Chapter Text
Eddie was so over it.
All day, every hallway, every classroom, every overheard conversation, it was the same damn name on repeat. Buck. Buck this. Buck that. Buck was coming to L.A. Buck was staying in L.A. Buck, Buck, Buck. As if the man was the second coming of Einstein instead of some loud, leather-wrapped guitar-slinger. Eddie was fairly sure his students had absorbed exactly zero percent of his lecture on predictive health algorithms in first responders because their brains had been hijacked by the promise of a rockstar sighting.
Which was tragic, really, because if you asked him, using data to forecast injury and burnout patterns was—objectively, mathematically—sexy. But no, apparently the nation’s youth preferred hair gel, screaming guitars, and whatever this Buck persona did onstage to statistics.
By the time Eddie dragged himself through his apartment door, it was past nine, his stomach was one long howl of protest, and he was ready to collapse into bed with a microwaved burrito. If he had any left, that is. Instead, he was greeted by Adriana on the couch, mascara tracks down her cheeks, sniffling into a tissue like her world had ended.
“Tom cheated on me,” she blurted as a greeting, voice wobbling.
That, Eddie thought, was objectively more terrible than his day had been. He sat down next to her and softened his gaze at her sudden appearance.
But then she added, with a fresh wave of tears, “And now I don’t have anyone to go to Buck’s show with tomorrow.”
There it was again. Buck. Even in his own living room, which would probably now become their living room.
Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose so hard his glasses nearly bent. He’d been in the lab too long, spent too many hours hunched over spreadsheets, and now he was supposed to figure out how to comfort a crying twenty-five-year-old when all he wanted was food and sleep.
Which was probably why the first words out of his mouth were incredibly, painfully stupid.
“Stop crying. I’ll go with you.”
The silence that followed was so thick he could practically hear his dissertation committee judging him from the past. But hell, the offer was out there now, irreversible. He stood, yanked open the fridge, and pretended like this was the most casual decision of his life. Like the mere thought didn’t make his heart race.
The fridge greeted him with a single sad lime, an expired yogurt, and what might once have been spinach but now resembled a science experiment. Eddie stared at the barren shelves for a beat, then shut the door with the quiet resignation of a man who knew he’d lost.
“Sushi or pizza?” he asked, because hunger was a solvable problem, unlike rockstars invading his carefully constructed, statistics-filled existence.
Without bothering to wait for Adriana’s reply, he pulled out his phone and tapped in an order for pizza. He could cheat once in a while. One greasy carb avalanche wouldn’t kill him, even if the probability of developing elevated triglyceride levels from habitual consumption was, according to several peer-reviewed studies, disturbingly high.
He was halfway through adding extra mushrooms when his phone nearly slipped out of his hand, because suddenly Adriana had launched herself at him like a caffeinated koala.
“You’ll come with me?!” she squealed, arms tightening around his neck.
Eddie stumbled back a step, heart rate spiking in a way his smartwatch would probably log as ‘aerobic exercise.’ “Jesus, warn a guy—”
“This is amazing!” Adriana bounced on her toes, still clinging. “I already know what we’re gonna wear. I have the perfect shirt for you, it’s black and a little see-through, and we’ll do your hair—”
“Absolutely not,” Eddie said automatically, still holding his phone out at arm’s length to save his pizza order from certain doom.
“—and oh my god, you’ll look so hot, Eddie, people are going to think you’re part of the band—”
He groaned, because of course this was happening. Of course, his Friday night was spiraling from lonely burrito and Netflix into wardrobe talk and rock concerts for a man named Buck. Who the hell named their child after a dollar, anyways? Or was he named after a male, horned animal? Because that Eddie could get behind now that he was thinking about it.
“Adriana,” he said flatly, “I agreed to sit in a chair and clap politely. That’s it. There will be no wardrobe. No hair. No… glitter.”
Her grin was so wide it could’ve lit the apartment. “You say that now.”
