Page 18

Second Act

Mia

The water crashing on the shore was the only music I wanted to hear.

I stood on the balcony connected to my bedroom, hands on the rail and a cool sea breeze flowing through my hair. I knew Renee had this part of the house blocked off and guarded, knew that James was serving as a barrier just a few doors down the hall. I reveled in the peace and quiet I found up here, in the solace I took in knowing I could be left alone if even for just a few blissful moments.

It didn’t make sense, sneaking away from my own album release party. But the moment the DJ started playing the album and everyone gathered around to hang onto every lyric, I felt like crawling out of my skin.

This one was just more… personal. More real.

And I couldn’t stand to be there to watch everyone’s faces as they judged it.

It wasn’t like my team wouldn’t be allowed up here where I’d snuck away, should they choose to find me. James was more on the lookout for fans or guests of the party not getting too close to me. Still, I hoped everyone would be too occupied with the first listen of the album to bother — at least, for a while.

Over the sound of the waves, I could hear the distant beat of the song they were listening to now. It was track fourteen — “After You . ”

Perhaps the most intimate song on the album, I closed my eyes and let myself sing along to it in my mind, knowing that right now, at this very moment, millions of people around the world might be listening to the very same thing.

And casting their judgments on a piece of art that felt like a piece of me .

I heard the sliding glass door open, but I didn’t turn to face whoever it was who was joining me. I let out a heavy sigh, knowing my peace and quiet was coming to an end, but I didn’t dare move. Maybe they’d turn around and leave again if I just pretended to blend in with the night.

As if I could, with this damn sunset of a glittery dress.

I closed my eyes, savoring the salty cool air across my cheeks. I waited, but no one said my name or asked what I was doing out here.

Instead, I only felt the heat of someone coming to stand next to me, of a smooth, muscular arm resting against mine on the railing.

I creaked one eye open and then another, heart pausing briefly before it galloped back to life at the sight of Aleks next to me. He watched the waves crashing on the beach below, one hand moving to unfasten the button of his suit jacket over his navel before he relaxed more into his pose over the railing.

And for a moment, I was seventeen again, staring at my crush while he stared at Lake Michigan.

“You know, that whole party going on in there? All those people gathered around the DJ listening to every song that plays?” He turned to me then, one brow rising into his hairline. “That’s for you.”

“You come to drag me back down there?”

“I didn’t realize any dragging would be necessary.”

I swallowed, turning toward the beach. “You’re right. I know they’re all here for me. I should be there.” I sighed. “I’m a selfish girl.”

“I never said that.”

I shrugged, not able to argue when I knew it was the truth. So many people had shown up for me tonight, and yet I’d run to get away from them all.

“You can go back inside,” I said. “I’ll be right there. I just… needed a second.”

“I think I’d rather stay right here.”

“Why? Don’t believe me that I’ll go back?”

His eyes locked on mine. “I’d just rather be with you.”

A long pause stretched between us as those words washed over me like warm spring water. Even if they weren’t true, even if he was just saying them to make me feel better… I loved to hear them.

“Besides,” he continued. “I’m curious why you felt the need to escape.”

I searched his gaze, finding nothing but softness and understanding there before I even said a word. I let out a long sigh and ran my hands through my hair, shaking my head before my elbows were balanced on the railing again.

“I wish I knew.”

Aleks didn’t push me for information. He didn’t pepper me with questions or guess what I was feeling. He just stood there, right beside me, our eyes on the water for the longest time.

“Every other album release party I’ve had, I’ve been so… excited,” I finally said, voice so soft I wasn’t sure he could even hear me over the waves. “It really freaks me out that I don’t feel that way tonight. In fact, I feel the opposite. I feel… scared.” I swallowed. “Maybe it’s because I know the album is shit. Maybe it’s because, deep down, I wonder if Garrett Orange is right about me — if they all are. Maybe it’s because this could be the night I crash and burn and everyone realizes I’m a fraud.”

