1. Chapter One #2
My hands grabbed the back of his jacket and held on too tight, because letting go had only ever been a theory until right then.
His shirt smelled faintly like laundry detergent, sweat, and the expensive cologne he pretended not to own.
I pressed my face into his chest and tried to make my body stop recognizing him as safe.
He held me like he'd done it a thousand times in hotel hallways and backstage corners. Like he already knew the shape of my panic.
We stood like that for a while. No speeches. No grand declarations. Just the muffled venue noise and my graduation tassel scratching against his jacket.
Inside, somewhere behind the walls and locked doors, a guitar riff leaked out. Something familiar. Something he'd written for me once. Distorted by distance and equipment, but still unmistakably his.
My fingers tightened in his jacket before I could stop them.
He noticed, of course.
Evan shifted first, pulling back just enough to look at me. That half-smile tugged at his mouth, the one that always made me feel chosen even when the whole world was pulling at him.
"So," he said, "where are we celebrating?"
The pain hit under my ribs fast, like a string snapping in the middle of a song.
"We're not."
His smile faltered. "Lila."
"I can't keep doing this, Evan." My voice cracked on his name, because apparently my body was determined to humiliate me all the way to independence. "I can't keep being a background character in someone else's spotlight."
"You were never that."
"I was." I held up a hand—not to stop him, but to protect myself. My fingers shook anyway. "And it's not your fault. You tried. You gave me everything. I'm the one who kept us in the shadows."
His face went still.
That always scared me more than anger. Evan angry was noise. Evan quiet meant he was choosing which words would do the least damage.
A cart rattled somewhere behind us. One of the stagehands cursed. The normal world kept moving, rude as hell.
"Tell me what you need," he said. "Tell me, and I'll do it."
That nearly did me in. Not because I didn't want him to fix it, but because I knew he would try. He would throw himself at the problem until there was nothing left of him but a love song and a bruise.
"I need to stop being afraid of my own life," I said. "I need to have something that's mine without it being attached to you."
His fingers curled at his sides. "You have that."
"Not out here." I gestured toward the venue, toward the posters with his face on them, toward the doors where people would scream his name. "Not when every time I touch you, it becomes about you."
He looked past me for one second. Just one. At the venue, at the crew, at the world waiting for him. Then back to me.
That tiny delay hurt more than I wanted it to.
He stepped closer again, as if proximity could rewrite reality. "Then we go public. We make it ours. We do it on your terms."
I wanted to say yes. I wanted it so badly that for one stupid, dangerous second, I let myself imagine it. My hand in his. His thumb brushing mine under interview lights. People finally knowing I wasn't a rumor, a lyric, a shadow in the back of a blurry tour photo.
Then I saw the headline.
EVAN WALKER'S SECRET GIRLFRIEND REVEALED.
MOLLY AND OLIVER RUSSELL'S DAUGHTER DATING ROCK'S SAD BOY HEARTTHROB.
NEPO BABY LANDS SOUNDTRACK AFTER ROCKSTAR ROMANCE.
There I was again. A subtitle. A connection. Someone else's girl. Someone else's daughter.
"That's the thing," I said, and the tears came. "I'm not saving you. I'm saving myself."
He didn't speak or move. Just looked at me like I'd taken a crowbar to something sacred.
And maybe I had.
I kissed him one last time. one last slow, aching kiss. For a second he kissed me back with everything he had, as if he could pour enough feeling into my mouth to make me stay.
Then his hands fell away.
The absence hit harder than the touch ever had.
And then I walked away.
I didn't look back. Mostly because my heel caught in the grass and I nearly face-planted into a recycling bin.
So yeah, maybe not entirely cinematic.
Unless you count the part where the bin fell over, and someone in Birkenstocks yelled, "Respect the planet," as if I'd just committed a war crime against compost.
But real, painfully, stupidly real.
On the walk back to my car, everything felt too bright. A girl on a skateboard zoomed past, humming one of Evan's songs. A squirrel sat on top of a trash can, aggressively licking a red Twizzler. Somewhere, a saxophonist was murdering "Careless Whisper" with absolute confidence.
I made it halfway across campus before I broke. Not a cute, single-tear-down-the-cheek kind of break—a full-on ugly cry into my steering wheel with mascara dripping down my face like a sad clown.
The waterproof kind.
