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“Good.” He kisses my forehead. “Because there isn’t anyone else. There’s never been anyone else. There never will be.”
The words settle into my chest, into the spaces that used to be filled with doubt, with fear, with the certainty that good things don’t last. This man, this ridiculous, beautiful, tender-hearted man who built me a music room and learned my song and looks at me like I hung the moon;he’s not going anywhere.
And neither am I.
24
SIENNA
Boston Logan Airport is not where I expected to end things.
I expected an office. A conference room with a round table, Joshua Eds and his portfolio, and Nicki in a blazer with her bun slicked back and her phone face down on the table, the whole controlled theatrical production of a professional ending. I expected to be managed through the ending the same way I was managed through everything else, smoothly and efficiently, with someone else controlling the terms of the room.
Instead, I’m standing in Terminal B departures, at seven a.m., in jeans, sneakers, and Grayson’s flannel with my hair loose, no luggage, and Grayson two steps behind me. Not next to me. Two steps behind, because I told him I needed to do this myself, and he heard the part I didn’t say out loud, which is that I also needed to know he was there.
Terminal B is a typical airport at seven a.m. There’s a peculiar species of chaos that belongs exclusively to early departures, rolling luggage, paper coffee cups, people who haven’t slept, and the flat light of a building that runs on fluorescents without apology. I walk through it and I feel exactly like what I am, a person who has made her choice and is here to say it out loud.
I spot her before she spots me.
Nicki is standing near the TSA entrance with her carry-on at her feet and her phone in her hand, her weight shifted onto one hip in the posture she reserves for when she has been kept waiting too long. She’s wearing the structured black blazer that she wears as armor. The bun is slicked to geometric perfection. She is dressed like a woman who came prepared for a negotiation.
She looks up from her phone and sees me.
Her eyes move past me to Grayson, two steps back, his hands in his pockets and his jaw set, and her expression does two things in quick succession, first the careful rearrangement of a woman selecting which version of herself this situation requires, and then underneath that, smaller and less controlled, something that is not quite surprise.
She knew. Of course she knew. Nicki Campbell always knows.
She slides the phone into her blazer pocket and straightens, her chin lifting.
“Sienna.” Her voice lands with the practiced warmth of someone who has spent two decades making difficult conversations feel like friendly ones. “You look well.”
“With no help from you.” I stop in front of her with my hands loose at my sides.
She tilts her head, scanning my face for the angle she can use, the soft place she can press. “I have a flight in ninety minutes. When you said you needed to see me, I assumed you’d reconsidered. I have a counteroffer to the label’s extended terms that I think you’ll find very—”
“The contract is settled,” I cut in, keeping my voice level. “It was paid four days ago. You should have had confirmation from Joshua’s office.”
Nicki goes very still.
She doesn’t flinch. She is too practiced to flinch. But something behind her eyes shifts, a microscopic adjustment while she figures out how to play it.
“I see, but that doesn’t mean I’m no longer your manager,” she says, her voice completely even.
“Yes, it does.” My voice is steady and absolute. “I’m no longer with the label, and you’re no longer my manager.”
She uncrosses her arms slowly, her eyes never leaving my face. “Sienna. You’re twenty-six years old. You are at the peak of your—”
“Don’t.” I step closer, lowering the conversation below the ambient noise of the terminal. “Don’t manage me right now, Nicki. Not today. I didn’t come here to be managed. I came here to say what I should’ve said a long time ago, and I need you to stand there and listen.”
She is quiet.
I take a breath.
“You’ve been managing me since I was eighteen years old.” The words come out measured because I practiced them at the bathroom mirror at six this morning while Grayson made coffee downstairs and pretended not to hear me. “You are exceptional at your job, probably one of the best. You got me into the best venues, you fought for me when I didn’t know enough to fight for myself, and I don’t take any of it for granted.” I pause. “But you also made decisions about my life that were never yours to make. You booked tour extensions I never agreed to and presented them as done deals. You scheduled me through illness and exhaustion because a cancelled show cost more than a sick artist. You were managing Echo, and somewhere in there, you forgot that Sienna was the one who had to live it.”
Nicki’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “Everything I did was for your career—”
“You walked the man I love out of the building,” I say.
