6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Lila
The thing no one tells you about dating a rock star in secret is that when it ends, you still have to hear the breakup song.
It started at Starbucks.
I walked in for a basic iced matcha and walked out with my nervous system dressed for war because they were playing the song.
"Say it slow / so I can memorize the sound before you go…"
My hand jerked. I dropped a cake pop, just plop, right onto the floor. It rolled slightly before stopping, as if it too had been emotionally compromised.
I stared at it in mute horror, because of course that would happen. Of course the universe would pick that exact second to add physical comedy to my suffering. The cake pop lay there in its sad little frosting shell, a casualty of love, capitalism, and poor grip strength.
The barista, completely unbothered by the existential shattering of my morning, tilted her head with a sympathetic smile. "Ugh, I cry every time I hear this."
She hadn't just broken me at 9 a.m. She'd handed me the pieces and asked if I wanted room for cream.
I left without the cake pop. I left with the matcha sweating through the plastic cup into my palm, my mouth too dry to taste anything, not even bitterness.
The song followed me out the door, echoing in my head while I walked to my car and pretended my chest wasn't trying to fold itself into a smaller, less dramatic shape.
Then it was TikTok. A slow-motion montage of someone's breakup set to our lyrics, sad font, rain filter, #IfThisIsGoodbye trending like a slap to the face.
I scrolled past it. Then another showed up. Then another. My thumb kept moving, traitorous little gremlin that it was. People cried into cameras. People lip-synced in bathrooms. People wrote captions about losing the love of their life. Our lyrics. My breakup. His voice.
Then the radio. Then my parents started humming it in the kitchen.
"It's catchy!" my mom chirped, blissfully unaware she was harmonizing with my emotional unraveling.
"I think they're using it in a wedding scene now," Dad added. "Very poetic. Bit of a gut-punch."
You have no idea, I thought, staring at my cereal like it had personally betrayed me. Which, to be fair, it kind of had. Cinnamon Life had no business being that aggressively cheerful in the middle of my grief spiral.
The kitchen was bright in that morning way that made falling apart feel impolite.
The counters were clean. My mom's hair was up.
My dad sat in his usual spot with coffee and glasses, looking half-awake and half-ready to argue with a studio executive.
Sam and Dakota were already mid-banter, their mugs held like props in a melodrama.
"I can't wait to see who they cast to play me," Sam announced, eyes gleaming.
Dakota didn't look up from their phone. "No one could capture your essence."
"I know," Sam said solemnly. "That's why I'm worried."
My mom sipped from her mug. "I heard they cut you from the movie completely."
Sam recoiled. "What? I'm the star."
"I know. That's what I said. But apparently you brought up death too much for a romance arc."
"Oh, fine." Sam sighed dramatically, laying her head on Oliver's shoulder. "Let it be lame. Olibear, how could you let them do this to me?"
Dad grimaced. "Don't ever bring up that nickname again."
"She's joking," Dad added quickly. "They didn't actually cut you from the movie."
I chewed my toast quietly, grateful for once that they weren't talking about Evan. Then Mom hummed the chorus under her breath while she rinsed her mug. Dad tapped the beat against the counter with two fingers. I kept my eyes down and pretended the toast required my full attention.
Later, after I finished breakfast and retreated upstairs to the sanctuary of my bedroom, hoodie pulled tight over my head like cotton could keep memories out, there was a soft knock at the door.
"Hey," Sam said through the wood. "Can we talk?"
My stomach sank. "About what?" I asked, trying to sound casual.
The door opened, and she slipped inside, closing it behind her. She didn't sit right away. She looked at me, her face unreadable in that way that meant she'd already solved the mystery and was deciding how much mercy to offer.
"You love him, don't you?"
"What?" I blinked. "I don't know what you're talking about. Love who? Finn?"
Sam gave me a look that was sharp, intuitive, and quietly terrifying. "I'm obsessed with serial killers, Lila. I watch people. I notice things no one else does." She folded her arms. "You're in love with Evan."