Eddie glanced at his phone, at the “Confirm Order” button on the screen and seriously considered adding a third pizza. He was going to need the extra calories. And possibly a helmet.
*
The next morning, Eddie was exactly where he belonged: buried in data and equations, not conversations about rockstars.
His Biomechanics & Applied Statistics lab hummed with the comforting noise of academia—keyboard clacks, the whirr of a motion-analysis camera, the occasional frustrated groan from a grad student. Screens all around the room glowed with stick-figure skeletons running, jumping, collapsing, their joints tagged with tiny fluorescent dots from yesterday’s trials.
Eddie leaned over one monitor, suspenders stretched as he braced a hand on the desk, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, a lab coat draped haphazardly on the back of his chair.
He gestured toward a jagged spike in the line graph with the tip of a pencil. “See that? That’s the tibiofemoral load spiking far too early in the gait cycle. Which tells us—?”
“That our firefighter subject is compensating for instability in the ankle?” Priya, one of his PhD students, ventured.
Eddie snapped his fingers, a quick smile breaking through the usual professorial focus. “Exactly. Good. Which means if we can predict when those spikes occur under stress, we can model long-term joint deterioration and intervene before it becomes career-ending.”
Across the room, Brandon piped up, “Uh, Dr. Diaz, I think the Vicon cameras glitched again. Half the skeleton looks like it’s breakdancing.”
Eddie strode over, crouched to squint at the monitor, then chuckled under his breath. “That’s… definitely not anatomically possible. Reset the calibration.” He ruffled his hair absently, pencil still tucked between his fingers as he began muttering about marker displacement and rotational vectors.
His students followed along, dutifully typing notes, though a few exchanged grins behind his back. The rolled sleeves, suspenders, and quiet excitement he had when talking about joint stress made him far more magnetic than he realized.
Eddie, of course, noticed none of it. For him, the world narrowed to datasets, statistical models, and the thrill of finding patterns hidden in chaos. The concert tonight hadn’t crossed his mind once.
Until, that is, his phone buzzed on the desk with a new message from Adriana.
Got the glitter eyeliner. Don’t be late <3!!!!!!!!
Eddie closed his eyes, inhaled through his nose, and muttered something about regret curves not being limited to biomechanics. He ignored his sister’s glitter-bomb of a text, flipped the phone face-down on his desk, and dove straight back into the dataset.
Hours blurred. The lab had that time-warp quality only research spaces achieved—fluorescent lights humming overhead, the faint smell of stale coffee in the air, and the hypnotic rhythm of keys tapping. Students came and went, but Eddie remained planted in the center like a gravitational pull, glasses sliding down again and again until he finally gave up and let them sit precariously low.
“Run the Fourier transform on the knee-angle sequence,” he instructed, pencil scratching across a notepad.
“Uh, which subject?”
“Case seventeen. The one who slipped on the wet floor.” He gestured absently, already sketching a graph. “I want to see if the irregularities are noise or if we’ve got a pattern across multiple trials.”
Behind him, a grad student named Ben was trying very hard to focus on the screen instead of the fact that Eddie had just shoved his sleeves higher, revealing forearms corded with muscle that clearly didn’t come from statistical modeling alone. Ben dropped his stylus, muttered a curse, and scrambled to pick it up. Priya raised an eyebrow at him but wisely said nothing.
Meanwhile, Eddie pointed at a set of squiggly lines with a flourish like they were a masterpiece. “Look at that. See the clustering right before the slip? That’s anticipatory muscle activation. The body knew it was going down before the brain did.” His eyes lit up. “God, that’s fascinating.”
“Totally,” Priya said, smiling. “Fascinating.”
“Now,” Eddie continued, pacing toward another workstation, suspenders stretching as he leaned over a chair, “if we model this properly, we can predict slips before they happen. Imagine a program that flags when someone’s on the verge of an accident in real time.”
“That sounds like science fiction,” Ben muttered, still fumbling with his stylus.
