her.

The Fontaine sisters were one of a kind, bred from music on both sides like harmony had been stitched into their blood before either of them knew how to hold a note, born to a singer who understood the discipline of breath and a producer who knew how to turn raw feeling into something polished enough for a record needle to worship.

They were sharpened first in the church choir, where every missed note earned a lifted brow from some auntie in the second pew and every solo had to be sung like the Lord Himself had leaned down to listen, then refined further in those after-school sessions their father arranged with the seriousness of a man building a legacy, hours spent on posture, pitch, timing, diction, and presence until even their childhood began to move in counts of eight.

Still, their mother, Melanie, had been firm about one thing, planting her foot so deeply into the ground that not even ambition, money, or industry men with big promises could move it; her daughters were going to have balance, they were going to have homework and dinner at a proper table, cartoons on Saturday mornings, birthdays that did not revolve around bookings, and stretches of time where they were allowed to be little girls instead of little investments.

Delilah did not understand, not then, how rare that protection was, how much privilege lived inside the simple fact that she could put her microphone down and go home, how much love it took for her mother to say no in rooms full of people who only knew how to ask for more, and it was not until she met Michael, not until she saw the way work clung to him like a second skin and childhood seemed to slip through his fingers no matter how tightly he tried to hold it, that she realized Melanie had not been strict for the sake of being strict, but had been standing guard at the gate of her daughters’ softness.

She remembered growing up beside Celeste, remembered the way people compared them as if sisters were meant to be measured instead of loved, as if talent became more interesting only when it could be turned into a contest, with Celeste often receiving the kind of attention Delilah neither wanted nor trusted, because her sister’s body had bloomed earlier, her hips rounding, her figure announcing itself before Delilah was old enough to understand why certain men suddenly looked too long.

It never drove a wedge between them, not truly, because Delilah had never envied that gaze or the burden that came with it, had never wanted to be watched that way, had never mistaken attention for affection, and if anything she was relieved when Celeste stepped into the light with her chin lifted and her smile bright enough to blind a room, because it meant Delilah could drift backward after the applause, could slip into the velvet-dark quiet beyond the stage, could become shadow again without anybody asking why.

That was where Delilah was happiest, not under the hot mouth of the spotlight but alone in her room after the performance, curled beneath her covers with her songbook pressed to her knees, humming half-finished melodies into the dark while the house settled around her, writing lyrics in the margins, circling words that felt almost right, composing little notes only she could hear clearly yet, and teaching herself that there was power in being unseen if what you made in secret was beautiful enough to haunt people later.

The Fontaine sisters met the Jacksons at Motown after being scouted during a performance at their local club, a scene their mother had been deeply hesitant to let them enter, not because she doubted her daughters’ gifts, but because Melanie Fontaine knew too well how quickly grown people could turn talented children into products if there was no mother standing close enough to say no.

Still, somehow, it all worked out, or at least it seemed to in the beginning, because there they were in the halls of Motown, rubbing elbows with other children who sang like old souls and adults who spoke in contracts, rehearsals, and promises, while the air itself seemed to hum with ambition, perfume, cigarette smoke, and the kind of possibility that made everybody stand a little straighter.

Soon enough, the Jacksons and the Fontaines became two peas in a pod, their lives folding together with the ease of people who understood the strange business of raising gifted children beneath hungry lights, and much of that closeness came from their mothers, because Katherine and Melanie found in each other a quiet kind of understanding, a woman-to-woman recognition that did not require much explanation.

Their fathers, however, were another matter entirely, because Elijah Fontaine and Joseph Jackson could sit at the same table, shake hands, speak politely, and still make the air between them feel like two locked horns pressing beneath a tablecloth, both men believing in greatness, both men demanding discipline, yet disagreeing fiercely on what a child should have to lose in order to become extraordinary.

Delilah remembered those family dinners most of all, remembered the noise and warmth of them, the scrape of forks against plates, the smell of buttered grits and fried fish, the grown folks talking over one another while the younger ones traded looks across the table, and beneath all that homely commotion she remembered playing footsie with Michael, their narrow legs hidden under the table like a shared secret, his socked foot nudging hers once, then twice, until she had to press her lips together to keep from laughing too loudly.

Across from them, Celeste would pretend to listen to whatever conversation was happening around her, but Delilah knew her sister well enough to recognize when her attention had gone elsewhere, and more often than not, Celeste’s eyes had drifted toward Jackie, watching him with that dangerous young curiosity that made the whole room seem to thin around the two of them, while Jackie, older and far too aware of the effect he had, would let his gaze settle back on hers with the slow confidence of a lion pretending not to notice the gazelle had already seen him in the grass.

Delilah remembered the way her mother caught everything without seeming to look, the way Melanie could be spooning grits onto somebody’s plate one second and reading every secret under the table the next, her voice suddenly cutting through the chatter sharp enough to make both families freeze.

“Delilah Fontaine! Michael Jackson!” she snapped, pointing her serving spoon like a weapon handed down from the ancestors themselves. “Eat them damn grits before I pop both y’all narrow behinds!”

The footsie would stop immediately, of course, Michael sitting up straighter with those wide guilty eyes while Delilah dropped her gaze to her plate as if the grits had become the most fascinating thing in the world, but it never lasted long, because within seconds they would look at each other again, their mouths twitching, their shoulders trembling, and then the same small grin would pass between them like a match struck under the table, bright and secret and impossible to put out.

Delilah remembered Michael in pieces that had never really loosened from her, remembered the way he became less of a boy from another family and more of a secret stitched into the lining of her own childhood, remembered how the two of them grew closer as their families toured together and the road turned everybody’s lives into one long, rumbling blur of hotel rooms, dressing rooms, reheated dinners, soundchecks, and highways silvering beneath the moon.

She remembered their teenage bodies before either of them had fully learned what to do with them, all lanky limbs, sharp elbows, growing pains, and awkward grace, folded together in one of the cramped backrooms of the tour bus where the walls seemed too close, the air always too warm, and the space never quite big enough for both of them and all the feeling they were too young and shy to name, though somehow they made it work because closeness had already become second nature.

In those little stolen rooms, with the bus humming beneath them like some great sleeping animal, they built a world out of board games and whispered jokes, out of Scrabble tiles spread across their knees, crossword books bent at the spine, Monopoly money crumpled in Michael’s hand whenever he started accusing her of cheating, and that old Twister mat they could never unfold properly without bumping shoulders, knocking knees, and laughing until one of the grown folks told them to hush.

They even kept a list, serious as scripture and messy as a child’s diary, of all the games they needed to buy at the next pit stop so the next few days on the road would not swallow them whole, Delilah writing the titles in her careful hand while Michael leaned over her shoulder with his chin nearly touching her hair, suggesting checkers, cards, another puzzle book, anything that would give him one more excuse to sit beside her when the world outside the bus became too loud.

She remembered the name he gave her too, remembered the first time he called her Tinky, the nickname tumbling shyly out of his mouth after Tinker Bell, after that ragged little copy of Peter Pan he carried around until the corners softened and the pages curled, the book about lost boys and make-believe islands and a child who never wanted to grow up, though even then Delilah had understood that Michael did not love that story merely because it was magical, but because some part of him already knew what it meant to be surrounded by wonder and still feel lonely inside it.

He called her Tinky with such bright affection that she never had the heart to dislike it, even when it made something ache quietly in her chest, because Tinker Bell loved Peter with all the fire her tiny body could hold, loved him so fiercely that it made her sharp, jealous, reckless, and impossible, and Peter, foolish little boy that he was, never truly saw the depth of it.

Delilah never wanted to name Michael Peter, not even in play, because she could not bear the thought of loving him like that, loudly in her heart and silently to his face, fluttering around the edges of his life while he looked past her toward some other adventure, some other girl, some other shining thing waiting beyond her reach.

She wanted him to see that she loved him, wanted him to know it in the way she saved him the good pencil for crossword puzzles, in the way she let him win at Monopoly only when his day had already been bad enough, in the way her knee always found his beneath the table or her shoulder drifted against his in the darkened backroom of the bus when everybody else had gone quiet.

So she settled on Bambi, soft and sweet and a little devastating, because Michael had those great brown eyes that seemed too honest for the world he had been born into, eyes bright enough to hold a thousand truths at once, eyes that could look shy, wounded, amused, curious, and ancient all in the same breath, as if every feeling he could not say aloud gathered there first and waited for Delilah to understand.

“Tinky, right foot red,” Michael announced from somewhere behind her, his voice carrying that soft little seriousness he always got whenever they played games, as if the fate of the whole tour bus depended on whether Delilah Fontaine could twist herself across a plastic mat without knocking them both clean to the floor.

“’M gonna fall if I go that way, Bambi,” Delilah warned, her sixteen-year-old body already folded into some ridiculous shape that had her left hand pressed to yellow, one knee trembling over blue, and her locs slipping over her shoulder like they, too were tired of fighting gravity.

“Girl, that ain’t my fault,” Michael said, and though his words came easy, his mouth had already started curving before he finished them, because he knew exactly what kind of trouble he had invited by sounding that smug while Delilah was balanced on the edge of humiliation and bodily collapse.

Delilah gasped like he had wounded her down to the bone, whipping her head around so fast her hair swung with the motion, her brown eyes narrowing into the kind of glare that might have scared somebody who had not spent half his adolescence learning the difference between her real anger and the kind she put on for theater.

Michael only blinked at her with those big Bambi eyes, all false innocence and barely hidden laughter, his long teenage limbs tangled too close to hers on the mat, his afro brushing the low ceiling of the cramped backroom while the tour bus hummed beneath them and the world outside rolled on in a dark ribbon of highway.

“You got somethin’ to say?” she asked, lifting her chin with as much dignity as a girl could manage while bent nearly sideways over a circle of primary colors.

“Nah,” he said, though the grin tugging at his mouth betrayed him entirely. “I’m just sayin’, you the one actin’ like red moved across the mat or somethin’.”

Her mouth fell open, offended beyond measure, but Michael could already see the crack forming in her performance, the way her eyes brightened, the way her lips twitched, the way her glare started losing its teeth because he had always known she would fold in a moment.

And sure enough, no sooner had she tried to huff at him than a laugh slipped loose, small at first and then helpless, spilling into the tiny room until Michael started laughing too, both of them shaking so badly that the Twister mat crinkled beneath them and Delilah finally lost her balance, toppling sideways into him with a shriek while he caught her as best as his own awkward limbs would allow.

For a second they lay there in a heap of elbows, knees, breathless laughter, and bright plastic beneath them, too close in that strange way teenagers could be before they had the courage to call closeness what it was, Delilah’s cheek near his shoulder, Michael’s hand still caught carefully at her waist, both of them suddenly quieter than the joke required.

Then Delilah looked up at him, still smiling, still pretending her heart had not skipped like a scratched record, and Michael looked back with those soft brown eyes of his, warm and startled and full of all the things he was not brave enough to say yet.

However, all good things, even the bright and glittering ones that seemed too blessed to rot, had to come to an end, and for the Fontaine girls that ending arrived cruelly in the summer of 1977, when Delilah was eighteen and still young enough to believe that the people who had grown up beside you might handle your heart with some memory of who you had been before the world made you useful.

It happened in a studio where they were meant to be recording together, a room thick with warm equipment, coiled wires, half-empty paper cups, cigarette smoke clinging to somebody’s jacket, and the electric hum of a track waiting to be born, but what should have been music became warfare the moment Celeste stepped close enough to Jackie to catch the scent of another woman on him.

It was not just the perfume, though that alone was enough, some unfamiliar floral sweetness blooming from his shirt like a betrayal with petals, but the faint red smear at his collar, small enough that a man might think it invisible, careless enough that only a woman already fluent in disappointment would know where to look.

Celeste saw it, and Delilah saw it too, because the Fontaine sisters were many things but never stupid, and they had grown up around too many dressing rooms, too many musicians, too many men who thought charm could rinse guilt clean from their hands to pretend that lipstick landed on collars by the grace of God.

One moment Celeste had been smiling, laughing even, her hand lifted as if she were about to adjust her headphones or tease Jackie for something low and private, and the next the whole room split open as if Mars himself had struck the floor with his spear, turning the studio from a place of rhythm and melody into a battlefield dressed in wood paneling and soundproof foam.

Delilah remembered the sound of it more than anything, the sharp crack in her sister’s voice when realization became rage, the stunned silence that fell over the musicians, the scrape of a chair shoved back too fast, the way Jackie’s face changed from confusion to guilt to that defensive male pride men reached for when they had been caught too plainly to lie well.

It was almost cinematic in its violence, reminiscent of wartime, as if Bellona had come sweeping through the door with blood beneath her fingernails and the Furies had risen from the studio floor to circle Celeste’s shoulders, whispering every wronged woman’s anger into her ear until grief no longer looked like grief but something armed and ancient.

Celeste screamed at him with the kind of hurt that had teeth, every word striking him harder because love was still buried inside it, because betrayal from a stranger was an insult but betrayal from someone who had once held your face in both hands was sacrilege, and Jackie, foolish enough or proud enough to keep trying to explain what had already damned him, only made her angrier with each breath he wasted.

Delilah still believed, even years later, that perhaps some ruined version of their relationship might have been salvageable if it had been only one mistake, one groupie, one nameless woman whose perfume could be cursed and forgotten, but Jackie had not merely strayed; he had gone and tangled himself in sheets with their own distant cousin, a woman close enough to make the betrayal feel incestuous in spirit even if the family tree had to stretch its arms to prove the relation.

That was the part Celeste could not swallow, the part that turned heartbreak into humiliation, because there were betrayals a woman could cry over in private and there were betrayals that made a fool of her in front of everyone who knew her name, and Celeste Fontaine had never been the kind of woman to suffer public foolishness quietly.

And in all wars there were innocents harmed, people who did not sharpen the blades but still bled when the fighting began, and Delilah, who had only wanted to keep her sister from doing something that could not be undone, became one of them.

She remembered moving before she thought, remembered Celeste lunging toward Jackie with a sound that did not belong to any song they had ever sung, remembered Michael’s voice somewhere behind her, panicked and calling her name, remembered the bodies rushing together in the cramped studio as everyone tried to stop the storm after it had already broken through the roof.

Then came the shove, hard and sudden, not meant for her perhaps but landing on her all the same, sending Delilah backward into the wall with enough force to knock the breath from her chest before the back of her head struck the door with a harsh, sickening smack that seemed to silence the whole room at once.

For one suspended second, everything froze: Celeste’s rage, Jackie’s excuses, the musicians’ scrambling hands, even the low red glow of the recording light seemed to hold its breath like a witness afraid to testify.

Then Delilah slid down the door and crumpled to the floor, her songbook skidding from her hand, her body going frighteningly still beneath the studio lights, and whatever battle Celeste and Jackie had been waging vanished beneath the greater terror of seeing the one person who had not deserved any of it lying unconscious in the ruins of their love.

She was fine, or at least that was what everyone kept saying with the strained relief of people trying to convince themselves before they convinced her, because the doctors called it a linear skull fracture, nothing deep, nothing complicated, nothing that had splintered inward or touched the delicate machinery of her brain, and by every clinical measure Delilah Fontaine had been lucky, though luck felt like a strange word to give a girl lying under hospital lights with bandages wrapped across her scalp and pain blooming behind her eyes like thunder trapped beneath bone.

They kept her under observation for eight hours, though the doctor had said four would have been enough, but between Elijah Fontaine’s iron-jawed refusal to let anybody rush his baby girl out of that bed, Melanie’s sharp, trembling questions, and Katherine Jackson’s quiet but immovable insistence that they were going to watch that child properly before sending her anywhere, the hospital staff quickly learned that there would be no arguing with the mothers, no bargaining with the fathers, and no offering half-measures to a room full of people who had already seen enough harm done for one day.

Delilah remembered the room in fragments, remembered the white walls and the thin blanket scratchy against her legs, remembered the cool tightness of the bandages on her scalp and the strange heaviness of her own limbs, remembered how the lights seemed too bright even when they were dimmed, how every fluorescent flicker made her ears ring as if Apollo himself had drawn his bow inside her skull and left the string vibrating long after the arrow flew.

She remembered voices rushing around her in waves, her mother’s voice closest and most familiar, her father’s deeper one trying and failing to stay calm, Katherine’s softer murmur threading through the room like prayer, and somewhere beside the bed, steady as a vow carved into stone, Michael’s hand holding hers as if he had decided that if he let go, the gods might mistake her for someone they were allowed to take.

