Chapter Two: The Fake Plant Conspiracy

The hallway outside the bathrooms had officially stopped being a hallway and started being a weather event.

A tornado made of glitter, platform sneakers, and high pitched squeals spun toward one point, Jace Wilder, who was moving fast but not fast enough because three girls in front had apparently decided personal space was a myth invented by people who hate joy.

Someone shouted, “JACE, I LOVE YOU!”

Someone else shouted, “JACE, LOOK AT MY TATTOO!” (I seriously hoped it was fake.)

And because the universe enjoys irony, the person they were chasing looked like he would rather be anywhere else, including possibly a haunted basement.

He kept his head down, shoulders tight, dark hair falling into his eyes. Not the soft, controlled “stage messy” look.

The real messy.

The human kind.

He took a sharp turn, right toward the bathroom corridor where I stood half frozen, my brain flipping through its options like a broken vending machine.

Option A: Do nothing. Let security handle it.

Option B: Scream too and become part of the problem.

Option C: Accidentally get trampled by love struck strangers and become a cautionary news headline.

Option D: Somehow, for reasons unknown even to me, interfere.

Guess which one my body chose before my mind signed off.

Jace’s path narrowed as he angled toward a staff, only door, but it was blocked by a security guard who was looking the other way, distracted by a radio and the chaos behind. Jace’s eyes darted, calculating, and he hesitated, just for a fraction of a second.

It was the kind of hesitation that gets you caught.

The crowd surged.

My stomach dropped.

And then Jace’s gaze flicked up again and landed on me, still standing there like an idiot with a purse strap cutting into my shoulder.

There was something in his expression that didn’t match any interview clip I’d ever seen. Not the glossy, grateful, “I love my fans” smile.

Just… panic, held in check by sheer stubbornness.

I moved.

Not elegantly. Not heroically.

I just stepped forward and grabbed the sleeve of his hoodie like I was yanking a friend away from traffic.

His arm tensed instantly, like he expected me to scream too.

“I’m not,” he started, but I cut him off because we did not have time for a dramatic misunderstanding.

“This way,” I said, voice low, sharp, like I knew what I was doing.

I did not know what I was doing.

He let me pull him anyway.

That was the strange part.

Jace Wilder, stadium singer, professional charmer, person with a security team, let a random girl in a hoodie drag him sideways behind a decorative divider like we were in a low-budget spy movie.

We slipped past a knot of people, and I steered him toward a ridiculous, oversized fake plant in a giant pot, one of those indoor palm things that looked like it belonged in a dentist office trying too hard.

It was tall. It was wide.

It was, frankly, the best ally I’d found all night.

I shoved him behind it.

He stumbled back, catching himself on the wall, chest heaving. Up close, he looked even younger than he did on screens, like someone had taken the concept of “famous” and forgotten to add the part where it makes you invincible.

His eyes were wide, scanning me like he was trying to decide if I was helping or about to demand a selfie with his soul.

“Stay,” I hissed.

His mouth opened, probably to argue.

I didn’t give him the chance.

I stepped out from behind the plant, planted my feet in the hallway, and did the only thing that made sense in the moment, which was…

I screamed.

Not in a fangirl way. In a “fire drill” way.

“JACE WILDER!” I yelled, loud enough that my throat immediately regretted it. I pointed hard down the hall in the exact wrong direction. “HE WENT THAT WAY!”

Every head snapped toward my finger like I was Moses parting the sea of obsession.

And because mobs are weirdly easy to redirect when they’re excited, the whole pack pivoted and surged away from me, racing toward the dead end I’d indicated like there was a prize at the end.

Phones bobbed. Screams echoed.

In seconds, the hallway cleared so dramatically it felt like someone had hit mute.

I stood there, breathing hard, staring down the suddenly empty corridor.

I had just lied loudly in public.

About the location of Jace Wilder.

I turned back to the plant.

He was still there, frozen like a startled cat. His hands were half-raised, as if he wasn’t sure whether to defend himself or applaud.

For a second, he just stared.

Then he blinked once, slow.

“What… was that?” he said.

His voice was lower in person than in songs, rough around the edges like he’d been running for longer than thirty seconds.

I shrugged like I did this every day. “Community service.”

He let out a short sound that might’ve been a laugh, but it came out more like disbelief. His shoulders were still tense, but the immediate panic had shifted into stunned confusion.

