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BEAUTIFUL RUIN

ENEMIES PART 3

1

RAE

April

Eight months after the fire

How do you know you’ve reached the end of a journey?

Is it when the pressure eases enough that you can breathe? When you can sleep through a night without waking up sweaty, questioning the choices that got you there?

I keep waiting for that feeling to kick in. The one that says, “I’ve made it.”

I thought it would happen at Debajo. Or one of the half dozen premiere shows since. Maybe when the top one hundred DJs list came out.

It hasn’t.

Now, I’m backstage after playing Wild Fest on a cool night in Colorado.

The Red Rocks Amphitheater is a natural wonder, and I rocked my set.

Sweat rolls down my neck and between my shoulders, joins what’s already collected at my low back over the past ninety minutes. My outfit sticks to my body as a circle of guys look over from their booze-filled cups.

“A girl made it to top twenty,” one DJ comments as I tug off my wig. “Can’t remember that happening.”

“You beat Maxx,” another says. “Where is that fool?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Eldon, a DJ in his late fifties with wrinkles around his eyes, lifts his cup at me.

I nod in return before going in search of my gear bag backstage. Wig in one hand, I take off my headphones and wind the cord around my hand.

In a dark corner, I bump into someone. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to?—“

Two guys look up. One has slumped posture and bleached blond hair buzzed short, and the other is Maxx, the DJ I beat out on this year’s list.

Maxx tucks something into his pocket and shoves past me, and the other man follows, shooting me side-eye on the way.

I grab my bag, tucking my wig and headphones inside. My attention lingers on the gems flickering stubbornly in the dark. The diamonds soak up every bit of light, as if they refuse to be ignored.

Not unlike the man who gave them to me.

For the past eight months, I’ve been to every corner of the globe, but I haven’t set foot in Ibiza or seen Harrison King. The man who made a stubborn, suspicious girl fall in love.

The one who took it away because love wasn’t as important as his vendetta.

For the first time in my life, I felt what love can do. How it changed me, made me feel alive.

Until it didn’t.

I’m not that girl anymore. I have a career I work my ass off for every day, music I love, fans who surprise me… even friends who have my back.

I’m not missing anything.

Say it often enough, you’ll start to believe it.