“It’s math,” Eddie corrected, matter-of-fact, scribbling an equation so fast chalk dust scattered onto his sleeve. “And math is better than science fiction.”
The lab chuckled, but Eddie was already moving on, caught in the current of his own enthusiasm. To him, there was nothing but data and possibility. He didn’t notice the sideways glances, the suppressed laughter at Ben’s continued clumsiness, or the fact that the pizza grease stain from last night’s dinner was still faintly visible on his pants.
By the time he finally glanced at the clock, it was well past five. His students were packing up, shoulders heavy from the day’s work but buzzing with the satisfaction of discovery. Eddie straightened, stretching his back, and allowed himself a small smile at the neat columns of results glowing on the screen.
Then he saw his phone. Adriana had sent seven more texts.
Don’t forget doors open at 7!
I laid your clothes out!!
Dios Sophia will be so jealous of us
We’ll be so fucking gorgeous
Diaz siblings taking over the world!!!!!
Have i told you Buck’s bi? Which means there is a 50% chance he’ll fall for me and a 50% chance he’ll fall for you. Which means, Professor Dr. Diaz, that there is a 100% chance he’ll fall for us.
If you bail, I will cry again :’(
Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face. Her mathematical skills hurt him almost as much as the reminder of the concert. He’d completely, blissfully forgotten about tonight. Again.
He packed his bag with the reluctant air of a man leaving behind true love. The datasets would wait. The Fourier transforms, the gait cycle models, the tantalizing possibility of predicting slips before they happened—it all whispered after him as he shut off the lab lights.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. He’d be in early, coffee in hand, when campus was still quiet and the grad students mercifully asleep. Sundays were his best days: no interruptions, no committee meetings, just him and the machines humming in harmony.
But tonight, apparently, belonged to glitter.
When he stepped into his apartment, his suspicions were confirmed instantly. Adriana had laid out “options” on his bed like a stylist preparing a client for a scandalous magazine shoot. Eddie froze in the doorway.
On the duvet lay two sets of clothes. On the left a sheer black mesh shirt that left little to the imagination, paired with leather pants so tight they looked like they might squeak when he walked, and a silver chain necklace thick enough to anchor a small boat.
The second set was… even worse. A glittering, skin-tight bodysuit covered in sequins, with strategically placed cutouts, thigh-high vinyl boots, and a feathered boa thrown casually across the corner as if to say, “You will wear this.”
Adriana spun around with her trademark grin, beaming like Vanna White presenting her prizes. “Well? Don’t they scream rock concert?”
“They scream… statistical outlier,” Eddie muttered, raising an eyebrow at the bodysuit like it might suddenly bite him.
Adriana ignored him, clapping her hands. “You’re going to look amazing in either. Trust me.”
Eddie folded his arms, sliding into professor mode. “Statistically, concerts are terrible environments. Elevated decibel levels increase the risk of long-term hearing loss by thirty percent, crowding doubles your chances of respiratory infection, and don’t get me started on the fire safety violations—”
“Eddie,” Adriana cut him off, striding over to snatch the pencil from his hand. “Stop trying to math your way out of this. You’re going.”
“I could be in the lab—”
“You could be in leather pants,” she countered, wiggling her eyebrows.
Eddie groaned, tugging at his suspenders like they were his last defense against chaos. He already missed his spreadsheets. Instead, he planted himself in the doorway, arms crossed, staring at the glittering bodysuit like it was radioactive waste.
“No.”
Adriana tilted her head, feigning innocence. “No what?”
“No to that—” he jabbed a finger at the sequined, cut-out nightmare, “—monstrosity. There are things I’ll do for you, Adriana, but statistical modeling proves there is a one-hundred-percent probability I will not put that on my body.”
She pouted. “It’s fun!”
“It’s a cry for help,” Eddie deadpanned. “From whoever designed it. Someone should check if they’re okay.”
Adriana laughed, undeterred, and shoved the feather boa toward his chest.
