12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Lila
Opening night hit with the kind of speed that made you feel late even when you were on time.
We practiced until our fingers cramped. We ran transitions until my legs ached from pacing a fake stage taped across a warehouse floor.
There were wardrobe fittings, last-minute choreography tweaks, and awkward promo shoots.
Someone kept yelling things like "chin down, confidence up!
" while I stood under brutal lighting, struggling to remember how to smile like a person who wasn't quietly falling apart.
There was more to the behind-the-scenes of a tour than I ever imagined, and we were just the opening act.
Still, the day came packed with check-ins and wristbands, security routes and runner schedules, crew members calling out timestamps as if they were counting down to detonation.
Someone else was always asking where someone named Brian went.
I never met Brian, but based on how often people yelled his name, he was either essential to the tour or a woodland spirit haunting production.
And seeing Evan all the time was killing me. Not in the dramatic, poetic way. In the practical way.
Constant collisions in corridors. Quick glimpses near catering. The sound of his laugh echoed from a dressing room while I tried to warm up my voice in peace. His name was printed on schedules. His guitar case stood beside mine for three miserable seconds before someone moved it.
He was everywhere. He looked good too, the kind of good that made me want to fight God and the lighting crew.
He moved through the space like he belonged to it. The stage was his home, and the world just a hallway leading back to it. Every crew member knew his name. Every photographer turned when he passed. Every stranger with a laminate wanted one more second of his attention.
And he gave it. That was the worst part.
Not in some dramatic flirty disaster way, not exactly.
He was polite, charming, professional. He smiled when people needed him to smile, nodded when someone asked for a quick clip, leaned in when a stylist fixed his collar, let a girl from publicity touch his sleeve while she told him where to stand.
Normal things. Tour things. Things I had no right to care about.
Naturally, I cared with my entire stupid body.
He was moving on. I could feel it. Or maybe I was projecting. Either way, it hurt. It shouldn't have. I was the one who left, the one who said no to being his plus-one, his shadow, his girl in the wings. I was the one who drew the line and called it freedom.
I should have been happy he was surviving without me. Instead I was crumbling in professionally scheduled increments.
I nearly called Sam. Twice. Just to ask what it felt like, watching someone you love fall in love with the stage instead of you. That was her specialty, after all. Dramatic heartbreak and murder plots, served with a smile. I didn't call. I kept moving.
Soundcheck came and went. Our set ran tight.
Finn paced, joked, and pretended he wasn't jittery, which would have worked better if he hadn't tried to drink from his mic instead of his water bottle.
Harper looked bored in the way she looked before she obliterated a kit.
Crew members shouted for last-minute fixes, for extra picks, for someone to please find Brian- seriously, where the hell was Brian?
Then the pre-show rush hit, the kind where you blink, and suddenly you're holding your guitar, someone is counting down on their fingers, and your mouth tastes like nerves and lip gloss.
Before I went out, Evan stopped me. Not dramatically. He didn't block my path or grab my wrist. He just stepped into the flow of backstage traffic, and the world narrowed around him, which was the problem with Evan. Even quiet, he took up space.
He stood there, hands in the pockets of his hoodie, eyes locked on mine like the hallway wasn't full of crew and cables and several witnesses to my emotional collapse if I chose to have one.
"Hey," he said.
My fingers tightened around the neck of my guitar. "Hey."
For one second we were painfully normal. Two people speaking a word that used to come before kissing, fighting, laughing, sleeping, everything.
His gaze flicked over my face, not slow enough to be obvious, not quick enough to miss. "You ready?"
"No."
His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Almost ours.
"Good," he said. "Means it matters."
"Is that rock star wisdom?"
"Obviously."
"Should I write it down?"
"I can sign it later."
I hated that I wanted to laugh. I hated more that I did, small and barely there, but his eyes caught it, and something in his face shifted, softened, then tightened again, like there was more he wanted to say, something less generous, something with teeth. But he swallowed it.
"This is what you've spent every second fighting for," he said. "Go out there and do the damn thing."
My makeup was not built for this. "Evan."
"I'm proud of you." His voice stayed even, but his hand flexed once inside his hoodie pocket. "No matter what."
No matter what. Meaning even if I had left him. Even if I'd accused him. Even if I'd turned us into a wound with a tour schedule.
I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say I'm sorry. I wanted to say I heard the song and it ruined me. Instead I nodded, because words had become a luxury item I could not currently afford.
He stepped aside, not far, just enough to let me pass. The sleeve of my jacket brushed his hoodie, one tiny touch, nothing, everything.
I walked onstage like I wasn't made entirely of heartbreak and highlighter.
The spotlight hit my skin hot and white. The crowd roared. Not for him. For us. For the opening act they barely knew, for the new band they were about to judge in the first ten seconds, for three people walking into the jaws of a room and hoping it didn't spit us back out.
Finn glanced at me from stage left, eyes wide and wild. Harper lifted both sticks. I stepped to the mic.
