Chapter 2
"Miami, are you alive?!" Mia Wilder shouts into the mic, her crooked smile dissolving into the shadow of the spotlight hitting her face.
The nearly twenty thousand people packed into the stadium answer with a roar so powerful it travels up from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair, shaking her completely.
Her music career is still relatively young, but by now she's heard dozens of surges like that one, and they still hit her like the first time.
She's been on stage for forty minutes with about an hour and fifteen left to go, but Mia is already drenched in sweat.
Her hair—which she's wearing somewhere between platinum blond and lavender for this tour—is plastered to her forehead and neck, and the off-white crop top that leaves a good stretch of her stomach exposed is soaked through, clinging to her skin like it's been glued on.
Below her ribs, parts of the many tattoos decorating her body peek through, especially on her arms.
"Are you alive?" she repeats, dipping her head and stretching the mic forward.
The wall of sound doubles. She straightens up and pulls in a long breath as it rips through her, flooding her body with adrenaline.
"This song," she says, dropping her voice, "I wrote it thinking about someone who didn't deserve any of it, and yet moving on was still hard. Has that ever happened to you?"
The crowd screams back a mix of yeses, nos, and things she can't make out.
Mia tilts her mouth to one side, nods, and launches straight into the song.
She did write it with someone in mind—that much is true—but that person didn't hurt her nearly as badly as she implied, and it didn't take her months to get over her.
The truth is that Mia struggles to connect with the women she dates because she's guarded by nature, and not because fame has made her cynical about people's motives—she just carries, somewhere deep in her brain, the belief that no one is going to stay.
Her father didn't, and she doesn't even know who he is; and her mother was physically present but completely absent in every way that mattered.
She walks down the runway that extends into the middle of the crowd and, on the chorus, drops to her knees at the edge. Her wavy hair falls grazing her shoulders, and the girls in the front row lose their minds when she points a finger in their direction.
She's electric and magnetic—maybe that's one of the biggest reasons for her success: she draws in everyone around her and makes them fall for her with a single blink of her blue eyes.
When the song ends, she steps back and lifts her gaze to the upper tiers, holding still for a few seconds while she takes them in.
The noise of the crowd raises goosebumps all along her skin, sending a shiver straight up her spine.
Then Mia turns, walks back to the stage, and catches the guitarist's eye to signal the next song.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, she walks off stage feeling her entire body still shaking, though from the outside she moves like she's the calmest woman in the world.
The hallway leading to backstage is narrow and jammed with cables and people who cross her path and look at her like they want to reach out and touch her but can't quite bring themselves to.
She smiles and waves as she goes, until she finally reaches her dressing room and pulls out her earpieces before grabbing the towel laid out on the chair, pressing it to her face and neck to soak up the sweat.
"Eighteen thousand one hundred," Jude announces behind her, stepping through the door Mia left open knowing he'd follow right in.
"Great," Mia answers, making sure her change of clothes is ready for after her shower.
"That's five thousand more than San Francisco," Jude adds, not looking up from his phone.
Mia watches him out of the corner of her eye and drops into one of the chairs in the room, crossing her arms and legs, waiting with a bored expression for him to run through the same numbers he always does, because for Jude Harmon, everything that matters comes down to figures.
"And Friday it's Madison Square Garden—you ready for that?"
Jude looks up, and Mia can tell he seems more excited about it than she is. It's not that she isn't; it'll even be her first time playing there, but her manager radiates an energy that overwhelms her, and he's the last person she wants to see after a show.
"I guess so," she says.
Jude makes a face at her lack of enthusiasm and tucks his phone into his pocket just as Noah—Mia's best friend and personal assistant—walks in carrying a bowl and a bottle of water.
"Hey, Jude," Noah says, setting the food on the table.
"Noah," the manager replies. "Alright, I'll leave you to it."
The man turns to go, and Mia watches him leave, her eyes drifting between her friend and her manager.
