Part 71
(Adrian's POV)
The countryside air was softer than he remembered.
It smelled of rain and roasted beans and the earth after dawn — the kind of scent that asked nothing from him.
For the first time, Adrian woke to silence that didn't come from noise-canceling headphones. Just birds, and the clinking of his mother's cups downstairs.
He'd told her he wanted to rest, to find himself again. She didn't ask questions, just handed him an apron and said, "Then make yourself useful."
Now he stood behind the small counter of her coffee shop, cap pulled low, mask hiding the face that had once filled billboards. No one here recognized him. No one looked twice.
He was just another quiet man with steady hands and tired eyes.
He learned to pour slow circles of milk into espresso, to watch the swirl turn into a faint heart. It was nothing like the spotlight — it was better.
He liked how the customers smiled without knowing his name. He liked that when someone said "thank you", it wasn't rehearsed.
Sometimes, at closing, he'd sit outside under the old tree beside the shop. The crickets sang, the stars felt close enough to touch. He would breathe, really breathe, and think —
maybe this was what peace was supposed to feel like.
But even in peace, shadows lingered.
At night, when he wiped the tables and turned off the lights, he'd sometimes feel eyes on him — not real ones, but memory.
Alex's voice still lingered somewhere behind his thoughts, that low whisper that once followed him from stage to sleep.
He would shake it off, tell himself it was just exhaustion.
Still, when the wind rattled the window, he caught himself glancing over his shoulder.
Then his mother's voice would cut through — warm and grounding.
"Adrian, close up. It's late."
And he would smile beneath the mask.
"Yeah, I'm coming."
Because here, he wasn't Adrian, the idol.
He was just her son.
And for now — that was enough.