Rain made the studio roof sound like applause that hadn’t been earned yet.
Saoirse Byrne sat in the last row of plastic chairs, collar pulled up, palms tucked under her thighs so they wouldn’t shake. The waiting room was a bright, brutal corridor of fluorescent light and laminated posters — SMILE FOR CAMERA, KNOW YOUR LYRICS, BE READY WHEN CALLED — like nerves were something you could schedule.
Down the hall, someone ran scales. A girl laughed too loudly, the laugh of a person who didn’t want anyone to see her fear. A runner in a headset clipped past, barking names into the air.
Saoirse kept her eyes on the door with the red light above it. AUDITION ROOM A. The light was off right now, which meant someone was in there being judged.
She should’ve been anywhere else.
Saoirse was doing that thing again — the brave face. She could feel it cracking at the edges.
What thing?
The brave face. Always the brave face.
She laughed once, rough. Good. She was tired of pretending.
Then don’t. Just breathe.
Instead, she was here, in a studio that smelled of hairspray and nerves, with a number pinned to her jumper like a price tag.
No second chances, she told herself. Not really.
Except… she’d signed up anyway.
She reached into her coat pocket and found the worn coin she kept there — old habit, old superstition. She rolled it over her knuckles, the metal cold, steady. The kind of steady she wasn’t.
Across the corridor, a big screen played highlights from last season: tears, screams, confetti, coaches grinning like saints and devils. The chairs turned in slow motion. Music swelled like a promise.
Saoirse didn’t look too long. Promises were dangerous things. She’d once mistaken them for ladders.
A producer with a clipboard appeared at the door. “Number eighty-two. Saoirse Byrne?”
Saoirse stood so fast the chair scraped behind her. She swallowed, lifted her chin, and walked forward with the kind of courage you can only borrow from desperation.
“Any song changes?” the producer asked, already half-turned away.
“No.” Her voice came out steady. She didn’t recognise it. “Same as submitted.”
“Grand. Follow me.”
They moved through a maze of corridors, soundproof doors, and little rooms where people rehearsed into mirrors. There were posters of past winners — smiling, beautiful, newly famous. There were framed records, tour photos, a hundred little reminders that this was a machine that ate people and spat out a story.
Saoirse kept walking.
She could do one song. She could do three minutes. She could do a lifetime in three minutes if she had to.
The producer stopped at a door and lowered her voice. “Okay. Quick rundown. You’ll go on stage. You’ll face away from the coaches. They’ll be listening blind. If they want you, they’ll turn. Don’t stop if you don’t get an immediate turn. Keep going. Sometimes they’re slow.”
Saoirse nodded. “I know.”
The producer’s eyes flicked down to Saoirse’s hands. “You alright?”
Saoirse’s mouth twitched. “Never better.”
That earned her a small laugh. “That’s the spirit. When you walk out, just… own it, yeah?”
Own it.
Saoirse had spent her whole life learning how to own things she didn’t actually have.
The producer opened the door, and the studio swallowed her whole.
The stage was smaller than it looked on telly, but the lights made it feel like a planet. Heat hit her face. The air was thick with it — spotlights and cameras and the quiet electricity of people watching.
She could see the audience as a dark blur beyond the glare, all heads and teeth and anticipation. She could see four red chairs, broad-backed, waiting. She could see the nameplates fixed to the arms.
One of them punched the breath out of her chest.
FIONN KAVANAGH.
Her vision narrowed. A ring of sound tightened around her skull.
No. No, no, no.
She’d known he was a coach this season. Dublin knew. Ireland knew. The papers had put his face everywhere the minute his boy band had officially gone on “indefinite hiatus” and he’d turned up on a judging panel like he’d always belonged there.
Réaltaí’s sweetheart. The nice one. The one who smiled like he meant it.
Saoirse hadn’t looked at those articles. She hadn’t clicked the videos. She’d told herself it didn’t matter. That the past was the past.
But the universe had a cruel sense of timing.
Her feet wanted to stop. Her lungs wanted to close. Her body wanted to run.
Instead, she walked to the mark on the floor and faced the chairs with her back to the coaches, because that was the rule. Because she was here now. Because she’d come too far to let one man — one memory — drag her off the stage.
She adjusted the mic, breathed in, and found the first note like a match in the dark.
The song began soft, bare, the melody a thread she could hold onto.
Saoirse sang the verse like it was a confession you made to yourself in the mirror when you couldn’t sleep. She kept her voice clean, controlled, not begging for anything. She didn’t try to show off. She didn’t try to be perfect.
She tried to be true.
The first chorus rose, and she let it. She let her voice break just enough to show the hurt, then pulled it back into warmth. She pictured a small boy on her hip, his hands on her cheeks, his laugh like a bell. She pictured everything she’d survived. She pictured everything she’d lost.
Halfway through the chorus, the room shifted.
Not physically — nothing moved — but the air changed. The audience made a tiny sound like a wave lifting. She felt it in her skin.
A chair squeaked behind her.
Her heart stopped. She didn’t turn. She didn’t breathe. She kept singing because she’d been told to keep singing, because stopping would be admitting she needed him to choose her.
Then — like fate couldn’t stand the suspense — metal clicked and a chair turned with a slow, deliberate rotation.
The audience roared.
Saoirse kept her eyes forward. Kept her voice steady. Kept her face from changing. She had learned, long ago, how to hold yourself together while the world decides what you’re worth.
The song carried on. Her hands were cold. Her pulse was loud. The back of her neck burned with the knowledge of being looked at.
