Chapter 24
What the Mirror Doesn’t Hide
T he clinic smelled like antiseptic and resignation. Lila sat under the fluorescent lights, a clipboard in her lap, ignoring the hollow ache in her back and the metallic taste that lingered on her tongue since her first round of chemotherapy.
She hadn’t told Nate. Not because she was afraid of his reaction—no, that part of her had long since been hollowed out. It was because she already knew what he would do.
He would come, maybe. He would bring her soup, or warm blankets, or feign concern. But his eyes would stay distant, like they always did now.
He would show up in body, not in soul. And the grief of that—his absence while sitting beside her—was heavier than the diagnosis itself.
So she told no one except her sister, who cried silently on the phone when Lila whispered the words she hadn’t spoken out loud until that night.
“I have cancer.”
Three syllables. That was all it took to change the way she saw everything. And yet, the children couldn’t know.
Not yet. So she smiled when she made their lunches. She nodded when Ava asked to sleep over at a friend’s house, and kissed Caleb’s forehead after his nightmares.
But every night, after they were tucked in, she vomited in the downstairs bathroom with the door locked. She was disappearing. Inch by inch and Nate hadn’t even noticed.
Nate
It was the third time that week he caught Lila sitting at the kitchen table, unmoving. Her cup of tea sat untouched.
She wore a sweater despite the warmth in the house, sleeves pulled down to cover her hands. She looked… smaller somehow. Faded.
“Are you okay?” he asked, for the first time in weeks.
She looked up, startled, then nodded.
“Just tired.”
He believed her.
Wanted to believe her. Because the alternative—a possibility he wasn’t ready to consider—would require too much of the man he used to be.
Later that night, he met Camille at the apartment. She wrapped herself around him the second he stepped inside, lips dragging across his jaw, arms tight around his neck like she was trying to mold him into her skin.
“You’re distracted,” she murmured against his collarbone.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about her again.”
He didn’t answer.
Just kissed her harder.
Camille laughed into his mouth, triumphant. Because silence meant surrender and Nate was always easiest to own when guilt softened his spine.
Lila
She stared at herself in the mirror that night after her shower. The bruises on her arms from the IVs had begun to bloom dark purple. Her skin was pale, thinner, the dark circles beneath her eyes no longer something concealer could hide.
And yet… he hadn’t said a word.
Hadn’t asked why she winced when reaching for the cupboard. Hadn’t questioned why her hair looked flatter, duller. Hadn’t stayed awake long enough to notice she no longer slept beside him.
She was eroding in silence, and he was too far gone to hear the cracking. But she had made peace with one thing:
She would not beg him to come back.
If he had truly left, he could stay gone.
Nate
Camille curled up beside him in bed, scrolling through her phone.
“I saw this house today,” she said casually.
“Two bedrooms, an open kitchen. It’d be perfect for us. Someday.”
Nate stared at the ceiling. He didn’t answer.
Didn’t know how.
Camille leaned closer.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
He glanced at her.
“No.”
She reached down beneath the sheets, fingers sliding over him with ease and confidence.
“Good,” she whispered.
“Because I want to make this real, Nate. I want us to be real.”
And maybe if she hadn’t touched him like that—if she hadn’t known exactly how to make him forget—he might’ve walked out right then.
But she did.
And he didn’t.