Chapter 2

My phone started buzzing before I made it out of Adrian's driveway.

At first, I thought he had come out of the shower and noticed I was gone. But when I pulled over at the end of the street, the notifications were all from the band group chat.

Someone had posted a video from the label after-party.

In it, Lily sat beside Adrian on the small stage at the back of the bar, holding my microphone with both hands. She was singing the harmony from The Last Firework, the part I had sung with Adrian for seven years.

She missed the first entrance.

Adrian laughed, leaned close, and sang the line into her ear so she could catch up. Their faces almost touched. The room broke into whistles and teasing applause, and Lily hid her face against his shoulder as if she had not known exactly what she was doing.

A minute later, she sent another message.

First day with the band and already stealing the best seat in the house. Guess the new girl gets better treatment than the seven-year veterans. Thank you, A, for believing in me.

Adrian replied almost immediately.

You earned it.

Then he added a little star emoji.

I stared at the screen until the car behind me honked.

Three years ago, I had written the chorus that got us our first radio play. That night, I tried to joke in the group chat like other girlfriends did.

Do I get a gold star, Mr. Frontman?

The message sat there all day.

Adrian never replied.

When I asked him about it later, he looked embarrassed for me.

"Mira, don't do that in front of the band. It makes us look childish."

Back then, I thought maybe I had made things awkward.

Now I watched him flirt with Lily in front of the same people, using the kind of silly message he had once made me feel ashamed for sending.

It turned out Adrian was not too private.

He just did not want to be that way with me.

I turned off my phone and drove away.

Over the next few days, I began handing off my work. I sent Rachel the updated tour calendar, forwarded venue contracts to Grant, and moved my lyrics, demos, and old voice notes into a private drive before anyone could quietly rename them as band material.

I stopped answering Adrian's calls.

When I had to go into the studio, I used the back entrance and left before rehearsals ended. Adrian and Lily became harder to avoid anyway. Her name appeared on revised set lists, radio prep notes, festival mood boards. By Friday, someone had taped a new rehearsal schedule to the studio door.

Lily Monroe — acoustic closer with Adrian.

I read it once, then kept walking.

On Monday morning, my father called from Pasadena.

His voice was low and strained.

"Mira, your mom woke up asking for the song."

I stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

"The Last Firework?"

"The old version," he said. "The one you two made when you were little. She keeps saying she wants to hear it before she sleeps."

My mother had been in hospice for three weeks.

Some days she knew me. Some days she thought I was still eight years old, sitting beside her in motel laundry rooms while she hummed over the sound of dryers. The melody that became The Last Firework had started there, between the heat of old machines and the smell of cheap detergent, when she tapped the rhythm against my knee and told me not to forget it.

The original cassette was not with me.

Adrian had it.

Two weeks earlier, he had taken the tape and my mother's signed release because the label wanted to digitize the recording for our anniversary show. He said it would be beautiful to open the acoustic set with my mother's voice before we sang the finished version together.

I had trusted him with it.

I had asked for it back twice.

Both times, he told me Grant was handling it.

"Dad, I'll get it," I said, already reaching for my keys. "Keep her awake if you can. I'm coming."

I called Adrian on the way to his house.

No answer.

I called again.

Still nothing.

By the sixth call, my hands were shaking against the steering wheel. I sent one text.

My mother is asking for the old tape. I need it now. Answer me.

The message showed delivered.

No reply.

Adrian's house sat behind a white gate in the hills. I had lived there for four years, though my name had never been on the deed because Adrian said it was cleaner with the label, the press, and the taxes. I used to believe him when he said things like that.

The gate code had been changed.

So had the front door code.

For a moment, I stood there staring at the keypad, wasting seconds I did not have. Then I remembered the side window by the laundry room, the one Adrian kept saying he would fix after the tour.

It was locked now.

I broke it with a stone from the garden.

The alarm started screaming the second I climbed in, but I ignored it and ran to Adrian's office.

Halfway down the hall, I stopped.

The house looked different.

A pink suitcase lay open beside the guest room. A curling iron sat on the bathroom counter. Glittery heels had been kicked under the couch. On the dining table, beside Adrian's neat stack of vinyl proofs and tour passes, Lily's marked-up lyrics were spread out in pink highlighter.

My lyrics.

The Last Firework, with hearts drawn around the chorus and little notes in the margin.

Make this softer.

Ask A if I can sing this line alone.

I thought of the yellow lamp I had once bought at a flea market because it looked like something from my mother's old apartment. Adrian had taken one look at it and said, "Please don't bring that cheap-looking thing into my house."

Now Lily's things were everywhere, and somehow his house had survived.

I forced myself into the office.

The cassette was not on his desk. Not in the drawers. Not in the cabinet where he kept contracts he never read. I checked the shelf beside the safe, then the black case where he kept hard drives from studio sessions.

Nothing.

I was still searching when the office door burst open.

Two officers came in with security behind them.

"Hands where we can see them."

I tried to explain, but one of them pushed me against the wall before I got more than a sentence out.

"I used to live here," I said, my cheek pressed hard to the plaster. "My mother is in hospice. Adrian has her tape. I need to find it."

The officer looked at the broken window, the open drawers, and the papers scattered on the desk.

"Ms. Monroe reported a break-in," he said. "She said Mr. Vale has a former employee who has been unstable and may be trying to access private band files."

"She's lying."

"Then you can explain that at the station."

At the station, they took my phone and bag.

I told them I had lived with Adrian for years. They said Lily had told them I moved out and had no permission to enter.

I told them I was a co-founder of the band's company. They said Grant had confirmed my role was "being reviewed" and that Lily was now attached to the upcoming acoustic set.

I told them my mother was dying and wanted to hear a tape that belonged to her.

They told me to wait.

Through the glass, I saw my phone light up on the officer's desk.

Dad.

It rang until it stopped, then lit up again with his name.

By the time someone came back to speak to me, my throat hurt from asking.

"Please," I said. "My mother is in hospice. She's waiting for me. Let me call my father."

The officer glanced at the file. "Mr. Vale is unreachable, and Ms. Monroe says they need to inventory the house before deciding how to proceed."

"She doesn't own the house."

"She made the report."

"My mother could die tonight."

He looked at me with the flat patience of someone who had heard too many emergencies.

"Then you shouldn't have broken a window."

I sat back down.

For the rest of the day, I watched my father's calls flash across my phone while Adrian stayed unreachable and Lily decided what was missing from a house she had entered yesterday.

It was close to midnight when the door finally opened.

Adrian walked in wearing a black coat, sunglasses pushed into his hair, and the expression of a man pulled away from something more important.

Lily followed half a step behind him.