His fingers never left hers, not when the nurse came in to check her pupils, not when her mother asked if she was nauseous, not when Jackie hovered near the doorway looking wrecked and guilty and unwanted, and not even when Delilah drifted in and out of that strange medicated fog where everything sounded both too loud and too far away, as though she had been lowered beneath the surface of Lethe and the whole world had to speak through water to reach her.

The headaches came in slow, punishing tides, rolling through her skull until she had to close her eyes and breathe like she was trying to keep the pain from noticing her, and she hated how helpless it made her feel, hated the way the medicine blurred the edges of her thoughts, hated how her tongue felt heavy in her mouth and her body refused to obey her with the quick, familiar certainty she had always depended on.

She wanted to sit up, wanted to swing her legs over the side of the bed and prove to everyone that she was still herself, wanted to walk the halls and peek into the rooms of people less fortunate than her because even then, aching and drowsy and wrapped in gauze, Delilah’s heart kept turning outward, reaching toward suffering as if compassion were a reflex she had been born with.

But every time she tried to move too much, the room tipped slightly, her stomach turned, and Michael’s hand tightened around hers while he whispered, “Don’t, Tinky,” in a voice so scared and tender that she hated him a little for making her listen.

She hated medicine, always had and always would, hated the chalky taste of pills and the sleepy drag they left behind, hated anything that entered her body and started making decisions without asking her permission first, because Delilah Fontaine could endure pain, could endure exhaustion, could endure the unfairness of being hurt in a war she had not started, but she despised feeling like Juno had reached down from Olympus and snatched the reins from her hands, leaving her trapped inside her own flesh while someone else drove the chariot.

Most of all, she hated not being in control, hated the betrayal of a body that had always carried her through songs, rehearsals, long nights, and bright stages suddenly becoming soft, slow, and unreliable, hated needing help to sit up, hated being told to rest, hated the way everyone looked at her as if she had become breakable simply because the door had hit harder than fate should have allowed.

And yet, through all of it, through the ringing lights and the cotton-mouthed drowsiness and the ache that pulsed behind her eyes, Michael stayed beside her like a boy keeping watch at a temple after the statue had cracked, his thumb moving carefully over her knuckles, his face pale with guilt he had no right to carry, and every time Delilah woke enough to look at him, he was still there, still holding on, still staring at her like the world had already taken too much from him and he was not about to let it take her too.

Michael sat beside Delilah’s hospital bed like somebody had nailed him there, his long legs folded awkwardly beneath the too-small chair, his shoulders hunched forward, his hand wrapped around hers with a carefulness that made her chest ache even through the medicine haze, because he held her as if she were made of blown glass and starlight and one wrong breath might send her slipping somewhere he could not follow.

The room had finally quieted after hours of rushing voices and too-bright lights, with Melanie and Elijah speaking in low, worried tones somewhere beyond the half-closed door while Katherine stood in the hallway with that soft, steady authority of hers, making sure nurses kept the lights dim and the noise down because Delilah had already flinched once too many at the sharp brightness overhead, and Michael, who had watched every little wince cross her face like a personal punishment, had not stopped frowning since.

“You still starin’ at me?” Delilah mumbled, her voice thick and sleepy from the medicine she hated so much, her lashes lifting with great effort until she found him sitting there with those enormous brown eyes fixed on her face like he was trying to memorize proof that she was alive.

Michael blinked, caught and guilty, though he did not look away.

“Nah,” he said softly, even though the lie was so poor it barely deserved to stand. “I was just makin’ sure you ain’t float off or nothin’.”

Delilah’s mouth twitched, the smallest little smile tugging at the corner before the ache in her head made her stop herself, and Michael saw it, saw that tiny flicker of amusement beneath the bandage wrapped carefully around her scalp, and relief passed through him so visibly it almost looked like pain leaving his body in one long breath.

“Float off where, Bambi?” she whispered, her fingers giving the faintest squeeze around his. “Ain’t got my shoes.”

Michael’s lips parted, then curved, and there it was, that shy smile of his, trembly around the edges and too bright for the dim room, as if she had reached up from the bed and lit a match behind his ribs.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, leaning closer so he would not have to speak above the quiet. “You always talkin’ ’bout visitin’ folks, even when you the one laid up, so I figured you might try to sneak out and go check on somebody else with your barefoot self.”

Delilah rolled her eyes, though the motion was slow and dramatic because the room still shifted when she moved too quickly, and Michael immediately straightened, worry flashing across his face before she could even breathe.

“I’m okay,” she said, though it came out in that stubborn Fontaine way, soft but firm, like she was already tired of everybody treating her as if the gods had misplaced her bones.

“You ain’t gotta keep sayin’ that,” he whispered, his thumb brushing gently over her knuckles, back and forth, back and forth, the same little motion he had been doing for what felt like forever, as if he could smooth the fear out of himself by touching her carefully enough. “You can just be hurt for a minute, Tinky.”

The nickname slipped from him so tenderly that Delilah went quiet, her eyes settling on his face with something drowsy and warm moving behind them, because Michael only called her Tinky like that when he was not teasing, when the word came from the softest part of him, the part that still smelled like tour-bus carpet, crossword paper, corner-store candy, and old Peter Pan pages softened by his fingers.

“You sound scared,” she said.

Michael looked down at their joined hands, and for a moment he was not Michael Jackson with a voice that could stop rooms, not the boy people pushed beneath lights and called miraculous, not the performer who knew how to smile through exhaustion, but just Michael, eighteen and terrified, his throat tight because the girl he loved before he had the courage to name it had gone still on a studio floor and made the whole world turn white around the edges.

“I was,” he admitted, so quietly that she had to look at his mouth to catch the words. “You hit that door and you ain’t move, and I ain’t never—”

He stopped himself, swallowing hard, his lashes dipping as if he could hide the shine gathering in his eyes by looking at the blanket instead of her face.

Delilah watched him through the fog of medicine and pain, watched how tightly he held himself together, watched how one of his knees bounced once before he forced it still, and even half-loopy she knew he was trying not to make his fear her responsibility, trying not to cry because if he cried then she might try to comfort him and he already knew she would, skull fracture and all, because Delilah had a heart that never did know how to sit down when somebody else was hurting.

“Bambi,” she whispered, tugging weakly at his hand.

He looked up immediately.

“You gon’ mess around and make your eyes fall out your head lookin’ at me like that,” she said, and because her voice was still sleepy and slow, the little joke came out softer than she meant it to, but Michael laughed anyway, sudden and wet and quiet, bowing his head over their hands like the sound had escaped him before he could decide whether joy was allowed in a room like that.

“You look pitiful,” he said, trying to tease her back, though his eyes betrayed him completely.

Delilah gasped, offended in the most delicate, medicated way imaginable.

“Pitiful?” she repeated, her brows pinching beneath the edge of her bandage. “I’m injured and you sittin’ here callin’ me pitiful?”

“I ain’t say you was ugly,” he rushed, cheeks warming at once, his voice tripping over itself because the last thing in the world he wanted was for Delilah Fontaine to think he had looked at her and seen anything other than something precious. “I just said you look pitiful, like… like a little hurt fairy or somethin’.”

“A hurt fairy?”

“Yeah,” he said, gaining a tiny bit of courage when her mouth twitched again. “Like Tinker Bell if somebody slammed her into a door.”

Delilah stared at him for one long second, trying very hard to look unimpressed, but the medicine had made her face too open and his nervous little smile had always been too hard to resist, so the laugh slipped out of her before she could catch it, small and airy and cut short by the pain that made her wince.

Michael’s whole expression changed in an instant, the teasing falling away as he leaned closer, his free hand hovering uselessly near her shoulder because he wanted to touch her, wanted to soothe her, wanted to gather her up and hold the ache out of her body by force, but he did not know where he was allowed to place all that wanting.

“Don’t laugh,” he whispered, panicked. “Don’t laugh if it hurt.”

“You the one makin’ jokes,” she breathed, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment.

“I ain’t gon’ make no more.”

“You better,” she murmured, opening one eye to glare at him. “I’m bored.”

Michael stared at her, then gave her that look, that soft disbelieving look that always made her feel like he was somewhere between laughing at her and worshipping her, like even her fussing from a hospital bed was something he wanted to keep in his pocket.

“You bored?” he repeated. “Girl, you just got knocked out cold and you bored already?”

“I hate hospitals.”

“I know.”

“I hate medicine.”

“I know that too.”

“I hate everybody lookin’ at me like I’m made of wet tissue.”

Michael’s thumb paused over her knuckles, and his voice gentled into something so intimate it made the dim room feel smaller around them.

“I ain’t lookin’ at you like that.”

Delilah turned her head slightly, careful not to anger the thunder sleeping behind her eyes, and found him watching her in a way that made her suddenly shy, which was ridiculous considering she was lying there with half her scalp wrapped up and no real dignity left to defend.

“How you lookin’ at me then?” she asked, and she meant for it to sound playful, but the question came out softer, thinner, threaded with something neither of them was old enough to handle gracefully.

Michael’s mouth opened, then closed, and all the words he could have said crowded behind his teeth, every secret he had swallowed on tour buses and at dinner tables and in backstage hallways pressing forward at once, because he wanted to tell her that he looked at her like she was the only quiet place he had ever known, like she was the first girl who had ever seen him without reaching for a piece of him, like watching her fall had scared him so badly that some locked door inside his chest had blown open and now everything he felt for her was standing in the hallway with nowhere to hide.

But he was Michael, shy and careful and trained too well to hold his own heart like contraband, so he only looked down at her hand and smiled a little.

“Like you my Tinky,” he said.

Delilah’s face softened at once, the kind of softening that made his stomach twist because she did not know what she did to him, did not know that every time she looked at him like that he felt both brave and ruined.

“That’s it?” she whispered.

He shook his head, still staring at their hands.

“Nah,” he said, almost under his breath. “But that’s all I can say without you laughin’ at me.”

Delilah was quiet for a moment, quiet enough that Michael worried the medicine had dragged her back toward sleep, but then her thumb moved weakly against his, a tiny stroke of comfort that nearly undid him.

“I wouldn’t laugh,” she murmured.

Michael looked at her then, really looked, and the yearning in him rose so sharply it felt like a hand around his throat, because her eyes were heavy and tired but still Delilah’s, still warm, still stubborn, still somehow worried about him while she lay there bandaged and aching, and he wanted so badly that it frightened him, wanted to bend down and press his mouth to the back of her hand, wanted to kiss her forehead where the bandage did not cover, wanted to crawl into that narrow hospital bed and hold her carefully until the world apologized for touching her wrong.

Instead, he reached into the paper bag at his feet with his free hand, his movements clumsy because he refused to let go of her, and pulled out a bent crossword book, a pencil, and a packet of candy he had clearly begged someone to buy from the vending machine downstairs.

Delilah blinked at the offerings, slow and suspicious.

“You brought entertainment?”

“Course I did,” he said, trying to look casual and failing because his ears were going pink. “You said hospitals boring.”

“I said that just now.”

“I knew you was gon’ say it.”

That made her smile again, and Michael looked so pleased with himself that for a second the fear slipped off his shoulders and left the boy she knew best, the one who took games too seriously, accused her of cheating at Monopoly, and hid his laughter behind his hand whenever Melanie Fontaine threatened both their narrow behinds over breakfast.

“You ain’t supposed to have all that candy in here,” Delilah whispered.

Michael glanced toward the door like a criminal in a church.

“Then don’t tell nobody.”

“What you gon’ give me?”

He frowned, opening the packet and peering inside with grave consideration, as if choosing her candy required the same focus other people gave to contracts.

“You can have the red one.”

“Only one?”

“You injured, not greedy.”

Delilah’s mouth fell open, and Michael’s smile broke loose before he could stop it, bright and boyish and helplessly fond, his laughter tumbling softly into the room as she tried to glare at him through the medicine fog.

“You lucky I can’t get up,” she muttered.

“I know,” he said, still smiling, though his voice went tender again as he placed the candy carefully on the little tray beside her water cup. “You woulda tore me up by now.”

“I still might.”

“I believe you.”

They sat like that for a while, the crossword book open between them even though Delilah could barely focus on the clues and Michael kept giving her answers that were either wrong or suspiciously convenient, his pencil scratching lightly against the page while she drifted in and out, waking every few minutes to find him still there, still holding her hand, still pretending not to stare whenever he thought she was too sleepy to notice.

At some point, when the hallway dimmed and the grown folks’ voices softened into a faraway murmur, Delilah opened her eyes and found Michael leaning over the crossword with his brows furrowed, whispering the clue to himself like it had personally insulted him.

“Bambi,” she whispered.

He looked up instantly.

“Yeah?”

“You still here?”

The question hit him harder than she meant it to, and for a moment all the softness left his face except the part that belonged to her.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said, and his voice carried no teasing then, no shyness, no performance, only the plain, trembling truth of a boy who had already lost too many pieces of normal and refused to lose this one too.

Delilah studied him for as long as her tired eyes would allow, then tugged weakly at his hand until he understood and leaned closer.

“You can sit on the bed,” she murmured. “Chair look like it’s eatin’ you alive.”

Michael hesitated, glancing toward the door as if Melanie Fontaine might storm in with a serving spoon and the authority of God, but Delilah gave his hand another tiny pull, and that was all it took for him to fold.

He moved carefully, easing onto the edge of the mattress with the stiff caution of somebody approaching a sleeping altar, keeping most of his weight off the bed, one hand still wrapped around hers while the other braced near her hip without touching, and Delilah, satisfied, let her eyes drift shut again.

“You better not fall on me,” she whispered.

“I ain’t gon’ fall on you.”

“You lanky.”

“You always got somethin’ to say.”

“Mhm.”

Michael smiled down at her, his heart so full it hurt, watching the bandage at her scalp, the soft curve of her cheek, the stubborn set of her mouth even in sleepiness, and he wished with the desperate foolishness of youth that he could trade places with her, could take the pain and the ringing lights and the helplessness she hated so much, not because he was noble but because seeing her hurt made him feel useless in a way fame had never taught him how to survive.

Delilah’s fingers loosened slightly in his as she began to drift, and panic flickered through him before he realized she was only falling asleep, not leaving him, only sinking into the rest everyone kept begging her to take.

He bent over their joined hands then, slow enough that even the air seemed to hold still, and pressed the lightest kiss to her knuckles, so soft it might have been mistaken for breath if she had not opened one eye at the exact wrong moment.

“Mikey.”

He froze.

Delilah looked at him, drowsy and smug despite the bandages, and Michael’s whole face went hot.

“You kissin’ on my hand while I’m concussed?”

“I ain’t kiss it,” he lied terribly.

“You did.”

“I was checkin’ your temperature.”

“With your lips?”

He looked toward the door again, mortified, while Delilah’s smile crept wider, sweet and sleepy and victorious.

“You sweet on me, Bambi?” she whispered.

Michael looked back at her then, and whatever little joke he had ready died in his throat, because yes, he was sweet on her, sweeter than he knew how to explain, sweeter than was safe, sweeter than he had any business being when their families were tangled together and their careers were pulling them down roads neither of them controlled.

But Delilah was looking at him with those heavy-lidded eyes and that soft, teasing mouth, and for once, maybe because the room was dim and the world felt fragile and the gods had already scared him half to death, he did not run from the truth fast enough to hide it completely.

“Maybe,” he whispered.

Delilah’s smile softened into something quieter, something that made the hospital room feel less like a place of pain and more like the little backroom of the tour bus, cramped and warm and humming with secrets.

“Good,” she murmured, closing her eyes again as if that answer had settled something inside her. “I’m sweet on you too.”

Michael stopped breathing for a second.

Then he sat there on the edge of her bed with her hand in his, the crossword forgotten, the candy untouched, the hallway voices fading into nothing, and stared at her sleeping face like Venus herself had brushed past the hospital curtain and left him with a blessing he was too young to hold properly, his heart beating so loudly he wondered if the nurses could hear it, his whole body aching with the wonder of being chosen, even softly, even sleepily, even in a room that smelled of antiseptic and worry.

And when Melanie finally peeked through the doorway and saw him perched there beside her daughter, holding Delilah’s hand like it was the only thing keeping him anchored to earth, she did not fuss, did not call his name, did not threaten his narrow behind for sitting on the bed, but simply watched for a moment with something tired and knowing in her eyes before she pulled the door halfway closed again and let the two children have their quiet, because some tenderness, even in the aftermath of war, deserved not to be interrupted.