Eddie recoiled like it was venomous. “Absolutely not.”
“Fine, fine.” She tossed the boa onto the bed, then pointed dramatically at the first outfit. “Then this one. Mesh and leather. Hot professor goes bad boy.”
Eddie rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. The mesh shirt was sheer enough to qualify as evidence in a court case. The leather pants… well, he was fairly sure they came with their own zip code. He sighed, long and suffering.
“This,” he muttered, picking up the mesh with two reluctant fingers, “is still terrible.”
“But better than sequins?” Adriana grinned.
“Marginally. Like choosing mild frostbite over hypothermia.”
“Great! Then it’s settled.” She clapped, practically bouncing with excitement. “You’ll look amazing, Eddie. Trust me.”
Eddie looked down at the pants again and muttered something about tensile strength, elasticity, and the danger of catastrophic seam failure.
Adriana didn’t care. She shoved the pile into his arms with all the subtlety of a marching band. “Now go change.”
As Eddie shuffled deeper into his room, muttering about regret curves and the complete absence of dignity in statistical modeling, Adriana called after him, “Don’t forget the necklace!”
He closed the door with a groan that could’ve been heard three floors down.
“I really don’t like this,” Eddie muttered as Adriana leaned in to finish his eyeliner with the precision of a surgeon twenty minutes later. His vision was already irritated from the mandatory contact lenses she’d bullied him into wearing. He hated those more than he hated leather pants, which was saying something.
Adriana beamed, tilting his chin toward the light. “Oh my god, look at this slut strand.” She brushed one rebellious lock of Eddie’s hair off his forehead, only for it to fall back into place. Eddie swore it had a will of its own. “It’s perfect. And your waist? Don’t get me started. It’s fucking gorgeous. I swear you stole all the good genes before I was even born.”
Eddie felt the tips of his ears heat. Compliments always hit him sideways, as if his brain had no idea how to file them. He muttered, “Bullshit,” under his breath, ducking his head.
“I know, I know.” Adriana sighed dramatically. “Statistically impossible.”
“But also untrue,” Eddie countered, his voice quieter but sincere. He met her eyes, making sure she heard him. “You are beautiful. And no fucking man is worthy of you. Especially not the gringo who shall not be named.”
That earned him a loud snort, though something unspoken flickered in her eyes, a vulnerability she refused to give voice to. Instead, she squeezed his hand, eyeliner pen still clutched between her fingers.
“I’m really happy we get to go together,” she said softly. “Even if you hate it.”
Eddie exhaled, long and slow, and squeezed her hand back. “I don’t hate it.” He tried for a smile, crooked and small but genuine. “Now, let’s send Sophia a selfie.”
Adriana lit up, already grabbing her phone like this was the moment she’d been waiting for all night. Eddie resigned himself to the inevitable, praying that statistics couldn’t actually measure embarrassment in megapixels.
*
The doors had technically opened at seven, but it still took nearly twenty-five minutes of shuffling, stopping, and apologizing before Eddie and Adriana reached their seats. That was how packed the arena was. Waves of people all funneled into their rows with popcorn, plastic cups of drinks, and keen energy.
Adriana explained as they moved that Blaze, Buck’s band, took fan safety very seriously. After some near-fatal incident last year, they’d demanded every show have assigned seating instead of chaotic open-floor crowds.
That surprised Eddie in the best way. Assigned seating statistically reduced accidents, improved crowd management, and—he was fairly certain—lowered his own risk of being trampled to death by 0.7 percent.
Their seats, when they finally reached them, were excellent. Eddie didn’t want to know how much they’d cost. It didn’t matter, anyway, Tom the Cheater had paid for them.
“You look hot!” a passing girl yelled, flashing Eddie a smile before disappearing with her friends.
Adriana’s grin was instant and triumphant. “Told you.”
She immediately launched into an enthusiastic explanation of the opening act, a brother-sister duo with what Eddie gathered was a very tragic backstory: orphaned young, split into different foster families, reunited as young adults, then catapulted into semi-fame with viral TikTok videos.
