The lights were hot on his face, same as always. Stage sweat slicked the back of his neck, his collar heavy with rhinestones and heat, but he didn’t mind it anymore—not really. The jumpsuit clung to him like a second skin, white and gold with that high Vegas flare, and the crowd roared with every shake of his hips, every little grin he tossed their way like a charm from the pocket of his youth.

He was thirty-nine years old. Two decades past the age when most people met their soulmates—twenty years of waiting for a voice that never came, for a feeling that never sparked. He’d heard every story, seen it happen to everyone else. Hell, even the Colonel found his years ago—some woman who worked out of a post office in Kentucky. And Elvis? Nothing.

He’d started to believe maybe he didn’t have one.

That God had forgotten him. That maybe he sang love songs so well because he didn’t have anyone of his own to get in the way. And Lord knows he tried. Tried hard. Married, divorced, left pieces of himself in hotel rooms and whispered kisses, signed records for strangers who cried just to hold his hand. But that thing, that deep marrow-deep connection? It never came.

Until now.

His hand tightened around the microphone stand as the band swelled behind him, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” bleeding out into the humid air like molasses and heartbreak. He turned his head—just a sweep, just a look—and there you were.

Right there, front row, between the cigarette smoke and the glitter of Las Vegas lights.

He faltered.

Just a second. Just a half-step behind the beat. No one noticed. The band kept going. The backup singers covered it like pros. But Elvis—he noticed.

Because the second his eyes met yours, something snapped into place. Not gently. Not like a puzzle piece. It clicked like a lock thrown open after years of rust and waiting. He felt it in his bones, in his lungs, in the heavy ache behind his ribs that had sat there since he was a boy. That mark—the one over his heart he hadn’t felt since he was nineteen—flared up like it had been lit on fire.

And there you were.

Looking at him like you already knew. Like your soul had reached through the crowd and grabbed him by the collar and whispered, “Finally.”

His mouth opened, but no words came. He smiled instead—tight and crooked, trying to play it off. His hand moved to adjust the microphone, but he nearly knocked it over. A few people laughed, thinking it was one of those “Elvis being playful” moments. He winked to cover it up, but he wasn’t even sure where he was in the song anymore.

He heard himself mumble something into the mic. “Lord, y’all gonna distract me somethin’ awful tonight,” he said, voice buttery and sweet, eyes flickering back to you as if checking you hadn’t disappeared. You hadn’t. You were still there, still watching him like he was the only thing in the room.

And now he couldn’t stop looking.

Every note after that was for you. Every stretch of his voice, every little quiver on the high parts—all for you. The band faded into background noise. The screaming fans? Muffled. Flashbulbs went off like lightning bugs, but his vision tunneled straight to where you sat, still and glowing and just so damn real he could barely breathe.

How was he supposed to keep going?

How was he supposed to sing about losing love when he’d just found it in the middle of a goddamn Vegas showroom?

He dragged the set to its close somehow, barely remembering how he got there. The applause thundered around him, but it felt distant. His ears rang—not with sound, but with something else. That soulmate mark of his still pulsed, softer now, warm and present. Finally.

And the second he stepped off the stage, towel draped over his neck and hands trembling, he turned to his bodyguard and said, voice low and serious:

“That girl. Front row. Left side. I need to know who she is.”