For one breath, all I saw was darkness beyond the lights. Then the first chord hit.
My hands knew what to do. Thank God.
The song ripped open beneath us, loud and bright and ours.
Finn moved like he had been born under stage lights.
Harper hit so hard the floor seemed to answer.
My voice came out stronger than it had any right to, cutting through the monitors, through the crowd noise, through every awful thought that had been chewing on me all day.
Then something happened. They listened. Not politely, not with that impatient opening-act energy where people use your set to buy drinks and talk over your bridge. They listened.
A girl near the barricade started singing along to the chorus, then two more. Someone lifted a handmade sign with CURSIVE CRUSH written in glitter marker. A guy in the front row pointed at Harper during the drum break like he'd just found religion and it had cymbals.
The rush hit all at once. That high. The way a lyric became a lifeline when strangers sang it back like it belonged to them now too. The way fear turned into fuel. The way the stage stopped feeling like something I had to earn and started feeling like something I could take.
It was everything I'd wanted.
The last chorus came, and I leaned into it, sweat cooling along my spine, guitar strap biting into my shoulder, Finn grinning like a maniac across the stage.
Harper threw in an extra fill that probably violated several local ordinances.
The crowd screamed when we hit the final chord, actually screamed, for us, for me.
I stood there under the lights. My chest heaved, fingers vibrating from the strings. I felt the dream land in my hands.
I had done it. I had stepped out of every shadow and survived the light.
And yet. As the applause rose, something inside me split along a seam I'd been ignoring. Was this worth it? Was ruining us worth this feeling?
The question was still sitting there when I came offstage.
The crew ushered us to the side corridor, into a brief pocket of space before the next chaos.
Finn bounced beside me and talked too fast. Adrenaline made him even more Finn, which was a public safety issue.
Harper looked pleased. For her, that meant she didn't throw anything or threaten a lighting tech.
"You heard that?" Finn grabbed my shoulders. "You heard them? They were singing. Actual humans. With mouths."
"I noticed the mouths."
"You killed it."
"We killed it."
"Correct, but this is your main character moment, so I'm being supportive."
Harper walked past us, drumsticks tucked into her back pocket. "I accept worship in cash or caffeine."
I laughed. For a second it felt clean.
Then the venue lights shifted. The stage reset. Arcadia Drive was next.
I should have gone back to the green room. I should have taken off my boots, touched up my makeup, and eaten whatever catering item carried the least emotional risk. I should have let the win be the win.
Instead, still buzzing, I did something reckless. I stayed.
I slipped out from backstage and into the front row, into the seats reserved for our team. The crowd around me roared louder with every passing second. Bodies pressed toward the barricade. Phones lifted. The room changed shape around anticipation.
Because I never got to watch Evan perform from the crowd when he was mine. And I wanted to see him, one last time, which was a stupid lie. I had told myself "one last time" too many times for the phrase to have legal standing.
The venue lights dipped. The crowd exploded.
Evan walked onstage like a storm that knew exactly where to strike. Hair a mess, guitar slung low, spotlight finding him like it had missed him personally.
I hoped, pettily and foolishly, that he might mess up. Trip, forget a lyric, rip those stupidly tight pants. Anything to prove he was human, anything to make the ache in my chest feel less like destiny and more like bad judgment with cheekbones.
But he didn't mess up. Of course he didn't. He owned the stage in a way that made the room feel temporary. He smiled at the crowd, and the crowd lost its collective mind. He leaned into the mic, and a thousand people screamed his name like they had been waiting all day to give it back to him.
I watched the version of him I'd never gotten to keep.
And then he played "Linger."
The live debut. The opening guitar line slid through the venue, and the noise changed- not quieter, hungrier. People recognized it from clips, teasers, and breakup edits they had cried over online. Phones shot up. The girl next to me grabbed her friend's arm so hard it left marks.
I couldn't move.
Because it wasn't just a love song. It was us. Late-night calls, diner fries, my laugh tucked into the spaces between notes. The goodbye I had rehearsed until I could say it without falling apart, which had been adorable of me, honestly, because here I was falling apart in public seating.
Every line was something I had left behind. Every lyric was a version of my voice he'd captured, polished, and offered to an audience that didn't know it was listening to me bleed.
The chorus swelled. His eyes swept the crowd. I told myself he wouldn't find me. There were too many people, too many lights, too many phones lifted between us.
Then his gaze landed on mine, right as the bridge hit.
Say it slow, so I can memorize the sound before you go.
The whole room sang with him. That was the worst part. Not his voice. Theirs. Thousands of strangers singing words he wrote because I left.
My hands turned useless in my lap. My eyes blurred so fast the lights smeared into gold streaks across the stage.
Evan kept singing, not softly, not privately. He gave it to the room like he was supposed to. But his eyes stayed on me for one extra beat, long enough to look accidental to everyone else, long enough to make sure I knew it wasn't.
By the time the final note rang out, tears were already sliding down my cheeks. I didn't stop them, didn't hide, didn't even try.