Semi, because Eddie had never heard of them. Then again, he hadn’t known Buck existed until yesterday. He didn’t have a TikTok. Or an Instagram. Or a Twitter. His only online presence was Goodreads, where he cataloged the books he never had time to read, and Reddit, where he argued about data visualization.
Still, when the sibling duo bounded onstage and launched into their set, the crowd came alive. Adriana sang along at the top of her lungs, dancing in her seat, and even made fast friends with the two girls next to her. Eddie clapped politely, tried to follow along, and decided he didn’t mind. His sister was happy. That was enough.
During intermission, while Adriana and her new concert friends disappeared to the bathroom, Eddie stayed put. He pulled out his phone, scanning through the twelve emails that had arrived in the last three hours. Three were predatory journals fishing for his name. One was a request to peer review a paper he was actually interested in. The rest were from students: drafts to critique, models to debug, questions he’d promised answers to.
He was mid-way through deciphering what Natasha had done to completely implode her regression model when his phone was snatched clean out of his hands.
His head snapped up, heart hammering. “¡Puta!” he cursed. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Eddie Diaz,” Adriana gasped in mock scandal. For a second, he thought she was going to scold him for swearing at her. Instead, she shook her head, eyes wide with disbelief. “I have literally never met anyone who was so obsessed with their work they’d bring it to a concert.” She slid his phone into her bag like it was evidence and dared him to try reclaiming it.
“Technically, there’s an intermission,” Eddie muttered, nodding toward the stagehands resetting drums and mic stands.
“Technically, there’s an intermission,” she echoed mockingly, rolling her eyes.
Eddie settled back, resigned. Truthfully, he wasn’t that hard to please when it came to music. He liked most genres, depending on his mood. Podcasts usually won, but he’d enjoyed the opening act, and he suspected he’d probably enjoy Blaze too.
The lights dimmed not long after Adriana and the others sat down. The sudden hush that fell over the arena was eerie, like the air itself was holding its breath. A video montage flashed across the giant screens. All around him, people erupted in screaming, whistling, and stomping.
“Buck’s the lead singer,” Adriana said unnecessarily, practically vibrating as the camera panned to a tall blond man. Tattoos covered his arms, his throat, even his knuckles. Eddie counted at least three earrings, plus a brow piercing. Two faint reddish marks dotted the other brow—birthmarks, maybe.
“Tori’s the bassist,” Adriana continued, pointing at a woman with purple hair and eyeliner sharp enough to cut glass. “Lili’s the guitarist. Reggie’s the drummer.” On-screen, a tiny Asian woman was piggyback riding a six-foot-two, dark-skinned man like it was nothing.
Eddie blinked. “So do they all go by nicknames, or were their parents just… feeling creative?”
Adriana snorted. “Evan Buckley, hence Buck. Tori is Victoria. Lili’s name is actually Elizabeth. Reggie’s Reginald.”
Eddie hummed, eyes fixed on the screen as Buck flashed a grin, all teeth and swagger. Evan Buckley.
The blackout was total for three beats. Then—
A wall of light exploded across the stage. Drums thundered like cannon fire, bass snarled deep enough to shake the floor, and guitar sliced through the noise with teeth-baring precision. The crowd detonated into screams.
And then Buck appeared.
He didn’t walk so much as prowl, striding out with the kind of loose confidence that said he owned every cubic inch of this arena. The camera zoomed in on him just as he leaned into the mic stand, and Eddie swore the entire stadium tilted forward with him. His voice tore through the first lyric—raw, sharp, and startlingly good.
Eddie blinked, startled by the punch of it. He hadn’t expected… whatever this was. Buck’s sound wasn’t polished, not really, but it was magnetic. His rasp wrapped itself around the words like barbed wire, equal parts dangerous and impossible to look away from.
