18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Lila
The storm hit the way a bad mood hits a party: sudden, loud, and personal.
Rain struck the roof of the tour bus in a frantic rhythm. Thunder cracked hard enough to rattle the windows. The engine coughed, shuddered, then died somewhere between the middle of nowhere and definitely-not-civilization.
The driver climbed down from the cab and complained about the alternator as he inspected the engine. Grant pressed the button on his walkie and swore into it, gripping it tightly as if he could summon a miracle with profanity. And the Wi-Fi? Dead. Of course. The modern apocalypse.
"No signal, no snacks, backup battery’s shot," Finn reported, tossing his phone aside. "We’re settlers now. Somebody fetch a butter churn."
"You ate the good snacks," Harper said from somewhere behind a curtain.
"That's called survival."
"That's called theft."
I didn't even flinch. I'd hit my limit hours ago. Now I stared out the fogged-up window. Arms crossed so tight they might as well have been structural support.
Lightning forked across the sky, white and sharp, splitting the clouds over a long stretch of road and nothing else.
Of course this happened now, of course I was stuck here, with him.
Why Evan was on my bus remained a mystery involving broken AC, bad routing, and Finn refusing to share oxygen with "that many ball sacks." Apparently Arcadia Drive's bus had become a locker room with wheels, and ours had been declared the temporary refuge.
Naturally, the universe took one look at that and said, funny.
So there Evan sat across from me, acting like the tension between us wasn't currently registering at DEFCON 1.
He looked rumpled instead of perfect, which was honestly worse.
Hoodie unzipped over a wrinkled black tank, damp hair curling at his temples, jaw shadowed like sleep had filed a complaint and lost. One knee bounced lightly, betraying the calm he was trying to sell everyone.
Still unfairly hot, still sitting close enough that I could smell rain on his hoodie along with the faint woodsmoke scent that used to cling to his skin after late nights outside venues.
I wasn't looking. He glanced up like he could feel me not-looking.
"Remember the old van?" he asked, voice almost drowned out by the storm.
"Which one? The one that smelled like regret and string cheese?"
His mouth twitched. "Yeah. That one."
A laugh got out before I could stop it, short and startled and treacherous. "We broke down outside that truck stop with the bathroom that had a pet lizard in it."
"God, yeah." He leaned back, one hand resting on his knee. "We wrote the chorus for 'Blood Honey' sitting on a curb eating gas station churros."
"You played it with powdered sugar on your strings."
"And you said it was the sexiest thing you'd ever seen."
"I lied."
His eyes stayed on mine, holding my gaze when I couldn't look away. My smile lingered too long.
That was the problem with memory. It had no manners. It arrived uninvited, kicked its boots onto the furniture, and started touching things.
The bus went quiet in pockets. Finn and Harper bickered softly near the bunks. Someone at the front called about roadside assistance. Rain kept punching the roof. The emergency lights washed the aisle in a dull amber glow that made everything feel temporary and weirdly intimate.
Evan rubbed his thumb over the side of his hand, an old tell. Not nervous exactly, just restless.
I looked away before I could start cataloging all the things I still knew about him. Too late.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Dead bus, thunderstorm, no Wi-Fi, protein dust for food. Thriving."
"Still funny when cornered."
"Still irritating when breathing."
"Fair."
The almost-smile came back and hit harder than it should have.
I shifted in my seat. My setlist, folded in my lap, felt heavy. I'd meant to review tomorrow's transitions. Instead, I sat across from my ex. Rain turned the windows into blurred silver sheets. My traitorous brain replayed every bad idea we'd ever had in a vehicle.
Evan leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. The aisle between us suddenly felt much smaller.
"I wrote the second verse about you," he said.
I stilled. "Which song?"
His look said, Don't make me say it, which was rude because making him say things used to be one of my favorite hobbies.
"You know which."
I did. Of course I did. The lyric came back before I could stop it.
You were the quiet in my chaos, the heartbeat under static.
I stared at the rain-smeared window. "Yeah, well, what songs weren't about me?"
His silence answered before he did. "Some," he said.
"Wow. Romantic."
"You asked."
He huffed a small laugh, then it faded. "That one was that was."
My fingers tightened around the setlist until the paper creased. "That's not fair," I said.
"Nothing about us ever was."
I hated that line. I hated that it sounded true.
The bus rocked slightly when another gust hit. Somewhere up front, the driver cursed. Finn said something about butter churn safety regulations. Harper told him to shut up before she made him sleep under the bus.
Normal sounds, tour sounds, everything that should have kept the moment from turning into what it was turning into.
Evan's hand moved slowly across the aisle, not sneaky, not smooth, careful enough to give me all the time in the world to stop him. His fingers settled on my knee, warm through denim, barely any pressure, a touch that should not have felt like a match dropped into gasoline.
I stared at his hand. The scar across his knuckle was paler than the rest of his skin. I remembered tracing it in bed, half-asleep, asking if he'd ever stop fighting the world long enough to let it miss him.
He'd said, Only if you keep me busy.
I had. For a while.
My knee didn't move. Neither did his hand. My body tilted toward him with humiliating loyalty, every cell apparently having missed the meeting where we'd decided to be over him.
His thumb moved once, not a stroke, not quite, just enough to make the air in my lungs misbehave.
"Lila," he said, low and careful, not a demand.
That was worse.
I looked up. His eyes weren't calm anymore. Good was better than calm. Calm Evan made me want to throw things. This Evan, damp and tired and too close, looked like he was one bad decision away from becoming honest.
My lips parted. His gaze dropped to them.
The rain fell heavily overhead, giving us cover nobody had asked for. Around us the bus felt smaller, warmer, like every sleeping bunk and abandoned hoodie and empty snack wrapper had agreed to keep its stupid mouth shut.
He shifted closer. I didn't stop him. I didn't move closer either. Tiny technicality. Important to no one.
His hand stayed on my knee. Without thinking, I moved mine before I gave it permission, fingers caressing the cuff of his hoodie. A terrible idea. A familiar one.
He looked down at my hand, then back up at me.
For one suspended second, the storm had nothing on us.
Then the bus jolted hard. The overhead lights flickered back to life, bright enough to kill a fantasy at fifty paces.
"Power's back!" someone yelled from the front.
Finn popped his head out from his bunk curtain. "Bless the gods of electricity and mediocre snacks!"
I bolted up like I'd been caught stealing contraband, moving so fast the seat creaked. Evan's hand dropped from my knee, and the cold hit where his warmth had been.
Absolutely rude of physics.
"I need air," I muttered, already halfway down the aisle.