“You,” he started, then stopped, as if his brain had stalled.

I glanced past him. No fans. No security yet. The arena corridor hummed with distant noise, but right here it was strangely quiet, just the buzz of overhead lights and the muffled thump of music from the seating area.

My heart hammered like it was trying to escape my ribs.

“You’re welcome,” I said, because sarcasm is my body’s natural stress response.

Jace’s eyes flicked over my face like he was trying to match me to something. “Do I… know you?”

“No,” I said immediately. Then, because that sounded harsh, I added, “I mean, no. Not really. You don’t.”

He frowned slightly. “You’re not.”

“A screamer?” I offered.

He hesitated, like he didn’t want to insult me but had also just watched me scream at full volume. “You screamed.”

“That was a tactical scream,” I said. “Different category.”

His lips twitched. He looked like he didn’t know what to do with someone talking to him like he was just… a person hiding behind a fake palm tree.

I crossed my arms, partly to look confident and partly because my hands were shaking and I didn’t want him to notice.

“Also,” I added, lowering my voice, “I paid way too much money to be here for it to get canceled because you were mauled in a hallway.”

His eyebrows lifted, and for a split second, something about him softened, like a crack in the polished glass version of him.

“That’s why?” he said.

“Mostly,” I said.

He stared at me, and I could practically see the thoughts bouncing around behind his eyes: Who is this? Why is she normal? Why is she angry about ticket prices instead of asking for a hug?

“You’re…” he began.

“Quinn,” I blurted.

I don’t know why I told him my name. Maybe because the moment was so weirdly intimate and quiet that it felt rude not to.

He repeated it, quietly, like he was testing the sound. “Quinn.”

It should not have made my stomach flip the way it did.

I immediately hated my stomach.

Before I could say something else dumb, a crackle of radios and the sound of heavy footsteps rushed closer.

Jace’s posture changed instantly. His shoulders drew in. His expression shifted, guard up, mask half ready.

Security rounded the corner in a hurry: two men in black with earpieces, scanning like they expected an ambush.

“There!” one of them barked, spotting Jace.

The other’s eyes snapped to me and narrowed. “Ma’am, step back.”

Ma’am.

I was seventeen. Eighteen soon enough. But sure, fine, I’d be a ma’am. Whatever got us through this.

Jace stepped forward from behind the plant as if he’d never been hiding at all. Like it was perfectly normal to stand behind a decorative palm while the world tried to consume you.

One of the guards moved to his side, protective.

“You okay?” the guard asked him.

Jace nodded too quickly. “Yeah.”

His eyes flicked to me again.

A silent question sat there.

Why did you do that?

I lifted one shoulder. Like: Why not?

Then, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I leaned slightly toward Jace and said under my breath, “Try not to get eaten before the encore, okay?”

His mouth pressed into a line, like he was fighting a smile.

The guard held up a hand between us. “He needs to go.”

“Obviously,” I said.

Jace didn’t move right away. For a heartbeat, he just stood there, looking at me like I was a glitch in his day.

Then he said, very quietly, “Thank you.”

Not the loud, polished “thank you for your support” kind.

Just… thank you.

It landed somewhere in my chest that I didn’t want to examine too closely.

I nodded, because what else do you do when a famous person thanks you behind a fake plant.

The guards guided him away, one in front, one behind, moving fast down a different corridor. Jace glanced back once, just once before he disappeared around the corner.

And then he was gone.

The hallway suddenly felt too bright, too normal, too empty.

I exhaled shakily and realized my hands were still trembling. My throat was sore from the tactical scream. My pulse was still sprinting even though the danger (to him, to the concert, to my personal sanity) had apparently passed.

I stared at the fake plant.

“You,” I told it, “are a hero.”

A woman walking past gave me a strange look.

I grabbed my bag and turned back toward the bathrooms because I’d forgotten the original mission: find Sienna, prevent her from having a spiritual collapse, and return to our seats before she accused me of abandonment.

Inside the bathroom, the vibe had changed. People were buzzing, phones out, whispering like conspirators.

“I swear I saw him.”

“No, I did.”

“He ran past me.”

“They’re keeping them backstage.”

It was like a rumour factory had gone into emergency production mode.

I found Sienna at the sink, reapplying lip gloss with trembling hands. She looked like she’d just witnessed the beginning of the apocalypse.

