At the label showcase, Lily Monroe pointed at the second microphone beside Adrian Vale and asked, "Is this where Mira usually sings with you?"

The room went quiet.

That mic had been mine for seven years.

From dive bars with sticky floors to sold-out theaters, I had stood to Adrian's left for every acoustic closer. I wrote the lyrics, arranged the harmonies, booked the early gigs, and talked club owners into paying us when Adrian was too proud to ask.

Everyone in the band knew that final song was ours.

Adrian had once promised me that when we sold out our first arena, we would sing it together before he announced our engagement.

But Lily only tilted her head and smiled, all nervous charm and pretty innocence.

"Can I try her part?"

Adrian looked at me for half a second.

Then he handed her the spare in-ear monitor.

"Go ahead."

The rehearsal room went silent in the way people go silent when they know they have just watched someone get replaced.

Lily stepped up to my microphone.

Adrian leaned close to adjust the stand for her height, his hand lingering at her waist as he showed her where to come in on the chorus.

The band looked anywhere but at me.

That was the moment I realized Adrian Vale and I were over.

After the showcase ended, Rachel, our tour manager, found me by the loading dock.

The crew was packing amps into flight cases behind her, and someone was still laughing inside the greenroom. Rachel glanced over her shoulder before lowering her voice.

"Mira, you don't need to come in for the acoustic rehearsal on Friday."

I already knew what she was going to say.

Still, my fingers tightened around the strap of my guitar case.

"Adrian wants Lily to sing The Last Firework with him."

The Last Firework.

My song.

The first melody came from my mother. She used to hum it in motel laundry rooms when she worked night shifts and thought I was asleep on a plastic chair beside the dryers. Years later, I turned it into lyrics in the back of our van while Adrian slept through another state line, too tired to notice me crying over the notebook in my lap.

He knew what that song meant.

He had heard the first demo in our kitchen, back when the fridge barely worked and our downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling every time he sang too loud. He had held my hand after listening to it and said, "When we make it, this is the one we sing together."

Now he was giving it to Lily because she had a soft voice, a pretty face, and the kind of fragile stage presence label executives loved to protect.

I nodded.

"Thanks for telling me."

Rachel looked like she wanted to say more, but the drummer walked past us with a cymbal case, and she only squeezed my arm before leaving.

That night, I sat in my car outside the venue for almost twenty minutes before calling a number I had not touched in years.

Nathaniel Reed answered on the sixth ring, his voice rough with sleep.

"Mira?"

For a second, I said nothing.

Then I looked through the windshield at the neon sign of the club where Adrian and I had once begged to play for free and asked, "You once told me that if I ever stopped confusing loyalty with love, you'd marry me at Royal Albert Hall. Did you mean it?"

There was a pause.

Then a heavy thud came through the phone, followed by a curse.

I blinked. "Did you just fall out of bed?"

"No," he said too quickly.

Despite everything, I laughed.

Nathaniel took a breath. When he spoke again, he sounded fully awake.

"Mira, say that again."

"You can refuse."

"Don't be ridiculous." His voice sharpened. "I meant it then. I mean it now. I'll mean it ten years from now if you call me again."

For the first time all day, the tightness in my chest loosened.

When Adrian came home, I was folding clothes into a suitcase.

He did not notice at first.

He walked in with his shirt half unbuttoned, his hair still damp from the after-party, and the easy exhaustion of a man who expected someone else to clean up after every good night he had.

"Do we have Tylenol?" he asked. "And can you get me some water? Lily tried to keep up with the label people and almost passed out in the car."

I looked at the pale pink lipstick near his collar.

"Adrian," I said, "we're done."

He paused.

Only then did he notice the suitcase.

"Is this about the mic?"

I said nothing.

He rubbed his temple. "Mira, come on. Lily was nervous. It was her first label showcase. I was helping her get comfortable."

"She sang my part."

"She tried a harmony."

"You gave her The Last Firework."

"It was one rehearsal."

"She missed the second verse."

"She has a tone people remember."

"She came in flat on the bridge."

"She has instinct."

I looked at him for a moment. "So that's what you're calling it now?"

His patience thinned at once.

