He settles back in, and the room falls into that easy preshow chatter: tour stories, bad airport food, Cal’s sense of humor, howweird it is to be filmed in a room that’s supposed to feel like a living room.
I sip my soda and try to stay present. Try not to think about SF. About fog. About quiet. About my house up there and how safe it feels.
Try not to think about things I don’t have.
Try not to?—
The door opens.
At first, I don’t pay attention. People come and go in studios constantly. Producers, assistants, makeup people. But then I see him, because my body reacts before my brain does.
Tall, broad shoulders, and a familiar posture like gravity knows him. A face I’ve seen a thousand times on screens but not in real life in almost eight years.
Oliver Marshall walks into the room.
For a second, everything slows. Sound dips out. My pulse becomes the loudest thing in existence. My fingers go cold.
He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s looking at Naomi, probably listening to her instructions, his attention angled the wrong way.
And I’m just… stuck.
I take him in like I’m starving.
He looks older. Not in a bad way. In amanway. The kind of solid maturity that comes from years of weight rooms and pressure and leadership and being watched. His hair’s a little shorter than I remember. His jaw is sharper. There’s something about him that feels… carved.
Still beautiful.
Still him.
And right alongside the longing is something hollow. A sadness so familiar it makes my throat burn, because the last time I saw him, we wereus.
Now he’s…
He’s a ghost made real.
Eli is the one who breaks the moment. He stands up so fast his chair scrapes. “Holyfuckingshit,” he says, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “Ollie Marshall.”
Ollie snaps his attention to Eli like he’s been slapped. His eyes go wide. His face drains of color so quickly it’s almost frightening. And then he searches. Like he’s looking for the source of a sound he’s been hearing in his sleep for years.
His gaze collides with mine, and I swear the room vibrates. Maybe it’s just my blood rushing too fast. Maybe I’m about to black out. Maybe this is what it feels like when the universe finally stops being cruel for half a second.
Ollie’s mouth opens. His voice comes out like a fracture. “Rafe.”
My name.
On his lips.
In a room full of people.
And before I can even breathe—before I can respond, before I can doanything—Naomi’s voice slices through the moment like a knife.
“Okay! Band, we’re up first—let’s go, let’s go!”
Hands are on shoulders. Movement starts. Miles grabs my elbow, guiding me toward the hallway like it’s automatic, like this is just another segment in the show.
The band is being pulled away, redirected, ushered toward the stage entrance. And Ollie is still there, frozen in the green room, watching me like he can’t decide whether to run or collapse.
My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
