“Hello, LA!” she called out, voice bright and breathless.
The crowd went ballistic.
She grinned, tucking her hair behind her ear. “As you probably know, this is the final stop of my tour.”
A wave of groans and nooos rolled through the audience.
“I know, I know,” she said, laughing. “I’ve had the most marvelous few months sharing these nights with you. I’ll never stop being grateful that you show up, that you care, that you listen.”
The fans screamed louder, and she let it ride out before strumming a soft chord on her guitar.
“But tonight’s a little different.”
A hush fell over the crowd as people recognized the tone shift.
“I’ve spent my whole life living through lyrics,” she said, quiet but clear.
“Pouring myself into songs and chasing the next thing. For the first time…I want to figure out who I am outside all that. Not because I’m walking away from it forever, but because I think I’ve earned the right to slow down. To be still.”
Silence stretched across the room. Not the awkward kind—the reverent kind.
“I’ll always write music,” she said. “That’s never going away. But I don’t think I’ll be performing like this again. Not for a long time. So tonight, this show…it’s kind of a goodbye, at least to this version of me.”
Another strum. Another beat of silence. Then, the crowd erupted. Screaming. Crying. Chanting her name.
I blinked hard. Damn it, I was about to fucking cry. I was supposed to be the tough football guy, but watching her say goodbye to this life with that kind of grace—on her own terms, in her own words—hit me in a way I wasn’t ready for.
She wasn’t walking away from something. She was walking toward something. And I got to be part of whatever that was.
She closed her eyes, soaking it all in, then shifted into her next song—her and the guitar, no lights, no backup vocals, nothing flashy. Just Ellie, stripped down and honest.
I leaned against the railing and let the music fill me, let her voice settle in my chest the way it always did—warm, steady, and a little cracked in the places that made it real.
She wasn’t pretending anymore. She wasn’t performing a version of herself to keep everyone happy.
She was her. And she was enough.