When we're alone, she swivels in her chair to face me. Halfway through her stage makeup — eyes dramatic, lips bare, hair pinned back. Half India, half the performer she becomes on stage. The version of her that belongs to twelve thousand strangers.
I've seen her bare-faced and sleepy in my bed. I've seen her laughing with Gracie and Josie, relaxed in a way she never is with her team. I've seen her come apart underneath me, gasping my name.
This version — the performer, the product — it's a mask. And I hate that she has to wear it.
"How's it looking out there?" she asks.
"Covered."
"That's not really an answer."
"It's the only answer that matters." I cross the room and stop in front of her. "You do your job. I'll do mine."
She reaches up and tugs at my cut, pulling me down until our foreheads touch. Her eyes close.
"I'm scared," she admits. Quiet. Just for me.
"I know."
"Of him being out there. Watching."
"He's not going to touch you." I pull back enough to look at her. "No one's going to touch you. I fucking promise you that."
"Ghost—"
"I'll be side stage the whole time. You won't see me, but I'll see you. And if anything feels wrong — anything at all — you give me the signal and we pull you out. Fuck the show, fuck the label. You come first."
She nods. Her hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing my jaw.
She pulls me down and kisses me. Soft. Sweet. The kind of kiss that means something more than heat.
"Don't let him hurt me," she whispers against my mouth.
"Never."
The show starts at eight.
By eight-fifteen, I've scanned every face in the crowd twice. By eight-thirty, I've clocked sixteen possible points of concern — two men near the front who keep looking at the security barriers instead of the stage, a group near the east exit that seems more interested in the backstage door than the music.
None of them are Harris.
But he's here. I can feel it. That prickle at the back of my neck that kept me alive through three deployments. The sense that something's wrong even when everything looks right.
India's on stage, and she's fucking glorious.
I knew she was talented. I'd heard her music before Nate called me — couldn't avoid it, really, her songs are everywhere. But hearing recordings isn't the same as watching her perform.
She commands that stage like she was born on it. Three thousand people screaming her name, and she makes every single one of them feel like she's singing just to them. The lights catch her face and she's luminous. Untouchable.
And mine.
That thought hits me hard. Not because it's new — I've known she was mine since the first night I fucked her, maybe before that — but because of what it means here. Now. In front of all these people who want a piece of her.
She's theirs for two hours. But when the lights go down and the crowd goes home, she comes back to me.
I force myself to focus. Watch the gaps, not the girl. Stay sharp.
That's when I see him.