16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Lila
The moment I walked out of soundcheck, it was as if stepping into a tornado with a ring light.
Press reps, PR assistants, camera flashes, laminated schedules, people with headsets and dreams of viral glory. Everywhere I turned, someone had a microphone, a coffee, or a crisis.
"Lila! Quick photo!"
"Lila, comment on the 'Linger' reaction?"
"Lila, can you confirm if you and Evan were ever..."
The lights were too bright, the questions too sharp. I kept my head down and my face somewhere between "no comment" and "please become mist".
That didn't stop the onslaught. My phone wouldn't stop vibrating.
Three missed calls from my mom, who had probably seen the footage and was ready to ship me chamomile tea and a stern lecture.
Four texts from Grant, all caps and escalating.
A video message from Dakota: You're trending in Australia. Also, you okay??
And Sam, because of course:
SAM: Just watched the TikTok of your soul leaving your body during Linger. Want me to slash his tires or just his throat?
I nearly laughed.
My handler leaned in, voice syrupy and deadly. "This could be huge for your brand, Lila."
There it was. Heartbreak as a marketing opportunity.
The whole reason I hadn't wanted anyone to know about us was currently slapping me across the face. Evan and I had kept it quiet for this exact reason. To avoid becoming a punchline, a headline, a ship hashtag, a slideshow with dramatic zooms and strangers typing theories with their thumbs.
And now the video was everywhere. That look on my face, the way I'd turned away from the stage and blinked too fast, the way I'd sat there with tears on my cheeks while thousands of people sang along to a song that had no business belonging to them.
I needed air.
I slipped through the green room, past security, past handlers calling my name, past the white noise of being too much and not enough at the same time, and shoved open a side door.
The cold hit me hard enough to feel useful.
Outside, the alley behind the venue was boxed in by chain-link and red brick, the kind of forgotten space that smelled like last night's beer, damp pavement, and anonymous smoke breaks. Somewhere beyond the wall, the crowd roared, muffled and hungry.
I pressed my shaking hands to my thighs and tried to breathe.
That was when I saw him.
Evan, leaning against the wall like some tortured album cover, hoodie up, a joint dangling between his fingers. Head tipped back, eyes closed, as if he didn't want to be anywhere else except nowhere.
He looked up.
Our eyes locked and everything stopped for one dangerous second. Not the storm inside, not the fallout, not the fact that people were currently turning my face into content. Just him, just me, just the old injury recognizing the blade.
"Didn't think anyone else knew this door existed," I said.
"Didn't think you'd need to disappear."
I hugged my arms around myself. "Surprise. I contain multitudes and panic."
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "You killed it last night."
I scoffed. "Yeah. I also cried on camera and accidentally reignited the internet's thirst for our former relationship."
"You were always a trendsetter."
"Don't."
The word came out sharper than I meant it to. His almost-smile disappeared.
Silence settled between us, heavy but not empty. The joint glowed orange between his fingers. He looked at it like he'd forgotten he was holding it, then took one last drag and exhaled toward the sky.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No."
He nodded once. "Same."
The honesty scraped. He stubbed the joint out against the brick, then rubbed the ash off with his thumb. His fingers lingered on the wall like he needed something solid, which was annoying because I was right there and absolutely not solid.
"It's weird, isn't it?" he said.
"What?"
"Everyone screaming about how perfect we were." He looked toward the alley mouth, not at me. "When they didn't even know we existed until five minutes ago."
I stared at the ground. The pavement was cracked near my boot, a thin line splitting toward the wall. "We were something."
"Yeah," he said. "We were something."
The past tense hit wrong. So did the agreement.
He looked at me then, and his expression did something I couldn't defend against. Not soft, softer would have been easier. This was tired and bitter and too honest.
"That was the problem," he said. "I didn't know how to be normal about it."
My chest tightened around the words. Because that was Evan. Not perfect, not saintly, not the clean sad-boy version the internet was currently building into edits and captions. He loved like a man who had once been starving and didn't trust the plate not to disappear.
I took a step closer without meaning to. He noticed. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and the alley shrank around us.
"Lila."
Just my name, warning, question, and mistake.
I should have stepped back. I should have said goodnight. I should have remembered Marcie's voice telling me doomed love with history and abs would be phenomenal for numbers. Instead I stood there and let him look at me.
"You gave the safe answer," I said.
His jaw tightened. "I did."
"Was it supposed to make me feel better?"
"No."
That startled me.
He pushed off the wall, slow enough that I could move away if I wanted. I didn't.
"I don't know what it was supposed to do," he said. "Keep them off you, maybe. Keep me from saying your name like an accusation on a live mic. Keep me from giving them the one thing you spent years asking me not to give."
"That's not fair."
"I know."
"Then why say it?"
"Because I'm tired." His voice stayed low, but the words had teeth. "And because you don't get to teach me how to hide you, then act shocked when I'm good at it."
The line landed hard enough to make the alley tilt.
I wanted to hit back. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell him I had almost posted something cryptic at midnight just to see if he'd bleed in public first.
Instead I said, "I didn't ask you to make me look like I imagined it."
His expression changed, pain first, then something sharper. "I didn't."
"You did."
"The song was for you."
The world went quiet around that. Not fully. The muffled crowd still pulsed through the brick; a door slammed somewhere far away. But those five words sat between us like they'd been waiting all night to be said.