That had been seven years ago, seven long years since the studio floor became a battlefield, since the door struck Delilah’s skull hard enough to send her into darkness, since Celeste’s heartbreak carved a boundary through both families so deep and unforgiving that even love, young and trembling as it was, could not cross without bleeding.

There had to be lines drawn in the sand after that, sharp and final as the borders of a conquered kingdom, and unfortunately for Delilah, Michael stood on the other side of them, not because he had harmed her, not because he had betrayed her, not because he had done anything except belong to the same family as the man who had broken her sister’s heart, but sometimes war did not care who was guilty when it came time to count the bodies left behind.

The house had been too quiet that night, the kind of quiet that did not soothe so much as accuse, every room holding its breath around the Fontaine girls as if the walls themselves knew something had been ruined that could not be swept up before morning.

Delilah remembered moving through the hallway with careful steps, one hand grazing the wall because her balance had not fully returned and the dull ache beneath her bandages still pulsed whenever she turned her head too quickly, remembered the way the low lamplight blurred at the edges and made the framed family photographs seem far away, as though she were walking through someone else’s memory instead of her own home.

Celeste’s bedroom door had been half-open, and from inside came no music, no humming, no little impatient clicks of her tongue while she fussed with lyrics or makeup or whatever outfit she had decided the world deserved to see her in next, only a soft, wrecked silence broken every now and then by the wet drag of breath from someone who had cried so hard that crying itself had become work.

Delilah should have gone to her own room and rested like the doctor had told her, should have let Melanie bring her water and medicine and fuss over the bandage hidden beneath her scarf, should have closed her eyes until the room stopped tilting like a ship caught in Neptune’s bad temper, but Celeste was her sister, and there were some hurts Delilah had never known how to walk past.

So she pushed the door open with two fingers.

Celeste sat on the edge of her bed in the same dress she had worn to the studio, though it looked different now, wrinkled and twisted at the hem, one strap slipping down her shoulder, the pretty fabric made pitiful by grief, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut from crying, her cheeks raw, her lips bitten until the skin had split in one tiny place that made Delilah’s chest tighten with fresh anger all over again.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The lamp beside Celeste’s bed cast a soft gold circle over the room, touching the scattered tissues on the floor, the open vanity drawer, the lipstick Celeste had thrown so hard it had cracked against the mirror, the sheet music lying crumpled near her shoes like some dead white bird that had flown too close to the wrong god’s fire.

“Cece,” Delilah whispered, and even that little bit of sound seemed to hurt Celeste, because her sister flinched as if her own name had weight.

Celeste lifted her head slowly, and the look on her face stole whatever Delilah had meant to say, because Celeste did not look angry then, not the way she had in the studio when she lunged at Jackie like Bellona herself had climbed into her bones; she looked small, stripped down, humiliated, like a girl who had been standing in sunlight one moment and found herself dropped into the underworld the next with no coin for the ferryman.

“You supposed to be layin’ down,” Celeste said, her voice scraped raw and ugly from screaming, nothing like the bright, sharp voice she used to cut through rehearsals.

“So are you.”

Celeste gave a sound that might have been a laugh if laughter had not been too far away from that room to find them.

“I ain’t the one got her head cracked open.”

“It ain’t cracked open,” Delilah murmured, trying for softness, trying for humor, trying for anything that might make the room feel less like a hospital waiting area after bad news. “Just fractured a little.”

Celeste’s face collapsed at that, guilt flashing through her grief so quickly Delilah almost wished she had not said it.

“I’m sorry,” Celeste whispered, and the words came out broken, thin as thread. “I’m so sorry, Lilah.”

Delilah crossed the room and sat beside her carefully, lowering herself onto the mattress with a little wince she tried to hide, but Celeste saw it anyway and turned away as if the sight of Delilah’s pain was one more punishment she could not bear.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Delilah said.

Celeste shook her head hard, her hands twisting together in her lap.

“It was all my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“If I hadn’t gone at him like that—”

“If he hadn’t done what he did,” Delilah interrupted, gentle but firm, “there wouldn’t have been nothing to go at him about.”

That was the first time Celeste truly looked at her.

Her eyes, swollen and red-rimmed, burned with a hurt so deep it seemed older than both of them, as if every woman ever made foolish by love had come and sat behind them.

“He was with her,” Celeste whispered.

Delilah swallowed.

“I know.”

“Our cousin, Lilah.”

“I know.”

“Not some girl from backstage, not some woman he met after a show, not some nobody I could curse out and forget.” Celeste’s voice trembled, then sharpened, not into rage but into something worse, something ruined. “He laid up with somebody who sat at my auntie’s table, somebody who smiled in my face, somebody who knew me.”

Delilah said nothing, because there were betrayals words could not soften, and trying only made the wound feel insulted.

Celeste pressed the heel of her hand against her mouth like she was trying to hold herself together from the outside.

“I feel dirty,” she whispered. “I feel stupid.”

“You ain’t stupid.”

“I am.”

“No, you loved him.”

Celeste’s breath hitched, and the tears came again, not dramatic this time, not loud, just steady and helpless, sliding down her face as she stared at the carpet.

“I did,” she said, so quietly Delilah almost missed it. “God help me, I did.”

Delilah’s own eyes burned then, because she had seen it, had watched Celeste fall into Jackie’s orbit with the doomed grace of Icarus flying toward a sun everybody warned him about too late, had watched her sister soften around him, brighten around him, become girlish and grown all at once beneath the warmth of his attention.

And now that same attention had turned cruel by being shared.

Celeste wiped at her face with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheek.

“I can’t do it anymore,” she said.

Delilah looked at her.

“Do what?”

“Sing.”

The word landed between them with a terrible finality.

Outside, somewhere down the hall, their mother’s voice murmured low to their father, but inside that bedroom the world narrowed to Delilah’s aching head and Celeste’s ruined voice.

“Cece…”

“No,” Celeste said, shaking her head again. “Don’t. Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m just—”

“I can’t stand on no stage and sing like my heart ain’t in pieces. I can’t go back in a studio and put headphones on and hear him laughin’ in the next room. I can’t watch them boys walk in and act like they don’t know what happened, like his name ain’t attached to mine now in the ugliest way.”

Delilah felt something cold move through her stomach before Celeste even said the rest.

“And I can’t sit at no table with them.”

The room went still.

Delilah’s fingers tightened around the edge of the mattress.

Celeste looked down at her hands, ashamed before she even asked, and somehow that made it worse, because if she had demanded it with anger, Delilah might have had something to push against.

But Celeste did not sound like a woman giving orders.

She sounded like a person drowning who had found Delilah’s sleeve in the dark.

“I know Michael ain’t do nothing,” Celeste whispered.

Delilah closed her eyes.

The name hurt more than the headache.

“I know he ain’t Jackie,” Celeste continued, voice cracking. “I know that, Lilah, I do, but he is still his brother, and every time I think about you over there, laughin’ with them, eatin’ with them, sittin’ next to him like everything can still be sweet, I feel like…”

She stopped, pressing her palm against her chest as if the feeling had claws.

Delilah opened her eyes slowly.

“You feel like what?”

Celeste looked at her then, and Delilah saw the terrible childishness grief had returned to her, the way heartbreak had made her younger instead of older.

“Like you picked them,” Celeste said. “Like I’m the one got embarrassed, I’m the one got cheated on, I’m the one everybody gon’ whisper about, and my own sister still gets to go be happy with his family.”

Delilah’s throat tightened.

“I wouldn’t be pickin’ them over you.”

“I know,” Celeste whispered, but her face said she did not know at all, not in the place where it mattered. “I know up here.” She touched her temple, then pressed her hand back to her chest. “But not here.”

The silence after that was cruel.

Delilah looked toward the vanity mirror, at the crack running through Celeste’s reflection, at the lipstick broken open like a small red wound, at the two of them sitting side by side on the bed looking nothing like the Fontaine sisters people clapped for, nothing like the girls who used to glide into rooms with their harmonies clean and their dresses pressed.

She thought of Michael.

She thought of his hand in hers at the hospital, of his thumb brushing her knuckles while she drifted in and out of sleep, of his nervous little smile when he tried to make her laugh, of the way his eyes had looked when she told him she was sweet on him too.

Then she looked back at Celeste, whose light had gone dimmer than Delilah had ever seen it.

“Cece,” she said, and her voice had already begun to break.

Celeste started crying harder before Delilah could finish.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, reaching for her sister’s hand with trembling fingers. “I’m sorry, Lilah, I know it’s not fair, I know it ain’t, but I can’t breathe when I think about it. I can’t breathe.”

Delilah let her sister take her hand.

Celeste clung to it like a lifeline, bowing her head over their joined fingers, and Delilah felt the old, impossible trap close around her: love on one side, loyalty on the other, and no version of herself able to walk away unbloodied.

“You want me to stop seeing all of them,” Delilah said, not as a question because they both knew the answer.

Celeste squeezed her eyes shut.

“I need you to.”

The words were small.

The damage was not.

Delilah turned her face away, staring at the wall while her vision blurred, and for one wild, aching second she wanted to be selfish, wanted to say no, wanted to tell Celeste that Michael had sat beside her bed and held her hand as if the whole world might end if he let go, that Michael had not kissed their cousin, had not lied, had not made Celeste scream herself hoarse in a studio, had not done anything except love Delilah quietly and lose her anyway.

But Celeste was still holding her hand.

Celeste was still crying.

Celeste was still her sister.

And Delilah, who had always been soft in the places other people pressed hardest, felt the answer leave her before she was ready to survive it.

“Okay,” she whispered.

Celeste lifted her head, her face crumpling with relief and guilt all at once.

“Lilah…”

“Okay,” Delilah repeated, though her own tears had started slipping now, quiet and hot against her cheeks. “I won’t go over there. I won’t call. I won’t—”

Her voice caught on the word because she almost said his name.

She almost said Michael.

Celeste heard it anyway.

Of course she did.

Sisters heard the words you swallowed.

“I’m sorry,” Celeste whispered again, and this time she moved carefully, wrapping her arms around Delilah with the fear of someone embracing a person already hurt.

Delilah let herself be held, her bandaged head resting awkwardly near Celeste’s shoulder, her body aching, her heart worse, and while Celeste cried into her hair, Delilah stared past her at the cracked mirror and understood that some promises were not made because they were right, but because someone you loved was too broken to survive your refusal.

Down the hall, the telephone rang once.

Then again.

Delilah’s whole body went still.

Celeste felt it.

They both knew who it might be.

For a moment, the house seemed to hold its breath with them, the bell ringing through the quiet like a summons from another life, from dinner tables and tour buses and hospital hands, from a boy with big brown eyes who had no idea a line was being drawn in the sand without him.

Melanie answered it before the third ring could finish.

Her voice was low.

Careful.

Sorry.

Delilah closed her eyes.

Celeste held her tighter.

And somewhere inside Delilah, something young and tender folded itself away, not dead, not gone, but hidden, like a letter placed in a Bible and left there for years because the person it belonged to could no longer be reached without sinning against somebody else.

It had not been fair, and some quiet part of Delilah had known that even then, but fairness looked different when your sister was sitting before you with the light gone from her eyes, asking for loyalty not as a command but as a lifeline, and Delilah, who had always loved softly but completely, had swallowed her own grief and promised that she would stay away.

So she did.

She stayed away from Michael, from Jackie, from Jermaine, from Tito, from Marlon, from all of them, stayed away from the family that had once folded itself into hers with Sunday dinners, backstage laughter, tour-bus games, and sleepy childhood secrets, stayed away even when her fingers itched for the phone, even when she heard Michael’s name spoken in rooms where nobody knew what it cost her to keep her face still, even when a song came on the radio and she found herself listening for the boy beneath the star.

Celeste, meanwhile, ended her singing days with the quiet devastation of a woman laying flowers on her own grave, because Jackie’s betrayal had not merely broken her heart; it had stolen the light from her voice, snuffed out that bright Fontaine fire until the stage no longer felt like home but like a crime scene with better lighting.

Where she had once sung like Juno entering a room crowned and terrible, she now turned away from microphones, away from harmonies, away from every place where memory might rise up and hum his name back to her, and instead she poured herself into art, into paint and charcoal and textured canvases, into colors that could scream without asking her throat to do the work.

A year later, in that new world of galleries, turpentine, late-night sketches, and quiet rooms where people studied pain without demanding it perform, Celeste met the man who would become her husband, a gentler man, a steadier man, someone who understood that some women did not need to be swept off their feet so much as approached like a temple after the gods had been angered.

Delilah kept her promise.

She kept away from the aforementioned family as if the very name Jackson had become a forbidden road, and while Michael rose higher and higher into the sky like Apollo dragging the sun behind him, all brilliance and heat and impossible distance, Delilah descended into a music world of her own, one built not from childhood proximity or family dinners, but from hunger, discipline, and the kind of quiet ambition people mistook for modesty until it was too late.

She apprenticed herself beneath the greats of their time, watching and learning from James Brown’s holy precision, from Bobby Womack’s gravel-edged soul, from Stevie Wonder’s impossible musical architecture, from Marvin Gaye’s aching sensuality, from Smokey Robinson’s silk-thread songwriting, from Chaka Khan’s fire, from Minnie Riperton’s celestial control, and from every producer, arranger, session player, and background singer generous enough to let her stand close and absorb the language of greatness without needing to be the loudest person in the room.

Delilah learned how to build a song from the bones up, how to let silence breathe between bass lines, how to write lyrics that did not chase a listener but waited in the dark for them to come closer, how to sing without begging and still make a man feel summoned, how to turn restraint into seduction and grief into something smooth enough for the radio but sharp enough to cut when nobody was looking.

By the time her own records began to spin, her voice had become the kind people spoke about carefully, low and elegant, smoky as a room after midnight, warm as velvet held over flame, a voice that seemed less interested in showing off than in confessing only what it wanted the world to know.

And somewhere out there, beyond the promise she had made and the wound that had made it necessary, Michael heard those records.

He heard her.

He heard Delilah Fontaine in every note she refused to oversing, in every lyric that sounded like a closed door with light beneath it, in every phrase that curled through the speakers like Venus stepping barefoot through smoke, and though seven years had passed, though they had become adults in separate worlds, though their childhood had been sealed behind family pain and silence, Michael knew that voice the way a man knew the name of the first goddess he ever prayed to.

It was 1981 when Delilah Fontaine released The Still Hour, the album that changed the shape of her life so quietly at first that people did not realize they were witnessing a coronation until the crown was already on her head.

There was nothing loud or desperate about the record, nothing that begged the world to look at her, nothing that chased spectacle for the sake of being seen, because Delilah had never been that kind of artist, and instead the album arrived like midnight entering a room in silk, low-lit and deliberate, carrying bass lines that moved like smoke beneath a closed door, percussion soft enough to feel intimate, and lyrics that seemed to confess everything while still keeping their secrets locked behind her teeth.

Her voice was the miracle of it, that deep, velvet-soft contralto that did not climb for attention because it had already learned how to command from stillness, a voice warm as brandy, smooth as polished mahogany, and cool as moonlight on marble, the kind of voice that made heartbreak sound expensive and desire sound like something whispered across white tablecloths in rooms where no one dared raise their tone.

Delilah did not sing as if she needed to prove she could, did not decorate every line with unnecessary runs or throw her pain at the listener’s feet like an offering begging to be received; she sang with restraint, with elegance, with the quiet confidence of Venus stepping from the sea already knowing every mortal eye would turn, letting each note unfurl slowly, letting silence sit between phrases like a second instrument, letting the ache come through not because she forced it but because she left just enough space for it to breathe.

The world had not known what to do with her at first, this brown-skinned woman with the soft gaze, the composed mouth, and the voice of a goddess who had survived exile, but then the record began to move from radio station to living room to bedroom to car speaker, slipping into people’s lives with the stealth of Cupid’s arrow, until suddenly everyone knew her name, everyone knew the songs, everyone knew that Delilah Fontaine had not merely released an album but built a world and invited them inside on her own terms.

By Grammy night, she was no longer the quiet Fontaine sister standing half in Celeste’s shadow, no longer the girl who used to drift backstage after performances with a songbook pressed to her chest, no longer the injured eighteen-year-old who had been knocked unconscious in the ruins of somebody else’s betrayal; she was Delilah Fontaine, a household name, an artist spoken about with lowered voices and lifted brows, the woman critics called rare, mysterious, untouchable, as if Minerva herself had placed a hand on her shoulder and taught her how to turn restraint into strategy.