Jude is the kind of man who always wears a suit, cleanly shaved, trailing cologne so strongly that if you get too close it's almost too much.
Noah is nothing like that, with his dark, wavy, perpetually tangled hair, a few days' worth of stubble, and a loose, slightly unkempt look that fills Mia with a deep, uncomplicated affection.
They met as teenagers and became inseparable, so when Mia's career took off and she was told she needed a personal assistant, she insisted it had to be Noah.
Not because her friend needed the work, but because she needed him—because he's the only person who truly knows her, with all the fears and insecurities she hides behind a bold, provocative personality that makes her look like the most confident woman on the planet.
"Here, drink," Noah says, opening the water bottle before handing it to her.
While she takes several long, eager gulps, he opens the bowl he brought and unwraps the cutlery, arranging everything neatly on the table like a waiter at a restaurant.
"It's cold pasta—the kind you like—grilled chicken, a little bread, and some fruit."
"I'm not hungry right now, Noah," Mia says, and drinks again.
He makes a face, then nudges the fork slightly to line it up with the knife.
"You don't have to eat right now—shower first, and when you come out you eat it," he says, with a mildly bossy tone that pulls a grin out of her.
"You shouldn't be so soft, or women are going to walk all over you." Mia stands and tugs at her shirt to peel it from her skin.
"I like being walked all over," he jokes with a grin. "You were incredible up there, by the way—I had goosebumps the whole concert."
Noah runs a hand along his arm as if the hair is still standing up, but Mia barely notices that—what she sees is the tattoo with Danny's name, identical to the one she carries somewhere else on her own body.
"He would've had his breath taken away watching you up there," Noah murmurs.
She manages a small smile and squeezes her friend's arm, because remembering Danny always ties a knot in both their stomachs.
"How are you feeling?" her assistant asks as she gathers her clothes and the towel.
Mia turns to look at him and gives him a smile.
"Great, though my body is still shaking—you know the adrenaline always takes a while to come down."
"That's not what I mean. Do you feel off? Like, weak, dizzy..."
"I'm fine, Noah. Can you let me shower now?"
He shoves one hand into his tangled hair, ruffling it even more as he thinks.
"Yeah, okay, but please eat that," he says, nodding toward the food.
"Later," she promises.
Noah accepts her answer and leaves the dressing room, pulling the door shut. Mia slides the lock and looks at the food. Cold pasta is her favorite, but after a show, eating is the last thing her body wants to do.
"Oh my God, you're—" the woman gasps as Mia pulls back from her.
It's two in the morning and the singer is in her hotel suite, wearing nothing but her shirt, next to a woman who just came and is lying there with one hand on her chest and a wide smile on her lips.
Mia watches her and can't help but smile back, satisfied.
She doesn't know her name—or rather, she doesn't remember it, because too many women pass through her bed on a temporary basis to bother memorizing them all—but she does remember her age: thirty-three.
She remembers it because Mia Janssen Wilder has never been drawn to women her own age.
Not when she was fourteen and figured out without a second thought that she liked women, and not now at twenty-six.
Maybe it's because she had to grow up fast and has never felt comfortable around people her age—except for Noah and Danny, but they don't count because their childhoods forced them to grow up just as quickly as she did—which is why she only notices women who are past thirty.
"Did you like it?" the woman asks, uncertain, as Mia gets up from the bed.
She smiles again, letting only one corner of her mouth lift, and winks, sending a jolt straight between her lover's legs.
"It was really good," she says, and the woman seems to breathe out every bit of air she'd been holding.
Mia hasn't lied. She came twice and feels satisfied—which is exactly what she was after. She opens the closet and pulls out the small box Noah always has ready for her, containing a single joint rolled by his expert fingers.
"You mind if I smoke?" the singer asks, drifting toward the floor-to-ceiling window to step out onto the balcony.
"Not at all," the woman says, sitting up slowly, her legs still carrying a slight tremor. "You might want to put some pants on before you go out, though."
