Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The moment Lily's phone reconnected to civilization, it had what could only be described as a nervous breakdown.
She was still on the connecting ferry to the main island when the notifications started—a cascading waterfall of pings that made the elderly couple across from her shoot concerned glances in her direction.
Emails, texts, Instagram alerts, voicemails, calendar reminders for meetings she'd missed a week ago.
Her phone vibrated so continuously it nearly walked itself off her lap.
Welcome back to the real world.
She thought it grimly, watching the numbers climb. 847 unread emails. 203 text messages. 14 voicemails, all from the same number.
Jessica.
Her manager was going to kill her.
Lily shoved her phone in her bag, not ready to face any of it yet. Through the salt-smeared window, the ocean stretched endlessly in every direction—the same impossible blue she'd woken up to for two weeks, the same waves that had soundtracked her nights with Alex.
Don't think about him. Don't think about him. Don't—
She thought about him.
The way he'd stood on that dock, hands fisted at his sides, watching her leave without saying a word. The shell in her bag, wrapped in his t-shirt—the one she'd stolen because it still smelled like him. The ghost of his voice in her ear: Get some sleep. Early morning tomorrow.
As if sleep were possible. As if anything were possible now.
Lily pressed her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes, letting the engine's rumble fill the hollow space in her chest.
You're Lily St. John. You don't fall apart.
But God, she wanted to.
LAX was an assault on every sense she'd forgotten existed.
After two weeks of nothing but waves and birdsong and Alex's low voice, the airport felt like a personal attack. Fluorescent lights. Screaming children. The cacophony of a thousand conversations layered over announcements and rolling luggage and someone's phone blaring a TikTok at full volume.
Lily stood frozen outside customs, her single suitcase beside her, feeling like an alien who'd forgotten how humans operated.
Move. Get an Uber. Go home. Deal with your life.
But her feet wouldn't cooperate. She just stood there, buffeted by the crowd flowing around her, trying to remember why any of this had ever felt normal.
Her phone buzzed again—Jessica, for the fifteenth time—and this time Lily answered.
"WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?"
She held the phone six inches from her ear. "Hi, Jess. Nice to hear from you too."
"Two weeks, Lily! Two weeks of radio silence! I thought you were dead! I almost called your father—"
"Please tell me you didn't."
"I didn't, but only because I knew you'd murder me." Jessica's voice shifted from panic to something more controlled. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"It's a really long story. I'm jet-lagged as hell. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow," she promised.
Jessica heard the fatigue in her voice and reluctantly backed down. "Yeah, I guess that's reasonable. First thing tomorrow morning, okay? We have a lot to discuss."
"Is it bad?"
A pause that told her everything. "We'll talk about it tomorrow. Nine AM sharp."
Lily hung up and finally made herself move toward the exit, her suitcase wheels catching on every crack in the pavement.
The Uber smelled like pine air freshener and stale fast food. Lily gave the driver her address and watched as the city she'd called home scrolled past like a movie she'd already seen.
Except nothing looked familiar. Nothing felt real.
You're just jet-lagged, she told herself. Give it a few days. Everything will go back to normal.
But even as she thought it, she knew it was a lie.
Normal didn't exist anymore. Alex had burned it down, and she wasn't sure she wanted to rebuild it.
Her apartment no longer felt like her sanctuary.
The carefully curated decor that had cost her thousands. The ring light still positioned by the window for optimal selfie lighting. The closet full of brand-approved outfits, organized by color and occasion. Everything designed to project an image of effortless, aspirational living.
It all felt like a costume she'd outgrown.
Lily dropped her suitcase in the middle of the living room and stood there, taking inventory of the life she'd built.
The awards on the shelf—"Top Influencer Under 30," "Best Travel Content Creator 2023.
" The photos on the walls—her at the Eiffel Tower, at Machu Picchu, at a dozen other destinations that blurred together in her memory.
Smiling in every single one. That practiced, camera-ready smile that never quite reached her eyes.
When did I become this person?
She didn't have an answer.
Instead, she did what she always did when emotions threatened to overwhelm her: she worked.