When her name was called again and again that night, six times in total, Delilah rose each time with a kind of stunned grace that made the room soften around her, her eyes bright beneath the lights as she held the awards close to her chest, gold pressed against silk, her smile trembling between disbelief and triumph while the applause rolled over her like the sea welcoming Venus back to shore.

And somewhere inside all that noise, beneath the cameras flashing and the industry hands reaching and the praise blooming around her from every side, Delilah felt the strange ache of knowing she had become exactly what she once wrote about becoming in the margins of her childhood songbooks, a woman whose voice could haunt rooms she had never entered, whose name could travel farther than any promise made in pain, whose music had carried her into immortality before she had even turned to see who might still be listening.

Now here she was at the 1984 Grammys, no longer the shy girl who used to hover in the shadowed edges of dressing rooms with a songbook hugged to her chest, but a woman fully stepped into the architecture of herself, her curves having finally settled in with quiet certainty, her thighs fuller beneath the fall of her gown, her face smooth and luminous where acne had once made her duck away from cameras, her whole presence carrying the calm authority of someone who had learned that beauty did not need to announce itself loudly in order to make a room turn.

She was a woman now, certain, firm, and far more aware of her own power than she had been at eighteen, standing beneath the lights in white shimmer and soft, cloudlike ruffles as if Venus herself had risen from the sea not in naked innocence but in silk, lace, and hard-earned self-possession, every camera flash catching on her skin like the gods were trying to crown her in pieces of borrowed lightning.

Her voice had changed too, not into something unrecognizable but into something ripened, silkier and smoother than it had been in girlhood, with a faint rasp at the edges that made every lyric feel lived in, as though life had brushed its thumb gently over her throat and left a little smoke behind, yet beneath all that elegance and restraint there were still traces of the Delilah Michael had known if a person understood how to look closely enough.

They were there in the way she twiddled her thumbs when the cameras stayed on her too long, in the way she bit at the inside of her cheek whenever nerves threatened to break through her composure, in the way her eyes still shifted toward exits before entering crowded rooms, and, most stubbornly, in the fact that Delilah Fontaine, Grammy winner, household name, woman of velvet vocals and goddess-like poise, still refused raw tomato with the same offended little grimace she had worn as a girl at family dinners, as if all the fame in the world could polish her but never quite take away the small, ridiculous truths that made her human.

He watched her from where he stood with Quincy, his aviators settled over his face like a veil drawn between himself and a world that had spent the entire night trying to stare him down, the flash of cameras catching against the dark lenses, the glittering military cut of his jacket making him look less like a man attending an award show and more like Mars dressed for conquest, all sequins, sharp shoulders, gold detail, and a single jeweled glove resting at his side like some strange modern relic.

Yet for all the weight of the night, for all the trophies waiting in the wings and all the history gathering around his name, Michael found his attention slipping from the room the moment Delilah Fontaine moved through it, her white gown shimmering beneath the lights, her train fluttering behind her like sea foam chasing Venus across marble, her smile polite and practiced as she greeted colleagues who leaned in too eagerly, all of them touching her elbow, kissing her cheek, speaking as if they had known her before the world learned to say her name.

His eyes followed her with a hunger he could not blame on curiosity, darting ahead of her before she arrived, searching the little place cards with a quiet urgency he disguised behind stillness, because he needed to know where they had put her, needed to know how far the room intended to keep her from him after seven years of silence had already done enough damage.

When he found her assigned seat, his jaw tightened behind the safety of his shades, because there it was, her name placed neatly beside Denzel Washington’s, close enough for conversation, close enough for laughter, close enough for that smooth-faced actor to lean toward her during the long pauses between categories and make her smile in a way Michael had no intention of witnessing politely.

A small huff left him before he could stop it, quiet enough that Quincy only glanced over with one brow lifted, but Michael had already moved with that soft-spoken decisiveness people always underestimated in him, murmuring something to an usher, trading charm for rearrangement, shifting the order of the room with a few gentle words and one stubborn look until Delilah Fontaine’s seat was no longer beside another man’s shoulder but directly next to his.

It was childish, maybe, and not altogether fair, but Michael could not bring himself to care, not when seven years had taught him how cruel distance could be, not when Jackie’s recklessness had robbed him of phone calls, dinners, backstage whispers, tour-bus games, and the only girl who had ever looked at him before the world turned him into a monument.

He wanted her close enough to breathe in the perfume gathered at her throat, close enough to hear the soft rustle of her gown when she sat, close enough to confirm with his own body that she was no longer some voice coming through a speaker at midnight, no longer the woman he had been forced to love from the far side of a promise, but flesh and warmth and history, seated beside him beneath the same dangerous lights.

And suddenly, terribly, Thriller — his crown, his conquest, his life’s work, the glittering chariot Apollo himself might have envied — seemed to dim at the edges, because what was a room full of applause compared to Delilah lowering herself into the chair beside him, what was another golden gramophone compared to the faint brush of her train near his shoe, what was immortality itself when the first muse he had ever known had returned to him wearing white and smelling like memory?

Michael turned his head only slightly when she sat, careful, controlled, hidden behind his aviators, but beneath all that practiced restraint his heart moved like a boy’s again, reckless and disobedient, beating against his ribs with the same old rhythm from family dinners and cramped tour-bus rooms and hospital whispers, as if no time had passed at all.

For one suspended moment after Delilah lowered herself into the seat beside him, neither of them said a word, though silence had never felt empty between them, not when it had always been full of old things, full of tour-bus laughter and hospital whispers, full of grits cooling on plates while their feet found one another beneath the table, full of all the years that had passed without either of them being brave or free enough to ask why the absence still hurt like something fresh.

Michael sat very still, his aviators hiding the first open shock of seeing her so close again, though they could not hide the way his body seemed to lean toward her in spite of itself, drawn by the faint, expensive warmth of her perfume, by the soft sound of her gown settling around her, by the nearness of a woman he had only allowed himself to hear through records for seven years, her voice traveling into his room at night like smoke under a locked door while the rest of her remained forbidden.

Delilah felt him looking before she turned, the same way she used to feel his gaze from across rehearsal rooms when they were children, that quiet, searching attention of his that never arrived loudly but always touched something under the skin, and when she finally angled her face toward him, the corner of her mouth lifted just enough to make his heart stumble hard beneath all that glitter and gold.

“Michael,” she said softly, and the grown-up shape of his name in her mouth nearly undid him, because she had said it a thousand times before in childhood, said it while laughing, scolding, whispering, and teasing, but this was different, silkier, lower, carrying the faint rasp that had made half the world fall in love with her records and made him sit alone in dark rooms wondering how a voice could grow older and still know exactly where to wound him.

“Delilah,” he answered, his voice gentle but not weak, shy at the edges yet steadier than it had any right to be, as though the boy in him had stepped back just long enough for the man to greet her properly. “Look at you.”

Her lashes dipped, not because she was coy in the easy way women learned to be for men who needed entertaining, but because praise from him landed differently, because Michael had known her before the gown, before the clear skin, before the Grammys and the headlines and the critics calling her voice mysterious as if mystery was not often just pain made elegant.

“Don’t start,” she murmured, smoothing one careful hand over the white shimmer at her knee, though her thumb began to worry at the side of her finger the way it always did when too much feeling moved beneath her composure.

Michael saw it.

Of course he saw it.

He had known that nervous little habit before either of them had learned how much adults could ruin a good thing, and something painfully fond moved through him at the sight, because there she was, Delilah Fontaine, draped in white like Venus risen from a colder, more glamorous sea, her train spilling around her chair like foam and lace, her name whispered through the room by people who wanted pieces of her time, and still the girl he had loved was there in the tiny motion of her hands.

“I ain’t startin’ nothin’,” he said, though his mouth curved with the softest hint of mischief, his head tilting toward her as applause swelled somewhere around them for somebody neither of them was listening to. “I’m just sayin’ you walked in here lookin’ like the good Lord took His time and then doubled back to make sure He ain’t miss nothin’.”

Delilah’s eyes lifted to his, sharp with amusement despite herself, and Michael felt the reward of it somewhere low in his chest, not lust exactly, though there was want in him and he would have been lying to God to pretend otherwise, but something older and sweeter, something that wanted her smile before it wanted anything else.

“You rehearsed that?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said, leaning back just a little, one gloved hand resting against his thigh while the other toyed absently with the edge of the program in his lap. “If I rehearsed it, it woulda sounded smoother.”

“It was already smooth enough.”

“Then I must still have a little somethin’ left in me.”

She laughed under her breath, low and brief, but it reached him like music, and Michael turned his face toward the stage as if he needed a second to survive the sound without making a fool of himself in front of the whole industry.

Quincy, seated not too far away and pretending with saintly dedication not to watch every second of this reunion unfold, glanced over his shoulder once, caught the way Michael’s attention had abandoned the night’s machinery completely, and shook his head with the private exasperation of a man who knew genius when he saw it and trouble when it sat down wearing white.

“You moved my seat,” Delilah said after a moment, her voice quiet enough that only he could hear it beneath the dull roar of the room.

Michael’s lips parted in offense that was far too immediate to be innocent.

“What make you say that?”

“Because I know where I was seated.”

“Maybe somebody made a mistake.”

“Maybe somebody wearing aviators and a jacket brighter than common sense made a request.”

That pulled a real smile from him, quick and boyish before he could tuck it away, and Delilah had to look down for a second because the sight of it struck too close to memory, too close to the Michael who used to accuse her of cheating at Monopoly and then let her keep the red candy because he knew it was her favorite.

“I ain’t want you sittin’ way over there,” he admitted, his confidence softening into something more honest, something that slipped out before pride could dress it up better. “Been seven years, ’Lilah.”

There it was.

Not accusation, not anger, not even bitterness exactly, but the number itself, placed gently between them like a wound neither of them had cleaned properly.

Delilah’s smile faded, and the lights above them seemed to sharpen, camera flashes bursting from across the room like little acts of lightning while the two of them sat inside a pocket of quiet made entirely from things unsaid.

“I know,” she whispered.

Michael turned the program over in his hands, smoothing the corner with his thumb though it did not need smoothing, his gloved hand bright and strange against the paper, his bare hand restless with the effort of not reaching for hers.

“Seven years is a mighty long time for a phone to stay quiet,” he said, and though he kept his voice light, there was a tremor beneath the words that made Delilah’s throat tighten. “I used to think maybe you’d call by accident one day, you know, like maybe your finger slip or somethin’.”

“Michael.”

“I know,” he said quickly, glancing at her, then away, because the last thing he wanted was to make her feel cornered when life had already put enough walls around them. “I know why you didn’t, and I ain’t tryin’ to make you feel bad, but I missed you, Tinky.”

The nickname touched her so suddenly that she almost closed her eyes.

Not because she had forgotten it, never that, but because hearing it in his grown voice did something cruel to her composure, taking a word from their childhood and placing it in the mouth of the man beside her, softening time and sharpening it all at once.

Michael saw her reaction and lowered his voice further, the flirtation slipping out of him like warmth from behind a door left cracked open, shy but deliberate, gentle but unwilling to retreat.

“I missed you so bad I started gettin’ mad at your records.”

Delilah blinked, then turned toward him, her brows lifting.

“My records?”

“Mhm.”

“What my records do to you?”

“They kept showin’ up in my house soundin’ all pretty and grown and actin’ like they ain’t know me.”

She stared at him for one beat, then another, and then laughter broke from her before she could stop it, not loud enough to disturb anyone but bright enough that Michael’s shoulders loosened as if somebody had cut a string tied too tight around him.

“You are ridiculous,” she whispered.

“I’m serious,” he murmured, though his smile gave him away. “Had me sittin’ there listenin’ like, ‘Now why she singin’ to everybody but me?’”

“I was not singing to everybody.”

“You sure?”

“Michael.”

“I’m just askin’, Delilah, ’cause folks was lookin’ real moved by it.”

Her eyes narrowed, playful now, the old rhythm sliding back between them with terrifying ease, and Michael leaned just a fraction closer, close enough that she could see herself reflected faintly in his aviators, white gown and warm skin distorted in the dark glass, like he was carrying a secret version of her no one else could touch.

“You jealous of a record?” she asked.

“I ain’t say jealous,” he replied softly. “I said I had questions.”

“Questions?”

“A few.”

“Such as?”

His mouth curved, but there was yearning under it, no hard swagger, no cheap confidence, only a man trying to make a joke out of the fact that he had been aching for years and did not quite know where to put it now that she was beside him.

“Such as how you gon’ make a whole album sound like midnight and not tell me where you learned to sing like that.”

Delilah’s face warmed despite the cameras, despite the noise, despite the fact that she was grown now and had been praised by people far more polished than the boy beside her, because Michael did not compliment her like he was admiring a product or appraising a woman in a dress; he said it like he had been listening for the girl he lost and found a goddess instead.

“You heard it?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

His head turned fully then, and even behind the aviators, she felt the weight of his eyes.

“Every song.”

Something in her chest tightened.

“Every song?”

“Every song,” he repeated, quieter, and there was no teasing left in him now. “More than once.”

Delilah looked toward the stage because she needed somewhere else to put her face, needed the glow of the room and the movement of presenters and the rustle of programs to steady her, but Michael did not let the moment run away completely.

“You still write in them margins?” he asked.

Her head turned back before she could pretend indifference.

“What?”

“In your songbooks,” he said, his voice softening further. “You used to write lyrics on one page and then write little notes to yourself in the margins like you was fussin’ at the song.”

Delilah’s mouth parted, and for a moment the Grammys disappeared, the whole room folding itself into the cramped backroom of a tour bus where a sixteen-year-old boy leaned over her shoulder, smelling faintly of stage sweat and soap, asking what word she had crossed out and why she hated it so much.

“You remember that?”

Michael gave her a look, gentle and almost wounded by the question.

“I remember everything about you.”

The sentence landed between them with enough weight to make both of them go still.

Delilah turned her eyes down to her lap, and Michael immediately wished he had said it differently, lighter, easier, wrapped it in humor before placing it at her feet, because he could be bold when he was singing, bold when the lights demanded it, but with Delilah he was still that boy in the hospital room kissing her hand and lying badly about checking her temperature.

“I ain’t mean to—”

“No,” she interrupted softly, looking back up at him with something fragile tucked behind her composure. “No, I remember too.”

His breath caught.

She let the words sit for a second, then added, because she needed air before the moment became too much, “I remember you cheating at Scrabble.”

Michael recoiled slightly, offended down to the bone.

“I ain’t never cheated at Scrabble.”

“You absolutely cheated at Scrabble.”

“How you cheat at Scrabble?”

“Making up words.”

“They was real words.”

“‘Shamone’ was not worth thirty-two points, Michael.”

“It had feeling.”

Delilah laughed again, and this time the laugh softened into something that stayed on her face afterward, a little smile full of memory and ache, and Michael watched it with open hunger now, not the kind that lowered itself to the body first but the kind that wanted to sit beside her for hours and collect every expression she had learned in his absence.

“You still hate raw tomato?” he asked suddenly.

She groaned, covering her face with one hand.

“Don’t start that.”

“You do.”

“I have taste.”

“You used to pick it out your sandwiches like somebody put poison in there.”

“Because they did.”

Michael’s smile widened, and the sight made Delilah’s stomach flutter against her will, because he had grown into himself too, not just the performer the whole world worshipped, but a man with sharper lines in his face, a quieter command in his posture, a carefulness that looked almost regal beneath the shine of his jacket, as if Apollo had stepped off his chariot and tried to pretend he did not miss being a boy.

“You look happy tonight,” she said, though she was not sure it was true.

Michael’s smile shifted, becoming smaller and more complicated.

“I’m tryin’ to be.”

“That ain’t the same.”

“No,” he admitted, his thumb dragging once over the program again. “It ain’t.”

Delilah studied him, the old concern rising before she could stop it, and Michael saw that too, saw the way her eyes changed when she thought he was hurting, saw the same girl who had once tried to get out of a hospital bed because she wanted to visit people worse off than herself, and something in him leaned toward that kindness like a starving thing toward warmth.

“You should be proud,” she said. “This is your night.”

“It was.”

“Was?”

His head tilted, and there was that softness again, that shy little confidence that did not know whether it had permission but stepped forward anyway.

“Then you sat down.”

Delilah stared at him, then shook her head slowly, though her smile betrayed her.

“You been practicing smooth talk since I last saw you?”

