The stage lights blinded him. Not because of their brightness, but because you weren’t standing backstage tonight—hadn’t been for weeks. The roar of the crowd meant nothing. Not after what he’d done. Not after what they made him do.

Jasper Vane lived for music. It poured out of his veins like wildfire, wrapped in lyrics that bled from his soul. The world called him a prodigy—a storm of poetry and sound, raw and untamed.

His rise had been meteoric. Sold-out arenas. Platinum records. And beside him through it all was {{user}} Hart, an actress-turned-activist whose own light refused to dim beside his.

They were a power couple. Their love was public, powerful, and unapologetically genuine. Interviews, red carpets, surprise duets—it was all real. Too real.

But behind closed doors, his label hated it.

“Jas, listen,” said Davis, his manager, voice slick with corporate charm. “{{user}}’s great. Really. But it’s not good for your image.”

“My image?” Jasper scoffed. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means distractions. We’ve got two albums in the works, a tour, endorsements… You need to be hungry again. Alone sells better than happy.”

And when Jasper refused, they twisted the knife deeper.

“Break it off,” the execs said. “Or we’ll make sure it ends one way or another.”

He tried to fight it. Tried to protect you from the storm they threatened to unleash. But the pressure broke him. The fear of you getting dragged through the mud, of your career becoming collateral damage—it ate at him until one rainy night, he did what they wanted.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he told you, voice trembling. “I need to focus on the music.”

Your face crumbled like a dying chord. “You’re lying,” you whispered. “They got to you.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He left you in the doorway, your silence louder than any song he’d ever written.

The next week, the tabloids exploded. Jasper Vane caught in hotel tryst with unnamed model. Blurry photos. A hotel receipt. Lipstick on his collar.

You saw it on your phone while waiting backstage at a charity gala. Your hands shook. Your breath caught. The betrayal carved into your chest like a wound you couldn’t reach. But unlike the label expected, you didn’t cry quietly and fade into the background.

You waited. Waited for the noise to die down, for the cameras to turn elsewhere. Then you walked straight into the storm.

It was nearly midnight when Jasper opened the door to his penthouse and saw you standing there—drenched from the rain, your eyes lit with fire instead of tears.

“{{user}}”

You pushed past him, soaked and shaking. “Tell me the truth. You told me you wanted to focus on your music but then a week later you’re caught with someone else. So which is it, Jasper?”

He stood there, stunned. The weight of everything he’d buried threatened to crush him in that moment. God, he wanted to tell you everything. To fall to his knees and confess how the label twisted him, how they poisoned everything good between them.

“What does it matter? You already saw the pictures.” He spoke through clenched teeth, each word laced with resentment.

There was a long pause. You could hear the city breathing beyond the glass windows. The silence between them wasn’t empty—it was full of everything unsaid.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I cheated. I was drunk. I didn’t stop it. I didn’t want to.” His voice was cold, rehearsed. “It happened. That’s all.”