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PROLOGUE- Fifteen Years Ago

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Ava Lark was not famous the night she met Evan Grant.

She was eighteen, clutching a cheap guitar with chipped blue paint, waiting backstage at a charity gala she'd somehow been invited to perform at. Her palms were sweating. Her heart was sprinting. Her entire future felt like it depended on three minutes of singing.

Then she saw him.

Evan Grant-twenty-two, newly famous, sharp suit, messy hair, a smile bright enough to light the drab backstage hallway. He held the door open for her, one hand braced against the frame as she stumbled through.

"You good?" he asked, voice warm like a summer night.

"Just... terrified," she whispered.

He laughed softly, eyes crinkling. "Good. Means you care."

Ava would later sing before crowds of fifty thousand, but no moment ever hit her like that one-his quiet kindness, the way he looked at her like she mattered.

She thought about him on the bus ride home. She thought about him the next morning.
She thought about him for fifteen years.

And Evan?

He walked away that night and told his agent:

"That girl's going to be big one day. Don't lose her name."

He didn't forget her either.

Neither of them knew their worlds would collide again.
Not through fate-or luck-
but through a breakup song.

And the moment they locked eyes again, fifteen years later...
nothing would ever be the same.

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