Zone 1
 

A smaller tent tucked between food vendors and art installs. Black canvas walls. No official signage. A few string lights and exposed cables taped to the ground. Performers walk on without warning. Security lingers nearby, like they’re ready to shut it down. It feels underground and exclusive.

She hadn’t meant to stay so tense for so long.

By the time the set ended and the tent filled back in with familiar faces, laughter, the low thrum of music bleeding in from somewhere else, Luna realized her shoulders had been tight for hours. Waiting did that to her. Even now, years into this life, the space between before and after a performance still felt like holding her breath underwater.

Now he was here.

Not onstage. Not watched. Not carried by the momentum of lights and noise and expectation.

Just Noah—warm, loose, a little flushed from the adrenaline—settling back onto the couch and pulling her with him like it was instinct. Like there was nowhere else she belonged.

She curled into his lap without thinking, legs tucked in, one arm around his neck, her cheek resting against his shoulder. The couch was pushed into a corner of the tent, half-shadowed, string lights dipping low overhead. It felt hidden in plain sight. Their own pocket of quiet inside the chaos.

She kept thinking about Harper.

She always did.

Her sister had texted earlier—something about pajamas and a minor meltdown over bedtime—but Luna still replayed it in her head. Wondered if she’d gone down easily. If she’d asked for her parents. If she’d wake up looking for them in the morning.

Even with the music and the drinks and the buzz of people around them, Harper was never far from her thoughts.

It wasn’t until someone handed her a drink—then another—and a joint made its lazy way around the couch that something finally loosened. Noah’s friends. Crew. People she trusted. Familiar enough not to feel on edge.

She hesitated, then took it.

Let the smoke soften the constant vigilance. Let the noise blur. Let herself exist without counting minutes or imagining worst-case scenarios.

Noah’s hand rested at her waist, steady and grounding, thumb absentmindedly tracing the seam of her dress. She could feel his heartbeat under her palm. Could feel the way he’d finally come down from the high of performing, settling back into himself—and into her.

She tipped her head back just enough to look at him. He smiled, tired and real, nothing performative left in it.

For a long time, she hadn’t wanted this life. Not the attention. Not the proximity to fame. Not being recognized as someone’s wife before being allowed to just be herself. She’d resisted it quietly, fiercely, convinced that loving him didn’t have to mean stepping into the light with him.

But love had a way of changing the shape of things.

She’d learned how to stand beside him without disappearing. Learned how to protect what mattered most. They still worked hard to keep Harper out of it—to shield her, to give her as normal a childhood as possible—but the world didn’t always cooperate. Cameras found cracks. Curiosity lingered.

Still, they tried.

And tonight, Luna let herself stop trying so hard.

She pressed a kiss to Noah’s jaw, felt him shift slightly to hold her closer, his chin resting against her hair. Around them, people talked and laughed and passed drinks. Somewhere, music swelled again.

But in their corner, it was quiet.

It had been like this a lot lately—finding each other in the middle of everything, choosing closeness over distance, choosing to stay present even when the world demanded pieces of him elsewhere.

She stayed curled in his lap, content to be held, content to let the night carry on without her needing to manage it.

She shifted slightly in his lap, the movement small enough that only he noticed. Her fingers curled into the fabric at his shoulder, grounding herself before the words slipped out—quiet, almost hesitant, like she didn’t want to break the fragile calm they’d carved out.

“I keep thinking about Harper,” she admitted softly.

It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t a complaint. Just the truth, offered the way she always offered it to him—unadorned and real.

Her forehead rested against his collarbone now, voice muffled by his shirt. “I know she’s fine. I know she’s safe. I just…” She exhaled, slow and shaky. “My brain doesn’t know how to turn that part off.”

She felt him shift beneath her, felt the subtle tightening of his arms around her waist. It steadied her. Always did.

“She’s probably asleep by now,” Luna went on, more to herself than anything. “Or she’s wide awake asking a million questions and refusing to believe bedtime is real.” A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “Either way, I keep picturing her.”