"Don't be petty. I'm trying to keep the band alive."

The way he said the band almost made me laugh.

For seven years, I had written the songs, handled the bookings, fixed the contracts, smoothed over his interviews, and stood beside him on stages so small the monitors barely worked.

But when it was time to give credit, it was his band.

When it was time to sacrifice something, it was always my place.

I closed the suitcase.

"You promised that at the anniversary show, we would announce the engagement."

His face changed.

"Mira, not this again."

"Yes. This again."

"The album is finally getting traction," he said. "The label is watching everything we do. We have festivals, radio, a tour to plan. I can't split my focus because you want a ring."

I stared at him.

He treated his focus like something too precious to waste on me, but somehow there was always room for Lily's nerves, Lily's mic level, Lily's hotel room, her throat spray, her stage fright.

With me, everything became pressure.

"I'm tired," I said. "Announce the engagement, or let me go."

Adrian laughed under his breath.

"Do you hear yourself? Do you know how desperate you sound?"

The word landed exactly where he wanted it to.

After seven years, that was what I had become to him: desperate.

"I told you this isn't the time," he said. "If you want to turn it into some grand tragedy, go ahead. I'm not chasing you every time you pack a bag."

I held his gaze. "So we're done."

"Fine." He threw his shirt onto the chair. "Then we're done."

He went into the bathroom and shut the door.

A moment later, the shower started.

I stood beside the bed for a while, listening to the water run.

On my birthday, he forgot the date unless his assistant reminded him.

When I was sick, he texted, Drink water, and came home after midnight.

When I sent him lyrics, he said they were good, then sang my best line in soundcheck like it had just come to him.

I had forgiven all of it because I remembered the boy who cried in my lap after a record executive told him his voice was ordinary.

But seven years was long enough.

I zipped the suitcase, picked up my coat, and left the keys on the dresser.

By the time Adrian came out of the shower, I was gone.

My phone started buzzing before I made it out of Adrian's driveway.

At first, I thought he had come out of the shower and noticed I was gone. But when I pulled over at the end of the street, the notifications were all from the band group chat.

Someone had posted a video from the label after-party.

In it, Lily sat beside Adrian on the small stage at the back of the bar, holding my microphone with both hands. She was singing the harmony from The Last Firework, the part I had sung with Adrian for seven years.

She missed the first entrance.

Adrian laughed, leaned close, and sang the line into her ear so she could catch up. Their faces almost touched. The room broke into whistles and teasing applause, and Lily hid her face against his shoulder as if she had not known exactly what she was doing.

A minute later, she sent another message.

First day with the band and already stealing the best seat in the house. Guess the new girl gets better treatment than the seven-year veterans. Thank you, A, for believing in me.

Adrian replied almost immediately.

You earned it.

Then he added a little star emoji.

I stared at the screen until the car behind me honked.

Three years ago, I had written the chorus that got us our first radio play. That night, I tried to joke in the group chat like other girlfriends did.

Do I get a gold star, Mr. Frontman?

The message sat there all day.

Adrian never replied.

When I asked him about it later, he looked embarrassed for me.

"Mira, don't do that in front of the band. It makes us look childish."

Back then, I thought maybe I had made things awkward.

Now I watched him flirt with Lily in front of the same people, using the kind of silly message he had once made me feel ashamed for sending.

It turned out Adrian was not too private.

He just did not want to be that way with me.

I turned off my phone and drove away.

Over the next few days, I began handing off my work. I sent Rachel the updated tour calendar, forwarded venue contracts to Grant, and moved my lyrics, demos, and old voice notes into a private drive before anyone could quietly rename them as band material.

I stopped answering Adrian's calls.

When I had to go into the studio, I used the back entrance and left before rehearsals ended. Adrian and Lily became harder to avoid anyway. Her name appeared on revised set lists, radio prep notes, festival mood boards. By Friday, someone had taped a new rehearsal schedule to the studio door.

Lily Monroe — acoustic closer with Adrian.

I read it once, then kept walking.

On Monday morning, my father called from Pasadena.

His voice was low and strained.

"Mira, your mom woke up asking for the song."

