24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lila
Luckily, we had a few hours before call time.
Unluckily, I spent them wrapped in a hotel duvet, hiding from the internet like it had grown teeth.
I couldn't sing. Could barely get myself upright without feeling like the whole suite tilted sideways. Everything was flooded with speculation, memes, and women sending death threats because apparently loving Evan Walker from afar made them experts in my moral failures.
Two hours ago, I had been photographed barefoot in a hotel hallway with Evan behind me, shirtless and devastating and impossible to explain.
Now I had to perform that night.
The universe had a sick sense of pacing.
My phone was face down and silent on the nightstand, but it still felt loud.
Each buzz made my spine tighten. Each pause gave my brain room to invent something worse.
I didn't need to look at the screen to know what people were saying.
My mind had already built a theater, cast the entire internet, and handed every stranger a rotten tomato.
The suite smelled like expensive nothing. Fresh linen, cold air-conditioning, room service I hadn't ordered, and panic dressed up in hotel slippers.
I had tried to make the space feel normal.
I lined up the tiny coffee pods by color.
I folded a hand towel twice, then unfolded it because it looked too hotel-perfect and made me feel insane.
I wiped down the desk with a makeup remover wipe because it was the only cleaning supply I had, and because apparently when my life fell apart, I became a very underqualified maid.
Outside the window, the city moved on without permission. Cars crawled below. Someone honked. Somewhere beneath us, fans were probably already gathering near the venue, wearing tour shirts and glitter and whatever version of hope didn't make them want to vomit.
I lay on my side with the duvet pulled to my chin. My throat felt raw from the show the night before, from crying, from swallowing back every sentence that wanted to claw its way out of me. I had soundcheck soon. Glam soon. A stage soon.
The thought of standing under lights while thousands of people looked at me made my skin feel too tight.
Every thought circled back to the same place. The photo. The hallway. Evan's face when the cameras caught us. Grant swearing into his phone as if he could legally murder a paparazzo with volume alone. My mother's inevitable Sweetheart, talk to me.
I didn't want to talk. Talking meant making it real.
A knock sounded, two brisk taps followed by a theatrical little flourish, like someone had decided the hotel door needed a drumroll.
"Go away," I called without moving.
The door opened anyway, because only three people in my life ignored boundaries with that much charisma, and two of them were absolutely not allowed in this room right now.
Jamie stepped inside carrying an iced latte like it was evidence in a trial.
"Good afternoon to my favorite public-relations disaster," he said, clicking the door shut behind him.
"The therapist is unavailable, the tour manager is stress-smoking in spirit, and your glam team has been instructed not to approach until you stop looking like a haunted throw pillow. So you're stuck with me."
"I'm not talking."
"Perfect. I love a silent film." He crossed the room and set the latte on the nightstand. "I accept payment in gossip and whatever snack you panic-bought from the lobby gift shop."
"I didn't buy snacks."
Jamie stared at me for three seconds.
Then he walked to the minibar with the confidence of a man who had absolutely raided my hotel snacks before. He opened it, crouched, and came back with a tiny can of Pringles and a package of overpriced shortbread.
"Lila," he said gravely, setting them on the bed. "Lying during a crisis is tacky."
I tugged the duvet higher, as if cotton batting could double as witness protection. "I hate you."
"Excellent. Hatred means you're alive." He glanced at the rolling rack by the wall, where my stage outfit hung in a garment bag like a threat. "Also, you have to perform tonight, so we need you upright before someone tries to contour tears onto your face."
"I can't do it."
Jamie's expression softened by half an inch. With him, that was practically a candlelit vigil.
"You can," he said. "You don't have to do it elegantly. You don't have to do it with inspirational cheekbones. But you can do it."
"I'm not sure I can walk into that venue."
"Good thing you'll be driven there."
"Jamie."
He sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch me without asking. "Okay. We'll skip the part where I pretend I'm not here for the gossip TMZ didn't find. I am nosy. I contain multitudes, most of them annoying. But I'm also here because I care about you."
My eyes stayed on the ceiling, where a sprinkler stared back with judgment. "There's nothing to talk about."
"Sure. And I'm six-two."
"You are six-two in spirit."
"Exactly. Lies can comfort us." He took a sip of his latte. "But we're not doing that today."
