“Yeah. Dollhouse hour’s over.” Ian lets out something that’s half a sigh and half a losing-his-shit laugh. “For good.”
Over.
For good.
Fiona’s gaze drop to her near-empty drink in shock.
Raj hasn’t blinked once. His wide eyes are staring ahead at air molecules, watching his future fall apart.
Everyone’s posture in the room physically breaks.
Austin is the only exception, holding his ground as he grips the phone tightly. He swallows hard.
“Because tonight,” Ian goes on, “it looks like everyone on the whole damned internet’s havingChase Holthour.”
Fiona and Raj look up, confused.
Austin squints. “Say what now?”
“Every single one of your socials just enjoyed a 650% increase in engagement.” Ian clears his throat. “Not that numbers mean shit to you apparently, but that’s a fucking lot.”
Austin shakes his head. “Uh … good engagement? Bad?”
“Just got off the phone with Irene. What did she just call your stunt, other than a musical mutiny? Oh, right. She called it …” Ian draws in one more deep breath, then sighs. “… the fastest pivot in a musical artist’s image she’s ever seen in her twenty-odd years at the label. Drew has been on the phone for the past two hours. And I …” He lets out a sound that is unmistakably manic laughter. “I … had to fucking tell him Iknewabout this to save my ass.”
I just now realize Austin is clutching my hand, squeezing onto it for dear life. “Save your ass?” asks Austin tentatively.
“Let me read you some of these. ‘Chase chasing love’. That’s currently trending. ‘Country star love story’. ‘Gay romance goals’. ‘Country but make it gay’. Want me to go on? Fuck it, I’m going on. ‘He said boyfriend not buddy’. Oh, and ‘Cowboys kissing cowboys’. Last time I checked, neither of you are cowboys. ‘BL material’. What the hell’s BL? ‘Honkytonk heart throbs’. ‘He chose love’. And ‘Hard launch boyfriend’. There are clips of your backyard concert all over the place. They’re eating this up, Chase, don’t you get it? I haven’t even started with how big an uptick of streams we’re already seeing on Spotify,YouTube, Apple, fucking name it. One of the highest search engine queries this past hour is ‘no fool for love songs’ and ‘love me for a reason’ which are two songs that don’t even exist yet. How’d you pull this off?” His voice is escalating. He no longer cares who hears. “How’d you blow up your careerandget what you want at the same time? Why do I feel like you fucked me overandbought me a winning lottery ticket? You handed me my own ass in a wicker basket. What in the hell did you do?”
Austin finally allows himself to smile. “What I had to.”
“I don’t even know if I’m mad at you.” Ian laughs. “How crazy is that? I think I’m mad at myself. I should’ve … I should’ve trusted you. Where’d I stray, Chase? All these years. You should fire me. You should be the one givingmethe told-you-so speech.”
“Nah. Your concerns were valid. You did your job.” He glances my way, smiles, and slides an arm around me, pulling me close. “I’m just a fool in love. What else can I say?” He brings the phone up closer and lowers his voice. “All the way to the top, buddy.”
There’s a pause. “To the top,” Ian quietly echoes. “Do me a … a favor, will you? Before I get emotional? Promise you’ll call Drew in the morning. I’m … I’m tired. I thinkIneed a dollhouse hour. And a whole bottle of scotch.”
“Love you, Ian.”
“Fuck you … and love you, too.”
Then he hangs up.
And the room erupts once again into cheers and screams, as if the show just wrapped up again—this phone call, the unexpected encore number no one knew they wanted.
A second later, Wily stumbles into the room. “Uh, what’s all the shouting for? What’d I miss?”
He gets a hundred answers all at once.
He doesn’t need ours.
Austin puts his lips on mine. I kiss him right back. The party resumes all around us as we fade into each other, our own world of breathless joy, like the phone call with Ian never happened.
The real victory here isn’t the number of streams.
It’s not the viral concert, nor the hashtags, nor the trending this-and-that.
It’s truth and love winning over cowardice.