2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Evan
Ididn't grow up with money.
School was less 'learning environment' and more 'Hunger Games with math quizzes.
' My fists had a bigger vocabulary than my mouth, and I figured out early that if you threw the first punch, you got to write the story.
Teachers called it acting out. Kids called it psycho.
I called it survival, with a side of detention.
My mom died young, and my dad tried in the only ways he knew how. Emotional warmth wasn't exactly in his toolkit. He worked, paid bills, kept the lights on, showed up to parent-teacher conferences with tired eyes and a jaw set hard enough to crack a tooth.
When I got suspended, he didn't yell. He got quieter. Somehow that was worse. He fumbled through fatherhood, and I fumbled through everything else. We both did what we could with what we had, which wasn’t much, but hey, it was something.
Then one day, I found my mom's old guitar stuffed in the back of a closet.
It was wedged behind winter coats that still held the shape of shoulders that weren't there anymore.
Dust clung to the case like it had settled in for the long haul.
I pulled it out and stared at it for a while, because I didn't know what to do with something that had been hers.
Touching it felt like stealing. Leaving it there felt like losing her twice.
I picked it up anyway.
Clueless, I strummed it with all the grace of a cat being sacrificed to stop a demon uprising. The sound was violent and wrong and absolutely humiliating.
I kept going.
The first blister surprised me. The second didn't. After that, pain became part of the routine. Fingers replaced fists. Rage bled into rhythm.
I didn't suddenly become a good kid. I didn't magically turn into the kind of person people wanted to root for. I found a place to put the noise in my head. It came out in chords instead of bruises, lyrics instead of detentions.
Soon came the leather jacket, the tattoos, the girls. I became a walking cliché, the kind that swaggered onto a bar stage like it was a pulpit, preaching heartbreak and distortion to anybody with twenty bucks and an attention span.
I told myself it was confidence. Half the time, it was armor.
And back then, attention was easier than intimacy. I was lazy enough to take the easy thing.
It was one of those tiny gigs in a forgettable bar, the kind with sticky floors, cheap lights, and a bathroom that should have been condemned for public safety.
I didn't even remember the name of the place.
We played there, got paid in cash that smelled like cigarettes, then loaded out through an alley that reeked of spilled beer.
The usual girls flirted. They always did.
Their eyes crawled across me, bold and hungry, as if I was something they could claim with a smile and a selfie.
One had written my name on her boobs in thick black marker.
Another kept angling her phone as if she were trying to catch the exact moment I looked available.
I knew how to play to that. Lean in. Grin. Let the stage lights do me favors. It wasn't real, but it worked.
Then I saw her.
She stood near the back, half tucked beside a crooked high-top table, her jacket folded over one arm. She looked around my age, college aged, with the kind of calm I'd never learned how to fake.
And she wasn't flirting.
She didn't try to catch my eye. Didn't lean forward when I moved to the edge of the stage. Didn't mouth the lyrics like she'd been waiting all night for me to notice.
She watched my hands. Not my mouth, not my tattoos, not the sweat on my skin. My hands. The way my fingers moved over the strings.
The music mattered to her before I did.
That hit me harder than any punch I'd ever thrown.
The bar's bad lighting couldn't ruin her. It tried. God, did it try. Everything in that place looked sticky and tired, but she stood there with this quiet focus that made the whole room seem louder around her.
In that moment, something reckless in me whispered mine before I even knew her name. Not the smart part of me. Not the part that had learned better. The stupid part. The hopeful part I usually kept locked behind sarcasm and guitar feedback.
The gig ended. We hit the last chord and let it ring until the room clapped in that half-drunk way people do when they're ready for their next drink. I hopped off stage with what I hoped was rock star swagger, aiming for the floor with practiced ease.
Then I tripped on a cord and faceplanted.
The impact jolted my teeth. A ripple of laughter spread across the room, the kind that usually made my spine go rigid. I'd grown up fighting for respect. Getting laughed at still scraped old places.
But her laugh rang out, loud and unapologetic. It didn't feel cruel. It felt delighted.
Which was annoying, because now I had to like it.
I pushed myself up, cheeks hot, palms stinging, trying to pretend this was part of the show. My bandmates were making faces at me, already filing it away for future humiliation.
Smooth. Very rock God of me.
I brushed dust off my jeans and walked straight to her before I could talk myself out of it, before I could decide she was too bright, too steady, too different from the world I'd built.
Up close, she looked even more dangerous. Not dangerous like the girls who longed to touch the leather jacket and tell their friends about it. Dangerous because she looked amused, like she'd seen me fall flat on my face and somehow liked me better for it.
"Want to get married?" I asked.
The words came out without rehearsal, bold enough to be charming or pathetic. I braced for her to laugh in my face.
She grinned. "Well, I guess you already fell for me. Sounds about right. But should I at least learn my future husband's name?"