I stopped in the middle of the parking lot.

"The Last Firework?"

"The old version," he said. "The one you two made when you were little. She keeps saying she wants to hear it before she sleeps."

My mother had been in hospice for three weeks.

Some days she knew me. Some days she thought I was still eight years old, sitting beside her in motel laundry rooms while she hummed over the sound of dryers. The melody that became The Last Firework had started there, between the heat of old machines and the smell of cheap detergent, when she tapped the rhythm against my knee and told me not to forget it.

The original cassette was not with me.

Adrian had it.

Two weeks earlier, he had taken the tape and my mother's signed release because the label wanted to digitize the recording for our anniversary show. He said it would be beautiful to open the acoustic set with my mother's voice before we sang the finished version together.

I had trusted him with it.

I had asked for it back twice.

Both times, he told me Grant was handling it.

"Dad, I'll get it," I said, already reaching for my keys. "Keep her awake if you can. I'm coming."

I called Adrian on the way to his house.

No answer.

I called again.

Still nothing.

By the sixth call, my hands were shaking against the steering wheel. I sent one text.

My mother is asking for the old tape. I need it now. Answer me.

The message showed delivered.

No reply.

Adrian's house sat behind a white gate in the hills. I had lived there for four years, though my name had never been on the deed because Adrian said it was cleaner with the label, the press, and the taxes. I used to believe him when he said things like that.

The gate code had been changed.

So had the front door code.

For a moment, I stood there staring at the keypad, wasting seconds I did not have. Then I remembered the side window by the laundry room, the one Adrian kept saying he would fix after the tour.

It was locked now.

I broke it with a stone from the garden.

The alarm started screaming the second I climbed in, but I ignored it and ran to Adrian's office.

Halfway down the hall, I stopped.

The house looked different.

A pink suitcase lay open beside the guest room. A curling iron sat on the bathroom counter. Glittery heels had been kicked under the couch. On the dining table, beside Adrian's neat stack of vinyl proofs and tour passes, Lily's marked-up lyrics were spread out in pink highlighter.

My lyrics.

The Last Firework, with hearts drawn around the chorus and little notes in the margin.

Make this softer.

Ask A if I can sing this line alone.

I thought of the yellow lamp I had once bought at a flea market because it looked like something from my mother's old apartment. Adrian had taken one look at it and said, "Please don't bring that cheap-looking thing into my house."

Now Lily's things were everywhere, and somehow his house had survived.

I forced myself into the office.

The cassette was not on his desk. Not in the drawers. Not in the cabinet where he kept contracts he never read. I checked the shelf beside the safe, then the black case where he kept hard drives from studio sessions.

Nothing.

I was still searching when the office door burst open.

Two officers came in with security behind them.

"Hands where we can see them."

I tried to explain, but one of them pushed me against the wall before I got more than a sentence out.

"I used to live here," I said, my cheek pressed hard to the plaster. "My mother is in hospice. Adrian has her tape. I need to find it."

The officer looked at the broken window, the open drawers, and the papers scattered on the desk.

"Ms. Monroe reported a break-in," he said. "She said Mr. Vale has a former employee who has been unstable and may be trying to access private band files."

"She's lying."

"Then you can explain that at the station."

At the station, they took my phone and bag.

I told them I had lived with Adrian for years. They said Lily had told them I moved out and had no permission to enter.

I told them I was a co-founder of the band's company. They said Grant had confirmed my role was "being reviewed" and that Lily was now attached to the upcoming acoustic set.

I told them my mother was dying and wanted to hear a tape that belonged to her.

They told me to wait.

Through the glass, I saw my phone light up on the officer's desk.

Dad.

It rang until it stopped, then lit up again with his name.

By the time someone came back to speak to me, my throat hurt from asking.

"Please," I said. "My mother is in hospice. She's waiting for me. Let me call my father."

The officer glanced at the file. "Mr. Vale is unreachable, and Ms. Monroe says they need to inventory the house before deciding how to proceed."

"She doesn't own the house."

"She made the report."

"My mother could die tonight."

He looked at me with the flat patience of someone who had heard too many emergencies.

"Then you shouldn't have broken a window."