Aleks nodded, tilting his head side to side a bit as if weighing the options I’d presented. “Maybe,” he conceded, which did nothing to ease the ache of my chest. “What if that was what was happening? What if every big fear you just listed came true?”

“I’d throw myself off this balcony.”

His gaze turned to me, stern and severe. “Don’t even joke like that.”

“I’m being dramatic,” I said, waving him off as my shoulders slumped more. “But I mean… I’d be dead in all the ways that matter. Creatively. Career-wise.”

“Would you?”

I blinked at him. “Didn’t you hear the worst-case scenarios? If Garrett is right, if the album tanks, if everyone realizes that I…” I shook my head. “That I’m a shit songwriter and an even more terrible singer? That I’ve been hyped up for years for nothing? That I’m irrelevant? That would be it. I’d be done for. I may only be twenty-six, but in this industry, that’s… not young.” I swallowed. “My time would be up.”

“But you wouldn’t be dead,” Aleks pointed out. “Regardless of how dramatic you want to be about dying of embarrassment. Your heart would still be beating. Your lungs would still be pumping oxygen into your organs.”

“I’d be lost without music.”

“Who said you’d have to give it up?”

He turned to me then, leaning weight on his elbow that rested on the railing. God, he looked so sexy it wasn’t fair. His suit, his freshly trimmed facial hair, his dark eyes…

“Would you really stop creating music if this album got panned? I mean, honestly. Would you just never pick up a guitar again, never sit down at the keys, never sing?”

My heart squeezed at the thought. I couldn’t even voice it, but I didn’t have to.

Aleks already knew.

“You wouldn’t stop,” he said when I didn’t answer. “If anything, you’d be… free. Free to create whatever you want, to start over, to take all this damned pressure off yourself to be the best. And then what would you bring to life? What would you feel?”

Every word he spoke made my heart race faster.

“You already have everything you could possibly want from this career, Mia — money, fame, awards. You wouldn’t be broke and on the street. You wouldn’t all of a sudden stop being booked for shows. Even if your tour didn’t sell out, it would still sell. You would still be desired by millions of fans worldwide. But you know that already. And you know what else? I think you also know you’re not scared of people not liking the album or agreeing with that chotzbrocke , Garrett Orange. Not really, anyway.”

Aleks inched closer, sliding his arm along the railing until our chests nearly brushed. He ran his fingertips up my arm, over my shoulder, along the slope of my neck until he was sweeping my hair back and behind one ear, his eyes locked on mine the entire time.

“You’re scared because this album is real, Mia. It’s you.”

My eyes instantly watered, a strangled breath escaping my parted lips.

“I heard it in just the first few tracks. I heard you at seventeen, and at twenty-one, and at twenty-six. I heard you breaking, heard you healing, heard you finding a new way. You’re not excited tonight because this wasn’t an album written for fans or for a label. This was an album written for you. And there’s nothing more terrifying than showing someone your true self like that, let alone showing the entire world.”

Silent tears built in my eyes and slipped hot and heavy down each cheek. Aleks caught one with his thumb, and I leaned into his palm, hanging onto his every word. It was like being back in my childhood home in Chicago, the two of us up way past our bedtime confessing our biggest fears to one another.

He knew mine so intimately now that I didn’t even have to voice them — even with years between us, he still knew.

“You should be scared. But you should also be proud, Mia. So fucking proud. Because you fucking did that. You put your everything into this. It isn’t just another cog in the wheel full of pop hits. It’s art — your art.

“And I can tell you right fucking now that yeah, some people are going to hate it. Some people are going to call it shit. But more people are going to love it, and connect with it, and play it on repeat, and see a little of themselves in every song. Because you didn’t hold back. You let yourself be raw and honest and true. And there’s nothing better than music that hits like that.”

“How can you be so sure?” I croaked.

At that, the corner of his mouth tilted up. His eyes flicked between mine for a long moment, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing hard.

“Because I felt it,” he admitted softly.

My heart was in a vise grip in my chest, struggling to beat as I read into those words. I wondered if he really did feel it. I wondered if he knew that so much of the music on this album was inspired by things he had made me feel.

