26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Evan
Backstage swallowed her whole.
One second, Lila was under the lights with her chin high and her voice shining through mine like she'd been born to ruin me in harmony. The next she was gone behind the curtain, walking in a straight line like if she paused, she'd either scream or set the building on fire.
The crowd kept roaring. They didn't care that I'd just turned the stage into a live grenade. They wanted more. More of the music. They wanted more chemistry, and more proof that the people under the lights were bleeding in an entertaining shape.
I smiled because that was the job.
The band launched into the next song behind me, and I hit the first line half a second late. Miles caught my eye from behind the kit. His expression said, You absolute idiot. Fair. I'd had worse reviews.
I pushed through the verse, let the crowd carry the chorus, and tried not to look toward the wing. Tried not to think about Lila's face when the band slipped into her hook. The flash of betrayal. The second she realized what I'd done.
Not her track, not her file. I wasn't stupid enough to steal her work. Just arrogant enough to think wrapping her hook around mine in front of thousands of people would feel like giving her the stage instead of dragging her into a story she hadn't agreed to tell.
Growth was going beautifully. Someone get me a sticker.
By the time the song ended, my pulse was wrong. Not fast. Wrong. Like my body had stayed onstage and the rest of me had followed her into the hallway.
I turned away from the mic and caught Miles pointing one drumstick toward the side. Go. Then he twirled the other stick and mouthed, Fix it.
I motioned vaguely toward the crowd. He mouthed, I'll vamp. It was not subtle. The man had all the finesse of a cymbal crash in a library.
I stepped back from the mic. "You still with us?"
The crowd screamed.
"Good." I smiled wider, felt worse. "Miles is going to pretend this next part was planned."
Miles hit a drum fill that made the room explode. I walked offstage before anyone official could stop me.
The stage manager was waiting in the wing with a clipboard and the expression of a woman who had considered homicide and found it logistically inconvenient.
"No," she said.
"I need two minutes."
"You need supervision."
"I know where she went."
"That is not the comforting sentence you think it is."
The crowd roared behind me as Miles led them into some ridiculous call-and-response. Harper would have loved it. Lila would have called it desperate crowd CPR. She would have been right.
I wiped sweat off my face with the bottom of my shirt and immediately realized I had made the wrong choice when the stage manager's eyes narrowed.
"Do not walk into that girl's dressing room half-naked and sweaty while the internet is foaming at the mouth."
"I'm wearing a shirt."
"Barely."
I looked down the hall. Lila's door was shut. Of course it was. The paper with her name on it trembled slightly from the bass thumping through the walls.
LILA RUSSELL. Spelled right. I'd fixed it earlier when no one was looking, peeled off the one missing L, wrote the second one in with a Sharpie I stole from a lighting tech, and pretended that didn't count as tenderness.
The stage manager followed my gaze. "You're lucky I respect your talent," she said.
"I get that a lot."
"No, you don't." She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "You pulled a live stunt with her song after twenty-four hours of paparazzi garbage and fan speculation. If you go in there and make my night harder, I will have you removed from your own tour."
I believed her. Deeply.
"Can I knock?" I asked.
She stared at me. "For the love of God," she said, "start there."
I went to Lila's door. My hand hovered for one second too long. Pathetic. I knocked.
No answer. I knocked again, heavier. "Lila."
Nothing. The song onstage hit the bridge. Miles was stretching it like taffy, bless his chaotic little heart.
"Open the door," I said.
"No."
Her voice came through the wood sharp enough to cut.
Anger meant she was still upright. "I'm not here to fight."
"I don't care."
"Okay." I leaned closer to the door. "Then don't fight. Just talk."
Silence. I pictured her on the other side. Pacing, hands shaking, face flushed from the lights, mouth probably red from singing and fury. The image did not help me behave.
"You can't be here," she said.
"I can. I am."
"Your set is happening."
"I'm between songs."
"You don't get to be between songs for emotional crimes."
Despite everything, a laugh tried to get out of me. I swallowed it down. "Fair."
"You hijacked my song," she snapped. "Onstage. In front of thousands of people."
"I know."
"You used it."
"I sang it," I said. "Because it's yours."
"That's not better."
It wasn't. I knew that now. Knew it from the way her voice shook around the edges, not weak, just furious enough to be wounded.