Mia turns, then glances down at her bare legs, remembering she's not wearing anything under the shirt.
"Someone could get a photo of you, you know..."
The singer looks out at the terrace. She's at the top of the building and the nearest adjacent one is pretty far away, but she decides the woman has a point—she needs to be careful, like Noah always reminds her.
She pulls on a pair of sweatpants, grabs a lighter, and throws the doors wide open, lighting the joint the moment she steps outside.
"Don't you want me to leave?" the woman asks, appearing at her side.
Mia leans one arm on the railing, takes a drag, and offers the joint to the woman, who takes it with a smile.
"Do whatever you want—there's coffee and breakfast in the morning if you stay." Mia shrugs.
She honestly doesn't care what her lover decides.
If she goes, she'll finish the joint, take another shower, and go to bed.
If she stays, she'll finish the joint either way, sleep with her again, then go to bed and shower in the morning.
Either way, she'll sleep—because that's what she's after right now: enough of a buzz from the weed to take the edge off, since she always spends hours wound up after a concert.
"You don't have anything stronger?" the woman asks, handing the joint back.
Mia takes it and shakes her head, her expression flat.
"This is the only thing I allow myself," she says, then turns toward the city, resting her arms on the railing as she stares out at nothing and the thousands of lights of Miami blur into a thick cloud of mixed colors that bleed into each other in front of her.
She's not lying about that either. By now she's been offered everything, for all kinds of reasons—to have fun, to keep her energy up on stage, to unwind, to make things better in bed—but both she and Noah have one rule that's sacred to them both: no hard drugs.
This joint is the only thing Mia has in the room.
Noah rolls one for her after every concert, one for her and one for himself, and that's the full extent of Mia Wilder's relationship with drugs.
The woman can't stop watching her. Up close and in person, Mia Wilder is shorter than she looks on stage—though right now she's barefoot—and she doesn't seem nearly as dangerous as she does when she's singing and moving like she owns the world.
In fact, she seems almost vulnerable, but that does nothing to take the edge off the magnetism that radiates from her.
At nine-thirty in the morning, there's a knock at the door.
Mia is already out of the shower and the woman is finishing tying her shoes, getting ready to head out.
Mia opens the door without hesitating, and Noah walks in, his hair so disheveled it looks like he hasn't touched it, but he smells like mint when he gets close, and she smiles because she loves that smell on her friend fresh out of the shower.
"Hey," Noah says, glancing sideways at the woman.
"Good morning," she answers, getting to her feet to find her bag.
The assistant drops into an armchair and pulls out his phone while he waits for Mia to say goodbye to her companion.
"So?" her friend asks the moment Mia closes the door. "A good night? Exhausting?"
Mia laughs and sits down in the chair next to his.
"No complaints. What about you? Any girls? A guy this time?"
"Both," Noah says with a grin.
Mia raises an eyebrow and grins back.
"Damn, you really know how to work it."
He nods and shrugs while she watches him a beat and shakes her head with mild disbelief, because Noah is a deeply shy guy who struggles to talk to people, and yet he goes home with two people at a time. She wonders if those are the only moments he lets himself stop caring what anyone thinks.
"I'm guessing you haven't eaten yet," Noah says, reaching over to pick up the phone and call the front desk.
She listens to him order breakfast for both of them and is reminded, once again, how lucky she was to have met him.
"Start getting your things together while they bring it up," Noah says, scrolling through his phone. "Sound check at Madison Square is at five today, and at seven you have a radio interview—"
"An interview?" she cuts in. "Come on, Noah, you want me to lose my voice before the show?"
He gives her a gentle smile.
"It's only fifteen minutes, and after that your schedule is clear until Monday so you can focus on the next concert. I promise."
She sighs and nods, then gets up to start packing her suitcase, because the moment they've eaten they need to make a run for the airport.
This is the part she likes least about touring—she spends so little time in each city that sometimes she has to think for a few seconds to figure out where she is.