Which is a lie. Possibly a crime.
I waited until I could see again, then stared at the steering wheel until the shape of it blurred. The song on the radio dissolved into static. Letting go didn't feel brave. It felt like choosing the lonelier wound and calling it growth.
Then I pulled out my phone and called the only person who knew the truth.
"Lila?" Finn answered on the first ring. "Is this a booty call or a breakdown?"
"Breakdown. Sorry."
"Damn. I was rooting for a booty call. I already lit the candles."
That made me laugh, even though my face felt swollen and tragic. "I did it."
A pause. "Wait," he said. "You broke up with the rock god?" His voice pitched up as if I'd just confessed to punching a puppy.
"I couldn't stay in his shadow anymore." I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, then immediately regretted it. Mascara everywhere. A raccoon with student debt. "You know how hard it is to be with someone like him?"
"You mean sexy, talented, globally beloved? Sure. Sounds terrible."
"I'm serious."
"I know." His voice softened around the edges. "Sorry."
"Every song, every interview, every red carpet. I wasn't a person. I was a secret. And not even his secret. Mine."
Finn didn't rush into a joke that time. He let the silence sit between us, which was how I knew he was actually worried.
"You could've stepped into the light with him," he said.
"I didn't want to be his plus-one." My grip tightened on the phone. "I wanted to be me. To build something real. Earn it. Not be the girl who got lucky and dated Evan Walker before he got too famous to remember my name."
"Okay, but let's not pretend you were dating some guy who plays guitar sometimes. You were dating Evan Walker. That man could melt underwear with a glance. And his arms? Have you seen his arms lately?"
"You're not helping."
"I'm providing context."
"You're objectifying my ex."
"Respectfully."
"Finn."
"I'm saying, you're over here breaking up with a walking fantasy. Meanwhile, I'm a sexy rockstar with a six-pack and excellent emotional availability, and you never give me a shot."
"You don't have a six-pack."
"I have abs. They're shy."
I snorted and wiped under my eyes with a napkin from my glove compartment. It had old coffee on one corner. I used the clean side because I am a woman of standards, even in collapse.
"Thanks, Finn."
"You okay?"
"No."
He went quiet again, and somehow that felt like a hand squeezing mine.
"I'm proud of you, Lil," he said. "For choosing yourself. Even if it hurts like hell. And I still think you're kind of dumb for breaking up with him."
"That is the worst pep talk I've ever received."
"It's honest. I'm a truth-teller in eyeliner."
I leaned back against the headrest and stared through the windshield. The parking lot lights had clicked on. My reflection stared back at me from the glass, streaky and wrecked and annoyingly not iconic.
"Do you think I'm the villain in this story?"
Finn didn't answer right away.
That scared me more than the question. Finn always had an answer—sometimes wrong, often delivered with jazz hands, occasionally in a fake British accent for no reason, but always something.
I kept going before he could make the silence worse. "Maybe this is my villain origin story. Maybe I just broke the heart of the guy everyone's rooting for. And for what? A maybe? A soundtrack pitch and a bruised ego?"
"You're not the villain," he said.
"You sure?"
"No, but I'm saying it with confidence because you're spiraling."
I laughed one small, pathetic laugh.
He sighed. "You're a woman trying to start her life without letting everyone else name it for you. That doesn't make you evil. It makes you twenty-something and annoying."
"Wow."
"And brave," he added. "Probably. I'll confirm after pancakes."
I stared down at my lap, where a smear of black mascara stained my graduation gown. Perfect. Very symbolic. Ten out of ten, no notes.
"But if I am the villain," I said, "I hope I at least looked hot doing it."
"Oh, babe. You know you did. Never make it easy on the man."
This time when I laughed, it didn't scrape as much.
"You want pancakes, Taylor Swift, and petty judgments in the morning?" he asked.
"Always."
"Then I'll bring syrup and glitter. We'll hex him a little."
"Don't tempt me."
The next morning, I walked into the studio and got hit with fluorescent lighting so harsh it practically highlighted my guilt in high-def.
My heart was somewhere between the drum kit and last night's texts I hadn't answered.
Finn was already there, guitar in hand, hair crammed under a beanie. Harper lounged behind the drum kit, spinning a drumstick and giving me that look only a best friend can pull off, the one that says, I love you, but I’m also going to enjoy every second of your misery.