“Maybe I had time.”

“Seven years?”

“Plenty time.”

“And this the best you got?”

He laughed under his breath, and the sound brushed across her like velvet.

“Nah, I’m holdin’ back.”

“For what?”

His answer came after a pause, quiet and warm.

“So I don’t scare you off again.”

The humor thinned.

Delilah’s smile softened, and for the first time that night, she let herself look at him without the armor of celebrity, without the careful calm she had learned in rooms full of executives and critics and men who thought mystery meant availability.

“You didn’t scare me off, Michael.”

“I know,” he said. “But you still left.”

“I had to.”

“I know.”

“My sister—”

“I know,” he repeated, gentler, turning slightly so his shoulder angled toward hers, his voice lowering until it felt like something meant only for the two of them. “Celeste was hurt, and Jackie was wrong as hell, and I ain’t never acted like he wasn’t, not even in my own mind.”

Delilah swallowed, surprised by the firmness in him, by the way his mouth tightened around his brother’s name as if the old anger had never fully cooled.

“I hated it,” Michael continued, not loud, not dramatic, but honest enough that every word seemed to cost him. “I hated what he did to her, hated what it did to your family, but I’d be lyin’ if I said I ain’t hate what it took from me too.”

Delilah’s eyes flickered.

“From you?”

He looked at her then, really looked, and the aviators suddenly felt unfair, too much distance for a moment that deserved his bare eyes, so he lifted one hand and slid them down just enough for her to see him over the dark rim.

“You,” he said simply.

The room kept moving around them, applause rising and falling, names being called, cameras flashing, but Delilah heard only that one word, only the way he said it without embellishment, without performance, without trying to make it prettier than the truth.

Her breath changed, soft and nearly hidden, but Michael noticed because he had always noticed her; he noticed the way her fingers stilled, the way her cheek warmed under the lights, the way she bit gently at the inside of her cheek as if trying to keep an emotion from crossing her face where the whole world might see it.

“Don’t do that,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Bite your cheek like you don’t wanna say somethin’.”

Delilah exhaled a small laugh, though her eyes had gone glossy in a way she would deny if asked.

“You remember too much.”

“I told you I remember everything.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“Only if you got somethin’ to hide from me.”

She looked at him then, and the air between them warmed, not with anything vulgar or careless but with the slow, aching awareness of two people sitting close after years apart, their knees almost touching, their history breathing between them like a third body, every glance carrying the weight of hands that had once held, feet that had once played under tables, promises never made and somehow still broken.

“I might,” she said softly.

Michael’s mouth curved, but his eyes stayed tender.

“Then I got time.”

“You always this patient now?”

“No.”

The honesty made her laugh.

“I was gon’ say.”

“I’m patient with things I want to keep,” he said, and then, as if the words had embarrassed him by arriving too naked, he looked toward the stage and added lightly, “Sometimes.”

Delilah shook her head, smiling despite the way her chest ached.

“You something else, Bambi.”

The nickname hit him so visibly that he had to lower his gaze, and the softest, most helpless smile crossed his face, one he could not have performed if he tried.

“Say that again.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“Bambi?”

His lashes lowered, and for one reckless second he looked younger, not boyish exactly, but touched by memory in a way that stripped the gold from the night and left only the two of them.

“Ain’t heard that in a long time,” he said.

“I ain’t said it in a long time.”

“You save it for me?”

“Who else I’m gon’ call Bambi?”

“I don’t know,” he said, the faint tease returning because he needed something to keep from drowning in her softness. “Denzel was sittin’ mighty close before somebody fixed that problem.”

Delilah’s eyes widened with delighted disbelief.

“So you admit it?”

“I ain’t admit nothin’.”

“You just said somebody fixed that problem.”

“Coulda been anybody.”

“You are terrible.”

“I’m improving.”

“You moved my seat because you were jealous?”

“I moved your seat because seven years was long enough,” he said, and the answer, though delivered softly, settled over her skin like a touch.

Delilah looked away first, but not before Michael saw the smile she tried to hide, the one that made his confidence bloom just a little brighter, not into arrogance, never that, but into the careful courage of a man realizing the door he had mourned might not be locked forever.

A presenter’s voice rolled across the room, calling attention back to the ceremony, and Michael sat straighter, slipping his aviators fully back into place, though his attention remained angled toward her as if some invisible string had looped around his ribs and tied him to the woman in white beside him.

“You think you gon’ win big tonight?” Delilah asked after a moment, her voice lighter now, though the question carried a little challenge beneath it.

Michael glanced at her.

“I hope so.”

“You hope so?”

“I ain’t gon’ sit here and say I know,” he replied, smiling faintly, his gloved fingers tapping once against his knee. “That’s how folks get humbled in public.”

“Smart man.”

“I try.”

Delilah leaned a little closer, careful not to let the ruffled edge of her gown catch beneath the chair, and Michael caught the movement from the corner of his eye, his whole body becoming quietly aware of her nearness, of the warmth of her shoulder, of the faint shimmer at her collarbone, of the fact that she smelled like something soft and expensive and almost familiar enough to hurt.

“So what happens if you make history tonight?” she asked.

Michael turned his head toward her slowly, sensing the game before she named it.

“What you mean?”

“I mean, if Michael Jackson breaks history tonight, what exactly does he plan to do after?”

He smiled, and this time it was not the shy boy’s smile or the superstar’s smile, but something in between, something warm and careful and daring enough to lean over the line without stepping on it.

“I was thinkin’ ’bout Studio 54,” he said. “Afterparty.”

Delilah arched a brow.

“Studio 54?”

“Mhm.”

“That don’t sound like your scene.”

“Maybe I’m full of surprises.”

“You been full of surprises since you moved my seat.”

“And you still sittin’ here.”

Her lips parted in a laugh she tried to suppress, and Michael knew then that he had her engaged in the rhythm of it, not won, not captured, not certain, but present, finally present with him after seven years of absence.

“You askin’ me to go?” she said.

“I’m askin’ you to make a bet with me.”

“A bet?”

His fingers tightened once around the program, nerves flickering beneath the smoothness of his tone, because this was the closest he had come to asking for something he truly wanted all night, and despite the trophies waiting in the dark, despite the cameras and the industry and the thunder of his own name, nothing felt more dangerous than her answer.

“If I break history tonight,” he said, voice low enough that the words seemed to travel only between their chairs, “you come with me.”

Delilah looked at him for a long moment, reading the softness beneath the challenge, the hope hidden under the flirt, the boy still there under the man in the glittering jacket, and she knew he was not asking about a party, not really.

He was asking for more time.

He was asking for a room beyond this room, a night beyond the ceremony, a chance to stand near her without assigned seating and cameras and their families’ ghosts sitting between them like unpaid debts.

“And if you don’t?” she asked.

Michael tilted his head, and his smile went small and rueful, not quite brave enough to pretend he did not care.

“If I don’t, I’ll still ask you to come,” he admitted. “Just won’t have nothin’ impressive to bargain with.”

That honesty caught her in the chest more than any polished line could have.

Delilah’s gaze softened, and her thumb brushed absently over the edge of her clutch as she pretended to consider him with great seriousness.

“You always did hate losin’ games.”

“I don’t mind losin’ if I still get to sit next to you.”

“Michael.”

“What?” he asked, all innocence, though his smile had tucked itself into one corner of his mouth. “That was smooth.”

“It was a little smooth.”

“Little?”

“Don’t get beside yourself.”

“I’m already beside you.”

Delilah stared at him, then looked down quickly, her shoulders shaking with quiet laughter, and Michael smiled at his lap like a man who had just been handed something fragile and priceless, because making her laugh after seven years felt better than applause, better than critics, better than the whole room waiting to crown him.

“All right,” she said finally.

His head turned so quickly that the light flashed across his aviators.

“All right?”

“If you break history tonight, I’ll go to Studio 54 with you.”

Michael went still, the words entering him slowly, lighting him up from the inside in a way he could not fully hide even behind tinted glass and careful posture.

“You mean that?”

“I said it, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“Then don’t make me repeat myself.”

He laughed softly, but there was a tenderness in it now, a reverence, as if the bet had become a promise the moment she gave it breath.

“A’ight then,” he murmured, turning toward the stage as the next category began, though his smile stayed fixed and foolish at the edges. “Guess I gotta go make history.”

Delilah looked at him, at the glittering line of his jacket, the dark fall of curls near his cheek, the jeweled glove catching light like a star trapped on his hand, and felt something old and dangerous stir awake inside her, not the reckless crush of girlhood but a grown woman’s recognition of unfinished love, the kind that did not ask whether it was convenient before returning.

“You better,” she whispered.

Michael heard her, and without looking away from the stage, he leaned just close enough for his shoulder to brush hers, the contact brief, respectful, and devastating in its restraint.

“For you?” he said softly. “I’m gon’ try.”

One award turned into two, two turned into three, and by the time three had become seven, the room had started to feel less like an award show and more like a coronation dressed in camera flashes, applause rising again and again until it seemed the whole building had surrendered to the fact that Michael Jackson was not merely having a good night, but carving his name into history with the glittering, merciless certainty of Apollo dragging the sun across the sky.

Each time his name was called, Delilah watched him rise beside her, watched the shimmer of his jacket catch the light, watched that single jeweled glove flash like a star trapped against his hand, and though the room saw the smile, the bows, the gentle humility of a man accepting praise with his head dipped and his voice soft, Delilah saw the smaller things beneath it, the way his shoulders loosened with disbelief after the fourth win, the way his mouth parted slightly after the fifth, the way he glanced at Quincy after the sixth like even he needed confirmation that the night had not become some elaborate dream.

But after the seventh, he did not look at Quincy first.

He looked at her.

It was brief enough that anyone else might have missed it, only a small turn of his head as he sat back down beside her, his aviators low on his nose now, his dark eyes visible over the rim, bright with triumph and something far less public, something that did not belong to the cameras or the Academy or the roaring room full of people suddenly eager to say they had always believed in him.

Delilah felt the look before she fully met it, felt it settle against the side of her face like warmth from a lamp left burning in a dark window, and when she finally turned toward him, Michael’s mouth curved, not wide, not cocky, not the kind of grin men wore when they thought winning entitled them to something, but soft and almost wondering, as if every trophy placed into his hands had only made the question between them heavier.

“You countin’?” he murmured, his voice low enough that it slipped beneath the applause and found her alone.

Delilah lifted one brow, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her before she could stop it.

“I know how to count, Michael.”

“Just checkin’.”

“You checkin’ or you gloatin’?”

His smile deepened, shy at the edges and dangerous only because it was so sincere.

“I ain’t gloatin’.”

“You sittin’ there with seven Grammys and a bet in your pocket, but you ain’t gloatin’?”

“Nah,” he said, leaning a fraction closer while the next presenters crossed the stage and the room kept moving around them, loud and golden and unaware of the quiet electricity passing between their chairs. “I’m just wonderin’ what you gon’ wear to Studio 54.”

Delilah’s eyes widened, and a laugh slipped out of her before she could school it into something elegant.

“You don’t even know if you won the last one.”

“I don’t,” he agreed, and for a second the confidence softened into nerves, his fingers brushing the edge of the program again as if the paper might keep him anchored. “But I got a good-luck charm sittin’ next to me, so I’m feelin’ all right.”

“A good-luck charm?”

“Mhm.”

“So now I’m responsible for your Grammy count?”

“You responsible for a lot more than you know,” he said, and the words came out too honest, too intimate, so he immediately looked toward the stage as if the lights had suddenly required his attention.

Delilah went quiet, her gaze lingering on the line of his cheek, on the soft fall of curls against his face, on the way he could still retreat into shyness after saying something bold enough to make her heartbeat lose its place, and for a moment she saw both Michaels at once, the grown man in the glittering jacket and the boy in the cramped tour bus room, the superstar being crowned by the world and the eighteen-year-old who had sat beside her hospital bed with candy, crosswords, and panic hidden badly in his hands.

“Michael Jackson,” a stagehand whispered near the aisle, leaning down with professional urgency, “Miss Fontaine, you’re needed backstage for the next presentation.”

The spell shifted.

Delilah blinked, then turned, remembering all at once that she had a job to do, that she was not simply a woman sitting beside an old love while history assembled itself around him, but Delilah Fontaine, Grammy-winning artist in her own right, invited to present the final award of the night, the last envelope, the last name, the last possibility standing between Michael and a kind of immortality no one in the room would ever forget.

Michael looked at the stagehand, then back at Delilah, and something in his expression changed when he understood.

“You announcin’ it?” he asked quietly.

Delilah gathered her train carefully, her fingers brushing through ruffles that looked like sea foam caught in a storm, and stood with the kind of grace that made the people nearest them glance over before they knew they had done it.

“Looks like it.”

Michael’s gaze moved over her face, not her body, not the dress, not the shine of her, but her face, as if he were trying to memorize the impossible symmetry of the moment, the first girl he ever loved walking toward the stage to announce whether he would break history.

“That ain’t fair,” he said softly.

Delilah paused, looking down at him with a small smile.

“What ain’t fair?”

“You standin’ up there with my fate in your hands like that.”

Her smile warmed, but her eyes stayed steady on his.

“Your fate?”

“My evening, then.”

“That’s better.”

“And maybe my afterparty plans.”

Delilah shook her head, but there was laughter in her eyes now, the old kind, the kind that belonged to footsie beneath dinner tables and Scrabble arguments and raw tomato slander.

“You better hope they put your name in that envelope, Bambi.”

The nickname struck him in the chest as surely as any award had struck his palms, and for a moment Michael forgot the room completely, forgot Quincy sitting nearby, forgot the cameras, forgot that the whole music industry had been watching him like he was a miracle with a pulse.

He only saw her.

Delilah in white, Delilah grown, Delilah with the girl he knew still hidden in her thumbs and her cheek-biting and that soft teasing mouth, Delilah holding seven years of absence between them and somehow making it feel, for one dangerous night, like something they might finally survive.

“I’m hopin’,” he said, his voice gentler now. “But even if it ain’t, I’m glad it’s you.”

The words landed quietly, without decoration, and Delilah’s smile faltered into something softer, something too exposed for the cameras nearby, so she turned before either of them could make the moment more fragile than it already was.

As she walked away, her train whispered over the floor behind her, a pale tide following in her wake, and Michael watched her go with an ache so clean and consuming it felt almost holy, as if Venus herself had crossed the room and every man there had mistaken beauty for spectacle while he alone knew it was memory returning in a gown.

Quincy leaned toward him once Delilah disappeared backstage, his voice dry enough to crack stone.

“You been starin’ at that girl like the award’s gon’ walk off if you blink.”

Michael did not look away from the place she had vanished.

“Leave me alone, Q.”

“Mhm.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Michael finally turned, and Quincy, seeing the look on his face, the quiet devastation beneath the glittering glory of the night, softened just enough not to tease him further.

Onstage, the show rolled toward its final breath, presenters smiling, cameras shifting, applause swelling and settling like the tide, and backstage Delilah stood with the envelope in her hand, feeling its weight as if Mercury himself had delivered it from Olympus with a message meant to alter the course of mortal lives.

Her pulse had become unruly.

She could hear the host’s voice through the curtain, could hear the muffled thunder of the audience, could feel the heat of the lights waiting beyond the stage, but beneath all of that she heard Michael’s voice in her memory, low and soft beside her: If I break history tonight, you come with me.

It should have been nothing.

A bet.

A flirtation dressed in old familiarity.

A little game between two people who had known each other before the world knew how to watch them properly.

But Delilah knew better than that, because nothing between her and Michael had ever been small, not really; not the footsie under the table, not the hospital-room hand kiss he had lied about, not the seven years of silence that had stretched between them like the River Styx, not the way his eyes had found hers after each win as if the trophies mattered less than making sure she was still there to witness him receiving them.

A woman beside her adjusted the microphone cue, someone else whispered timing instructions, and Delilah nodded at all the right places, though her mind was nowhere near practical things.

She was thinking about Celeste.

She was thinking about Jackie.

She was thinking about the old line in the sand, drawn in grief and loyalty and blood-warm sisterhood, and how strange it felt to stand now at the edge of another line, one not drawn by someone else’s heartbreak but by her own desire, her own choice, her own terrifying wish to step toward the man she had never fully stopped loving.

“Miss Fontaine, you’re on.”

Delilah inhaled.

Then she stepped through the curtain.

