The house was full of movement.
Stylists, assistants, a camera girl from her social team, buzzing like bees around her as if she were something about to wilt.
Rylla sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor, chewing the edge of a plastic straw while someone decided whether her nails needed to be "cool pink" or "barely blushed."
"You're flying at nine. We need a look that lands, not lingers," said Cass, her agent-slash-image-wrangler.
"I need sleep," Rylla muttered.
No one heard her.
Or maybe they did. Maybe they just didn't care.
---
She'd said yes to this award show six months ago. Back when things still felt exciting.
Now?
Her latest album tour had ended barely four weeks ago. Twenty cities. Sixty-seven shows. Three encores she didn't plan. Two public tears she didn't mean to shed.
Her voice still worked, technically.
But inside, she felt scraped out.
She missed her piano. The quiet kind of writing. The version of herself that existed in empty hotel rooms with a black notebook and raw lyrics and no lashes glued to her face.
---
A makeup brush flicked her jaw.
"Can you look up for me, babe?"
Rylla obeyed.
Automatically.
She always did—on cue, in photos, in life.
Her head tilted. Chin angled. Dream girl activated.
It was muscle memory now.
She hadn't been singing first. Not originally.
She'd been a teenage face in sunlit photos. Golden hair. Glass skin. A mouth shaped like innocence.
She remembered the first magazine headline that stuck: "The New Angel in American Pop."
Her manager never let that version die.
Not even now.
---
The real Rylla Smith?
Stubborn. Sharp. Swore too much. Didn't cry easily. Had opinions about everything from production budgets to chord structures to the politics of Instagram captions.
But none of that fit the brand.
So she learned to soften her edges in public. Dress like a watercolor. Speak like a sigh.
It was easier that way.
Safer.
---
Cass knelt beside her, holding up a dress in pale gray silk. Strapless. Fitted. The kind of thing that made her look like she might shatter if someone touched her too hard.
"This one," Cass said. "For the jet. And maybe we keep it on for the hotel lobby shots, just in case someone gets a sneak peek?"
Rylla blinked.
Then shrugged.
"Sure."
Because why not?
She was flying out tomorrow morning on a rented jet she didn't book, to perform a song she'd written in her worst month, in front of people who didn't really care—just as long as she didn't mess up the aesthetic.
And God forbid she sweat.
---
Her phone buzzed in her lap.
A text from her mom: You'll do great, baby. Everyone's watching.
That was the problem.
Everyone always was.
—
The house emptied out by ten.
Cass gone. The glam team gone. The social girl whispering about algorithms gone.
Rylla stood in the hallway barefoot, her skin scrubbed clean, hair damp from a shower. The silence felt foreign. Like it didn't belong here anymore.
She padded into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. Not that anyone would walk in.
Her feet found the piano bench without thinking.
She didn't turn on the overheads. Just the little lamp in the corner. Warm light on the white keys. Like dusk, held in a bottle.
---
She played something soft.
New. Unfinished.
She didn't have lyrics yet, just a melody in slow, rising phrases. It felt like longing. Or sunlight. Or the kind of ache that lives in your ribs when you're alone too long.
Her eyes drifted to the window.
Dark outside. Pine trees. Winter sky.
---
She wondered what it would feel like to sunbathe on an empty beach. Not for a photoshoot. Not for a campaign. Just… because it was warm and her body still worked.
Or maybe to wake up in a little apartment above a café. Somewhere with old floors and bad plumbing and no press.
Somewhere where no one expected her to be Rylla Smith.
She played the tune again, slower.
Maybe she'd find the lyrics tomorrow.
---
She smiled to herself.
Italy.
That sounded right.
Old buildings. Warm bread. Sea breeze.
And maybe—
Just maybe—
There'd be a man.
Not the clean-cut, manicured type they cast in her videos. No.
Someone dangerous.
Rough around the edges.
Someone who didn't give a damn about the charts, who wouldn't flinch if she swore like a sailor or told him to fuck off just to test him.
Someone who might kiss her hard just for the hell of it.
Someone who could look at her and know, she wasn't anyone's angel.
---
She laughed, low in her throat.
"You're tired," she whispered to herself. "Go to sleep before you fall in love with a fantasy."
She closed the piano. Shut off the lamp. Slid into bed.
And as her eyes closed, the melody still hummed in her head.
Somewhere.
Somewhere warm.
Somewhere real.