She raises an eyebrow. “How about the harlequin Gucci suit you wore to the iHeart Radio Awards in 2018?”
“Absolutely.”
“Last one,” she promises excitedly. “Tell me that you still have the rhinestone Archie Alled-Martínez denim coverall from the Jingle Ball when you announced your second album?”
“Ooh, a deep cut,” you chuckle, relieved to have to rack your brain a little. To distract yourself. “I’d have to text my curator, but I’m, like, 99 percent sure it’s in there. Not that it fits me anymore. I was… what? Eighteen when I wore that?”
“Seventeen,” she fills in helpfully.
“I should put you in charge of the catalog,” you tell her.
She tosses her hair. “I want to go to school for fashion on a dance scholarship,” she replies. “I need to know my references.”
Eventually, Chanel’s grandma sweeps by and tells her sternly to stop bothering you. She won’t listen to you insisting that the girl is absolutely no trouble at all, and Chanel skips off towards the food in the back of the room, buoyed by her private nugget of Sterling Grayson lore. Unfortunately, that means that watching the Cyclones get absolutely destroyed is something that has your undivided attention.
With Kai back on the field, it seems like the crowds of haters picketing his games get even thicker and louder. You know that all their anger is really directed towards you, and hate that it’s being reflected not only on Kai, but his teammates as well.
Between Week 6 and Week 7, you make a five-million-dollar donation to The Trevor Project and release a statement dedicating it to all your loyal queer fans who have stuck with you. (You don’t addthrough all the bullshit surrounding being cancelled,but hope your silence speaks volumes.) The donation wasnotmade to court good press—ever since No Kid Hungry dropped you, you’ve been looking for the right fit for a charityto throw your support behind—but it buys it nonetheless, and there’s maybe five minutes of radio silence from most of your detractors… the ones who aren’t accusing you of using the organization for attention and to distract from your many wrongdoings.
Inside your fragile bubble of positivity, life goes on. Arch Rubin, the illustrious Hollywood director you are fortunate to call a friend, extends an invite to you and Kai for his 75th birthday party in LA in December. It’s quite a ways out and will require getting Kai to the West Coast on a weekday, but you impulsively RSVP affirmatively after talking with Kai. Things are, after all, looking up. Renovations are almost done on the second villa in Miami, and you are already planning on flying your parents down for their wedding anniversary. Your other favorite producer, Graham, sends over some musical demos that really inspire you. You write a few songs. The Cyclones lose again during Week 7, but that feels like a speed bump at worst. Kai is doing better, you think. Things are going well.
In retrospect, things were goingtoowell.
When Maeve calls you at four in the morning on a Tuesday, you almost miss the call. Your phone is set to Do Not Disturb and is charging in your office, a habit that you’ve established to keep you from doomscrolling endlessly if you happen to stir in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Kai only puts his phone on vibrate. By some strange miracle, the low-pitched hum of five straight phone calls wakes him up from where he’s sleeping beside you. It’s the Tuesday following the seventh game, and he’s staying over at your place, which he wouldn’t be doing if this coming Sunday wasn’t the bye week.
He jostles your shoulder, more asleep than awake.
“Babe,” he rumbles. “‘S Maeve.”
In the darkness, you blink at the clock beside your bed, and at the phone that he’s handing you. The pieces don’t click until you put the device to your ear.
“Hello?”
“Don’t freak out,” Maeve orders briskly. Which, of course, means that youautomaticallyare wide awake and on high alert. “I need you to get on the plane and get up here.”
With the bleariness of being disrupted from dreams,up heredoesn’t immediately register.Up here.Oh. Maeve is in New York. You’re in Miami.
“The plane?” you repeat dumbly. “What’s going on?”
Her voice is low. It sounds like she’s trying to stage whisper through the receiver. You’ve never heard Maeve talk like that. “It’s Artemis.”
“Artemis?” Again, you sound like a brain-dead parrot. At the sound of his sister’s name, Apollo jerks his head up from where he is sleeping at the foot of the bed, sprawled over both your feet and Kai’s. “What the… is she okay?”
“Someone broke into the house,” Maeve says. “They took her, Ster. Drugged her and carried her out like a baby. Thank god that the fucking paparazzi were camped out outside and know exactly what your goddamn dogs look like. A pap asked the woman why she was with her and if something was wrong with her, because, thank god again, the person was too stupid to use the back exit. She dropped her on the sidewalk and took off running.”
You barely register thethunkof your scalp colliding with the headboard. Shock propels you backwards like it pushed you, like it had hands and jagged jaws that it could sink into your chest.
“Oh, Christ,” you mumble. “Art must have been so scared. She hates strangers.”
“It was shift change,” Maeve continues in that low, eerie tone. “You know we’ve had someone at every one of your houses ‘round-the-clock lately? Somehow, this person knew that there was a five-minute window where Zane was briefing Logan and neither one of them were inside. Whoever planned this wasgood, Sterling. The police think that maybe she got startled and made a break for the front instead of the back.”
“It would have had to be a guy,” you say slowly. “Couldn’t be a woman. Art weighs 55 pounds. And they drugged her? She would have been dead weight. Where is she now?”
Maeve laughs, but doesn’t sound amused. “You owe that paparazzo a gratuity or something, because he actually put down his fucking camera for a minute and called the cops. Logan was there within a couple minutes, but a forensic team is here as well. Logan called an emergency vet, and Zane drove her over. We haven’t heard anything yet.”
By now, Kai is fully awake. It’s pitch-black in the bedroom, and he fumbles for the lamp when he sits up.
“Everything all right?” he asks sleepily.
