Finding Us (Christian Interracial Romance)

More Than the Music

Jeremy

Evening settles over the house, heavy and still. Athena's in the den with Ryan and Annaliese, the muffled sound of Ms. Rachel floating down the hall. Mom's upstairs, humming faintly as she folds laundry. Dad's in the garage, tinkering with something only he finds satisfying.

And me? I'm planted on the couch with my laptop, staring at the YouTube homepage like it's mocking me.

Because I forgot.

I forgot to watch the second part of Stella and Reagan's podcast with Cecilia.

The reminder hit me after dinner when my phone buzzed with another notification: "Part 2 now trending at #6!" Somehow, in the chaos of the last few days—Dad and Luis, Damien, therapy, praying until I was wrung out—I never hit play on the rest of her story.

Now the thumbnail sits there, frozen on Cecilia's face. She looks both fragile and strong at the same time, shoulders squared but eyes shining like she's holding back an ocean. My chest tightens.

I hover the mouse over the video, hesitation gnawing at me. Do I even want to hear more? After everything she's already revealed—the faith-shaming, the racism, the eating disorder—what's left? What if it breaks me in ways I can't come back from?

I swallow hard, click play.

The video opens with Stella leaning forward, her voice careful but steady. "Cecilia, thank you for being so open earlier. In this second part, we want to go deeper—about what happened after you left Voices in the Skyline, and what led you to step away from the music industry recently."

Cecilia's laugh is small, tired. "Where do I even begin?"

And just like that, I'm pulled in.

She talks about her hiatus, about the Grammy's, about how shaken she was by what she saw that night, which leads to her depression. My chest burns with anger and sorrow in equal measure. Then she mentions something new—something I didn't know at all.

"I had to strip my playlists down, cut out artists I once idolized. Some of them..." She pauses, glancing down. "Some of them are not what I thought they were, spiritually by their fruits. I couldn't pretend I didn't see it anymore. I couldn't sing songs that glorified what I knew was wrong. It felt like grieving my own childhood—but God gave me peace when I let it go."

My throat goes dry. The strength in her voice isn't the kind you fake. It's the kind forged in fire.

Stella nods softly. "And Damien O'Brien—he played a role in so much of this, didn't he?"

Cecilia's jaw tightens and I lean closer, heart pounding.

This is where it shifts.

Where the shadows get darker.

Where the man who haunted my career for nearly a decade—and apparently hers—comes into sharp focus.

I brace myself, but I already know: whatever she says next is going to change the way I see everything.

Cecilia lifts her chin on the screen, steady even as her voice trembles. "When I won the Grammy for Flowers, I thought maybe—for just a second—things were turning around. That maybe my music could speak for itself. That people might finally see me for who I really am."

Reagan leans forward, her tone protective. "But then Helvectia happened."

The name makes me frown, even before Cecilia reacts. I've heard of her—who hasn't? The rapper-singer with a mouth like a sewer, a stage presence built on shock, and headlines that read more like police blotters than art reviews. The evil-spirited woman who sent me unwanted chills through my car speakers the other day.