The room opened before her in light, applause rising as she walked to the microphone, every eye turning toward her white gown, her soft auburn curls, the calm expression she had spent years perfecting, the face of a woman who had learned to make stillness look like power.

Michael watched from the audience, his body gone still again, his hands folded together in his lap, his aviators back in place though they did nothing to hide the fact that his whole attention had risen with her.

Delilah did not look at him at first.

She looked at the teleprompter, smiled at the crowd, let the applause settle, and spoke with that velvet voice that had made radios go quiet in millions of homes.

“Good evening,” she said, and the room seemed to lean toward her. “Tonight has already given us music, memory, and more than a little history.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the audience, warm and knowing, and Delilah allowed herself the smallest smile before continuing.

“The final award of the evening honors not only an album, but a world built from sound, vision, discipline, and imagination, the kind of work that reminds us why music does not simply entertain us, but follows us home, changes the temperature of our rooms, and stays with us long after the last note fades.”

Michael lowered his head slightly, and Delilah saw it from the corner of her eye, saw the way the praise hit him not as ego but as tenderness, as recognition, and some foolish part of her wanted to step off the stage, cross the room, and tell him that she had heard him too, that she had listened to Thriller alone and hated how brilliant it was because brilliance made missing him harder to justify.

Instead, she read the nominees, each name leaving her mouth smooth and measured, though her fingertips tightened around the envelope once she reached the end.

The applause rose again.

The envelope waited.

Delilah slid one finger beneath the flap and opened it carefully, her heart beating so loudly she thought the microphone might catch it, and when she looked down at the card, the name stared back at her like fate had developed a sense of theater.

For one second, just one, she forgot to breathe.

Then she smiled.

Not the Grammy smile.

Not the poised, industry smile.

A real one, helpless and bright, blooming before she could stop it, and Michael saw that smile from his seat before she said a word.

He knew.

His mouth parted slightly.

Delilah lifted her eyes from the card and found him through the crowd, found him as easily as she had found his foot beneath dinner tables and his hand beside hospital beds, and when she spoke, the whole room heard the winner, but Michael heard the promise beneath it.

“And the Grammy goes to…”

She paused, and the room held its breath.

“Michael Jackson.”

The room erupted.

Applause detonated around him, people shot to their feet, Quincy clapped with both hands raised, cameras swung toward Michael like worshippers turning toward a god newly named, but for half a heartbeat he did not move.

He sat there staring at Delilah, and she stood at the microphone staring back, both of them caught in the impossible knowledge that history had just opened its door and she was the one holding it.

Then Quincy touched his arm, and the spell broke enough for Michael to rise.

The room thundered for him as he made his way toward the stage, his body slim and glittering beneath the lights, each step measured, almost dreamlike, while Delilah waited beside the microphone with the award in both hands, her white train pooled around her feet like clouds at the edge of Olympus.

When he reached her, the applause seemed to stretch and distort around them, becoming distant, watery, less important than the small space between his hand and hers.

Delilah held the Grammy out to him.

Michael took it slowly, his fingers brushing hers in a touch so brief no camera could accuse it of anything, but it moved through both of them like lightning striking a temple roof.

“Guess you won your bet,” she whispered, barely moving her lips.

Michael leaned just close enough for the microphone not to catch him, his voice soft, breathless, and full of wonder.

“Guess you comin’ with me.”

Delilah’s eyes flickered, and that little nervous habit returned, the faint bite at the inside of her cheek, though she was smiling now, smiling like she could not quite help herself.

“Go give your speech, Bambi.”

His face changed at the nickname, the same way it had beside her seat, the same way it must have years ago when she first gave it to him, and for a moment the man who had just made history looked almost shy again.

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured.

Then he turned to the microphone, the Grammy in his hands, the world on its feet, and Delilah stepped slightly aside, close enough to feel the warmth of him, close enough to smell the faint clean sweetness of his cologne, close enough to understand that the distance of seven years had ended not with an apology, not with a dramatic declaration, but with a bet, a brush of fingers, and Michael Jackson standing beside her under the lights while history bowed its head.

He began his speech softly, thanking the people he was supposed to thank, his voice humble and careful beneath the heavy glow of the stage lights, the Grammy held between his hands like something sacred and impossible, but every few sentences his eyes slid toward Delilah for the briefest fraction of a second, as if he needed to make sure she had not disappeared again, as if seven years of absence had taught him that joy could be snatched away in the time it took to blink.

“I wanna thank God first,” Michael said, and the room quieted beneath the sincerity of it, beneath that soft, trembling reverence that made him sound, for all his glitter and history, like a boy standing barefoot at the foot of an altar. “I wanna thank my mother, my family, Quincy, Rod, everybody who helped build this album from a dream into somethin’ real, everybody who gave their time, their hands, their prayers, their faith.”

The audience applauded, but Michael did not seem to hear it the way he was supposed to, because some part of him had already stepped away from the ceremony and into a dimmer, holier room inside himself, the room where Delilah had lived untouched by cameras, untouched by gossip, untouched even by the silence that had kept them apart.

He looked down at the award, and the gold of it caught the light like a small sun in his palms, yet his expression was not triumphant as much as it was overwhelmed, as if all the noise in the room had parted like the Red Sea and left him staring at the one truth he had carried across the wilderness.

“And I wanna thank…” He stopped, swallowed, then let out a faint breath that shook at the edges, his lashes lowering for a moment before he looked up again. “I wanna thank someone I have been thankin’ in my heart for a very long time, even when I didn’t have the right to say her name out loud.”

Delilah’s smile faltered.

Not enough for the room to call it distress, not enough for the cameras to make a scandal of it yet, but enough for Michael to see the girl beneath the woman, the old Delilah inside the white gown, the one who used to bite the inside of her cheek when emotion threatened to climb too high.

He saw it and nearly lost his place.

Because there she was.

His Tinky.

His first muse.

His unfinished prayer.

The woman he had dreamt of for years and woken from like a man dragged back from paradise too soon, the woman whose voice had slipped through speakers and into his rooms like incense under a temple door, the woman he had written around, written toward, written through, turning the ache of her absence into bridges, bass lines, hidden harmonies, and melodies that would outlive the ache that made them.

“I learned a long time ago,” he continued, voice softening until the microphone seemed to carry not sound but confession, “that a song can come from places you ain’t ready to speak on yet. Sometimes it come from joy, sometimes it come from pain, and sometimes it come from missin’ somebody so long that the missin’ becomes its own language.”

The room went still.

Quincy, seated below, lifted his chin slightly, suddenly understanding that Michael had wandered far beyond the safe borders of an acceptance speech and into the dangerous country of the heart, where every sentence carried a match and every pause smelled faintly of smoke.

Michael turned his head, just slightly, toward Delilah.

“There is a word for that,” he said. “Saudade.”

Delilah’s fingers tightened around the side of her gown.

“It means a kind of longing that don’t know how to end,” he said, and his voice thinned with tenderness, not weakness, but tenderness so deep it seemed to bruise him on its way out. “It means missin’ someone like they are still with you, like your soul done kept a place set for them at the table, like every room you walk into knows who ain’t there.”

The audience had become a held breath.

Michael looked back toward the crowd, but he was not speaking to them anymore.

“I knew no end to it,” he said. “No end to missin’ her, no end to wonderin’ where she was, no end to hearin’ her voice and feelin’ like the Lord had let me hear heaven but not enter it.”

Delilah’s breath caught, and the sound was so small no microphone could have captured it, but Michael heard it because Michael had always heard her, even in crowded rooms, even beneath applause, even across seven years of silence.

He turned then, not fully, but enough that the gesture became unmistakable, enough that every camera knew where the gravity of the room had shifted.

“Delilah Fontaine,” he said, and her name came from him like scripture, like a psalm remembered in childhood and spoken again after years of wandering.

A murmur moved through the room, soft and startled, but Michael did not flinch from it.

If anything, the sound steadied him.

Because there had been too many years of quiet.

Too many unsent calls.

Too many songs written with her ghost sitting at the piano bench beside him.

Too many nights where he woke from dreams of her and spent days recovering from the cruelty of having touched happiness only in sleep.

“You were my muse before I knew what a muse was,” he said, eyes fixed on her now, his voice growing more fragile and more certain at the same time, the way a candle becomes most beautiful when the room darkens around it. “Before I had language for it, before I understood why your laugh stayed in my head longer than applause, before I knew why every song I loved felt unfinished if I couldn’t imagine you hearin’ it.”

Delilah’s eyes shone beneath the stage lights, and Michael had to look at her hands to survive her face, because if he looked too long, he feared he might forget the room altogether and speak with no restraint left.

“I have written about her in ways nobody knows,” he continued, and his fingers curved tighter around the Grammy. “Not always in names. Not always in words. Sometimes in a pause before the chorus. Sometimes in a note held longer than it had to be. Sometimes in the space between one breath and the next. I put her in songs the way old builders put gold behind cathedral walls, knowin’ maybe nobody would ever see it, but God would know it was there.”

Delilah’s lips parted.

The image struck her harder than a simple declaration could have, because she understood then that Michael had not merely missed her, had not merely remembered her as a sweet childhood wound or a girl from Motown hallways; he had carried her into his work the way monks once carried illuminated scripture, hidden in detail, patient in devotion, every brush of gold placed by hand for a beloved who might never come close enough to read it.

“I immortalized her before I had permission,” he said, and the confession trembled with guilt as much as love. “In music, in movement, in dreams, in the kind of silence a man keeps when he know he ain’t supposed to reach for what he still prays over.”

His eyes lifted to hers again.

“And I did pray,” he said, softer. “Not always right, maybe not always clean, but I prayed. I prayed she was safe. I prayed she was loved. I prayed her voice stayed hers. I prayed the world was gentle with her, even when I couldn’t be near enough to ask it myself.”

Delilah lowered her gaze, and one tear slipped free before she could stop it, sliding over the careful elegance of her face with such quiet dignity that the sight of it nearly split him open.

He stepped away from the microphone then.

Only one step.

Only enough to reach her.

The room stirred, cameras adjusting, audience members leaning forward, every person present suddenly aware they were no longer watching an award acceptance but something rarer and far more dangerous: a wound being opened in public and turning, somehow, into a vow.

Michael shifted the Grammy into his left hand and held out his right, bare and trembling slightly, not commanding, not claiming, not pulling her into spectacle, only offering.

Delilah stared at his hand.

For one terrible, breathless moment, the seven years stood between them like a wall of salt.

Celeste’s tears.

Jackie’s betrayal.

The studio floor.

The hospital bed.

The silence.

The records.

The dreams.

The love neither of them had been allowed to bury properly.

Then Delilah placed her hand in his.

The audience exhaled as if the whole room had been waiting for permission to breathe.

Michael’s fingers closed around hers with devastating care, and his face changed, not dramatically, not theatrically, but with the quiet ruin of a man touching home after years in exile.

He looked at their joined hands like Thomas might have looked upon proof of resurrection, like faith had become flesh beneath his palm.

“This album changed my life,” he said, returning his gaze to the microphone though he did not let go of her. “But she changed the room my life happened in.”

Delilah’s hand tightened faintly around his.

Michael felt it and nearly smiled, though the emotion in his throat made the expression tremble before it could fully form.

“She taught me that softness can have a spine,” he said. “That quiet can still command. That a person can leave and still be present in everything you make, not because you want to suffer, but because some people mark you so deeply that forgettin’ them would mean forgettin’ yourself.”

There was no applause now.

Only silence.

The kind of silence that gathers before a storm breaks, before a bride speaks, before a king lays down his crown, before Juliet looks over the balcony and hears her name become a fate.

Michael turned back to Delilah, and the whole stage seemed to narrow around them.

“I have spent years dreamin’ of you,” he said, not loudly, but every word carried. “And it has taken me days, sometimes, to recover from a dream with you in it, because I would wake up and the room would still be there, and my work would still be there, and all the people who needed me would still be there, but you would not.”

Delilah’s face folded around the pain of it, and Michael immediately softened his hold on her hand, as if afraid even his truth might hurt her too much.

“I ain’t sayin’ that to burden you,” he whispered, though the microphone loved him too much and carried it anyway. “I’m sayin’ it because tonight, for the first time in seven years, I ain’t dreamin’.”

A sound moved through the audience, low and emotional, but Michael did not look away from her.

He lifted the Grammy between them, the gold catching fire beneath the lights, then lowered it carefully into Delilah’s free hand.

She shook her head before he even let go.

“Michael,” she whispered, and the word broke in her mouth.

He smiled at her then, small and aching, so full of tenderness it seemed almost indecent for the world to witness.

“This one belongs to you.”

“No,” she breathed.

“Yes,” he said gently. “Because I know what they gon’ write. They gon’ say I broke history tonight. They gon’ say Thriller did somethin’ nobody seen before. They gon’ say a lot of things, and maybe some of it true.”

He guided her fingers around the base of the award, his hand warm over hers, steadying her beneath the weight of it.

“But before tonight was history,” he said, “it was longing. It was labor. It was loneliness. It was me reachin’ for somethin’ I could not name without sayin’ yours.”

Delilah’s tears were falling now, silent and furious in their restraint, and she hated that the world could see them, hated that every camera had been invited to the most tender room inside her, but she could not pull her hand away from his, could not reject the gold he had placed in her palm like a burnt offering laid at the foot of an altar.

“You were in the art,” he said. “Even when you were absent from my life, you were not absent from my work. You were the lamp in the window. The letter I never sent. The hymn under the melody. The garden I kept returnin’ to in my sleep.”

He looked down once, breath shaking.

“And I know I had no right.”

That made her look up sharply.

Michael’s face was open now in a way she had never seen, not even in the hospital, not even as children, because this was not a boy’s shy confession or a star’s polished speech; this was a man placing his heart on a public altar and waiting to see whether heaven would consume it or spare it.

“I know I had no right to keep you in my songs when life said I had to let you go,” he said. “I know your silence had reasons. I know your loyalty had a name. I know pain drew that line in the sand, and I know you ain’t draw it to hurt me.”

Delilah’s mouth trembled.

“But I need you to know,” he continued, voice lowering, “I never stood on my side of that line and stopped lovin’ you.”

The room broke.

Not into applause yet, not fully, but into sound, into soft gasps and murmurs and hands pressed to mouths, because there was no mistaking it now, no hiding the shape of what he had said beneath artistic gratitude or poetic metaphor.

Michael Jackson, crowned by the world, had turned to Delilah Fontaine and confessed like a man at judgment.

“I tried to be good,” he said, almost laughing at himself, though the laugh was wet with feeling. “I tried to be respectful. I tried not to reach where I wasn’t welcome. I tried to let the years teach me sense.”

His thumb moved once over her knuckles.

“They ain’t teach me nothin’ but how much I missed you.”

Delilah let out the smallest, broken breath, and Michael held it in his chest like a relic.

“I am not askin’ you for an answer tonight,” he said, and that gentleness, that restraint after so much exposure, broke her more than pressure ever could have. “I ain’t askin’ you to fix seven years under these lights. I ain’t askin’ you to forget what happened, or who got hurt, or what love cost your sister. I am only thankin’ you, Delilah, because my heart has been callin’ your name for longer than my mouth was allowed to, and tonight I finally get to say it where you can hear me.”

Her fingers tightened around his.

Michael inhaled, unsteady, then looked toward the audience at last, though his body remained angled toward her as if he could not bear to turn fully away.

“So thank you,” he said, voice nearly breaking. “Thank you for the dreams I survived. Thank you for the songs I built from missin’ you. Thank you for bein’ the quiet in the middle of the noise. Thank you for bein’ the part of the music I kept safe, even from myself.”

The applause began then, not sudden but swelling, rising like a tide beneath the stage, the room coming to its feet slowly and then all at once, but Michael did not release her hand, and Delilah did not return the Grammy.

She stood beside him with his history in her hand and his confession in her chest, and for a moment she looked less like a woman accepting a public honor than a saint in a painting receiving a golden flame, trembling not because she was weak but because revelation had weight.

Michael stepped closer, close enough that the cameras could capture the intimacy but not the words he spoke next.

“You don’t gotta forgive me for lovin’ you this loud,” he whispered. “But I had to stop pretendin’ it was quiet.”

Delilah looked at him through her tears.

“You are impossible,” she whispered back.

His smile trembled.

“I know.”

“You gave me your Grammy.”

“I did.”

“In front of everybody.”

“I did that too.”

“You always been dramatic.”

A laugh broke through his emotion, soft and boyish, and the sound loosened something in her chest that had been locked for seven years.