Something in my chest shifted. Not soft. I didn't do soft back then. Something more like a lock getting picked.
"Evan Walker," I said. "And you are?"
"Lila."
"Lila?"
"Yep. Just Lila."
The simplicity of it made me want to smile, which made me want to fight myself, because smiling at strangers wasn't something I did unless I wanted something. I let it happen anyway.
My cheek throbbed from the fall. I rubbed at the forming bruise like I could erase the evidence.
"I haven't seen you around before," I said. "What are you doing here?"
Her eyes flicked past my shoulder, then back. She tilted her head toward a girl near the bar, glaring daggers at us. The girl's stance was stiff, arms crossed, body angled like she owned the space and hated that Lila existed in it.
"Apparently, trying to survive death glares from that one with your name tattooed across her chest."
I followed her glance and immediately regretted having eyeballs. "That's Sharpie. And honestly, I'm about two days away from a restraining order."
Lila laughed again, and the whole room sharpened around it. My band's chatter faded into background noise. The sticky floor, the bad lights, the stale beer breath. None of it had any manners, but for once, I didn't care.
"So," I asked, "when did you hear of us?"
"About five minutes after you started playing."
"That's brutal."
"I heard the music outside and wandered in."
I pressed a hand to my chest. "So you're not here for me? You're here for the music?"
"Devastating, I know."
"I'm trying to recover from a stage injury."
"You tripped over a cord."
"A career-ending cord."
She looked me over, and for one ridiculous second, I wanted her to keep doing it. Then her gaze landed on the bruise forming near my eye, and she looked entirely too pleased with herself.
"I was always big on music," she said. "My parents were those insanely corny people who danced in the living room and sang along to whatever was playing. My dad wrote songs for my mom. She sang constantly. I loved it when I was little, then got older and thought it was embarrassing as hell."
"But the music stuck," I said.
Her smile changed. Not bigger, not softer exactly. More private.
"Yeah. It stuck." She glanced toward the stage, where my guitar still leaned against the amp. "Dad taught me guitar as soon as I could hold one. Uncle Grant, his best friend, taught me how to smash one soon after."
I barked out a laugh. "That feels like a mixed message."
"That's family."
She didn't say any of it for sympathy. She said it matter-of-fact, the way people talk about the shape of their childhood when they've already survived it.
"When I hear good music," she added, "I can't help but enjoy it."
I tried not to look too pleased. Failed.
"So you think my music's good?"
She lifted one shoulder. "Your bass player was phenomenal."
I stared at her.
"And the drummer," she added. "Is he single?"
"Ouch. Trying to bruise my ego now?"
She pointed at my face. "I think the stage dive has that covered."
"I didn't stage dive."
"It would have been less embarrassing if you pretended it was a stage dive."
"I thought maybe you'd catch me if I fell."
"You should have submitted that request in writing."
We both laughed.
I'd had flings, and fans. I'd had the kind of attention that felt good until you realized it wasn't aimed at you.
It was aimed at the idea of you. The guy onstage, the leather jacket, the attitude, the one who could make a girl feel chosen for three minutes and disappear before morning. That guy was easy. I knew him.
But this was different. I'd never had someone who watched the music first.
Lila glanced toward the side door, where cold air slipped in every time someone dragged gear outside. "So, Evan Walker. Do you always propose to strangers after falling in front of them?"
"Only the ones who insult me immediately after."
"Good to know I'm special."
"Don't let it go to your head."
"Too late."
She was smiling when she said it, and I wanted that smile aimed at me again before I'd earned it. That was the problem. I wanted things fast back then, the applause, and sex. Anything that made the silence afterward easier.
With Lila, I wanted to slow down and still somehow skip to the part where she knew me. I didn't have the language for that.
So I used the only thing I had. Swagger.
"You hungry?" I asked.
She blinked. "That depends. Is this part of the proposal?"
"Obviously. I'm traditional."
"Nothing says romance like bar nachos and possible food poisoning."
"I was thinking diner fries."
"Bold pivot."
"I contain multitudes."
She studied me as if she were deciding whether I was funny or a hazard. Probably both.
A guy from the bar yelled my name, something about loading the van before our bassist wandered off with a redhead and forgot we owned equipment. I lifted a hand without looking away from her.
"One second," I called back.
"You should go," Lila said.
"I should."
Neither of us moved.
That was the first stolen moment. Tiny, stupid, barely a moment at all. But I kept it.
I kept the way she looked at my hands and not the rest of me. I kept the sound of her laugh after I hit the floor. I kept the way she said "just Lila" like her name didn't already feel like a chorus I'd be humming for weeks.
I didn't know yet that stolen moments could become a habit. I didn't know that secrecy could feel like a gift until it started cutting.
I only knew that, for the first time in my life, being seen felt more dangerous than being wanted.
And I still asked her for fries.