Chapter Three (Cara)

My skull feels cracked open. Not figuratively. I mean, it genuinely feels like someone pried the top half of my head off, rattled my brain in a blender, and then glued it back on crooked. The sunlight stabbing across my face is a personal attack.

The sheets smell like sweat, perfume, and regret. I groan and roll onto my back, one eye squinting against the bright morning slicing through the curtains. My mouth tastes like cotton and bad decisions. My tongue is dry. My pulse beats in my temples like a war drum.

Flashes come in disjointed bursts of light, sound, and color that don’t belong to morning. Backstage lights are throwing halos around everything. My manager is pushing some tall, tattooed stranger toward me. I stumble, smiling too wide. I wanted to climb, said the stranger, as if he were my personal headboard. The stranger’s voice, low and patient: “No.” I'm doubling down because rejecting rejection is practically a religion for me. My stomach twists.

“Oh God.”

I bury my face in my pillow and kick my heel uselessly against the mattress. I made a fool out of myself—a spectacular, cosmic-level fool. In front of the first man in months I’ve found attractive enough to flirt with. Fantastic.

After a full minute of wallowing in self-pity, I force myself upright. The movement sends a wave of nausea rolling through my stomach, and I grab the edge of the bed until the room stops spinning. My hair is a Medusa nest, my lipstick is still smudged at the corner of my mouth, and I’ve somehow lost one sock.

I need water and a shower. Maybe to walk into the ocean and never return. Instead, I wobble toward the door and shuffle down the hall, blinking at the brightness stabbing through the mansion’s enormous windows. Every polished marble tile seems to glare at me. The air smells too clean. Too judgmental.

By the time I reach the kitchen, I’m thoroughly convinced God is punishing me. Then I see them. Hal sits at the island, sipping chamomile tea like he’s a barbarian pretending to be delicate. His sandy hair is tied back, his shoulders stretched so wide they practically cast their own shadows. This man looks like he could lift the refrigerator with one hand and offer it a warm mug of tea with the other. Hal has been with me for almost three years, which is longer than any boyfriend, assistant, or therapist. He’s steady in the way a mountain is steady, quiet in a way that feels protective instead of cold. He never judges me for showing up hungover, never lectures, never rolls his eyes the way others on my payroll do. He hands me a bottle of water, calls me “kid,” and tells me the truth in that calm, anchoring baritone that makes me feel… safe.

He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to family, and he treats me like something worth guarding, not a paycheck, not a headline, not a liability—just… me.

Across from him stands Giovanni. He’s leaning against the counter, sleeves rolled up to his forearms, tattoos slicing up his skin like black smoke. His dark hair is a little messy, like he’s run his hands through it on the way down. He looks alert. Sharper than morning. Sharper than I feel capable of being.

He looks at me. It's an up, down look that's taking stock of me. It's nothing sexual, nothing mocking, but I feel it in my spine all the same.

Hal smiles warmly. “Morning, Miss Sinclair.”

“It is neither morning nor good, Hal.” I wave a limp hand.

Giovanni raises an eyebrow. “Rough night?”

“Don’t,” I warn, lifting a hand toward him.

He ignores the warning. “You’re hungover.”

“I know,” I snap. “My suffering doesn’t need narration.”

Hal tries not to laugh into his tea; it escapes as a tiny choking sound.

I turn sharply on him. “Et tu, Hal?”

Giovanni watches the exchange with the calm patience of a man who has lived through worse than my dramatics.

“It happens,” he says with a shrug. “You drank half the city.”

“I was celebrating,” I mutter defensively.

His gaze sharpens just barely. “You were drunk and high.”

My stomach drops. The memory shifts uneasily inside me—blurry lights. My limbs are turning heavy. The way the room twisted at impossible angles.

“I didn’t need you to rescue me. Also, it's called cross-faded, you straight-laced loser.” I say, though my voice wavers.

His expression doesn’t change. “Last night, you did.”

I hate that his tone is gentle. I hate that it isn’t condescending. I hate that it lands somewhere in my ribs and stays there.

“Well,” I say, crossing my arms, “sorry to inconvenience you.”

“Wasn’t inconvenient.”

Hal glances between us like he’s watching a tennis match.

“It’s dangerous, though,” Giovanni adds.

“I don’t want to talk about last night.” My voice goes sharp, brittle. “At all.”

“Not my call,” he replies. “Talking or not talking doesn’t change the fact that it happened.”

I feel stripped bare. Exposed. Like he can see all the ugly knots inside me, all the insecurity, the fear, the loneliness I bury under glitter and sequins and stadium lights.

So I lash out.

“You know,” I say coldly, “for a man who’s supposed to blend into the background, you’re very… present.”

Hal abruptly stands, giving Giovanni an apologetic nod. “Shift change. I should, uh… go check the perimeter.”

He flees. Giovanni doesn’t move.

“You’re upset because I turned you down,” he says quietly.

Blood rushes to my face. “I’m upset because you’re rude.”

“I wasn’t rude,” he says mildly. “You were high and drunk and hitting on your new bodyguard.”

“I was being friendly.”

“You were being—”

“If you finish that sentence,” I warn, “I swear I will fire you myself.”

His lips twitch with the faintest ghost of a smile.

“You tried that last night,” he reminds me. “Your manager vetoed it.”

I groan. “Can this get worse?”

“Yes,” Giovanni says. “You could be asleep in the middle of the club floor.”

I glare at him, but my pulse stutters slightly when he steps past me. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I feel a whisper of something warm trail over my skin.

He stops at the doorway.

“I’ll be in the security room,” he says. “Drink water.”

I scoff. “Are you… giving me instructions?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who I am?”

He pauses just long enough to look back at me, the corner of his mouth rising in a slow, knowing smirk.

“I do,” he murmurs. “That’s why I’m telling you to drink water.”

Heat shoots up my neck.

“So bossy,” I mutter.

“So stubborn,” he shoots back.

He leaves, and I hate how long I stand in the doorway watching him go with a small smile.