"I'm being stupid."
"Stupid is wearing leather pants to an outdoor festival in July. What you're doing is shutting down." He tilted his head. "Question is, from what?"
"From everything."
"Specific, poetic, useless."
I rolled onto my back and stared harder at the sprinkler.
"I looked at one comment," I said. "One. Which was obviously a rookie mistake because now my brain has decided that one woman named EvanWalkerWife1997 speaks for the nation."
Jamie winced. "Never trust a woman with a fake marriage in her username."
"She said I was using him."
"Of course she did."
"And someone else said I trapped him. Someone said I was ruining the tour. Someone said he looked miserable."
Jamie's brows lifted. "In the photo where he looked ready to fistfight the entire hotel hallway?"
I closed my eyes. "That's not the point."
"No. The point is strangers are making a meal out of something they weren't invited to taste."
I hated that. Mostly because it was true.
My throat tightened again. "I don't know how to stand onstage tonight and act like everyone isn't looking for proof. Proof I slept with him. Proof I broke him. Proof I'm some career-climbing disaster with eyeliner."
"First of all, your eyeliner is innocent."
"Jamie."
"Second, they were always going to look for a story. If it wasn't this, it would be your dress, your set list, your face, your breathing pattern. People love turning women into group projects."
A laugh slipped out, brief and ugly. It broke the heaviness for half a second before the weight settled back onto my chest.
"I look around, and it's always women shrinking," I said. "Giving up jobs, cities, friends, themselves, because love is supposed to be the reward. Then he's the hero for 'letting' her keep a hobby."
Jamie didn't interrupt, which was rude, because the rant was already out and now it had room to stretch.
"Everyone acts like compromise means cutting pieces off until you fit the other person's life." I twisted the duvet between my fingers. "Packing foam. That's what it feels like. You cram yourself around someone else's shape so they don't break."
Jamie's face changed, barely enough.
"I worked so hard not to disappear," I said. "And now a single blurry hallway photo makes me feel like I've already vanished. Like now I'm not Lila on tour. I'm Evan Walker's scandal before dinner."
"Now you think a man is a fast track to vanishing."
I nodded and hated that he could translate me so easily.
"Mom only got where she is after she broke up with Oliver," I said.
"She leveled up because she was alone. Every story I've been fed says the same thing.
Be single to be strong." I stared at my lap, at the white half-moons my nails had carved into my palm.
"Maybe that's my story too. Maybe it has to be. "
Jamie set down his cup.
"Your mom didn't shrink for your dad," he said. "If anything, she doubled down. She is terrifyingly successful, possibly more than he is, but don't tell him because I enjoy watching him pretend not to care."
"They're the exception, Jamie."
My voice cracked on the word. I hated that.
"Everyone's always told me they're some once-in-a-generation love story. Why should I trust that I lucked into that? What are the odds I'm not the cautionary tale?"
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I'm going to say something wise, and you're going to hate it because it doesn't come with a refund policy."
"I already hate it."
"You are not your mother."
I glared. "That's a fortune cookie."
"It is," Jamie agreed. "But it's also true.
Your mother's success after the breakup doesn't mean solitude is a prerequisite for greatness.
It means pain can be rocket fuel. It means she decided nobody else got to ask her to dim.
" He paused. "And then, inconveniently, she fell in love anyway. With someone who wanted her brighter."
I closed my eyes.
Too-bright flashes. Cameras. My name shouted in that hungry tone that made me want to leave my own skin. The way shutting down felt like flipping a switch so I wouldn't blow.
"It's more than dimming," I said. "It's about losing the plot. I've watched women rewrite entire chapters to make room for a man who wouldn't lift a paragraph for them."
"And which man are we talking about?" Jamie asked. "Because I have a list and color-coded opinions."
I shot him a look. He raised both hands. No names, no lectures, just staying in the room with me.
"I don't want to wake up ten years from now and realize I curated myself to be palatable," I said. "I don't want to fold in so many corners I'm just tidy."
Jamie reached for the shortbread, opened the package with a satisfying plastic crackle, and slid it toward me until it bumped my knee.
"Eat your tiny grief rectangle."
I took one because refusing hotel shortbread felt arrogant. Sugar hit my tongue, dry and buttery and somehow offensive.