Note: This story is a slow-burn romance and will contain mature themes/scenes in later chapters

PROLOGUE

*Camille*

Brooklyn, New York
Two Months After the Move

He left when I was nine.

Three days later, my mother stood in the hallway smoking and said, without looking at me:

“Depuis qu’elle est née, il n’a plus jamais été le même.”

Ever since she was born, he was never the same.

I believed her.

The apartment smelled like paint and pine cleaner. Light poured through the big window, and the floorboards groaned like they remembered other people’s lives.

Brooklyn felt like a foreign language I hadn’t quite learned—too loud, too fast, but promising something I couldn’t yet name.

I stood by the window, arms crossed, pretending I wasn’t watching my father pace like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d helped cover the deposit. Bought the bed. Carried the last box like that made up for anything.

Lena was in the kitchen, laughing about the French press she refuses to replace. She was warm—always had been. We met three years ago in London, taking a summer course at the atelier. She kept me laughing when I didn’t want to speak. Somehow, she stayed.

I was grateful for her.
My father finally stopped moving, eyes scanning the room like he could see me in the walls.
“It’s smaller than I imagined,” he said, nodding once. “But it suits you.”
I smiled thinly. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

I didn’t say, You don’t know what suits me.

He tapped his knuckles on the kitchen island. “You doing okay? You look… good.”

That word again. Good.
I used to think if I was good enough, he’d come back.
But he didn’t.

When the door shut behind them, silence folded over me like something heavy and familiar. A cracked mug sat on the counter—one of the few things I’d taken from home. He left, and something in our house shattered. Where my mother drowned, I learned how to float.

I pulled my sketchbook from a half-opened box. Clean silhouettes stared back at me. Too careful. Too controlled. Like me.

Therapy once. Twice. Abandonment trauma. Attachment anxiety. Internalized guilt. Too many words for something that felt simple.

Brooklyn hummed outside the window. A siren. Someone’s music bleeding through thin walls. This is your life now. Start from here.

I pressed my forehead to the glass and whispered the words my mother used to say before she became unreachable:
“On recommence. Encore une fois.”

We begin again. One more time.

I wasn’t sure I believed it. But I said it anyway.

*Daniele*

Brooklyn, New York

Three Months Before

The studio lights were so bright they blurred the edges of things.

I shifted on the couch, ran a hand through my hair, and smiled at the girl next to me like I wasn’t dead inside from shooting fake chemistry all afternoon.

“Okay, Dani, one more take,” Vince — my agent — called. “Flirt harder.”

Ari — tall, blonde, MatchUp’s latest “dream pairing” — leaned into me like she’d done this a thousand times. Maybe she had.

I smirked, slow and sharp. “If I flirt any harder, they’re gonna have to censor it.”

She laughed, tipping her drink toward mine. The crew chuckled. Someone behind the camera whispered “He’s such a natural.”

Yeah, no shit.

“Describe your perfect match,” Ari purred for the promo cut.

I tilted my head, letting a beat of silence drag just long enough to make her lean in. Then:
“Me. Just… slightly less difficult.”

Laughter. Cameras clicking. Vince’s voice: “Perfect. Keep that grin—Jesus, this shit’s gonna blow up.”

It always did.

We wrapped fast. Ari squeezed my arm with manicured fingers. “You’re fun,” she said.

“Dangerously,” I replied with a wink.

But the second I stepped outside the set, it slipped — the grin, the voice, the version of me that sold well.

By the time I got home, my jaw ached from smiling. My feet hurt. I didn’t even turn on the lights. Just dropped my jacket and kicked off my boots in the dark.

It’s not like I hated it — the attention, the numbers, the brand. It paid for the apartment. The guitars. The nights I could take my band out and pretend we’d already made it.

But most nights, I’d trade a million likes for the feeling I used to get writing demos in Jax’s garage — broke, tired, and fucking alive.

I picked up my guitar, let my fingers fall into old muscle memory. Quiet. A few chords. Just enough to remind myself I could still feel it.

The fame was supposed to be the prize. But most nights, it felt like the price. All the noise, all the eyes—it looked like connection, until I realized it was just an echo.

What I really wanted was something solid.

A voice that hit back.

 I wasn't sure what I wanted anymore, but I knew it wasn't this.