Ryder Knox is five minutes from the biggest show of his life, and he’s choosing now to be a complete disaster.
Not the fun kind.
Not the smashing-a-guitar-then-winking-at-security kind.
The you’re-standing-in-the-wrong-place-and-I’m-about-to-make-it-everyone’s-problem kind.
Backstage shakes with the crowd outside, twenty thousand voices stomping his name through the concrete.
RY-DER. RY-DER. RY-DER.
The air tastes like smoke machines, sweat, black coffee, and bad choices. Crew members rush past in headsets. Someone yells for lights. Someone else yells for Ryder.
Ryder doesn’t move.
He stands in front of the taped mark on the floor like it personally betrayed him.
A neat strip of white tape sits by the curtain, half scuffed from years of boots and cables. Your name is written across it in black marker.
Your spot.
Stage left.
Where you always stand.
Ryder points at it with two ringed fingers. “No.”
That’s all he says at first.
Then he looks up.
Dark hair messy. Jaw tight. Guitar hanging low against his hips. Eyes too bright under the backstage lights, like he’s running on nerves, caffeine, and pure denial.
“You’re not standing there tonight.”
His manager freezes three steps away, takes one look at Ryder’s face, and suddenly finds something very important to do in the opposite direction.
Ryder’s mouth twists.
“Don’t look at them. They’re cowards.” His eyes flick back to you. “And don’t give me that face. I know the face.”
The crowd screams again. Louder this time.
A tech jogs past holding a clipboard.
“Ryder, two minutes.”
“Great,” Ryder snaps, not looking away. “Perfect. Love that for me.”
He steps over a coil of cable and gets closer. Too close for a fight about floor tape. Too close for best friends who are apparently fine. Totally fine. Extremely normal.
The setlist is taped to the wall beside him.
Right under the encore, written in fresh black ink:
BONUS TRACK: BAD IDEA
Everyone knows.
The band knows. The crew knows. The internet knows, because one leaked clip of Ryder singing I wrote your name where the lights can’t reach was enough to make every fan lose their mind.
Ryder, of course, told three interviewers it was “fiction.”
Ryder lies like he plays guitar. Loud. Messy. Too pretty to trust.
“You can stand literally anywhere else,” he says, voice dropping. “Green room. Sound booth. Parking lot. Another country if you’re feeling generous.”
The curtain snaps beside him as the stage lights flare blue.
He glances at it, then back at you, and something cracks through his anger for half a second.
Panic.
Then it’s gone.
He laughs once, rough and fake. “Don’t make this weird.”
No one says anything.
That makes it worse.
Ryder drags a hand down his face. The silver rings scrape over his stubble. “I’m serious. I don’t want you there when I play it.”
The chant outside turns into a roar.
RY-DER. RY-DER. RY-DER.
He looks almost sick with it. Famous, reckless, impossible Ryder Knox, the boy who can break a guitar in front of a stadium but can’t say one honest thing in a hallway.
“You always stand there,” he says. Softer now. Meaner because of it. “Like you own the left side of every stage I’ve ever stepped on.”
His eyes drop to the tape with your name on it.
Then back to you.
“And during the bridge...” His throat works. “No.”
A stagehand appears at the curtain. “Ryder. Now.”
Ryder doesn’t answer.
He leans in, close enough that the cold edge of his guitar brushes the space between you. His voice turns low enough that it almost gets swallowed by the crowd.
“Fine,” he says. “Stand there if you want.”
His smile is sharp, but his eyes aren’t.
“But do not look at me during the bridge.”
The curtain starts to rise.
Ryder reaches for his guitar pick, pauses, then looks at you like this fight is the only thing keeping him from saying something worse.
“Tell me you understand.”