Heartbeat // JK

24 - Smoke, Mirrors, Control

The doors of The Polo Bar closed behind me like a velvet trap snapping shut.

For a second, I just stood there.
Not moving.
Not breathing.

Not Eva Simon, a potential rising pop star.
Just... a girl on the sidewalk with a folder under her arm and a storm in her chest.

Taxis rushed past in slick lines of yellow. Heels clicked on pavement. Someone nearby laughed too loud. The world spun like nothing had changed.

But everything had.

The folder pressed sharp against my side.

Forty-eight hours.
A development deal.
Disappear.

Jungkook doesn't exist unless she says so.

I didn't know whether to scream or throw up or sprint down Fifth Avenue until I dissolved into traffic.

Instead, I walked.
Not toward anything. Just... away.

My boots clacked too loud on the concrete, a metronome for my heartbeat. I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care. Every step felt like I was trying to outpace the weight of her voice.

You want to be a singer or his girlfriend. You don't get to be both. This phrase stuck in my head.

The cold air scraped down my throat.

I should've called someone.
A friend.
My therapist.
God.

Instead, I pressed the folder tighter to my ribs and kept walking.

I didn't even notice when I passed a coffee shop.
Or when my phone buzzed twice in my coat pocket.
All I could feel was the adrenaline still coiled tight beneath my skin.

And the way Sierra had looked at me like a bet — high risk, high reward.

The lights of the city blurred.
I didn't know where I was going.

But I knew I couldn't go back to who I was before that dinner.

My phone buzzed just as I turned the corner.

Not Jungkook.
Taehyung.

Of course it was him.
I answered on instinct, voice low.

"Hi."

"You alive?" he asked, casual but too casual — the kind of casual that knew what that dinner must've felt like.

"Barely."

"I'll take it," he said.

"We weren't sure. I had five bucks on Sierra tossing you into a dumpster behind The Polo Bar and lighting a match."

"Funny."

"Do you know how hard it was not to fake a mustache and pose as your waiter?" He joked.

I let out a laugh.
It cracked on the way out.

He heard it.
Of course he did.

"She got in your head."

I didn't say anything. Just kept walking, the wind slicing clean across my cheeks.

"Eva," he said more gently.

"talk to me."

"She offered me a development deal," I said, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be.

"Three months. Private. Off the record. I work with her team, no public anything, and she decides if I'm worth signing after that."

"That's not nothing," he said, voice careful.