Page 82 of The Pucking Grump

Could it be?—?

Don’t be stupid, Faye, I chide myself. Finish your speech.

The world is waiting. After tonight, my career will take a definite turn. But I can garner confidence in knowing that even if I’m left with the ashes, I’m going to be rebuilding on absolute truth.

“The good news is that you can find yourself in all this, like I did. Relationships don’t define you. Love doesn’t define you. Having the perfect man or woman in your corner doesn’t mean your life is going to be perfect. You have an identity, and you have a purpose separate from the love of your life. Don’t wait for them. Live your life.”

My shoulders sag as I step back from the mic. The murmuring grows louder. I focus on the young girl. She’s got her eyes fixed on me, her expression blank. Slowly, though, she begins to smile, until it lights up her face.

I smile back. The tears that form in my eyes are those of joy.

I’ve done my job. Finally.

She starts clapping. Some people join in. I wait, wondering if it’s going to turn into full-on applause.

Just then, a louder murmuring starts, followed by multiple people gasping. Soon, the whole bar is screaming. One of my bodyguards moves quickly toward me. I turn around in alarm, wondering if I’m about to get attacked.

But it’s Blake.

Like every time he walks into a room, my body reacts with a tingling sensation.

His hair is glued to his forehead by sweat, and he looks haggard, like he hasn’t slept for days. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt that tightens around his biceps like a second skin. His blue eyes are lit with a fervor I’ve not seen before.

The mic slips from my fingers in shock. The feedback sends a horrible, grating noise around the room, but I can barely hear it. What’s he doing here? Is this Kevin’s last-ditch effort, sending him in an attempt to save my career? But Kevin isn’t even here. The only other person here is the woman I now realize is Blake’s sister, Britney.

Blake dives and takes the mic before the moderator can get at it. He stares at me for a moment longer, his gaze indecipherable. My heart beats faster, and my knees are weak. What the hell is going on? Then he turns to the audience.

“Hello, guys.” Shock floods my veins. Blake never, ever spoke to the public. What did Kevin ask him to do? Was he paid for it?

The crowd is screaming again. Blake pauses until he can make himself somewhat heard. “All Faye said is true. We were in a fake relationship.”

I narrow my eyes at him. If this was Kevin’s idea of saving my career, he made a huge mistake. I can already see the posts: “Faye went from a sweet girl to the most dramatic and messy popstar on the whole planet. Unfollow and block.”

“And she did confess her love for me, and I turned her down.”

Kevin is never going to find work as a manager again. Ever.

“But . . .”

My heart stills. But? I look up at him as he focuses on the crowd. I glance at Britney, but her eyes are trained on her brother rather than me.

“But I was an idiot.”

The crowd goes wild. My heart is ramming in my chest. I’m desperate for him to keep going.

“Truth is, I faced some pretty severe things in my childhood. Those experiences made me swear off love. It took a week and a lot of brain bashing by my sister, but I can now finally admit it.”

Blake turns to me then, his eyes shining with inexplicable light. “I love you, Faye. More than I ever thought possible. Yeah, romance wasn’t my thing, and I was too much of a brute to realize how my childhood hurt me. Maybe I never would have gone down that dark road if it weren’t for you. But from the moment you barreled into my life in that wedding gown, everything changed. I don’t want to ever live a single moment where you’re not the focal point of it. I admire your message about finding yourself, and I understand why you need to do that. I’m ready to wait as long as it takes. Because I’ve found myself, and now, all I want to do is to hold you again.”

This cannot be happening. I stare at him, blinded with tears, the overpowering noise of the audience deafening my ears. I don’t even know what to say, how to go about a response. If this isn’t a stunt orchestrated by Kevin, how can I let Blake down when he’s saying all I’ve desperately wanted to hear for months? And even if this is a stunt, I can’t embarrass him and reject him publicly. But how can I take him back so brazenly after the message I just preached?

Unbidden, my head turns toward the girl. She’s still on her seat, smiling. There are also tears streaming down her face. Our eyes lock, and I wait with her. I need to know how all of the girls that have been affected by my music feel about this.

She mouths three words to me: Love finds you.

And just like that, I have the answer.

It takes a full hour. For my bodyguards to hustle me backstage, for the moderator to clear out the bar while the crowds chant for me to reply to Blake publicly, for me to get into a car and have the driver evade the tons of cars and paparazzi bikes following us—how the hell did they get here so fast in the first place?

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