I dropped my bag by the mic stand and attempted to stand like someone who’d actually slept last night. Spoiler: no one was fooled.
Finn's gaze flicked to my face, then to the slight smudges under my eyes. He didn't comment. He shifted his guitar strap and gave me a look that said, at least you’re out of bed.
"Let's try it again," I said. "One more time from the chorus."
Finn strummed the opening chord, steady and familiar, the kind of sound that filled up the whole room in a way my chest just couldn’t manage.
I drew in a breath and started.
My voice cracked halfway through the first line. Again. Because apparently, my vocal cords had joined the rebellion.
Harper's eyebrows climbed. Finn stopped playing before his face could betray him. He was good at that, pausing his own reaction so it didn't become my shame.
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands. This was impossible. Like, trying-to-fold-a-fitted-sheet impossible.
"Maybe because you're trying to write a love song while actively ripping your own heart out," Harper offered, twirling her drumstick like she was preparing for war. Possibly against me.
This isn’t just any love song. I stared at my scribbled lyrics until they blurred into a Rorschach test for heartbreak.
It’s for my parents’ movie. Full Hallmark love story, except my dad is being played by River Hale, which is a whole other level of weird.
They want something meaningful. Emotional. Real. No pressure.
"And you decided to write that while being emotionally unhinged." Finn sipped his iced coffee with the disapproval of a man who had watched too many romance tropes drive into a ditch. "Bold."
"I'm fine."
"You cried into a box of cereal last night."
Because it was the last of the Honey Nut Cheerios and you ate them. That was my emotional support cereal.
"You said, 'Take whatever I want.'"
"I was mid-breakdown. That was a trap."
Harper raised her hand. "Can we get back to the part where you're trying to channel love while actively allergic to it?"
"Not allergic. Out of stock."
Finn set his coffee down and leaned forward on the stool, elbows on his knees.
For once, the glitter-cape version of him faded, leaving the friend who had seen me make bad choices and still handed me fries after.
"You don't have to write the perfect love song.
Write something true. Even if it's messy. Even if it hurts."
I looked down at my lyrics again. The paper was smudged, one corner bent from being crammed in my bag like a guilty secret. I’d scribbled, crossed out, rewritten, and technically, there was a chorus. But it had no pulse. It didn’t even want to be a song.
"What if I'm the villain in this one?" I said. I didn't mean to say it out loud.
Harper didn't even blink. "Then write from the villain's point of view. At least the soundtrack will slap."
"Villain ballads are sexier anyway," Finn added. "People love emotional destruction with harmonies."
I laughed, which sounded suspiciously like I might cry. Perfect. Now I’m both the heartbreak muse and the heartbreaker.
I yanked myself back into the room, mentally shoving the daydream into a closet with all my other questionable life choices.
Finn tapped the edge of my notebook with two fingers. "Read it."
"What?"
"Read the chorus out loud." His tone stayed gentle, but he didn't leave me an easy exit. "Don't sing it. Read it."
Harper's drumstick stilled.
I stopped, then cleared my throat and looked down at my handwriting. The words sat there, stubborn and small.
My mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Finn waited without pushing a joke into the gap. He held the silence open until I could step into it.
"The words are there," I uttered finally. "The melody is stuck."
"Where?" Finn asked.
My fingers clenched around the notebook until the paper creased, like I could squeeze a melody out if I just tried hard enough.
Somewhere outside the studio, a car drove past with its bass turned up too loud. For one second it sounded like a crowd chanting his name.
I closed my eyes.
"Somewhere between the kiss I never wanted to end and the goodbye I wish I could undo."
Harper pointed a drumstick at me. "That. That's the song."
"That's not romantic."
"It's real," Finn said. "And your parents' whole thing is real. They just survived it."
I stared down at the page again. The ink looked darker, as if the words were finally willing to mean something.
Maybe love songs weren’t always about the happy endings. Maybe sometimes they crawled out of the wreckage, bruised and messy. Maybe sometimes the song was what you wrote because you couldn’t unsay goodbye.
Irony was probably backstage right now, sipping a latte and humming Evan’s chorus, just waiting for its next cue.
I picked up my pen.
"From the top," I said.
Finn lifted his guitar. Harper raised both sticks. And this time, when the first chord filled the room, I didn't try to sound fine.