The first time Fionn Kavanagh realised he could be broken by something as simple as a smile, he was standing on a sticky stage in a student bar on the south side, guitar strap cutting into the slope of his shoulder, fingers numb from playing through other people’s noise.
The room was all cheap lager and wet coats. Midweek. Half the crowd there to shout, the other half there to be seen. The lights were rubbish. The sound was worse. He played anyway, because music was the only thing that ever made sense in his bones.
And then she walked in.
Saoirse Byrne — hair loose and dark, coat too big, cheeks pink from the cold — paused just inside the door like she was weighing the place up and deciding whether it was worth her time.
Fionn hit a chord wrong.
It should’ve annoyed him. Instead, he felt it like a laugh caught in his throat.
She didn’t look at him straight away. She looked at the stage, at the battered microphone stand, at the little spotlight that made everyone on that platform look more important than they were. Her mouth tilted, not impressed, not impressed at all.
Then her eyes slid to him and stuck.
For half a second, the whole room went quiet in his head. He kept singing because he didn’t know what else to do with himself, and because stopping would have been admitting she’d got under his skin with one glance.
“Talk to me,” Fionn said.
Saoirse hesitated. “I keep waiting for it to vanish.”
“It won’t,” Fionn replied. “Not unless we let it.”
Saoirse breathed out. “And we’re not letting it.”
“Aye,” Fionn said. “That’s my girl.”
When the song ended, people clapped without meaning it. Someone whistled. Fionn gave his usual half-grin, the one he’d practised in mirrors, and reached for the next track.
Saoirse lifted two fingers and crooked them at him.
Come here.
He shouldn’t have. He did.
He leaned down, still holding his guitar like a shield.
“You’re wasting your voice on this crowd,” she said, blunt as a slap.
Fionn blinked. “Am I, yeah?”
“You are.” Her gaze flicked to his mouth, then back up. Bold, steady. “You play like you want to disappear.”
He laughed, because it was either that or admit she’d just read him like sheet music. “And you talk like you’re used to being right.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I’m just used to people pretending I’m wrong.”
The confidence was mad for a student night in a bar with a floor that stuck to your shoes. It should’ve put him off. It didn’t. It made something in him go bright and reckless.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Saoirse tapped the stage. “I want you to audition for the Spotlight Society with me.”
That was the first time she said it. Like it was nothing. Like he was a tool you picked up because it fit your hand.
He should’ve been insulted. Instead, his heart did something stupid.
“The what?” he said, though he knew well enough. Everyone knew. The Spotlight Society were the campus darlings — show choir, competitions, socials, photos on posters with perfect teeth and matching jumpers. If you got in with them, you got invited to everything. You got noticed.
Saoirse’s mouth twitched. “Don’t play thick, Kavanagh. You’re not.”
He pulled back slightly. “You know my name.”
“I asked.” She said it like asking was a normal thing, like she hadn’t just wandered up to a stranger and decided he’d be hers to use. “You’re good. You just need to act like you are.”
“I don’t do show choir.”
“You do if I ask nicely.”
Fionn snorted. “Is that what this is? Nice?”
Her eyes flashed, amused. “Fine. Please. Will you help me? I need a guitarist for my audition and every lad in this place thinks ‘harmony’’ is something you buy in a bottle.”
He should’ve said no. He should’ve smiled and gone back to his set and let her go find some other idiot to charm.
But she was standing there like the world had already said no to her a dozen times and she was daring it to try again.
“What do you sing?” he asked.
Saoirse tilted her head. “Better than you.”
He laughed again, properly this time. “That’s a strong claim.”
“You’ll find out.” Then, softer, almost careful: “Unless you’re scared.”
He hated that it worked.
“I’m not scared,” he said, because he couldn’t bear the idea of her believing it.
Saoirse’s smile turned real for the first time. It hit him low in the chest.
“Grand,” she said. “Tomorrow. Music room three. Five.”
She walked away without waiting for his answer, like she’d already gotten it.
Fionn stared after her, fingers still on the strings, and realised — too late — that he’d just agreed to something without knowing what it would cost him.
***
Music room three smelled like old dust and newer dreams. The piano was out of tune. The chairs were scratched. The walls were covered in faded posters from productions that had already been forgotten.
Saoirse arrived at five on the dot, hair still damp, notebook clutched to her chest. No coat this time. Just a jumper with the sleeves shoved up and a look on her face like she was walking into a fight she intended to win.
Fionn was already there, guitar case open, pretending his stomach wasn’t doing somersaults.
“You’re early,” she said.
“So are you.”
“I’m never late,” she replied, and dropped her bag on a chair like it belonged there.
He watched her write the first line of lyrics on the whiteboard. Her handwriting was quick and decisive. No hesitation.
“You wrote that?” he asked, nodding at the page.
Saoirse’s shoulders tensed for a split second. “Yeah.”
“It’s good.”
She looked up fast, suspicious, as if kindness was a trick. “Don’t lie.”
“I don’t.” He shifted on his chair. “Not about music.”
Something eased in her. A fraction. Enough for him to see the softness under the sharp edges.
They worked for an hour, then two. He played and she tried melodies over the chords, changing keys without apology, chasing the note that felt right. When she sang, the room changed.
Her voice wasn’t polished. It was honest. It had cracks where it needed them and fire where it counted. It was the kind of voice that made you stop talking mid-sentence and listen, because it sounded like a person, not a performance.
When she finished the chorus, Fionn realised he’d forgotten to breathe.
Saoirse caught him staring. “What?”
“Nothing,” he lied.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re rubbish at lying.”
He grinned. “So I’ve been told.”
They should’ve stayed strangers. They didn’t.