A laugh burst out of me, too loud and too broken, hitting the air and falling apart before it fully formed.
"What, because everyone is?"
"No," she said. "Because you've been secretly dating him. And that song? It's about you, isn't it?"
My mouth opened to deny it but nothing came out.
Sam's expression didn't change, but her voice gentled. "Lila, I've known you your whole life. I know what it looks like when someone keeps a relationship sacred and close because they're not ready to let the world chew on it. You're more like me than either of your love-out-loud parents."
My fingers curled into the sleeve of my hoodie.
"You flinched the first time someone called him hot," she added. "Like it wasn't celebrity thirst. Like it was personal."
I stared at my comforter, at the tiny black threads woven through the gray. One had snagged near my knee.
"So," I said, because apparently that was the only word I still owned. "We broke up."
Her face shifted in an instant, horror and readiness and a little sparkle of violence she probably considered a love language.
"I've got an alibi on standby, and the shovel and duct tape are already in the car."
I stared at her.
"Because he broke your heart," she clarified. "He doesn't get to live after that."
"I, uh." I tucked my knees closer to my chest. "I broke up with him."
Sam blinked, then blinked again. "Oh. Wait, what? Are you okay? Was he an asshole? Did he ghost you? Sell bad? Cheat? Bad in bed?"
"No." I pressed my chin to my knees. "None of that."
Her brows knit together. "He was…" I hated the word before it even left my mouth. "Perfect."
Sam's expression sharpened. "Not perfect-perfect," I rushed out.
"Obviously. Nobody is. But he was good to me.
He smelled amazing. Never cheated, at least not that I know of, but honestly he's not the type.
He wanted to go public. He wanted everyone to know.
He kept asking, and I kept saying not yet. "
Sam sat down beside me on the bed. She didn't touch me right away, as if she knew I might shatter out of spite.
"Then why?" she asked.
"Because I want to be my own person." The truth sat heavy in my mouth. "I want people to see me, not Evan Walker's girlfriend. I've spent my whole life as Molly and Oliver's daughter. I didn't want to become another footnote in someone else's story."
Sam looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes didn't soften. They steadied.
"I get that," she said. "I really do. But don't you think you could have done it while you were still together?"
There it was. The question, simple and cruel and worse because it wasn't trying to be.
I shook my head. "Honestly? No. He's too overwhelming. He's the kind of person you lose yourself in."
"Or maybe," Sam said carefully, "he's the kind of person you were afraid people would only see."
I looked away. "Sam."
"I'm not saying you were wrong to want your own life." She shifted closer, her shoulder brushing mine. "I'm saying maybe breaking your own heart wasn't the only way to get it."
My eyes stung, and I hated that too. I was tired of being damp, physically, spiritually, just a sad sponge in leggings.
"He's everywhere now," I whispered. "The song is everywhere. People are singing my breakup while they buy coffee and make TikToks and eat cereal in my kitchen."
Sam's mouth tightened, not with pity but with understanding. She pulled me into a hug.
I went stiff for one second, then folded into her because fighting comfort was exhausting and I had already used my dramatic quota on the cake pop.
She didn't try to fix it, didn't give me a speech.
She just held on while I cried into her shoulder, quiet enough that no one downstairs would hear over my mother humming the chorus of the song that was slowly ruining my life.
By the time I walked into tour rehearsal, I was raw.
Not heartbreak-hot raw, not cinematic in a distressed leather jacket with mascara tears and an acoustic soundtrack.
I was the kind of raw that made my skin feel badly packaged, like one wrong note or one passing glance might split the tape holding me together.
Tired, empty, sick of pretending it didn't hurt.
The warehouse space was too bright. The lights hung high overhead, buzzing faintly.
Cases lined the walls. Cables snaked across concrete.
Someone's voice echoed from deeper inside, calling for a mic check.
A crew member rolled a cart past me without looking up, moving with the brisk purpose of tour life, where you didn't stop unless something was on fire or blocking the load-in door.
