Page 120 of Unleashed By Eden

“Let’s fucking do this,” I say, mostly to myself.

We walk through the revolving doors and into a glass-and-marble foyer. Heads turn as we pass, and phones come out. Liam ignores it all and spears straight for the elevators, hitting the button with his fist.

“You got it?” I ask under my breath.

He lifts the folder in his hand. “I got it.”

In the elevator, I crack my neck and check my phone.

No calls or texts from Vi.

We’re met on the floor by a receptionist and directed down a corridor into a conference room, with a long board table and a huge projector screen on one side of the wall.

Megan, Dave, and Mika are already there.

“Great wrap party, guys.” Dave stands to shake my hand.

“Best ten months of my life,” Mika adds, giving me a quick hug. “Tiring as fuck, but worth it.”

“As much as I hated having you guys on my ass for the entire tour,” I say, hugging Megan next, “I can’t wait to see what you’ve put together. You three busted your asses.”

“Thanks for coming in early. Before everyone else gets here . . .” Megan glances at the open door, then back to me. “Mika and Dave wanted to show you something, real quick. Off the record.”

My brows pinch. “What is it?” We all take our seats, and I shrug out of my coat.

I look to Liam. He shakes his head.

“Dave and I have been working on something during the tour, and we stayed up late last night to finish it. Just watch,” Mika says, dropping into his chair. He plugs his laptop into the HDMI, and the projector blinks to life on the wall.

The first few shots are what I expect—backstage crew working, crowd surf of faces, light flares over guitar necks. But after a couple of scenes, it shifts.

It’s not the official tour cut. It’s . . . us.

Me and Violet.

Grainy hallway footage of me catching her wrist and tugging her into my dressing room, door clicking shut behind us. A quick stolen kiss in a shadowed backstage corner. Violet rolling her eyes at something I said, and my whole face lighting up when I look at her. Whispered conversations caught from across the room, our voices too low to make out, but you feel the connection anyway.

I can’t take my eyes off the screen.

I’m watching our whole love story cut together—one I didn’t realize anyone else could see. A slow timeline of us: looks and touches, from stiff and wary at the start of the tour to completely gone by the middle. Every frame is want and longing staring back at me. She’s beautiful in all of it, caught off guard, unfiltered. We had no idea we were being filmed like this, which makes it that much more special. It’s rough and completely genuine. You can’t fake this.

I forget there’s anyone else in the room. My eyes well up, and I open my mouth to say something, but the lump in my throat stops me.

“Damn,” Liam says quietly beside me. “You really do love her.”

I drag my eyes off the screen and over to him, nodding once, blinking hard.

On the wall, the footage freezes—Mika hits pause on the last frame: just me and Vi looking at each other, not touching, everything else blurred out, so much love between us it almost leaps off the screen.

“None of this goes in the final cut, obviously,” Dave says. “But we wanted you to see what we’ve been seeing through our lens.”

“What was obvious to us from day one,” Mika adds. “Even when you two were pretending it wasn’t happening.”

“Carter,” Megan starts softly. “I know how it looks, but I’m sure Violet didn’t sell those images. She would never do something like that.”

The lump finally slides down my throat enough for me to speak.

“I know.” The energy around the table shifts.