After rehearsal, she walked him outside. They stood on the pavement in the early dark, the city damp around them, and she talked — real talk, not that sharp, defensive banter. Little things. Her mum’s old radio. The way music could make you feel less alone. How she hated being told she was too much.
He told her about growing up with a guitar as his only escape, about learning songs by ear because nobody in his house had time for lessons, about the way he could stand in a room full of people and still feel invisible.
Saoirse listened like it mattered.
That was the start of it. Small and harmless, like the first drop of rain before you realise you’re caught in a storm.
By the time audition day came, he was already in trouble.
She wore a white shirt and black jeans and confidence like armour. He wore his usual hoodie and tried not to look like a man about to hand his heart over to strangers.
They stood outside the room where the Spotlight Society panel waited — three older students, all smiles and sharp teeth. A girl with perfect hair and a clipboard kept glancing at Saoirse like she was measuring her.
“You’re going to be brilliant,” Fionn said.
Saoirse didn’t look at him. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?”
“Because if I fall on my face, it’ll hurt worse.”
He stepped closer. “You’re not going to fall.”
Saoirse finally met his eyes. There was something naked there, hidden under the swagger. Want. Need. Fear.
“Fionn,” she said, and his name sounded different in her mouth. Like she meant it.
He reached out before he could think and brushed his thumb over her knuckles. A touch so small it could’ve been nothing. It wasn’t.
The door opened. The clipboard girl called Saoirse’s name.
Saoirse pulled her hand away like she’d been burned. She straightened, chin up, and walked into the audition room like she owned it.
Fionn followed with his guitar, heart thumping.
She sang their song. She did it with her whole body, her whole history, every rough edge and bright note laid bare. Halfway through, one of the panelists stopped pretending to be bored.
When she finished, there was a beat of silence.
Then the clipboard girl clapped like she was starting a trend.
“We’ll be in touch,” the lead panelist said, smiling too wide.
Outside, Saoirse let out a breath. “I didn’t mess it up.”
“You didn’t,” Fionn said, and he couldn’t stop himself — he took her face in his hands and kissed her, quick and fierce, right there in the corridor that smelled of bleach and old perfume.
Saoirse froze for half a heartbeat.
Then she kissed him back like she’d been waiting for it.
That was the moment he fell properly. Not a crush. Not a flirt. Love, like a door you couldn’t close once it swung open.
He didn’t know it was also the moment she decided how she would use him.
***
Three days later, the acceptance list went up on the noticeboard.
Saoirse found it first. She stood in front of it with a little crowd gathering, scanning names. When she spotted hers, her mouth parted like she was shocked. Like she couldn’t quite believe she’d made it.
Then she looked at him.
Fionn was grinning like a fool. He’d gotten in too, of course — he’d played like the panel asked him to play for the Society itself. They’d be mad not to take him.
Saoirse pushed through the crowd and grabbed his hoodie in both fists, pulling him down into another kiss. This one longer. This one public.
The people around them whooped and laughed. Someone shouted, “Get a room!”
Saoirse broke away, breathless, eyes bright. “We’re in,” she whispered.
“We’re in,” he agreed, and he meant it like they were a team.
Saoirse smiled and turned back to the noticeboard, letting the crowd swallow her.
Fionn lingered, shoulders warm with that ridiculous hopeful feeling, and watched her join the Spotlight group as if she’d always belonged.
He was about to go after her when he heard his own name.
Not from Saoirse. From someone else.
Two girls in Spotlight jumpers were standing a few steps away, half-hidden behind a pillar. One had glitter on her cheekbones. The other had a sharp bob and a voice like a blade.
“You pulled it off,” the bob-haired one said.
Saoirse laughed — light, careless. Not the laugh she’d given him. A different one. A performance.
“Obviously I did,” she replied. “I told you.”
“But the guitarist,” Glitter Cheekbones said, leaning in. “Is he… like, your boyfriend now?”
Saoirse’s pause was tiny. A beat long enough to tell the truth.
Then she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be daft.”
Fionn stopped breathing.
“He’s just… convenient,” Saoirse went on, voice casual, even bored. “He’s obsessed with me. All I had to do was look at him and play sweet.”
Glitter Cheekbones giggled. “Stop.”
“No, seriously,” Saoirse said, and there it was again — that blunt edge. “I needed in. They love a little romance storyline.’Talented girl and her sad indie boy.’ It gets people watching. It gets them talking. And it got me through the door.”
The bob-haired girl grinned. “You are lethal.”
Saoirse shrugged like it was nothing. Like he was nothing. “It’s not personal. It’s just… school. You know?”
Fionn stood in the corridor with his guitar strap digging into his shoulder and realised his hands were shaking.
All that warmth, all that softness he’d thought he’d seen in her — had he imagined it? Or had she used it like she’d used everything else?
He wanted to walk in and confront her. He wanted to grab her wrist and demand the truth. He wanted to make her look at him and see him as a person, not a rung on a ladder.
Instead, he took one slow step back.
Then another.
He didn’t make a sound. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him break.
He walked out of the building and into the damp Dublin evening, and the cold hit his face like a punishment.
By the time he reached the river, he had one clear thought, sharp as the edge of a pick:
He would never be anybody’s convenient again.
Not for popularity. Not for a storyline. Not for a girl with a smile like a weapon.
He didn’t know, then, that the girl who’d just gutted him was already carrying something that would tie them together for the rest of their lives.
He only knew that when his phone buzzed with a message from Saoirse — two words, bright and careless —
**celebrate tonight?**
— he stared at it until the screen dimmed, and he didn’t answer.
Because if he answered, he’d go back.
And if he went back, she’d own him.
Not this time.