Chapter 2

"Your new single? Why is it always so sickeningly sweet?"

I was in the studio wearing headphones and tracking vocals when a deep male voice inside my head made me jump out of my skin.

This damn telepathy again.

I snapped back in my head, thoroughly annoyed.

"You dare call my songs sweet? Look at your own tracks, they sound like a funeral march. Think you could pull off your edgy vibe with my lyrics?"

"Bet," Jaxon hummed casually in my mind. "Stars align, gentle breeze, our romance will never rust in peace."

The deep, resonant voice in my head carried a different melody, a completely different texture, but it was breathtakingly good.

"Damn, that actually sounds amazing..." I caught myself sighing aloud.

"Obviously," Jaxon replied with an involuntary chuckle, which practically scared his manager, Peter, half to death across town.

His artist randomly humming and bursting into a soft smile out of nowhere? What kind of glitch was this?!

"Jaxon, are you losing your mind because you have to work with Harper?"

Peter eyed him with genuine concern. "I know you two hate each other, but this is a massive platform. Can you just grin and bear it?"

Jaxon gave Peter a flat, unamused look. "Stop overthinking it. It's just a shoot. I'm fine."

"Then... once the contract is officially inked, we need to do some promo to generate buzz. Want me to draft the social posts for you?"

Peter pulled up his phone to reply to the producers while brainstorming copy.

"No need. I'll... do it myself." Hearing the little boy system voice prompting him in his head, Jaxon let out a quiet sigh and looked down at his phone.

"Jaxon, did you know you and Harper are trending everywhere right now?!"

Backstage at The Perfect Pitch, I was adjusting my in-ear monitor when I spotted the veteran Pop King shoving his phone right into Jaxon's face.

"I have officially joined the show with my woman. No voice on this earth sounds sweeter than hers. @HarperLovesJaxonEveryday."

"Aww, I adore you too, sweet cheeks. @HarperIsJaxonsWoman."

Yep. After forcing us to spit out stomach-churning dialogue, the system made us change our Instagram handles.

Unlike other celebrity couples, fans immediately assumed we had escalated our cold war from direct bashing to aggressive public trolling.

Consequently, our fan clubs rebranded themselves respectively to "Jaxon Is A God" and "Harper Is A Princess."

Nobody—literally nobody—shipped us. I guess that's the perk of being lifelong rivals.

"See what I mean? The public has 20/20 vision. Who in their right mind would ship a stud like me with you?"

Jaxon's voice rang out inside my head without warning.

"Please. Shacking up with you would be like a princess adopting a toad. No sane person would ever put us together."

Mid-conversation with the Pop King, Jaxon abruptly turned to glare at me, flashing a tight, furious grin.

"Little darling, come over here. If I can't hold your soft, sweet self in my arms, I might just lose my mind."

While cursing him out in my head, I threw myself onto Jaxon with open arms. "Coming, sweetie! I missed you so, so much!"

The Pop King beside us stood frozen, his jaw on the floor. "Wait, I didn't mean to..."

Ignoring the stunned veteran singer, Jaxon and I powered through our system prompt in one go.

To give credit where it's due, Jaxon's critiques of the contestants were impeccably sharp.

From the lyricism to the melodies, he sliced straight to the heart of the matter.

Sitting right beside him, I piped in with encouraging words every now and then, terrified he'd crush the contestants' spirits entirely.

The seat beside the Pop King had remained vacant the whole time, and I had sneakily glanced at it more than once.

"For instance, if you tweak this cadence right here... Little creature, why do your eyes keep wandering toward other men?"

The third time my gaze drifted to the empty seat, Jaxon rested his hand firmly on top of my head and dragged me toward his side, not forgetting to shoot a warning glare at the innocent Pop King.

I swatted his hand away. "Don't mess up my hair... Sorry, sweetie, I was just curious who that empty chair belonged to, I wasn't checking him out!"

Trying my best to avoid the Pop King's look of sheer, second-hand-embarrassment despair, I took Jaxon's hand.

"The guy who's late is Logan," the Pop King muttered under his breath, sounding like a traumatized NPC delivering a mandatory line.

Right on cue, the backstage door swung open.