Jordin sipped her water, eyes moving between us. “You realize you just assaulted a client. His label’s gonna want answers.”
“He won’t press charges,” Ciarán said, snatching a fry the moment the plate hit the table. “He’d never live it down. Got his ass kicked by a businessman—a white, middle-aged one, at that.” He smirked. “It’s poetic.”
“This is what you deal with all the time?” I asked, softer now. “This… posturing? These egos you have to constantly manage?”
She let out a short, bitter laugh. “Welcome to the music industry, Oak. It’s not all Grammys and creative freedom. It’s babysitting grown men with toddler emotions and bank accounts big enough to make them think they own you.”
She pointed a fry between us. “And it’s cleaning upeverythingthat happens when they don’t.”
Her eyes locked with mine—and something cracked open.
All the things I’d misunderstood. All the ways I’d minimized what she did, all the ways I’d resented the time and space her career demanded.
This wasn’t a side hustle.
She wasn’t just a songwriter.
She was a negotiator. A strategist. A therapist. A crisis manager. A warden.
And somehow, still an artist beneath it all.
It was a profoundly humbling realization.
forty One-Ciarian
Time is the fire in which we burn.
I read that somewhere. Some dead philosopher or poet who knew shit I didn't. Someone who understood the way time eats at you, burning slow at first—just a little heat, a flicker—until suddenly, you’re fucking engulfed.
I felt it now. The heat licking at my heels. The smoke thick in my lungs. Time was slipping through my fingers, fast as fuck, and I couldn't grab hold. Couldn't slow it down.
I was running out of time.
With Jordin.
With everything.
I needed to talk to her.
But how?
Hey, Jordin. I'm bipolar.How the fuck would that sound?
I ran my tongue over my teeth. I was sitting by the pool, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in my hand. I still hadn’t taken my pills and was now resorting to drowning out the noise in my head the unhealthy way. I knew I should take them, knew I was walking the edge, but I wasn’t ready to pull myself back.
My phone rang, the screen lighting up with an unknown number. Fuck it. Probably Tyrell on some bullshit about the new album.
It rang again. And again. Until I finally answered.
“Ciarán?” The voice was unfamiliar, cold and clinical. “This is Sergeant Daniels from the county jail. I’m calling to inform you that your father, Darryl James, was found deceased in his cell earlier this evening. It appears to be a suicide. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Loss.
That word stuck, but nothing else did. The rest turned into background noise, muffled and distant, like the static in my head had swallowed it whole.
The bottle in my hand felt heavier. Or maybe my arms just felt weak. My whole body felt hollow, like someone had sucked the air out of me.
I sat there, frozen, the phone pressed to my ear as the world spun.