By the second verse, Buck had already shed the leather jacket he’d come onstage with. He tossed it aside without looking, revealing ink-drenched arms slick with sweat under the spotlight. He gripped the mic like it was alive, body rolling with the beat, tattoos shifting with every flex of muscle.
The arena was chaos: girls shrieking, phones lifted like a galaxy of stars, even grown men shouting lyrics like their lives depended on it.
Eddie wasn’t shouting. But he wasn’t looking away either.
He tracked Buck across the stage. How he leaned against Lili’s shoulder for a riff, how he pulled Tori into the mic to sing a harmony, how he bounced across to slap Reggie’s cymbal in time with a beat. He was a storm in constant motion, but somehow… it worked.
Adriana was singing so hard beside him her voice cracked, but Eddie barely noticed. His eyes stayed on Buck, studying.
He understood now. Why people followed this man. Why stadiums filled, why strangers cried, why Adriana had been vibrating with excitement for months. There was something about Evan Buckley that demanded your attention, and, if you weren’t careful, convinced you to give it willingly.
Eddie exhaled, as the first song slammed into silence and the crowd screamed even louder. For the first time all night, he didn’t think about data sets, or missed emails, or how much he hated his leather pants.
He thought about how captivating Buck was.
The arena was still vibrating from that first song when Buck finally stepped back from the mic, laughing a little as he ran a hand through sweat-damp curls. He glanced around like he needed to take the temperature of the room, but the temperature was obvious: fever-hot, electric.
“Los Angeles!” he shouted, voice resonating through the speakers. The roar that answered was almost physical, a wall of sound hitting Eddie square in the chest. Buck grinned wider, like he’d just won a dare. “God, it’s good to be home. Thank you! Thank you all for being here tonight!”
He paced the stage as he spoke, pointing at different sections of the arena, soaking in the cheers. “We’ve been on the road for weeks, and there is no better feeling than coming back and seeing this—” he gestured at the teeming crowd, “—our city, our people, ready to blow the roof off this place with us.”
Eddie couldn’t stop himself from noticing that there was no roof.
Adriana screamed right along with everyone else, clapping until her rings rattled against each other. Eddie couldn’t help but smile at her joy, even as his own chest tightened strangely watching Buck stand there, so sure of himself.
Buck leaned back into the mic, eyes bright. “Let’s make it a night none of us forget.”
And just like that, the band crashed into their second song—faster, dirtier, meant to get people on their feet. The bass shook the soles of Eddie’s shoes. Adriana was already dancing, hands in the air, belting out lyrics Eddie had never heard in his life.
Eddie stayed in his seat at first, absorbing. He noticed things others probably didn’t, the way Reggie kept perfect time with the light show, how Tori’s bass line filled the gaps Buck left when he broke away from the mic, the practiced ease of four people who’d played together long enough to predict each other’s moves.
It was magnificent.
But then Buck jumped down onto a smaller platform closer to the crowd, letting fans scream in his face as he sang. Phones went wild, recording every second. Eddie’s stomach dipped unexpectedly when Buck tilted his head back, sweat shining on his neck under the lights, his voice grinding through the speakers like a promise.
Adriana grabbed Eddie’s wrist, hauling him half-up from his seat. “Come on! You can’t just sit there!”
He let her pull him to his feet, though he didn’t dance, he watched. Studied. And he realized he was smiling despite himself.
By the time the third song rolled in, he wasn’t cataloging emails in his head anymore. He wasn’t calculating probabilities or thinking about regression errors.
He was caught somewhere between the weight of the music and the way Buck made an arena of twenty thousand people feel like he was singing only to them.
Including, to Eddie’s reluctant astonishment… him.
Twenty minutes later, another great song ended like a body blow, sharp and sudden, leaving the crowd gasping before they roared even louder. Buck stood at center stage, chest heaving, sweat gleaming down his temple under the heat of the lights. He pulled the mic from his lips slowly, like he was savoring the moment, eyes scanning the crowd.
And then his gaze snagged.
