28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Evan
The second I stepped back onto the stage, I knew I had fucked up.
Not in the kind of way I could fix by smiling into a spotlight and letting twenty thousand people scream until the guilt blurred.
I mean I knew.
Bone-deep, hands-shaking, guitar-pick-slipping-between-my-fingers knew.
Miles saw it before anyone else did.
Of course he did. He was behind the kit, half-hidden by cymbals and smoke, but he always had a front-row seat to whatever disaster I tried to turn into rhythm. His brows lifted when I crossed back into the light, and he hit the transition fill harder than necessary.
Translation: Get your shit together, Walker.
Which, was a fair point.
The crowd roared like I had done something impressive instead of abandoning my own set to argue with the woman I loved beside a support pillar and a stack of road cases.
A guitar tech shoved my instrument into my hands. I almost missed the strap.
Almost.
He noticed. His eyes widened.
I gave him the stage smile. He relaxed.
That smile had saved me from worse than a missed cue.
It had covered blown notes, panic attacks in greenrooms, nights I forgot what city I was in, interviews where people asked about songs they had no right to touch.
It had led millions of people to believe I was in control because I had learned early that control didn't have to be real.
It only had to photograph well.
Lila's words followed me to the mic anyway.
Your feelings have a spotlight. Mine have consequences.
The line hit harder under actual lights.
Brutal little symmetry.
The front rows were lit by phone screens. Raised and hungry, every lens pointed at me, waiting for the next clip, the next almost-confession, the next proof that the story they'd been building on the internet had a pulse.
And I had fed it. Again.
I had told myself I was giving Lila the room. I had told myself I was refusing to hide. I had told myself a lot of things that sounded better when there was a guitar in my hands.
The band held the intro for the guest block, stretching it long enough to become suspicious. Miles hit another fill.
I stepped to the mic.
"Still with me?"
The crowd screamed. A crowd was easy when it didn't know you personally.
I lifted my guitar pick and hit the first chord of the song.
The sound came out too sharp. My hand wasn't steady. I adjusted on the next measure and leaned into the grit as if it had been intentional.
The crowd ate it up. They always did.
That was the terrifying thing about performing pain. If you carried it with enough confidence, people called it art.
The first verse moved on muscle memory. My mouth knew the lyrics even when my brain was still in the hallway with Lila's face going pale when I reached for her wrist.
I had let go. Instantly. That mattered.
It also didn't erase the fact that I had reached.
My thumb pressed too hard into the pick.
I'm tired of hiding.
I'm tired of being exposed.
There it was.
The song shifted toward her cue. My cue too. The one that was supposed to be smooth. Planned. Cute, even, if either of us were capable of experiencing a normal human emotion without adding gasoline and a bridge.
I glanced toward the wing.
She wasn't there yet.
For half a second, panic cut clean through the stage version of me.
Maybe she wouldn't come. Maybe she was done. Maybe I had pushed too hard, and she had finally chosen the one thing I kept daring her to choose.
Herself.
The thought should have made me proud. It made me feel like someone had taken a house key out of my hand.
Miles's eyes caught mine again. This time, there was no joke in his expression.
Keep going.
So I did. Because that was what I knew how to do.
I sang the next line into a sea of strangers and pretended every word wasn't aimed at the empty space near stage left.
Then the stage manager's shadow shifted in the wing.
Lila stepped out.
The crowd lost its mind. The sound hit like a wave. Her name tangled with mine, messy and hungry, turning us into one chant before she'd even reached her mark.
She walked in with her shoulders set and her face calm. Too calm. The kind of calm people built when they were one breath away from breaking a glass.
Her in-ears were in. Her mic was hot. She moved to her mark like a professional because she was one, because even when I made a mess, she still knew how to work inside it.
That should have made me stop. It didn't.
I turned toward her and sang my line.
She lifted her mic.
Her voice came in clear, strong, trained within an inch of its life.
The crowd roared again. They loved it. Of course they loved it.
Our voices fit. They always had. That was part of the problem. Even angry, even hurt, even with half the venue waiting for us to combust, we could still find each other in a melody.
For three minutes, if I could get three minutes, we were undeniable.
That was the ugly wish under it all. Not romance. Not art. Proof.
I wanted proof she was still here. Proof we still worked. Proof that the thing between us could survive being seen.
I stepped closer on the beat. Not touching. Never touching. But close enough for the front row to scream. Close enough for the cameras to catch chemistry and miss the bruises underneath it.
Lila's eyes cut to mine.
Fury. Fear. Heat too, because she had never been able to hide that from me, not when music was under us, and a microphone was between us like a dare.
I knew that look. I had loved that look. I had used that look.
The realization crawled up my spine cold and mean.
She kept singing. Her voice didn't shake, but I saw the way her fingers tightened around the mic. White at the knuckles. A tiny angle shift at her shoulder, away from me instead of toward.
I moved with her anyway. Half a step. Too small for the crowd to clock. Enough that she knew.
Idiot. Absolute idiot.
Miles hit the snare harder, and I felt the warning in it.
Back off.
I didn't. Because I was hurt and stubborn and still stupid enough to think if she finished the song beside me, it would mean we hadn't lost.
Between lines, I leaned toward her, close enough that only she would hear under the stage noise.
"Finish the song."
The words left my mouth like a command. I heard it too late.
Her eyes flashed.
There. That was the crack. Not in her voice. In her.
I had wanted her onstage so she couldn't vanish. I had made the stage another room she had to escape.
The chorus hit again. The lights swept over us in white and gold. Phones rose higher. The crowd screamed louder.
My body performed on instinct. My mouth sang. My face did whatever face men like me made when the whole room wanted to believe we were born to be watched.