I rested my hand against the door, flat, not pushing. "You sounded unstoppable."
"Stop doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Making it feel..."
She cut herself off. I closed my eyes for half a second. "Making it feel what?"
No answer. The handle didn't move.
"Lila."
"Don't say my name like that."
"Like what?"
"Like it's a key."
That landed. Because maybe I did. Maybe I kept thinking if I said her name the right way, some old door would open, and we'd both get to pretend I hadn't built half the wall myself.
I dropped my hand from the door. "Are you alone?"
A pause. "Yes."
"Are you safe?"
The silence shifted. I hated that I could tell. Hated that I still knew the shape of her pauses.
"I'm safe," she said.
"Then open the door."
"I should not."
"No," I said. "Probably not."
That earned another pause. Confusion. My only remaining strategy.
"I need you to say something first," she said.
"What?"
"Say you're not here because you think you can just win."
The word scraped. Win. As if this were a game, not two people taking turns bleeding on the floor and calling it proof.
I leaned my forehead against the wood. "I'm here because I couldn't breathe after that."
"That's your problem."
"I know."
"I'm not fixing it for you."
"I know that too."
The lock clicked. My chest tightened.
The door opened a crack.
Lila stood on the other side in stage clothes, cheeks flushed, hair a little wild, eyes too bright. She looked like she had walked out of a fire and was furious with herself for missing the warmth.
My hands stayed at my sides, empty, visible. Very adult of me, considering my brain had become static with her standing three feet away.
"Hi," I said.
Her eyes narrowed. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't look at me like that."
I dragged my gaze back up from her mouth. "I'm trying not to."
"Try harder. You're a grown man."
"You're right."
That startled her. Not much. Enough.
I stayed in the hallway, didn't touch the door, didn't step forward.
The stage thundered behind us. A cheer rose through the walls, and I felt the tug of it like a hook in my back.
My job, my crowd, my machine. And Lila in front of me, arms crossed, furious because I'd used the machine to reach her.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said. "You made it a circus."
"I made it a moment."
Her face changed. Bad answer. I knew it the second it left my mouth.
"For who?" she snapped. "For you? For the crowd? For the internet?"
"For you," I said.
She scoffed. "That's a lie."
My jaw tightened. Not because she was wrong. Because she wasn't wrong enough.
"I wanted it to be for you," I said.
Her expression faltered for half a second. I kept going before I could clean it up and make it prettier than it was.
"But part of me wanted everyone to know you still heard me."
The ugly little truth, no guitar solo to hide it, no lights, no crowd screaming over the worst of it. Just me, saying the thing that made me look like exactly the kind of man she was scared to love.
Lila stared at me. "That's not an apology."
"No," I said. "But it's the truth."
Her mouth parted, then closed. Behind me, a crew member rounded the corner, saw us, and immediately studied the ceiling like it held the secrets of the universe. Good man.
Lila noticed too. Her shoulders went stiff. I hated how fast the world got into the room with us, even when the room was a hallway and a door cracked three inches open.
"I heard you on stage this morning," I said. "I watched you tonight."
"I know."
"You're shrinking when you walk past me, and then you get out there and burn the place down."
She shook her head. "Don't romanticize this."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"Maybe." I took that hit because it belonged to me. "But you deserved the room."
"It was never mine," she said. "They were screaming for the story."
I wanted to tell her no. Wanted to tell her every person in that crowd knew the difference between gossip and art. But I'd been famous long enough to know better. Some of them wanted the story. Some of them wanted the mess. Some of them had come for blood with a chorus attached.
"Maybe some did," I said.
Her eyes flicked to mine. "But some of them heard you," I added. "I know they did."
She looked away, which meant she wanted to believe it and hated me for noticing.
"You have to go back," she said.
"I will."
"In a minute is not a plan."
"It's more of a crime against scheduling."
Her mouth twitched. Barely. I felt it like applause. Then she caught herself and scowled. "Do not make jokes while I'm mad at you."
"You like jokes while you're mad."
"I like murder while I'm mad."
"Noted."
The bass thumped through the walls again, louder now. Miles had maybe thirty more seconds before someone started asking where the lead singer went and why the drummer was leading a chant about local hot dogs.
Lila's fingers tightened on the edge of the door.
"Tell me you didn't feel it," I said.
Her gaze snapped back to mine. "I felt trapped."