Page 25 of The Encore’s Crown

I shut my eyes, but that makes it worse. There she is anyway, the way everything in her went still. I push off the door and toss my jacket onto the chair harder than necessary. It slides half off and hangs there, pathetic and expensive. Fitting. My phone is already in my hand before I decide to pick it up. Notifications crowd the screen. Band group chat exploding. Ronan sending memes that only make sense to drummers. Rithy asking where his damn pick went, like I've been stealing them from him all these years. Management emails I’ll pretend don’t exist until morning. My thumb slides past all of it and straight to Instagram.

Her profile is the first thing on my feed, like the app itself has developed a sense of humor. Natalia Sawadzka. Verified. Sixty thousand followers. I stare at her name for too long. Every photo is brighter than the last. Sunlight, confidence, lip gloss, captions that make it all look effortless. A shot of her laughing with her nephew, Kacper, perched on her shoulders, one hand gripping his ankle so he doesn’t launch himself off like a tiny maniac.

Next, it's a full-body selfie in a green dress from a brand campaign she'd been picked for, some vitamin gummy. I'd eat whatever the woman in that dress is selling. Then a close-up of her eye makeup, winged liner and attitude. Last, my thumb hovers over a blurry hotel mirror photo from earlier today. That black dress with the fitted winter coat over it. Her blonde waves falling over one shoulder, lips tinted pink, eyes catching the exact shade of Seoul neon like the city decided to behave for her and no one else.

My stomach drops. I remember exactly how she looked tonight. How close she stood, her hand on my chest. Her finger jabbing into me after I insulted her to her bones. I tap the picture, just to look at her longer, to feel closer, then I swipe back, because I don't deserve it.

The little message icon sits there on her profile, innocent and lethal. I want to message her. I want to apologize, to tell her I’m an asshole, that I panicked and reached for the ugliest word I could find because she was too close to something true. I want to tell her I didn't think of her as cheap, not once, not ever. I want to tell her that the whole fucking problem is that she mattered more than she should have. That I fought Rafe, fought all of them to keep her, but in the end, I let her go for her own good. To keep her safe from my bullshit.

But I don't. Because what would I be doing? Apologizing or pulling her back in? Making it better or making sure she thinks about me all night too? She's angry, and she has every right to be. I shouldn’t want someone this badly when I’m supposed to stay the hell away from her. So I put the phone down, then pick it back up immediately, open her profile again. Then I close the app and toss the phone onto the bed like it insulted my mom.

“I'm a fucking joke,” I mutter.

The room offers no rebuttal. Rude, but fair. I lie back and stare at the ceiling but it doesn’t help. All I see is her on that terrace, chin up, eyes glacial, wrapping herself in pride because I had given her something humiliating to survive. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. Jesus.

The worst part is she wasn’t wrong. I did like the distance, I liked the screen between us. That way, I could want her and still pretend it wasn’t real enough to cost anything. I scrub a hand over my face and shove myself into the shower. The water is hot, then scalding, but I stand there anyway until my skin feels raw. I keep thinking maybe I can wash the night off me. Soju and club smoke. Cold air and shame. Her voice.

Kurwa. Bullshit. Fuck. You.

I bow my head under the spray and let it pound against the back of my neck. I told her she was too young because that part is easy to hold up like evidence. Twenty-three and thirty-six. Numbers, facts. Sensible barriers, so very mature. Except she looked at me like I was hiding behind arithmetic because I didn’t have the balls to admit I was scared. She was right about that too.

Fantastic. Love that for me.

Back in the room, I towel off, pull on sweatpants, and try to distract myself. I open a mindless phone game and lose. I try again and lose harder. I pick up my bass. That should help, it usually does. I sit on the edge of the bed, fingers running through scales I don’t even hear. The strings vibrate under my hands, familiar and obedient. Music makes sense, the notes have rules. Pressure, release, timing. If something sounds wrong, you adjust. If you break a string, you replace it. People aren't as convenient. Every note drags me back to her touching my chest. Her palm flat over my shirt like she was daring herself to feel whatever was beating there. Her eyes on me when she said, Oh, I know.

And what did I do?

I called her a groupie.

I groan and set the bass back in its case before I punish it for my own stupidity. I consider texting Rithy for a cigarette, just one to take the edge off. Something to do with my hands that isn’t opening her profile again. But then I think about tomorrow. The flight, sitting near her, maybe close enough for her to smell stale smoke on me. Her nose wrinkling and her body turning away.

Shit.

There it is again, that pull to measure myself through her eyes. The way she saw through me. The way she looked at me like I was better than the act until I proved her wrong.

I walk back to the bed and pick up my phone again. I open our old thread, because I've decided there's no bottom to this spiral tonight. All our old messages stare back at me. The flirting. The voice notes. The plans dressed up as jokes in case one of us needed to deny them later. Somewhere with bad coffee and a good bed I'd promised her. She used to make me laugh at my phone like an idiot. In airports, in green rooms, in cars after shows, while Rafe sat two feet away not knowing I was already doing the thing he’d eventually try to stop me from doing. Or maybe he suspected. Rafe sees more than he says, an inconvenient habit.

I scroll too far and find the message where she first said my name in a voice note, teasing me about something stupid, drawing out the K like she knew exactly what it would do to my body. I last ten seconds before I hit play. Her voice fills the quiet room, small through the speaker but still deadly.

“Kiri.”

That’s all I let myself hear before I stop it. I throw the phone down again and stand.

“Nope.”

I pace once across the room, then back, then again. The walls feel too close, the air thick, like I’m going to suffocate under the weight of every choice I did or didn’t make tonight. I should have apologized before she walked away. I should have followed her.

I can’t stay here. The hotel room has too much of me in it. I need to walk it off. Run it off. Anything. I pull on a hoodie, yank the hood over my still-damp hair, jam my feet into my sneakers, and grab my keycard.

At the door, I stop. For one stupid second, I imagine knocking on hers. I don’t even know her room number, what the fuck am I even thinking? I shove my hands into my pockets and step into the hallway, walking fast before some dumbass part of me decides to go find out.

Chapter 12

Games And Monsters

Kiri

Running was either a terrible idea or the only good one I’ve had all night. I honestly don’t know anymore. All I know is I needed to get out of that hotel room before I wore a groove into the carpet and drove myself completely insane.