“And you always been actin’ like you don’t like it,” he murmured.

Delilah stared at him, and there, beneath the lights, with the room clapping around them like thunder over Olympus and heaven, she saw both versions of him at once: the boy who had kissed her hand in a hospital room and lied about it, and the man who had just handed her proof of his life’s work because he believed some part of it belonged to her.

Her heart broke for the years.

It came together for the moment.

She looked down at the Grammy, then at their joined hands, then back at him.

“This don’t fix everything,” she said softly.

Michael’s expression gentled at once.

“I know.”

“We have things to talk about.”

They barely made it through the door of Delilah’s penthouse before all the restraint they had worn so beautifully in public came apart in the privacy of marble floors, soft lamplight, and the city glittering far beneath them like a thousand stolen stars scattered across black velvet.

The door swung open too hard, striking the wall with a dull, expensive thud neither of them cared enough to notice, because Michael had one hand at her waist and the other pressed to the doorframe as Delilah pulled him in by the front of that glittering jacket, both of them laughing into each other’s mouths with the kind of breathless disbelief that belonged to people who had spent seven years starving and had finally been seated before the feast.

It was not graceful at first.

It was not careful or cinematic or polished enough for the world that had just watched him stand beneath lights and speak of muses, dreams, prayers, and longing like a man confessing at the altar.

It was messy in the foyer, hungry in the hallway, tender in all the places hunger could have turned selfish but did not, Michael’s back meeting the closed door as Delilah kissed him like she was trying to find the boy she had lost inside the man who had returned to her, while he held her like he had already learned the cost of letting go and did not intend to pay it twice.

“Tinky,” he breathed against her mouth, and the nickname sounded different here, not sweetly nostalgic beneath Grammy lights, not teasing across childhood board games, but low and shaken in the dim warmth of her home, a name dragged through years of silence and finally allowed to touch skin.

“Don’t Tinky me now,” Delilah murmured, though she was already smiling, already reaching for the edge of his aviators with fingers that trembled just enough to betray her. “You gave a whole sermon in front of everybody, Michael Jackson.”

He let her slide the glasses from his face, let her see him fully, soft brown eyes bare and bright with everything he had not been able to fit into that speech, everything too private for microphones and too sacred for applause.

“I meant every word,” he said.

“I know you did,” she whispered, and that was the trouble, because if he had been dramatic for drama’s sake she might have laughed him off, might have told him he was doing too much, might have slipped neatly back into the life she had built without him, but Michael had stood on that stage and told the truth so plainly that it had reached into the locked room of her heart and turned the key like it had always belonged there.

His jeweled glove came off first, not with performance but with desperation disguised as patience, Delilah tugging it from his hand and letting it fall somewhere near the door as if history itself could wait on the floor for once, and Michael looked at the abandoned glove, then at her, his mouth curving with that shy, disbelieving smile that made her want to ruin all his composure on principle.

“You just throwin’ my things around now?”

“You gave me a Grammy,” she said, walking him backward by the lapels until he nearly stumbled over the edge of her ruffled train. “I figured we past manners.”

Michael laughed, soft and startled, and caught her before either of them could trip, his hands landing at her waist with a firmness that made her breath change, his thumbs pressing through the delicate fabric as if he had to remind himself she was real, that this was not another dream he would spend days recovering from, that she was not about to vanish with the morning and leave him alone with the cruelty of memory.

“You always been bossy,” he murmured.

“You always liked it.”

His eyes lifted to hers, and the air between them tightened so quickly that Delilah’s teasing smile softened around the edges.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quieter now. “I did.”

The honesty made something warm and helpless open inside her, and she kissed him again before either of them could speak too much and turn the moment fragile, her hands sliding beneath the sharp shoulders of his jacket, pushing it back until all those sequins and gold details slipped from him like armor being removed after battle.

Michael let it fall.

Let the jacket drop from his shoulders and land in a glittering heap on her polished floor, let the room take him down from myth to man piece by piece, until he stood before her in softer layers, breathing harder than he wanted to admit, looking at her as if she had been the only award he had wanted to bring home all night.

Delilah’s coat went next, the cloudlike ruffles sliding from her shoulders under his careful hands, Michael slowing despite himself when the fabric caught at her arms, his fingers gentle as he freed her, his mouth following the bare line of her shoulder with kisses that were less possession than gratitude, less hunger than recognition.

Seven years had made them ravenous, but it had also made them reverent.

That was the ache of it.

They wanted each other badly, yes, wanted with all the force of old silence, wanted with the helplessness of interrupted youth and unfinished love, but beneath every kiss there was the tenderness of people touching a bruise they had both carried separately, the breathless shock of realizing the other person had been wounded in the same place.

“You really listened to all my records?” Delilah asked, though her voice had gone soft and uneven as he kissed the side of her neck, his curls brushing her cheek, his hand warm at the small of her back.

Michael lifted his head just enough to look at her.

“Every one.”

“You ain’t skip nothin’?”

“Not one song.”

“Even the sad ones?”

His mouth softened.

“Especially them.”

Delilah swallowed, and for a second the passion in the room gave way to something deeper and more dangerous, because there was desire, and then there was being known, and Michael had somehow managed to arrive at her door carrying both.

She tried to look away, but he touched her chin lightly, not forcing, only asking, and when she let him turn her face back to his, the kiss that followed was slower than the others, almost unbearably intimate, as if he was not simply kissing her mouth but apologizing to every year that had stood between them.

“You know,” she murmured against him, mischief returning because the feeling was getting too big and she needed somewhere to put it, “you lucky I ain’t got nobody waitin’ in here.”

Michael went still.

Not stiff, not angry, not cruel, but still enough that Delilah felt the shift in him immediately, felt his hand pause at her waist and his breath catch against her cheek.

She pulled back just enough to see his face.

His eyes had narrowed slightly, not with arrogance, not with ownership, but with that wounded, disbelieving look that made him seem at once grown and terribly young.

“Somebody?” he repeated.

Delilah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Mhm.”

“In here?”

“Could be.”

Michael looked past her into the dim, immaculate sweep of the penthouse, at the grand piano near the windows, the low cream sofa, the flowers arranged on the glass table, the stack of records beside the stereo, the city blazing behind it all, then looked back at her with a softness that did not quite hide the jealousy moving under his skin.

“You play too much, girl.”

“Do I?”

“You know you do.”

“What if I had a man?”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then rose again, slower this time, and when he spoke his voice was quiet, careful, and edged with feeling he was trying very hard not to let turn sharp.

“Then I’d be standin’ here lookin’ real foolish.”

Delilah’s smile faded a little because he did not take the bait the way most men would have, did not puff up, did not make some claim he had no right to make, did not turn her joke into a demand.

He simply looked at her with seven years of yearning in his face and let the hurt show.

“I ain’t got nobody,” she whispered.

Michael exhaled, almost a laugh, almost a prayer.

“I know.”

Her brows lifted.

“You know?”

“I hoped,” he corrected, his mouth curving faintly, shy now that the danger had passed. “I hoped real hard.”

Delilah shook her head, smiling despite the ache pressing behind her ribs.

“You something else.”

“I been told.”

“By who?”

He leaned closer, brushing his nose against hers with a tenderness that made the marble foyer feel like the smallest room in the world.

“By this girl I used to know.”

Delilah’s breath caught, and Michael kissed her again before she could answer, before she could tell him that girl had never stopped knowing him, not really, not even when loyalty and grief had shut every door between them.

They moved deeper into the penthouse in uneven steps, kissing between breaths, laughing when her train tangled around his ankle, stopping when Michael bent to free the fabric with such solemn concentration that Delilah had to grip the wall to keep from melting right there in the hallway.

“Bambi, if you don’t leave that dress alone—”

“I’m tryna save it,” he said, looking up at her from where he had crouched, one hand carefully lifting the white shimmer away from his shoe. “You come in here lookin’ like a whole angel and expect me to let you tear it?”

“You sayin’ I look like an angel?”

He stood slowly, close enough that his chest brushed hers.

“I’m sayin’ if angels look like you, I understand why men be fallin’ to their knees.”

Delilah stared at him.

Michael’s confidence lasted exactly three seconds before he looked embarrassed by his own mouth, his eyes dropping with a small laugh as if he could not believe he had said it out loud.

“That was too much?”

“It was a lot.”

“I can take it back.”

“Don’t you dare.”

His smile came back then, soft and relieved, and Delilah reached for him again, pulling him down by his loosened collar, because there was only so much yearning a woman could be expected to survive while standing upright.

By the time they reached the living room, the city lights were flickering behind the glass like witnesses sworn to secrecy, his jacket lay forgotten by the door, her ruffled coat had fallen along the hallway like a shed cloud, his aviators were somewhere on the console table, and the Grammy he had given her sat gleaming beneath a lamp as if it had been placed there to watch over whatever fragile, feverish thing had begun again between them.

Michael paused when he saw it, the award catching gold in the corner of his eye.

Delilah followed his gaze, then looked back at him.

“You really gave me your Grammy.”

“I told you why.”

“You gave me history.”

He shook his head, stepping closer until his hands found hers again, bare fingers sliding between hers as if their bodies remembered the shape before their minds could question it.

“Nah,” he said softly. “I gave history back to the woman who helped me survive it.”

Delilah’s face changed, the teasing leaving her all at once, and Michael lifted their joined hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles the way he had done in that hospital room seven years earlier, only this time he did not lie about it, did not call it checking her temperature, did not hide from the sweetness of being caught.

He looked up at her over their hands.

“I missed you,” he whispered. “Not like folks say it when they ain’t seen somebody in a while. I missed you like somethin’ in me stayed hungry.”

Delilah’s eyes shone.

“Michael…”

“I know,” he murmured. “I know we got things to talk about. I know tonight don’t fix it all.”

His thumb stroked over her hand, slow and reverent.

“But can I just hold you for a minute like I found you?”

That broke her.

Not the speech, not the Grammy, not the kisses at the door, but that simple request, that yearning stripped of performance and poetry, that boyish ache inside the man who had just made history and still stood in her living room asking permission to hold what he had lost.

Delilah stepped into him.

Michael wrapped his arms around her immediately, gathering her against him with a sound that was almost relief, his face turning into her hair, her hands sliding up his back, both of them going still in the middle of all that heat because the embrace itself was a kind of hunger too.

For a while, there was no rush.

Only his breathing against her temple.

Only her fingers pressing into the fabric at his back.

Only the city below them, the Grammy beneath the lamp, the forgotten layers scattered like evidence of a storm that had finally found shore.

Then Delilah lifted her face from his chest and looked up at him, her smile small, wet-eyed, and dangerous.

“One minute over?”

Michael’s gaze dropped to her mouth.

“Not even close.”

“Good,” she whispered.

And when she kissed him again, Michael answered like a man who had spent seven years dreaming of her and had finally woken up with heaven in his hands.

Michael kissed her like he had been trying not to for seven years, like every polite smile, every swallowed phone call, every song written around her absence, every dream he had woken from with an ache in his chest had finally gathered itself into his mouth and found nowhere else to go.

It was not frantic in the careless way of strangers who only knew wanting by its hunger, but it was desperate all the same, desperate with memory, desperate with grief, desperate with the strange, holy terror of touching someone familiar and changed at once, because Delilah’s mouth was still Delilah’s and yet not the same as it had been in girlhood, softer now, surer now, carrying the taste of champagne, lipstick, and a woman who had lived a whole life on the other side of his silence.

His hands moved carefully at first, as if some part of him was still afraid of startling her away, one palm spread warm against her waist while the other traced the line of her back through the delicate shimmer of her gown, and Delilah felt him pause at the zipper like a question, like a prayer left unopened on an altar.

She answered by kissing him deeper.

Michael exhaled against her mouth, a soft, broken sound that made her fingers tighten in his shirt, and only then did he draw the zipper down slowly, inch by inch, the faint whisper of it almost swallowed by the city humming beyond the glass and the uneven rhythm of their breathing.

“I don’t wanna be friends,” he murmured, the words spoken against the corner of her mouth as if he could not bear to pull away far enough to say them properly.

Delilah stilled beneath his hands, not because she was afraid, but because the sentence struck too cleanly, too directly, cutting through all the pretty fog of the night and finding the old wound still waiting underneath.

Michael lifted his head just enough to look at her, his eyes bare now, no aviators, no stage lights, no applause to soften the truth in them, only that deep brown ache she had known since childhood, bright and pleading and stubborn all at once.

“I mean it, ’Lilah,” he said, voice low, careful, carrying that Gary softness around the edges, the kind that made every word feel both gentle and firm. “I don’t wanna sit up in your life pretendin’ I ain’t loved you since before I had good sense. I don’t wanna shake your hand, call you an old friend, ask about your records like I ain’t listened to ’em in the dark missin’ you past reason.”

Her dress loosened beneath his fingers, the white fabric easing from her shoulders just enough for cool air to kiss the skin he had uncovered, and Michael’s gaze did not drop in a way that made her feel looked at like spectacle; he watched her face instead, watched the way her lashes trembled, the way her lips parted, the way she tried to hold herself together while he took the old silence apart seam by seam.

“I can be patient,” he whispered, his thumb brushing the bare line at the top of her back with such tenderness that it felt less like seduction than devotion. “I can be careful. I can court you proper, take you out, call when I say I’m gon’ call, show up how a man supposed to show up, but I can’t be your friend like that’s all this ever was.”

Delilah swallowed, her eyes shining as she looked up at him.

“Mikey…”

“No, listen to me, baby,” he said softly, not commanding her so much as begging her not to hide from the thing standing between them. “Please.”

The word softened everything.

She nodded once, and his hand stilled at her back, the zipper halfway down, his palm warm over the opening as though he were holding the gown together by will alone, as though even now he wanted her to know that nothing would come apart unless she let it.

“I don’t wanna be punished for Jackie’s sins no more,” Michael said, and the quiet hurt in his voice made Delilah’s face change. “I know what he did. I know he hurt Celeste. I know your sister had every right to be mad, and I ain’t never gon’ tell you she didn’t. But I didn’t do that to her, ’Lilah.”

His voice cracked faintly on her name, and she reached for him without thinking, her fingers sliding up to cup the side of his face.

“I know,” she whispered.

His eyes searched hers, almost disbelieving, like those two words had been something he had waited years to hear from her mouth.

“I didn’t do that to you either,” he continued, softer now, leaning into her touch despite himself. “But I lost you like I had.”

The ache of it entered the room and changed the air.

For a moment, they were no longer standing in her penthouse with his Grammy glowing beneath the lamp and their formal clothes coming undone around them; they were back in every place they had been denied, the studio after the screaming, the hospital room with his hand around hers, the silent years where her records found him but her voice never did.

Delilah’s thumb brushed his cheek, slow and trembling.

“I thought I was doing right by her,” she said.

“I know you did.”

“She was my sister.”

“I know.”

“She was broken, Michael.”

“I know that too,” he murmured, and his eyes softened because he did know, because he had seen enough pain in his own house to recognize when love became a wound everybody else had to walk around carefully. “But we grown now.”

The words landed between them like a door opening.

Michael lowered his forehead to hers, breathing her in, his hand still at her back, his mouth close enough to touch but not yet taking.

“We grown now, Delilah,” he repeated, quieter, firmer, like he needed both of them to believe it. “We ain’t them kids sneakin’ footsie under the table no more. We ain’t sittin’ on no tour bus scared to say what we mean. We ain’t gotta let everybody else’s hurt decide what we allowed to have.”

Delilah closed her eyes because the truth of it hurt, because freedom sometimes arrived carrying guilt in both hands, because loving him had always felt simple in her body and complicated everywhere else.

Michael kissed her closed eyelid, then the tear that had gathered at the corner, his mouth so careful there it nearly broke her.

“I missed you,” he breathed. “God help me, I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” she whispered, and his whole body seemed to receive the words before his mind did, his shoulders falling, his breath leaving him like a man finally set down after carrying something too heavy for too long.

He kissed her again then, slower this time, deeper in feeling than in force, his hand finishing the path of the zipper with reverent care until the dress loosened around her like a secret slipping free, and Delilah let it, let the gown give way from her shoulders as she stepped closer into him, not because seven years could be erased by one night, but because they could at least stop pretending the wanting had died.

Michael’s hands found her again through the loosened fabric, warm and shaking slightly, and Delilah gave a small laugh against his mouth when she felt it.

“You nervous?”

He huffed softly, embarrassed but honest.

