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“Actually, from New York,” he says, taking a quick sip of the coffee. “The wife, kids and I vacation in the Hamptons.”

“Oh well, I’m sorry,” I suck in a sharp breath, shaking my head. “That’s very inconvenient. You must really want to talk to me or maybe you wanted to get away from the wife.”

“It was a little bit of both.”

He chuckles, setting the coffee into the cupholder and reaching for the portfolio on the passenger seat. I watch him open it and pull out a single sheet and I keep the smile exactly where it is, because I’ve been performing calm for eight years and I am very good at it.

“I will keep this brief,” he says, holding the sheet out the window. “The label has rescheduled the remaining tour dates, and your management has already confirmed the venues. The new itinerary begins in eight days.” He holds the sheet steady, waiting for me to take it. “All that remains is your signature.”

I look at the sheet. I don’t take it.

“And if I don’t sign?”

He lowers it half an inch, and I spot a fresh pink paper bag with Iris’s signature company logo on it. Butter Treats. Which means she opened her shop, and I could go see her.

Joshua coughs, jolting me back to the car. “Then the breach-of-contract clause activates. Fifty million dollars, payable within ninety days. The label has also reserved the right to pursue additional damages for revenue loss and reputational impact sustained during your absence, as well as shelving all products made, and of course, you can’t resign for the duration of your six-album contract, or thirty-two years.” He winks. “Whichever is first.”

I suck in a deep breath through my nose, my performance breaking.

Breaking my contract would cost me double my entire net worth. So, I either spend the rest of my life trying to break free, or I stay willingly until my contract is over.

“Joshua,” I keep my voice the same temperature as the morning air. “Did Nicki tell you this would scare me? Did she tell you I’d be reasonable about this?”

He blinks. “She said you were⁠—”

“Because I’m not,” I say. “I’m exhausted and I’m in love and my best friend isn’t speaking to me. I’ve literally spent the last eight years doing exactly what the label asked me to do. A forty-five-show tour, every interview, every cover, every meet and greet, every night I stood on a stage running on four hours of sleep and giving them everything I had left. I’m done.” I hold his gaze. “So, you can take that contract back to whoever signed off on it and tell them Sienna Rhodes said to kiss her ass, and they can decide what they want to do about the fifty million.”

Joshua is quiet for a moment. He looks down at the coffee I brought him and then back up at me.

“I’m going to do you a favor,” he says evenly, “because my daughters love you. And I mean that sincerely.” He pauses while it lands. “Don’t make that your official statement. You and I both know what will happen if you walk away from this. They’ll lock down your catalog. Every song you recorded under their label will go dark. You won’t be able to perform them, license them, or release them. They will pursue the fifty million, and when that judgment hits, everything you’ve built will go towards settling it. By the time they’re finished, you won’t be able to sing a note at a children’s birthday party without their permission.” He offers me the contract one more time. “Take the deal. Be on that flight to Ireland in eight days. And after six albums, when your contract expires, you walk away clean.”

I look at the contract.

The thing about threats that are mostly true is that they land differently than the ones that aren’t. Joshua isn’t bluffing, not entirely, and we both know it. The catalog lockdown is real. The fifty million is real. The part of me that has been managing this career since I was eighteen, the part that learned very early how to weigh what the label could do against what I could survive, that part is running the math right now and the math isn’t good.

And then I feel the ring on my finger.

The pearl. The sapphires. The weight of it, small and specific, the thing Grayson had made two years ago and drove four hours to give me and kept in a velvet box in a sock drawer because he didn’t give up on us even when he thought he should.

I think about Iris watching movies with me when I came back because that’s what friends do.

I think about Miss Flack and her Saturday girls, and Mr. Mason with the photo in his window, and Grandma Mary telling me to figure it out, pumpkin, in the kitchen with the yellow tile.

I think about a field full of lupine in the dark.

“Have a safe drive back to New York,” I say.

Joshua looks at me for a long moment before scoffing. “You popstars are such divas.”

I suck my teeth.

He leans out the window and drops the contract. It hits the gravel and flutters in the morning wind before settling at my feet.

I leave it there and walk back up the drive.

My hands are shaking around the empty space where the mug was. My heart is going at a pace that has nothing to do with the walk. Fifty million dollars. Ninety days. A catalog I cannot touch. I don’t let myself do the math out loud in my head because once I start, I’ll stop walking, and I can’t stop walking because he’s still watching me.

Grayson is at the bottom of the porch steps before I make it halfway up the drive. He doesn’t speak. He reads my face, and his jaw goes tight, and he looks past me at the car.