"You don't get to say that now," I said.
His laugh came out rough. "When do I get to say it?"
I had no answer. That was probably why I stepped closer again. Or maybe he did. Maybe we both moved. Maybe the space gave up.
His hand lifted, then stopped near my face. He didn't touch me. "Tell me not to," he said.
My pulse kicked hard. I hated my body for understanding before my brain could ruin it.
"Not to what?"
He gave me a look, the kind that said we both knew exactly what game I was playing and neither of us was winning.
"Kiss you," he said.
My mouth went dry. Do not. Two simple words, clean and smart and safe. They did not come.
Instead I heard myself say, "You still taste like smoke?"
His gaze dropped to my mouth. "Probably."
"Terrible habit."
"Yeah."
"You said you were quitting."
"I lied."
"Clearly."
His thumb touched my cheek. One careful touch, barely there, enough to ruin years of good intentions I did not actually have.
"You can still tell me not to," he said.
I should have, but I didn't.
So he kissed me.
No warning beyond the one I refused to use, no easing into it, just his mouth on mine, bitter smoke and mint and every bad decision I had pretended I was too evolved to make. My hands fisted in his hoodie. His fingers slid into my hair. The alley disappeared in pieces.
He kissed me like he hated me for leaving. Like he hated himself for letting me. Like he loved me anyway.
And God help me, I kissed him like some reckless part of me still believed I belonged there. Not to him. There. In the space between his hands and the sound of my own name in his mouth.
His other hand found my waist, not soft, not rough, just certain enough to make my knees reconsider their job. I pulled him closer because apparently I was dedicated to the scientific study of how quickly a woman could ruin her own boundaries.
The brick pressed cold against my back. His body was warm in front of me.
I made a sound into his mouth, and he stopped for half a breath. Forehead against mine, breathing hard, hand still in my hair.
"Lila."
"I'm okay," I said too fast.
His eyes searched mine. "Are you?"
No. Yes. Maybe. What a stupid question.
"I don't know," I admitted.
That should have ended it. Instead it made his face do something awful, tender and angry and wrecked all at once.
I kissed him again because I could not survive looking at it.
This time he met me halfway. Less force, more ache, worse somehow.
His thumb slid along my jaw. My fingers grasped the front of his shirt.
Every part of me remembered him with humiliating precision.
The way he tilted his head when he wanted more.
The tiny sound he made when I bit his bottom lip.
The way his hand tightened on my waist, then loosened, like even now he was trying not to take more than I gave.
That nearly broke me, not the heat, but the restraint.
I yanked back like I'd touched a live wire.
The alley returned all at once. Cold air, bad light, brick at my back, Evan in front of me with eyes that looked too honest for either of us.
"That can't happen again," I said.
His jaw tightened like he wanted to argue, like he wanted to ask if I was done lying to both of us. Instead he nodded once.
"Okay."
Not calm. Controlled. There was a difference, and I knew him well enough to hear it.
My mouth still tingled with him. My hands still wanted his hoodie. My entire body was currently betraying feminism, therapy, and common sense.
He didn't move closer, didn't plead, didn't make it easier by being cruel. He just stood there breathing hard through his nose, looking like he had swallowed every wrong thing he wanted to say.
I hated him for that. I loved him for that. Very inconvenient overlap.
"We can't," I said.
"I heard you."
"Evan."
"I said okay." The words were flat this time, a little hurt, a little pissed. Good. Pissed I could handle. Pissed meant he was still real under all that restraint.
I stepped back. He let me. The space between us returned, but it didn't feel repaired. It felt staged, a prop wall between two people who had already set the room on fire.
The door creaked behind me.
"Okay," Finn said, dry as Nevada toast. "I'm just gonna pretend I didn't walk into the extended trailer for your bad decisions."
"Finn."
He stood in the doorway, hands raised, eyes flicking between my mouth and Evan's. His expression said he had jokes. Many jokes. A full buffet of jokes. He was, for once, trying not to serve them all at once.
"Relax," he said. "No judgment. But I did win twenty bucks from Harper for calling this before the end of the week."
"We didn't bang," I snapped.
Finn blinked. "I said bad decisions. Your mind went there."
I glared.
He grinned. "Interesting."
"Finn."
"I'm your vault." He made a zipping motion over his mouth, then immediately ruined it by adding, "A handsome vault with excellent instincts."
Evan said nothing. He stood near the wall, joint crushed out beside him, lips still parted like he hadn't decided whether to say stay, sorry, or something that would ruin us worse.
Finn's gaze softened a fraction. "Handlers are looking for you," he said to me. "Something about follow-up photos and crisis smiles."
"Crisis smiles?"
"Smiling like you don't want to bite the nearest publicist."
"So regular smiling."
"Exactly."
I looked at Evan one more time. Mistake. He looked back. Bigger mistake. The kiss sat between us, hot and stupid and alive.
I turned toward the door. Finn stepped aside.
Behind me, Evan finally spoke. "Lila."
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"Don't let them turn you into a headline you didn't choose."
My hand tightened on the doorframe. There he was again, kind and angry and too late.
I looked back just enough to see him. "Funny. I was going to say the same thing to you."
Then I walked inside before either of us could make another mistake.