“Girl, I just made history in front of everybody and somehow you still the one who got me scared.”

That made her smile, tender and wicked all at once.

“You scared of me, Bambi?”

His eyes darkened with feeling, not lust alone but the terrible intimacy of being known by someone who remembered him before the world did.

“Terrified,” he said. “But I’m stayin’.”

Delilah’s smile faded into something softer, something that trembled at the edges, and she pulled him back down to her mouth.

“Then stay.”

Michael kissed her like an answer, like a vow, like the first honest thing after seven years of borrowed silence. Behind them the abandoned layers of the night lay scattered across her penthouse floor — sequins, ruffles, gloves, pride, grief, history — while the two of them stood wrapped in the fragile, burning truth that they were no longer children, no longer innocent casualties of someone else’s war, and no longer willing to call longing by any smaller name.

Delilah gently pushed him back until the cold concrete wall pressed firm against his shoulder blades. Michael resisted the instinctive shiver that threatened to move through him as her hands settled against his chest, those same hands he had spent years holding in hospital rooms, under dinner tables, and in the cramped backrooms of tour buses, the same hands he had once laughingly smacked away whenever he suspected her of cheating at their favorite games, those very same hands reached for the button of his slacks and unzipped them, the metal clinking as her knuckles brushed aaginst the vee of his waistband. He exhaled something that was a breath of her name as the rush of cold air made him shiver as his length swelled free from its confines, relieved to no longer be tucked against his waistband as he’d done earlier tonight when he’d watched her hips switch as she walked to the stage to present him with his award. However he wasn't left cold for long, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as she wrapped her hand around him and sank to her knees, her dress bunching up beneath her. 

“Delilah–”

“ I missed you, baby… let me show you how much, don’t think… jus’ focus on me.”

His head tipped against the wall, his hand immediately going to her scalp, faltering for a moment as if shy, then settling into a tight fist at his side. The night continued around them as she began – slow, tortuously slow– her tongue tracing the vein that made him go weak in the knees as he let out a sound he was sure would make him blush later on. 

Delilah responded to the praise, eager to hear him again, she responded with a deeper and deliberate swirl, eager to taste all of him and to be flushed with his pelvis. Curling her hand into a fist she was able to do just that as her throat relaxed as she took as much as she could, recalling the trick she read in that one Playboy magazine she found in his bedroom cupboard when she was sixteen.

Michael’s eyes fluttered shut as he searched for purchase on any surface around him, his hands slipping and sliding against the wall as he fought for purchase, his sanity slipping bit by bit as Delilah deepthroated him, she darted her tongue out to lick his balls, leaving no crevice untouched by her tongue. She leaned back slightly, watching as he slipped out of her mouth, slick with her saliva, and she wrapped her hand around him, jerking him as she looked up at him, noting how stiff he looked above her as his hazy eyes met her own, nothing but lust, love and desire swimming in their gazes.

“Touch me, baby,” she whispered as she looked up at him. A determined fire in her gaze as she reached for his hand and put it in her hair, a quiet intensity as she encouraged him to grip her strands. She didn’t want him shy; she wanted him to throw caution to the wind, wanted him to shed the skin finally he wore for everyone else; she wanted to see who he actually was.

She was getting just that because he couldn’t look away from her. Delilah, who looked so put together at some point, had black tears staining her cheeks. Her lipstick smeared on his shaft and across her cheek. She looked a mess, but she looked so beautiful… so beautiful. So much so that he reached for the Polaroid beside him that rested on a shelf, watching as she didn't take the movement into account, eager to wring him for all he was worth. 

Flicking the camera open, he gently cupped her cheek, willing her to look up at him, his dick snug between her plush lips and down her throat made him throb as he fought not to orgasm right then and there – and it was a fight – he willed himself to remain on task. He snapped the picture, the white flash illuminating the dark room for a moment before the shutter closed. He reached for it, flapping it back and forth as it developed. What followed became a fevered blur of Polaroid flashes and whispered laughter, the little camera catching fragments of Delilah as Michael saw her in that private, worshipful light, desire hanging heavy in the room like incense before an altar while their perfumes, sweat, and history mingled until the night itself seemed to forget where one of them ended and the other began; by the time the city darkened beyond the windows and dawn began to loosen its pale fingers over the skyline, whatever passed between them had become something so tender, consuming, and sacred that even Venus might have turned away with reddened cheeks, leaving Mars to guard the door while Cupid scattered the last arrows of their restraint across the floor, and after that, seven years was no longer merely a wound between them, but the very reason their passion burned with the force of something lost, mourned, and finally returned.

you weren’t doing the absolute most—no shaking ass on the wall or making a scene—but you were doing a little polite throw, moving perfectly to the rhythm while your homegirl hyped you up, hands on your waist. you looked stunning. a literal goddess under the neon lights, effortless and completely captivating.

jermajesty locked eyes with you from across the room, his heart doing a sudden flip. he set his drink down, determined to break away from his section just to get your name. but the second he blinked and looked past a passing bottle girl, you were gone.

your best friend had grabbed your arm, practically begging to hit the restroom before an emergency happened. you let out a whimper, looking back toward the section. you were genuinely sad, thinking you’d completely lost the pretty boy who had been staring a hole through you, but your girl was the priority.

ten minutes later, you walked out of the restroom, smoothing down your outfit. you expected him to be long gone, back to his friends. instead, you found him leaning against the bar. he wasn't buying a drink; he was just standing there, eyes scanning the crowd until they landed right back on you. it was like he was waiting.

you didn’t hesitate. you marched right up to him, hips swaying, determined to leave the club with his number.

“you’re cute,” you said, leaning slightly against the bar counter.

jermajesty was immediately taken aback. his dark eyes widened slightly, a faint blush creeping up his neck that he hoped the club lights hid. he didn't think you’d be so bold. at first, he wondered if it was just the liquor talking, but as he got to know you over the next few weeks, he realized that was just who you were. unapologetic, vibrant, and completely magnetic. you had the whole baddie aesthetic thing going on.

it became the exact thing he loved most about you.

fast forward months later, and he still found himself wondering how a nerdy guy like him ended up with a girl like you.

you weren't an anime fan by any means. your timeline was filled with fashion, beauty, and music, but you loved him, which meant you loved the things that made him happy. you’d curl up right against his chest on the couch, the glowing television screen illuminating your face as hunter x hunter played.

you’d look up from your phone, blinking your glossy eyes at the screen before pouting up at him. “but why is the hunter exam so long, baby?”

jermajesty couldn't do anything but smile down at you, his heart melting into a puddle. he’d press a kiss to your forehead, pulling the blanket tighter around your shoulders. “they gotta screen out the weak ones, ma. just watch, it gets better.”

you were his whole world, and he showed it every chance he got. he’d willingly go sit in the nail salon for two hours, tucked into a chair next to yours, just listening to you and your friends gossip about absolutely nothing. he didn’t mind being the designated bag holder when you went shopping, trailing behind you through the mall with your luxury bags resting on his forearms.

and whenever you surprised him with a new funko pop to add to his growing collection, he would completely lose his shit. he’d lift you right off your feet, laughing, and cover your entire face in warm, breathless kisses until you were giggling and begging him to stop.

you were his outgoing baddie, and he was your quiet, nerdy boy. it made absolutely no sense to the rest of the world, but to the two of you, it was everything.

Souline sighs, lifting the camera downwards to show her face again but she’s peeking around her to make sure Cameron is still busy, “Like? I’m confused. We just got here—two days ago but still. We relaxed the first day because we got here late. Then the day after? Man has a whole itinerary—which is fine because we love a man that can make plans but also? Why are you trying to do laps in the pool at six in the morning? And then think we’re gonna go on a hike by eight? This is what it’s like dating an athlete—now I understand mom. You married one in the nineties! S.O.S. And that’s on Rihanna, I swear to God.”

The crystal water from the view breezes by smelling of salt and light like floral that eases the brief stress from Souline. She flips the view to the turquoise waters and pastel colored buildings in the distance off to the right.

Slowly panning over to the left towards the dining area was a mistake.

The yelp she lets out is enough for her to realize she’s been caught.

“You done talkin’ shit so we can put this work in or what?” Cameron Cade stands by the edge of the wall, shoulder pressing into the stone as his eyes are set on his dramatic journalist of a girlfriend.

She stops recording.

“…and if I say no?”

Cameron puffs out a humorless laugh, “Then you don’t get that Prada bag that you’ve been eyeing for weeks—which I put on hold here this morning at that boutique we drove by and that Dior bag might just turn up missin’. Your choice.”

Souline’s nose crinkles in irritation when she peeks down at the exact Dior bag that’s hanging onto her wrist. She takes a deep inhale, shoving her phone back into her bag. Then she lifts her head meeting his challenging indigo-eyed stare, “I will not apologize for having an excellent breakfast.”

Cameron frowns.

“It was balanced. Sufficient. There’s benefits to exercising after devouring food, believe me when I say that, big back. You’ll be thanking me later since you’re missing out on Pilates this week.”

Souline’s mouth drops while she picks up on the teasing in his tone. A faint dimple appears on the side of his cheek as she steps towards him, finger pointed in his direction, “Did you just call me a linebacker, Cameron Samuel Cade?”

“Nah. Didn’t say all that,” Cameron rolls his eyes at the middle name drop as he meets her toe to toe, “Far from a body shamer baby. Love all that you are…but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna be on your ass, especially when you’re on my team.”

Souline hated how much she liked hearing that.

Which was unfortunate.

It was making a perfectly reasonable argument much harder to win.

She keeps her chin up though, moving to step around Cameron but he simply matches with her, tossing his arm over her shoulder, and tucking her into his side.

It was all, “Slight work, I promise,” as they ride in the red Moke back to the Villa.

Cameron Cade was the only one looking like a bombshell—as if the concept of fatigue was foreign to him. While Souline lay on the mat, bare knees up swaying from side to side, folded hands pressed against her damp forehead, she fought hard to catch her breath.

It had to be over an hour of exercising.

Cameron’s definition of light exercise was completely different from Souline’s.

This was actually relaxing to him.

How sick!

She was used to thirty minute Cardio on her own every now and then. She’s also only been to Pilates with her sister and her friends once or twice—but that was THEIR thing.

Souline just wanted to try it out.

She even gave into the propaganda.

Now the Pilates reformer that Cameron actually set up back at her place was collecting dust if her sister wasn’t over taking full advantage of it.

She should have known better messing around with a dedicated athlete.

“C’mon, Soul. Up. We hitting the chest raises next.” Cameron calls out, dropping down from the pull-up machine.

Souline peeks over as Cameron is making his way over to her. Her heartbeat is in her ears as she slowly shakes her head.

“…I’m cool.”

“What?”

“I said…I don’t wanna be a gym baddie no more.” Souline pushes up onto her elbows and even that feels like a crime but her eyes sit on the shirtless 6’5 man standing over her, “The more I do these sessions with you? The heller the nah.”

Cameron blinks at her, leaning forward to smack at her calf, “I let you have your five minute break. Hydrate some more. Then get those dumbbells. I’m not playin’ with you.”

He turns his back but that doesn’t stop him from feeling Souline’s glare.

She scoffs and drops back down, head lolling around like a bad ass kid throwing a tantrum in store. Soul thinks she’s muttering to herself just as Future’s voice fades into a Don Toliver track, “…got me feelin’ like Chante Moore: just leave me alone, nee-ga.”

Cameron whips his head around, “Oh you a real comedian huh? Watch this.”

Being dragged by the ankles and tossed up into the air like Souline was suddenly on the cheerleading squad again (that she hated so bad) was insane work, truly.

Hanging over his shoulder like this was NOT it.

Low-key Souline was starting to wonder if Cameron had intentions of trying to kill her.

She would never voice this out loud since that’s a sensitive topic to even joke about—with the whole cult scandal thing but we can all keep a secret.

Right?

His large hand smacks right at her backside, made her hiss and consider jamming her elbow into the back of his head but since she was a considerate girlfriend, who was mindful of his concussions, she decided against that.

“Knock it the fuck off, Joe Jackson.”

“Aye now, don’t you ever compare me to that bitch.”

“Then act like you have some sense, Cam.” Souline bites back while said man starts to lower her back onto her feet, “We’ve been at this for two hours.”

Cam sucks his teeth at her and looks at his watch, “It’s only been forty-five minutes.”

Only?

“Of hell!”

“You a quitter?”

“Yup.” Souline nods her head obnoxiously, “I sure am!”

Cam snorts, “Aight then go. And have fun writing about me in your journal like Moesha.”

A flat look is immediately sent his way when he attempts to wave her off.

It’s like he sees what she’s imagining in her head before she even does it. Almost as if the old scar on his scalp tingles like a left in too long relaxer just before she lunges at him.

He could have stepped to the side but the last thing he wanted was for Souline to ever get hurt.

So he meets the force with a grunt.

Her shoulder is digging into his torso, he curls around her like he’s about to yell, “hut,” with a devilish smirk.

“There she is.”

Cameron Cade holds strong around her tugging, amusement taking over his body.

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆

Three hours later…after some much needed rest that Souline was actually right about…

Cameron manages to persuade Souline into another outing in town during the late June afternoon.

She’s passenger side beside him in the apple red Moze, glossed lip combo wrapped around the thin black plastic straw, lightly sipping on the fresh pressed juice from the smoothie bar Cam suggested they taste test.

He told her to pick one for him since the menu was only in French and she so happened to be fluent in it, while his mom ended up calling at the moment they were deciding. So he stepped out of line after Souline called out her hello’s to the woman, before Cameron moved to the side to chat with his mom privately.

“How’s everything going, baby? You guys having fun and staying out of trouble?” His mother asks but he already knows what she’s hinting at.

Cam almost smirks to himself at the memory of pushing Soul’s buttons at the villa’s gym to cushioning the back of her head in the steaming shower before her damp body met the slippery tile.

“As much good trouble that’s allowed, ma.”

The woman that gave him life warns, “Cameron Cade.”

Cameron laughs, sliding past that, “Wanna hear the latest about the ring?”

“Yes, Father God!”

“You sure?” He instigates.

“As sure as I am that my president will always be black.”

He grins.

Cam sadly left his, “Take A Hike!” Right in the cup holder after three sips.

“What’s wrong? You don’t like it. I thought it was fitting?” Souline geninuely questions.

With one hand on the wheel, Cam clears his throat, “These are juice cleanses. My stomach is talking and telling me I gotta take it slow. There’s definitely kale in that. I can tell.”

Souline’s mouth forms into a “o,” with a nod of her head until she breathes out a laugh.

It’s Cameron’s turn to send her a side eye.

“I know you’re not laughing.”

“I’m not. I swear.”

“Got you that bag and now you don’t know how to act.” Cameron sits up in the driver’s side then glances over at his girlfriend, “…Did you set me up?”

“What?!” Souline gasps, still laughing, “I would never, CC.”

Her fingers reach out to pinch his cheeks together, cooing.

Cameron stares over at her hard, for as long as he could until he turns back to the road, dodging his face from her hold, quietly wondering if he’s gonna make it.

His stomach was at an easy five but he wasn’t trying to discuss bowel movements right now.

“Do you want me to drive?” Souline offers.

“Did you poison my ass?”

“For an athlete, I thought you would be used to cleanses by now. You said you wanted a juice? So I picked just like you asked.”

“Couldn’t have selected one to boost my glow or help my muscles after back to back workouts?”

Souline knows exactly what other workout he was referring to.

She beams at him, “That’s what mine is.”

Cameron sucks his teeth as his stomach flips again when he fails to avoid a bump in the road, “Foul as hell. So we at war now?”

“No.” Souline rubs at his thigh in hopes of comforting him and making him see she wouldn’t be that petty after everything that went on today, “We’re on vacation.”

She sits back against the passenger chair, her thumb rubbing over Cameron’s knee cap as he caresses his own set jaw.

Her drink sits beside his, between them, a sigh leaving her as the wind whips all around them and inside the car.

“…appreciate the bag tho.”

He meets her stare, humor in her’s now as her hair floats all around her.

“You’re lucky we’re so locked in…otherwise we’d be beefing for the rest of our stay, that it might start some more rumors in the headlines.” Cameron tells her, she laughs moving to smack a glittery kiss against his cheek.

Souline knows that wouldn’t be true.

The rumors of breaking up—that is.

They’re too attached.

𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆ 𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎. ˖°𓇼⋆ 𖤓 ｡𖦹°‧ ⋆☀︎.