Rhett wasn't expecting her.
After thousands of meet-and-greets, he'd learned to tune them out—smile politely, sign the thing, nod at the compliments. Most fans wanted the same moments captured: a flash of proximity, a hug they'd post with a caption about dreams coming true. None of it ever stuck.
But June Marlowe did.
Even before she spoke, there was something unplaceable about her. She stood with both confidence and nerves, like she'd talked herself into showing up at the last second. Her eyes didn't dart around the room—they locked onto his face like she wasn't afraid to see him
And her letter.
That damn letter.
It sat on the small table in his dressing room now, unfolded, the creases soft from his fingertips tracing over them again and again. Her words weren't flowery or dramatic. They were deliberate. Laced with a kind of vulnerability he hadn't let himself feel in years.
He read the line again:
"Your songs didn't save me. They didn't need to. They just reminded me I wasn't crazy for feeling too much in a world that tries to feel nothing."
That stuck.
Because he had tried to save people with his music once—his mom, his first love, even himself. But music wasn't a cure. It was a mirror. And June, in her gentle honesty, understood that.
He didn't know why she affected him so deeply after five minutes. Maybe it was the way she didn't rush to fill the silence. Maybe it was how she didn't flinch when he let his guard drop, even just a little.
Or maybe it was because she asked the one question no one ever had.
"Are you trying to remember something you lost, or trying to feel something you never got to feel in the moment?"
That question haunted him.
He sat down on the small leather couch and leaned his head back, letting the silence press in.
She didn't ask for a selfie. She didn't tell him he'd changed her life. She asked him to feel something real.
And now, hours later, with the venue empty and the crew gone, he still couldn't shake her voice from his head. That slight catch when she said his name. The way she looked like she was trying not to care too much, even as her heart cracked just a little at being near him.
He made it back to his hotel by midnight.
The penthouse suite was elegant but sterile—too many perfect edges and not enough soul. A bottle of champagne sat untouched near the window. His manager had it sent up to celebrate the end of the tour.
Rhett popped open a beer instead. Something ordinary. Something grounded.
He wandered to the balcony, city lights blurring below him. Somewhere down there, June was walking around in a world she'd lit up for a few minutes.
He opened his notebook. The same one he carried through every tour. Dozens of scribbles, false starts, lyrics he never finished.
He flipped to a blank page. Then paused.
And wrote, slowly, deliberately:
"Seconds of forever, caught in the space between hello and goodbye."
The pen felt heavy in his hand. He hadn't written lyrics that felt alive in months. But this—this had a pulse.
He kept going.
"You looked at me like I was a person, not a promise
Like you didn't need fixing, just a place to stand."
He stopped, re-read the lines. His throat felt tight.
This wasn't a song yet. It was a fragment. A breath.
But it was hers.
June's presence lingered like a note held too long. She had a stillness about her that didn't beg for attention but commanded it anyway. And she hadn't asked him for anything—except honesty.
He remembered the last thing she said before leaving.
"I know what that's like."
He hadn't asked what she meant. But the way she said it—it was enough. Whatever ghosts haunted him, she carried her own.
Maybe that was what struck him the most: she didn't come looking for rescue. She came to offer something.
A reflection. A challenge.
A beginning.
By 3 a.m., he'd written three verses and torn two of them out. Perfectionism. Or fear. Maybe both.
But one stanza stayed:
"If time had hands, I think it reached for us
Pressed the clock between our ribs
And told us—this. Just this."
He closed the notebook and stared out the window.
Could something so brief matter?
It wasn't love. That would be insane.
But it was… something.
The kind of moment that shifted a person's rhythm. That rewrote silence.
He'd been numb for months. Applauded. Worshipped. Exhausted.
And then June walked in with her big eyes and her real words and her trembling hand, and he remembered what presence felt like.
He didn't even know her last name until he saw it in the email confirmation. June Marlowe. It sounded like an old song lyric. Like someone he might've imagined once and forgotten how to draw.
He wondered if she'd come to another show. If she even wanted to.
Or if that small moment was all it was ever meant to be.
But something in him—something old and tender—hoped not.
The next morning, Rhett woke before his alarm.
There was a new note on his pillow. Not a physical one—just something scrawled across the inside of his mind.
He picked up his guitar, still tuned from last night. And for the first time in a long time, he didn't play something rehearsed.
He just… played.
A soft chord progression. Minor, but not sad. Suspended in possibility. A melody rose from it, shy and hesitant, like a voice clearing its throat.
He recorded a voice memo. Called it "June, maybe."
Then laughed at himself.
But he didn't delete it.
Because something had started.
Maybe not a love story. Not yet.
But a flicker.
A seed in his chest that hummed with a new rhythm.
And he wanted to see where it led.