She unpacked. Did laundry. Sorted through the mountain of mail that had accumulated. Responded to the most urgent emails with generic apologies and promises to follow up. Ordered Thai food because carbs felt necessary.
And then, at midnight, when the apartment was too quiet and the walls were too close and she couldn't avoid it any longer, she opened her phone and started watching the footage.
Alex's face filled her screen, golden in the morning light, talking about tide pools and his mother and why fragile things were worth protecting.
His voice washed over her like a wave, and Lily let herself sink into it—the memory of salt air and warm sand and the way he'd looked at her when he thought she wasn't watching.
She watched for hours. Every clip. Every frame.
The way his eyes crinkled when he almost smiled.
The unconscious gesture of running his hand through his hair when he got excited about a topic.
The moment—captured accidentally—when he'd reached out to brush a curl from her face, his expression so tender it made her chest ache.
By 3 AM, she was crying.
By 4 AM, she was editing the final cut—the one she was ready to post for the world to see.
And by the time the sun crept over Los Angeles, bleeding pink and gold through her unwashed windows, Lily had created something she'd never made before.
Something honest.
At 6 AM, the video went live.
She was just stepping out of the shower, towel wrapped around her hair, when her phone rang.
Not a text. Not an email. An actual phone call, from the one number that still made her stomach clench with complicated dread.
Dad.
She glanced at the time. 8:03 AM. She had less than an hour before she needed to be at Jessica's office.
She could let it go to voicemail. She should let it go to voicemail. Whatever he wanted to say, she wasn't in the right headspace to hear it—not after the night she'd had, not with her defenses this low.
Her thumb hit accept anyway.
"Lily." John St. John's voice was clipped, the same tone he used in boardrooms and conference calls. "Your assistant said you were unreachable for two weeks. I assume there's an explanation."
Hi, Dad. Nice to hear from you too. How's the weather in Connecticut?
"There was a booking error," she said, keeping her voice carefully neutral as she padded toward her closet. "I ended up on the wrong island. No cell service."
"For two weeks?"
"It's a protected conservation area. Very remote."
A pause that somehow conveyed disappointment more effectively than words ever could. "I see. And I suppose it didn't occur to you to find a way to contact anyone? To let people know you were alive?"
"The supply boats only come every two weeks, Dad. There wasn't exactly a FedEx drop box."
"This is exactly what I mean, Lily." His voice sharpened. "This career of yours—if we can even call it that—has made you completely irresponsible. No contingency plans. No professional infrastructure. You disappear for weeks and expect the world to just... wait for you."
She'd heard variations of this speech a hundred times. Usually, she weathered it in silence, waiting for him to run out of steam. Today, something felt different. Rawer. Like the protective layer she usually wore had been scraped away somewhere between Alex's dock and this moment.
"Your mother called me," he continued, and Lily's stomach dropped. "She saw some video online this morning. Something about an island and sea turtles and—" He made a dismissive sound. "She's worried you're throwing away your career over some environmentalist phase."
Phase.
She immediately bristled.
"It's not a phase, Dad."
"Isn't it? First it was photography. Then YouTube. Then 'influencing.'" He said the word like it tasted bad. "And now, what—you're going to become a conservation activist? Chain yourself to trees?"
"Would that be so terrible?"
"It would be unfocused. Unrealistic. Just like everything else you've—"
"Stop."
The word came out sharper than she intended, cutting him off mid-sentence. In thirty years, she'd never interrupted her father.
"Excuse me?"
"I said stop." Lily abandoned her closet and stood in the middle of her bedroom, heart pounding. "I'm done, Dad. I'm done listening to you dismiss everything I do as a phase or a waste of potential or whatever criticism du jour you've decided I deserve."
"Lily—"
"No. You don't get to talk right now." Her voice shook, but she didn't stop.
"I built a company from nothing. I have six million followers, Dad.
Six million people who care what I have to say.
I've traveled to more places than you've ever been, met more people than you'll ever know, created things that actually matter to actual humans—and all you can see is what I'm not. "
"I never said—"