When she reached the bridge, she took a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been saving and let the note ring out like a dare.
At the end of the last chorus, another chair turned.
Then a third.
The studio was thunder, lights, and shouting. The kind of noise that made you feel like you’d done something impossible.
Saoirse finished the final line on a quiet, held note, and when it faded, she lowered the mic and stood still, letting the silence land.
A beat.
Then the host’s voice filled the space, delighted. “Saoirse Byrne! Three turns! That’s what we like to see!”
She turned around because now she was allowed, and the first thing she saw was Fionn Kavanagh looking at her like he’d been punched.
He’d changed. Of course he had. Five years did that to people.
His hair was shorter than the old posters. His face was a shade leaner, the kind of lean that came from touring and sleeping badly and learning how to smile when you didn’t feel like it. But his eyes — God, his eyes — were the same.
A soft grey-blue that had once felt like safety.
Now they looked like a storm held behind glass.
Fionn’s hand was still on his chair’s button, knuckles white, as if he’d pressed it without meaning to and now didn’t know what to do with the consequence.
His mouth opened and closed.
The other coaches were grinning, impressed, talking over each other.
“She’s got grit.”
“That tone, though.”
“Where have you been hiding, Saoirse?”
Saoirse heard none of it properly. She heard only the rush of blood in her ears and the memory of a corridor that smelled of bleach and perfume and a voice saying he’s just convenient.
Fionn finally found his voice.
“Byrne,” he said, and her surname sounded like a question in his mouth. “It’s… you.”
The host laughed, delighted by the drama. “Hold on — hold on — do we have history here?”
Saoirse smiled because she had learned how to smile when she was on the edge of falling apart. “We’ve met.”
Fionn’s gaze didn’t leave her face. “Yeah,” he said. “We have.”
One of the other coaches leaned forward, playful. “You two dated?”
“Not exactly,” Saoirse said, light as smoke.
Fionn’s jaw tightened. “No.”
The word hit harder than she expected. Not because it was false, but because of what sat underneath it: refusal. Correction. Boundary.
The host was still grinning, sensing good telly. “Alright, alright. Saoirse, you’ve got three coaches turned. You get to pick. Who do you want to coach you?”
Saoirse’s mouth went dry.
She looked at the coaches — two strangers who liked her voice, and one man who used to know the shape of her laugh.
Fionn didn’t move. Didn’t charm. Didn’t sell himself. He just watched her, expression careful, like he was holding his own hands behind his back.
He wasn’t going to fight for her.
Good, she thought, a little bitterly. He’d learned.
The safer choice was obvious. A clean slate. A coach who didn’t look at her like she’d set fire to his life and walked away.
But Saoirse had never been very good at choosing safe.
She pointed at the woman in the second chair — a coach with a reputation for turning rough talent into careers. “I pick Maeve.”
The audience cheered.
Maeve stood, delighted, and walked onto the stage to hug her. “Welcome, babe. We’re going to work.”
Saoirse hugged back, grateful and a little dizzy. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fionn exhale like he’d been holding his breath since the first note.
Maeve leaned close to Saoirse’s ear. “Ignore the chaos, yeah? You were brilliant.”
Saoirse nodded, swallowing hard. “Thanks.”
As the host wrapped the moment, Saoirse began to move off stage, following Maeve toward the wings.
Fionn’s voice stopped her like a hand on her wrist.
“Saoirse.”
She turned.
He was still in his chair, eyes locked on hers. The lights made him look unreal. But the ache in his face was real enough to break teeth on.
“I turned because you’re good,” he said, each word measured. “Not because of… whatever this is.”
Saoirse’s throat tightened. “Right.”
“And,” he added, sharper now, as if he needed to make the line visible, “I’m not having a private conversation with you while you’re on this show. I’m not doing anything that could be twisted into a storyline.”
A pulse of anger flared in her chest, hot and ugly. “You think I came here for a storyline?”
Fionn’s eyes darkened. “I think you’ve always been good at getting what you want.”
Ouch.
She forced her smile back into place. The cameras were still on. People were still watching. “Don’t worry. I won’t ruin your brand.”
Something in his expression flickered — hurt, maybe. Regret. But he didn’t reach for her.
“No,” he said. “You won’t.”
Saoirse turned away before he could see the damage the words had done.
She walked into the wings on legs that felt too light.
Maeve was talking to her — something about song choice, staging, next steps — but Saoirse only half heard. She nodded at the right times. Smiled when told. Let the machine pull her forward.
Then a runner hurried up, breathless, headset askew. “Saoirse Byrne?”
“Yes.”
The runner glanced down at her clipboard. “Your child is here.”
Saoirse went very, very still.
“My —”
The runner pointed. “Over there. Childcare. He’s… he’s brilliant. He’s also tried to steal the host’s microphone twice.”
Saoirse closed her eyes for half a second.
“Of course he has,” she murmured.
She followed the runner down a side corridor toward the childcare room.
Ahead of her, a small voice rose above everything — clear, fearless, singing a half-made-up melody at full volume like the world was his stage.
And for a moment, Saoirse forgot about Fionn Kavanagh.
Until she stepped into the doorway and saw him standing there at the end of the corridor, having left his chair, his coach badge hanging from his neck.
He wasn’t looking at her.
He was looking at the little boy with the mic in his hand — wild curls, bright eyes, and a grin so familiar it made Fionn’s face drain of colour.
Fionn’s gaze lifted — slow, stunned — until it met Saoirse’s.
His voice came out rough.
“Saoirse,” he said. “Who is that?”