Did he know that track two was about how I longed for him when I was with my first real boyfriend, how I wondered how Aleks would do it all differently if it were him as my man?

Did he know that tracks six and seven explored how angry I was with him for rejecting me, how I somewhat blamed him for my string of terrible boyfriends before I realized that it was me self-sabotaging all along?

Did he know the final track, titled “Windows,” was about how I couldn’t leave my doors open for him forever, but that I’d never be able to shut my window because I would always be hanging onto hope that maybe, one night, he’d crawl through it?

I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know if I was as transparent as I felt under his gaze right now.

But before I could speak even one word, Aleks wet his bottom lip, his eyes falling to my mouth.

God , the way he looked at me. The way he always had.

It made it impossible not to think he felt something even when I knew he didn’t.

He stepped closer, eliminating the little distance between us. My skin was hot to the touch at his proximity, at how his hand still cradled my face, how it seemed to shake a bit as his other hand hooked me at my waist.

“Aleks…”

“Mia.”

He tugged me into him, eliciting a muted gasp that got stuck in my throat as our bodies lined up flush against one another. I could feel my heart about to beat out of my ribcage, my chest rapidly rising and falling as I fought to steady my breathing.

I blinked, and saw us years ago — me on top of him, him pinning my hips to stop me, my mouth on track for his before he turned his chin and denied me.

But when I blinked again, I was in the present, where he wasn’t turning away.

The present, where he was angling his mouth for mine.

The present, where his fingers were curling in the fabric of my dress.

“There aren’t any cameras out here, you know,” I breathed. “You don’t have to pretend.”

That made him pause, the muscle in his jaw flexing hard as his gaze shot from my mouth to my eyes. He searched them, looking for… something.

And then the sliding glass door flew open.

“Oh! Look at you two, committing to the cause,” Isabella said, stepping onto the balcony barefoot with a bottle of champagne in one hand and two flutes clutched in the other. “You can ease up. I made sure no one can see us up here.”

Giana stepped through after her, holding two glass flutes of her own.

“Which is a good thing, since I’m pretty sure your publicist is about to shake this bottle of champagne and pour it over your tits like you’re in a rap star video,” Gsaid on a laugh.

Aleks let out a strained breath that rumbled softly in his throat as he released me, stepping back so far I felt chills sweep over my body as if we were in the icy tundra instead of California.

Giana handed a glass to him as Isabella handed one to me, and she popped the bottle, pouring bubbles to the top for each of us.

“You fucking did it, bitch,” she said, shaking her head on a drunken smile. “The streams are insane. Social media is spiraling. It’s only been an hour and a half since the album dropped and I can already confidently tell you that this is the one.”

“People are crying downstairs,” Giana said, pausing a moment and blinking a few times to let that settle in. “Crying, Mia.”

As if my heart wasn’t unsteady enough, it now felt like a wobbly wagon on one precarious wheel, like it was about to fall out of my body and splat onto the floor at any moment.

People loved the album.

Was Aleks about to kiss me?

They were crying. The Internet was exploding.

Was Aleks about to kiss me… when he didn’t have to, when it wasn’t for show?

“See?” Aleks said, knuckles tapping my chin. I blinked up at him, feeling like I was living an out-of-body experience. “Told you so.”

His eyes held mine in the softest caress, like he didn’t just have me ready to mount him had we been left alone for even a second longer.

Was that what he wanted, too?

Did he want… me?

Or was it all still pretend?

“I think it’s time for our second act,” Isabella said, chugging half her glass of champagne before she tilted it toward me. “The rising action, if you will.”

Giana bounced a little on her toes, wearing her excitement in her wide gray eyes as Aleks and I shared questioning glances.

Isabella chuckled a bit at our discomfort, waggling her brows as she slid up next to Aleks and patted him on the chest.

“Hope you’re ready to go ring shopping, bad boy.”

Her gaze turned to me next, playful and yet as serious as a heart attack when she added three words that finally did my shaky heart in.

“It’s proposal time.”