I took one step inside and stopped.
There he was.
It had only been a few weeks. Weeks are different after heartbreak. They stretch, they rot, they settle into your muscles and act like they own the place.
Evan Walker looked the same. No, worse. He looked better.
Ripped jeans, faded hoodie, that black guitar slung over his shoulder like it had grown there.
He had this effortless gravity to him, as if he didn't walk into a room so much as make the room adjust. His hair was longer, messier.
Under his eyes, faint shadows cut through the pretty.
Good, a petty little part of me thought. Then I hated myself for thinking it. Then I hated him for looking beautiful even when tired, because when I looked tired, I resembled a Victorian child who had seen a ghost and had also failed a math test.
He was tuning his guitar, fingers moving with muscle memory, head tipped down, attention on the instrument. The black cuff of his sleeve rode up enough to show the scar on his knuckle. The one I used to trace when we were half-asleep. The one I had no business remembering.
He looked unaware I was there. Until he wasn't.
His hand stilled on the strings, then he looked up and saw me.
For one suspended, terrible second, the room disappeared. No feedback, no crew, no cart wheels squeaking across concrete. Just Evan, standing beneath rehearsal lights, holding the guitar that knew more about us than most people ever would.
We didn't look away. No flinch, no smile. Just the distance between us, packed tight with everything we weren't saying.
He blinked first. I hated him for it.
I hated the way my body still knew him. The way memory shoved itself forward with both hands. His hoodie under my cheek. His fingers on my wrist. The mint gum and cherry cola taste of him after late-night gas station runs. The way I still wanted to ask if he had eaten.
Absolutely humiliating.
Finn materialized beside me like a human shield. He didn't say anything. He pressed a granola bar into my hand and nudged me gently forward with the kind of practiced care that made it clear he knew exactly what this moment was.
I nodded, swallowed the shards of memory, and walked in.
The warehouse swallowed me up in sound, feedback, tuning strings and drums, checking mics, and someone tapping a cable against the floor to see if it was dead.
Evan turned away. He didn't come over, didn't wave, didn't ask if I was okay.
Which was fine. I hated that too.
Grant appeared near the center of the room with a clipboard and the expression of a man pretending this entire situation wasn't one emotional spark away from becoming a group liability.
"Okay," he called. "Let's get everyone settled. Lila, Finn, Harper, you'll run your opener first. Arcadia Drive, stand by for transition checks."
Arcadia Drive. Not Evan, not the boy who wrote me into every chord. A band, a machine, a name on the schedule.
I adjusted the strap of my guitar and stepped toward the mic. My hands were steady. That surprised me.
Across the room, Evan shifted his weight. I didn't look.
Liar. I looked, only a little. He had turned halfway back, not enough to be obvious, just enough that I caught the line of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers flexed once against the neck of his guitar before going still.
Finn plugged in beside me. "Granola bar after first verse if you survive."
"Make it half."
"Quarter. Budget cuts."
"You're a monster."
"Beloved monster."
Harper clicked her sticks together behind us. "Are we emotionally ready, or should I hit something until we are?"
"Hit something," I said.
She did. The first crack of the snare snapped through the warehouse and made two crew members glance over.
Good. Let them look.
I leaned into the mic. My voice came out rough at first, scraped thin from crying and not sleeping and hearing Evan Walker sing my heartbreak back to the world.
Then the song caught. Finn's guitar slid under mine.
Harper found the pulse. The warehouse stopped being a room I had to survive and became a stage I could claim one note at a time.
I didn't look at Evan through the first verse, not through the chorus, not until the bridge, where the lyric bent too close to something true, and my gaze betrayed me.
He was watching. Not smiling, not performing. Just watching me like he remembered the first bar, the first fall, the first time I sang and forgot to be afraid. His shoulders were tense. His hand rested over the strings of his guitar, muting them without needing to.
That was enough. Just enough to know it still hurt him too.
I faced the mic again and sang the last line like I didn't need him to hear it.
Which was a lie. But at least it was in tune.