Eddie felt it before he realized it, those blue eyes, bright even from this distance, locking right on him. Not on Adriana, who was practically vibrating beside him. Not on the gaggle of girls shrieking two rows back. Him.
Eddie’s brain promptly short-circuited.
It had to be a trick of the lights. Or his contacts were drying out again, skewing his vision. There were twenty thousand people in this arena, Buck wasn’t staring at Eddie Diaz, professor of biomechanics and applied statistics, whose greatest accomplishment this week had been getting his grad students to run an ANOVA test correctly.
And yet… the singer didn’t look away.
He was still breathing hard, mouth parted, sweat dripping down the line of his throat as he kept his gaze fixed, steady, almost searing. Eddie’s stomach did a dangerous flip. His throat went dry. He couldn’t—didn’t want to—but he also couldn’t stop staring back.
It felt like a lifetime and a heartbeat all at once.
Then, finally, Buck turned away.
The trance snapped so abruptly Eddie sucked in air like he’d been holding his breath. The noise of the stadium crashed back in around him, the pounding of feet, the deafening cheer, Adriana yelling something he didn’t catch.
Behind him, two girls immediately started bickering.
“He looked right at me!” one squealed.
“No, he didn’t, are you blind? That was so for me.”
Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose, heat crawling up his neck.
It was a fluke. A coincidence. Buck had been staring at… someone else. Anyone else.
Not him. Definitely not him.
But the echo of those blue eyes stayed burned in his head, stubborn as data points that refused to fit the model.
By the time the last encore rang out, Eddie’s head was buzzing almost as much as his ears. Buck’s band had powered through nearly two hours of sweat, light, and sound, with only a handful of pauses where Buck or one of the others would speak.
At one point, Tori leaned into the mic with a sly grin. “You’ve been the loudest crowd we’ve had all tour, LA.”
Reggie threw a drumstick into the air and caught it one-handed, adding, “She means you’re spoiled, but we love you anyway.”
And Buck… well, Buck just smiled that ridiculous smile, the kind that felt personal even when he said, “Thank you. Thank you for letting us come home to this. For making us feel like family every damn time.” His voice cracked a little, rough with exhaustion, but Eddie swore the arena collectively melted.
The finale left the stage bathed in white light, confetti cannons exploding, the band bowing together before jogging off, still laughing, still waving. Adriana was still screaming when the house lights came up, cheeks flushed, eyes wild with delight.
It would take forever for the crowd to shuffle out, and Eddie thought maybe now, finally, he could go home, shower, crawl into bed, and sleep until the data sets called him in the morning.
But of course, Adriana wasn’t done.
One of the girls she’d befriended turned around in her seat, grinning wide. “Hey, you two should come with us. My boyfriend’s bartending at this place down on Fairfax. Buck goes there all the time. The others too.”
Adriana gasped. “No way.”
The girl nodded earnestly. “Yeah. There’s a hidden VIP room upstairs. Hardly anyone even knows about it, so it’s not, like, overrun with people. My boyfriend can get us in.”
Adriana’s hand was already clutching Eddie’s sleeve. “We have to go.”
Eddie gave her the flattest look he could manage. “Adriana, I have work tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s Sunday.”
“Exactly. Which means I’ll have the lab to myself, no students interrupting me. Prime working conditions.”
Adriana turned to the girls with an expression of pure desperation. “Do you hear this man? He’d rather marry his spreadsheets than live a little.”
Eddie opened his mouth to argue, but then Adriana hit him with the big guns: wide, watery eyes, lower lip jutting out in a pout he knew all too well. “Please, Eddie. For me?”
He sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re impossible.”
Her grin snapped back instantly. “So that’s a yes?”
“I’m going to regret this,” he muttered. But Adriana was already bouncing, hugging him tight before linking arms with the other girls to chatter excitedly about outfits and drinks and the show.
Eddie followed reluctantly toward the exits, silently promising himself he’d make up for every lost hour tomorrow. Data, unlike sisters, never begged.