Chapter 3: The Price of Devotion

Since the day Carter Hayes crashed into the industry, I’ve been the one picking up the pieces for six relentless years.

Every contract, every PR disaster, every 3 a.m. meltdown—if Carter needed something, I was the first call, no matter the hour or the city.

When he debuted, all he had were his looks and a battered portfolio. Even as a model for cheap e-commerce catalogs, he was the outcast, bullied and iced out by the cool kids.

The fashion world chewed him up and spit him out. He’d show up to shoots at a Brooklyn loft with bruises on his arms, other models snickering as they scrolled through Instagram. He never said a word, but I saw the way he flinched when anyone brushed past him.

I wrote songs night after night in my tiny Silver Lake basement—walls plastered with neon Post-its, empty Red Bull cans piling up, my battered Fender propped against a thrift store couch. I’d sit there, headphones on, chasing hooks until my hands cramped and my vision blurred.

The response was shockingly good. He got signed by a major label—something we’d barely dared to dream.

He asked me to manage him, and I said yes, even though I knew what it would cost me.

Back then, he was just a kid with wild dreams, standing in that cramped, dark basement, but he glowed like a headliner at Coachella.

He lifted a can of PBR, threw an arm around my shoulder, cheeks flushed from the cheap booze, and grinned, “Maya, just watch—I’m gonna make it to the top.”

His breath was all beer and hope. For a split second, I believed we could both make it out alive.

He was drunk, half-fallen on the couch. Only then did I dare reach out and gently touch his eyelids, tracing the lashes I’d memorized. My heart thudded. I told myself it was gratitude, nothing more.

Six years have flown by, and Carter’s on the verge of superstardom.

Eight albums—each one charting on Billboard for months, every single a streaming smash.

Almost nobody knows the truth: every melody, every lyric, came from me.

Some offered millions for those hits. I turned them all down.

I credited Carter as the songwriter.

For nothing. For free.

I’m the one who wants him to shine most of all.

But Carter never believed it. He always thought I had some hidden agenda, some angle.

Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve let him believe that. Maybe it would’ve hurt less for both of us.