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“How are you still so happy?” he asked.
She glanced his way and realized he wasn’t looking at the ceiling but was on his side, facing her, one arm tucked beneath the pillow under his head.
“What do you mean?” she asked, rolling onto her side to face him.
His black eyebrows dipped and his mouth pulled into a frustrated line. “How has this world not ruined you?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. “It’s nice that you think I’m not ruined,” she said.
“Are you joking?” he asked. “You’re joking. Have you met you, Zara?”
She laughed and tucked her hands under her cheek.
“Look at you, still smiling away,” Asa said like he was disappointed in her, and she laughed some more. “Like you didn’t just have a messy fight with your boyfriend?—”
“Ex-boyfriend,” she corrected quickly.
His lips tilted to the side. “Right. Like you didn’t just have a messy fight with your ex-boyfriend in front of literally everyone in the industry.” He stopped speaking for a beat like he was withholding additional commentary. “You ruined your dress,” he went on, voice pitched lower. His eyes drifted over her face and her chest got tight under his slow examination. “This could not have been how you pictured spending tonight. You should be celebrating.”
She swallowed as heat crept into her eyes. Hadn’t she just been thinking those exact thoughts?
“How do you put it all aside and not lose yourself?” he asked.
He wasn’t asking for pity’s sake. No, this question came from a place deep inside him that needed an answer she couldn’t provide.
But she’d still try.
“They’re always going to get it wrong,” she said. “By tomorrow there’ll be a dozen stories about tonight. But no one really knows, do they? My whole life I’ve had to hear about all the shameful things I’ve been a part of. I could go out there and defend myself, try to explain things that don’t require explanation. But that would be it. That would become my new occupation. I’d never be able to stop because they never stop.”
She chewed on her bottom lip as she thought about all the times she’d compromised on who she was and what she wanted for the sake of Logan, or a record’s release, or the threat of bad press.
No, she hadn’t always made the right call.
But even in those times, a part of her had known better.
“Maybe being happy is my own type of denial,” she admitted. “Maybe I use it as a way to ignore what I actually need to change. I don’t know.”
“I don’t see that about you.”
Her gaze flicked back to his.
“Maybe you’re so adept at growth that you give others around you the opportunity to do the same.”
“You make me sound like the kind of person I want to be,” she said softly, the thunder rumbling through the building and her bones.
These were the kind of conversations she never had. So often she was surrounded by cameras and microphones and people looking for an angle. She’d learned to guard her words and her mind from beingtoohonest.
But there, in the dark, across from Asa, she felt her soul relax its cautious nature. She wasn’t the Artist of the Year there in that hotel room.
She was just Zara.
“Logan Black is beneath you,” Asa said into the quiet.
She held his gaze without flinching.
“It’s not my place to say, but I hope you know you’re too valuable to be in that kind of a situation. No one should ever speak to you the way he did.”
Her heart stung with the truth in his words. “Are you still trying to rescue me?”