Her thumb traced a slow, familiar circle against his chest. The noise of the tent faded in and out—laughter, clinking glasses, distant bass—but none of it pulled her away from the weight of him, the warmth of being held without having to explain herself further.

“I hate that part of this,” she said quietly. Not accusing. Just honest. “Being here and loving it and still feeling like a piece of me is somewhere else.”

She tilted her head just enough to look up at him, eyes soft, a little glassy but steady. “I don’t want to miss anything. Not with her. Not with you.”

Then she leaned back in, tucking herself closer, like the confession itself had loosened something.

“But right now,” she added, barely above a breath, “I’m glad I’m here. With you.”

And she stayed curled there, letting the night move around them, trusting—if only for a little while—that it was okay to hold more than one kind of love in her chest at the same time.

Noah felt her words before he heard them.

Felt them in the way she shifted against him, like the truth lived in her bones and needed out. In the way her breath dipped and caught like she was scared it might make her soft in the wrong places. Like softness was a risk.

He knew that risk.

She said Harper, and something in him twisted.

Not with guilt, exactly. Not even with regret. Just that aching kind of love—the kind that stretched in opposite directions. The kind that left a piece of you in footie pajamas back home, and another in the lap of the woman you loved, whispering truths into your collarbone.

His fingers pressed lightly into her waist. Not to still her—just to say, I hear you.

The tent buzzed around them. A low tide of sound. Familiar voices, faraway laughter, someone calling for a lighter. All of it soft at the edges. All of it blurring into something distant the moment Luna spoke.

Noah tipped his head down, his lips brushing the top of her hair, then rested his cheek there.

He didn’t rush to answer.

Didn’t try to fix it.

Just breathed with her.

Matched the rhythm.

And when her fingers curled tighter in the fabric of his shirt, like maybe she thought she was too much—too heavy, too far away—he let his hand slide up her back. Slow. Steady.

“No one ever told me loving two people could make you feel split like this,” he murmured, voice just for her. “Like you’re always missing something, no matter where you are.”

He swallowed. “I miss her too.”

He hadn’t said it out loud yet tonight. Hadn’t let it surface. But it had been there the whole time—beneath the adrenaline of the set, beneath the press of bodies and sound and all the ways he tried to stay present.

It was always there.

The image of Harper in her dinosaur pajamas, demanding two bedtime stories and a glass of water with “exactly five ice cubes, Daddy, not four, not six.”

The way she kicked her feet in her sleep.

The way she said “come back home safe” without knowing the weight of the words.

Noah exhaled slow, his hand smoothing down Luna’s spine like it could ground both of them.

“She’ll be okay tonight,” he said quietly, thumb brushing her side. “Wrapped up in her pillow fort, probably snoring louder than me.”

He smiled faintly, the kind of smile that knew her heart, that matched the ache in his own chest.

“And we’ll call her first thing,” he added. “Hear all about the dreams, the snacks, whatever her stuffed animals got up to while we were gone.”

He shifted slightly, just enough to see her face again—her eyes, glassy and fierce all at once. That look she always had when she was trying not to feel too much.

“Missing her doesn’t mean you’re not here,” he added gently. “And being here doesn’t mean you’ve left her.”

He reached up, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

“You’re doing both. Every day. That’s the magic of you, Lulu.”

His smile softened, lazy and lopsided, the tired kind of grin that showed up only when all the masks were off.

“And I know it’s not perfect,” he went on. “But you in my lap, in this tent, still smelling like pancakes and star stickers from bedtime? That’s my favorite kind of imperfect.”

A beat.

Then a softer laugh, like he couldn’t help it.

“Besides,” he added, leaning in to brush a kiss just beneath her jaw, “when we do get home, you know she’s gonna make us throw a dance party in the kitchen at 8am with ‘Let It Go’ on repeat.”

Another beat.

A look.

Then: “You’re not allowed to leave me alone in that.”

He kissed her again—closer to her mouth this time, but still soft, still waiting.

Still letting her choose.

And even as the night roared on around them, Noah stayed right there in the corner of that tent, arms full of the girl he loved, the echo of their daughter’s laughter in his ears, and a heart big enough to hold both.