30. Chapter Thirty #3
I looked down at the floor and made myself count the tiny scuffs near my shoes. Then I looked back at her.
"I meant what I said."
"About what?"
"You. Being great before me."
Her face changed, small but there. "You sent the memo."
"You listened."
"Yes," she said. "I listened."
A beat.
"Did it help?" I asked.
Her pride fought across her face. I could practically see it sharpening knives. Then her shoulders lowered by a fraction.
"It did."
Relief hit me hard enough that I had to look at the wall behind her. "Good."
The booth stayed quiet. No phones, no crowd, no convenient interruption except the thousand-dollar microphones designed to hear everything we didn't know how to say.
"Say it," I said.
Her eyes narrowed. "Say what?"
"The thing you keep circling. The thing under all of this."
She laughed once. "I'm not doing therapy in a recording booth."
"Then don't." I held her gaze. "Just be honest."
The words hit her because they were hers too. Because that was all either of us had ever wanted, and neither of us knew how to give without making it bleed.
She looked at the padded wall behind me, then back at my face.
"My core fear," she said, with the kind of clinical precision people use when they're trying not to break, "is that I become your shadow."
I didn't move. Moving felt dangerous.
She kept going. "That I get reduced to a storyline. Your muse, your ex, your girl. That my work becomes a footnote. That when people say my name, yours comes attached." Her voice trembled on the last word, barely. I heard it anyway.
"And I'm scared," she said, "that if I let you close, I'll start letting that happen because it's easier than fighting."
I wanted to argue. Not because she was wrong, but because the idea of being the thing that made her smaller made me want to crawl out of my own skin. But this was not my turn to defend. So I shut up.
She swallowed. "I'm also scared that if I keep pushing you away, I'll spend my whole life making choices based on you anyway. Even when I think I'm being independent." Her eyes shone. "I don't want either version."
The room held the words. No crowd to cheer, no band to cover the silence. Just us.
"That's valid," I said. Simple. It still felt like tearing something out of myself.
She blinked, like she had expected a rebuttal.
I stepped closer, stopping again at a safe distance. "I did make you feel like you had to disappear," I said. "Not because I wanted to. That doesn't matter. I did it. I took up space without asking. I turned things into spectacle because I thought it proved how much I cared."
Her eyes stayed on mine. No escape.
"I keep making love loud," I said. "And then you're the one left dealing with the echo."
A tear slipped down her cheek. She looked furious about it. I did not reach for her. Every cell in my body wanted to. I did not.
"I'm sorry." The words came out raw, not polished enough to be useful. Maybe that made them better.
"I'm sorry for the stage. For the duet stunt. For making you feel like saying no would make you the villain. For acting like being seen with me should feel like proof instead of pressure."
Her mouth parted. I kept going before fear could shut me up.
"I'm not going to romance your fear away. I don't get to. It's real. Some of it came from me."
She wiped the tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. "You can't fix it with one credit fight."
"I know."
"Or one voice memo."
"I know."
"Or one apology."
"I know."
The repetition should have annoyed me. It didn't. I needed to say it until it began to shape something inside me.
"But I can start fixing it by changing how I move," I said. "How I speak about you. How I credit you. How I show up."
Her throat moved. "And if you forget?"
"Call me on it," I said. "I'll listen."
She stared at me for a long second. I did not ask if she believed me. That would make the answer about my comfort.
The booth door handle rattled. Both of us startled.
I glanced at the mics, then at her. "We should step back."
She nodded quickly. We moved away from each other in the same second, putting space between us like we had rehearsed it.
The door opened, and the engineer stepped in, eyes on his phone. "Producer's back. He wants a quick playback in the control room. You can come out."
Lila nodded, face neutral. I could feel my own mask sliding back on. Not the full stage version, something smaller, enough to walk into the control room without handing everyone my bleeding organs in a tote bag.
We stepped out.
The producer hit play. Our voices filled the speakers, intimate and clean. Ridiculous. Unfairly good.
The producer grinned. "It's insane. You hear that? It's insane."
Lila stared at the console lights. I stared at the speaker. Grant stood behind her, calm and watchful, but his eyes cut to me once. A question. I gave a tiny nod. Her name first. Grant nodded back.
The producer started talking about release strategy and playlist pitching. Words like momentum, conversion, and viral window floated through the control room, landing on my skin like gnats. I said nothing. That was its own workout.
After a few minutes, the producer clapped his hands. "Okay. That's it. We'll handle the credit conversation. You both are free."
Free. Sure. The funniest words were always accidental.
We left the control room. Grant walked beside Lila toward the exit. I followed several steps back.
The hallway smelled like coffee and expensive soundproofing.
Near the lobby, Lila glanced over her shoulder. Our eyes met, half a second. I didn't smile, didn't speak, didn't try to turn it into a moment. I looked at her like I had heard her. Then I looked away and let her walk out first.
That was harder than singing in front of stadiums. Humbling, frankly.
Ten minutes later I was in my car, alone, staring at the back of the seat in front of me and thinking about microphones. About the booth. About the engineer telling us not to touch anything. About the mics that had stayed exactly where they were.
My hand went cold around my phone.
I sat up. "Turn around."
The driver glanced at me in the rearview. "Back to the studio?"
"Yes."
He pulled into the next lot to turn around.
My phone buzzed. Grant.
I answered immediately.
"Did you notice the red light?" he asked.
I closed my eyes. "No."
"Lila just asked me."
My jaw set.
If that conversation existed on a file somewhere, it could prove I had finally said the right thing.
It could make me look good. It could turn my apology into content with a clean little headline.
EVAN WALKER ADMITS FAULT IN RAW STUDIO AUDIO.
People would call it romantic. They would call it growth.
They would clip the part where I said I was sorry and ignore the fact that Lila's fear came first.
My stomach turned. That was exactly why nobody could use it.
"I'm going back," I said.
Grant went quiet. Then: "Good."
I stared out the window as the car turned toward the studio. For once, the move wasn't to reach her. It was to protect the room where she had finally told the truth.