I sat back down.

For the rest of the day, I watched my father's calls flash across my phone while Adrian stayed unreachable and Lily decided what was missing from a house she had entered yesterday.

It was close to midnight when the door finally opened.

Adrian walked in wearing a black coat, sunglasses pushed into his hair, and the expression of a man pulled away from something more important.

Lily followed half a step behind him.

Adrian looked annoyed when he walked into the station.

Lily followed behind him in one of his oversized hoodies, her hair loose around her face. She stayed close to his side, quiet and pale, like she had been the one sitting under fluorescent lights for hours while her father's calls kept flashing on a phone she was not allowed to touch.

Adrian took one look at me and frowned.

"Was this really necessary?"

My throat was raw from asking the officer for my phone.

"My mother is in hospice," I said. "I called you nine times."

"I was in rehearsal."

"You didn't answer my text."

His jaw tightened. "Because I didn't think you'd break into my house."

"I needed the tape."

"You could have asked."

"I did ask."

Lily's eyes filled at once. "Adrian, I'm sorry. The alarm went off, and security called me because I was still at the house. I saw the office drawers open, and I panicked."

Adrian looked at her first.

That tiny movement told me enough.

The officer brought over a form. "Mr. Vale has agreed not to press charges for now. Ms. Lane will be released after signing the warning. She is not to return to the property without permission."

Adrian signed without reading.

I held out my hand. "My phone."

The officer gave it back.

There were twenty-seven missed calls from my father.

The last voicemail was from forty minutes ago.

I pressed play.

"Mira." My father's voice broke on my name. "She waited as long as she could. I played the little recording from my phone, but she kept asking for the real one. She kept saying you'd bring it. Honey, she's gone. I'm so sorry."

For a moment, I could not move.

The station kept going around me. Phones rang. Someone laughed near the front desk. An officer walked past with a coffee in one hand and a folder in the other.

Adrian's irritation finally slipped.

"Mira?"

I looked up at him.

"Where is the tape?"

He frowned. "What?"

"My mother's cassette. The release form. The drive you said Grant was digitizing. Where is it?"

His expression changed.

"I gave it to Grant."

"You gave my mother's only original recording to your manager?"

"He was handling the anniversary package."

"Did he send it back?"

Adrian did not answer.

Lily glanced between us, then said softly, "I thought Grant said you were saving the original for the showcase."

Adrian turned toward her too late.

I stared at him.

"You kept my mother's tape for a showcase?"

"It wasn't like that."

"She was asking for that song before she died."

His face went still.

Lily covered her mouth. "Mira, I didn't know—"

"Don't."

She stopped.

Adrian reached for my arm, but I stepped back.

"I didn't know it was that urgent," he said.

"You didn't know because you didn't pick up the phone."

He swallowed. "You said she had good days and bad days."

"She was in hospice."

"You should have told me clearly."

"My text said my mother was asking for the old tape and I needed it now. How much clearer did it need to be?"

Adrian opened his mouth, then closed it again.

For once, he had nothing ready. No excuse, no joke, no way to make the room believe he had only been misunderstood.

After a long silence, he lowered his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said.

The apology came quietly, almost stiffly, as if he was not used to saying it without turning it into someone else's fault.

I used to wait for those words. After forgotten dinners, missed calls, bad interviews I had cleaned up for him, lyrics he sang like they had come from nowhere, I used to think one real apology would make the years feel less foolish.

Now it only made me tired.

"You should be sorry," I said.

His face tightened.

For a moment, he looked like he understood there was nothing left to fix. Then he looked at me the way he looked at a bad show before the encore, still convinced the night could be saved if he chose the right song.

"Let me make it up to you."

I said nothing.

"I know this isn't the right time," he said quickly. "But next week is your birthday."

I froze.

Adrian noticed.

His voice grew gentler.

"I booked the private room at San Vicente weeks ago. It was supposed to be a surprise. Just dinner. You, me, a few people from the label."

Lily's fingers tightened around his sleeve.

Adrian did not look at her.

"And Miles Hart will be there," he added. "You always said he was the only producer you'd trust with your songs. I invited him for you."

That name made me pause despite myself.