“Quinn!” she shrieked when she saw me, grabbing my shoulders. “Where were you? I thought you got swept away! Everyone says Jace was, was.”

“Running,” I said blandly.

Her eyes widened. “You saw him?”

I forced my face into something that resembled calm. “I saw… commotion.”

Sienna leaned in so close her glitter stars threatened to infect my pores. “Quinn. Quinn. People are saying he was chased and hid somewhere.”

“Huh,” I said, focusing hard on the soap dispenser like it held the secrets of the universe. “People say a lot of things.”

Sienna squinted at me. “Why are you acting like you just committed a crime?”

“Because I’m in a bathroom that smells like stress and cherry perfume,” I said. “Let’s go back before they start without us.”

She grabbed my wrist. “They won’t start without,” she stopped mid sentence, eyes snapping to the door as a fresh wave of screaming echoed down the concourse.

Sienna made a noise somewhere between joy and terror. “It’s happening!”

We hurried back through the crowd, moving with the flow of people being pulled toward their seats like a tide.

My brain, meanwhile, refused to behave.

It replayed the moment behind the plant: his breathless voice, the way his eyes looked without stage lights, the tiny flash of almost laughter when I called my scream tactical.

I didn’t know him.

I knew that. I clung to it.

He was still a stranger. A person whose public life was a performance. A person whose name was screamed by thousands of people who believed they owned a piece of him.

But for ten seconds behind a fake palm tree, he’d looked like someone who just wanted to be left alone long enough to breathe.

And I’d helped.

Which was good. Good and simple.

That was all it was.

Right?

We reached our section. Sienna practically launched herself into her seat, then grabbed my arm so tightly I knew I’d have fingerprints later.

“I can’t believe I missed seeing him,” she wailed.

“I can,” I said because I was a liar.

The arena lights dimmed, this time for real.

The crowd roared like a living thing waking up.

Sienna screamed immediately because, of course, she did.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t.

I just sat there, my heart still doing backflips, watching the stage with my mouth slightly open, trying to act like I wasn’t different than I’d been twenty minutes ago.

A low rumble of bass rolled through the floor. The LED screens flickered to life with swirling neon graphics.

Then the music hit, sharp and bright and the first silhouettes appeared.

Three figures stepped into the light.

The arena exploded.

Rory threw a hand up, already grinning like he’d been born for this. Micah stood tall and steady, scanning the crowd like he could see everything. And Jace.

Jace walked to the centre mic like nothing had happened.

Like he hadn’t been cornered in a hallway.

Like he hadn’t been hiding behind a fake plant five minutes ago.

He smiled, wide and radiant, and the scream that rose from the crowd felt like it could lift the roof clean off the building.

He lifted the mic.

“WESTBRIDGE!” he shouted, voice booming with joy. “Are you ready?”

Everyone screamed again, including Sienna, who grabbed my arm and shook it like she was trying to rattle the sound out of my bones.

Jace’s grin didn’t falter. His eyes glittered under the lights.

He looked unstoppable.

Perfect.

Happy.

And because my brain loves making my life harder, all I could think was:

That is the best acting I have ever seen in my life.

The music surged into the first song.

Sienna screamed lyrics. Everyone screamed lyrics.

I didn’t scream.

I sang along quietly, under my breath, where no one could accuse me of having feelings.

And onstage, Jace Wilder danced and laughed and pointed at the crowd like he adored every single person in it.

But once, just once, his gaze swept across the arena, and for the briefest second, it felt like it snagged on my row.

Not like he recognised me.

That would be ridiculous.

Just… like he was looking for something calm in the noise.

And then the spotlight shifted, the moment vanished, and the show swallowed him whole again.

I swallowed too, because apparently that’s what I do now when life gets weird.

Sienna leaned into my ear, screaming over the music, “THIS IS THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!”

I forced a smile and leaned back, yelling, “YET!”

Because I like optimism. Even when my heart is still stuck behind a fake plant with a boy who doesn’t know my last name.

And I had a feeling, an annoying, prickly, very unwelcome feeling, that this wasn’t going to be a one time story I laughed about later.

This felt like the beginning of something.

Something I definitely did not have time for.

Something I was absolutely not prepared for.

Something that, if I was being honest, might actually be… kind of interesting.