Inside, everything snagged on her sentence.
Mine have consequences.
I angled my mic away for half a second. "After this, you're not running."
Her hand tightened on her mic.
Mistake. Another one.
I knew it as soon as I said it. Not because I didn't mean it. I meant it too much. I was so tired of doors closing and safe answers and watching her vanish into silence that my mouth kept turning fear into orders.
Lila looked out at the crowd. Not at me. At them.
All those faces, with that hunger waiting to decide what she meant.
Her posture changed. The set of her shoulders. The lift of her chin.
Not fear now. Decision.
The bridge approached. This was where I usually worked the crowd, gave them the grin, the walk, the little callout that made the front row lose basic motor skills.
Tonight I stayed near her.
That was the wrong choice.
I knew it, but knowing wasn't fast enough to stop me.
"Look at me," I said.
The demand barely carried over the monitors. It didn't need to.
Her head snapped toward mine. Her eyes blazed.
And there was the truth.
She had been looking at me. For years, probably. In songs. In silences. In rooms she left before I could ask her to stay.
I kept acting like I was the only one watching something disappear.
Lila stepped back. Off her mark.
My next line nearly vanished. I caught it late, sang it rough.
The crowd screamed, thinking it was intentional. Everything could be mistaken for performance if enough lights were aimed at it.
"Lila," I said between lyrics.
She took another step back.
The band kept playing. Miles's fill came in too hard, too sharp, trying to cover the fracture.
"Lila."
She shook her head once. Small. Final.
Then she turned and walked offstage mid-performance.
For half a beat, I forgot the next line. The crowd blurred into light, mouths, and raised phones. Lila's empty mark stared back at me from the other side of the stage.
I had wanted proof. Proof she still cared. Proof we still sounded right together. Proof that the thing between us was real enough to survive being seen.
Instead, I had handed twelve thousand people a front-row seat to her panic.
My fingers tightened on the neck of the guitar.
Miles hit the fill harder than necessary, dragging me back into the song. I found the lyric on instinct. Sang because the machine demanded sound, even when my chest had gone hollow.
She was gone.
And for the first time, I understood that making love public could still make it feel like a theft.
The crowd didn't know what to do with the empty space.
So they screamed at it. Of course they did.
They screamed because silence made people nervous.
They screamed because phones were still recording.
They screamed because they wanted the next beat, the next twist, the part where someone made the moment make sense.
I couldn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
I finished the chorus alone.
My voice cracked on the last note. Not pretty. Not useful. Real enough that the front row screamed louder, as if breaking in public was a bonus feature.
Miles kept the tempo tight. The band did what bands did when the frontman drove the car toward a ditch.
They played like nobody had noticed the wheels leave the road.
The song ended in a wall of sound.
I stepped back from the mic. The crowd roared. My ears rang.
A stage light caught the sweat on my hands, and for one stupid second, I thought about the first time Lila ever sang with me in a room that smelled like dust and cheap coffee.
She had missed a note that night and laughed so hard she had to sit down.
I had loved her right then, before either of us was smart enough to be scared.
Miles counted into the next song.
I was supposed to speak. Say the city's name. Make the room feel chosen. Give them the version of me that always knew what to do next.
Instead, I looked toward the wing.
The stage manager stood there, face carved from pure exhausted fury. She pointed down the hall with two fingers.
Go after her.
Then she pointed at the crowd.
Finish first.
Both orders. Both impossible.
I stepped to the mic.
"Give me one more," I said.
The crowd screamed. The band crashed in.
I don't remember much of that song. My hands played it. My mouth survived it. My body hit the marks because years of touring had wired the show into me deeper than panic.
But my head was in the hallway. In a dressing room. In the split second where her face changed because I'd said "look at me" like one more command.
By the time the last chord hit, I didn't wait for the applause to finish. I yanked the guitar strap over my head and handed it off to a tech who looked alarmed enough to start praying.
Miles caught my arm before I cleared the riser.
"What the hell was that?"
I shook him off, then stopped because I deserved worse than a hand on my arm. "I know."
"No, you don't," he snapped. "You think you know because you made the sad face under the lights. You don't know yet."
That landed. Harder because Miles wasn't usually the philosopher. He was more "throw a drumstick, ask questions later."
"I have to talk to her," I said.
"You have to listen to her."
I stared at him. He didn't blink.
Behind him, the crowd was still chanting, confused but excited, eating the whole mess by the handful.
Miles leaned closer. "You pulled her into the fire and got shocked when she burned."
My jaw worked. No defense came. None that wasn't garbage.
"Yeah," I said.
His expression shifted. Not softer. Less sharp.
"Then don't go in there swinging."
"I won't."
"Evan."
"I won't," I said again. This time, I meant it more.
I left the stage.
The hallway felt colder without the lights. Crew moved around me in cautious little currents, everyone trying not to look like they were looking. A security guy straightened when he saw me. The stage manager was halfway down the hall, headset pushed back slightly, one hand on her clipboard.
She intercepted me before I reached the dressing-room corridor.
"No."
I stopped. "I need to know she's okay."
"She said she can't be a thing for them," the stage manager said. "Try hearing that before you make yourself another emergency."
The sentence hit. Not because it was new. Because it sounded worse from someone who didn't love me.
I nodded once. "Can I knock?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You artists are going to put me in early retirement."
"That a yes?"
"That's a knock. Not an enter. Not a monologue. Not a tragic hallway concert."
"Understood."
"I doubt that."
Fair.
I walked to Lila's dressing room. The door was shut. Locked, probably.
I could still feel the last image of her onstage, stepping back with every camera following. She hadn't run from me. Not only me. She had run from the room I put around us.
I lifted my hand. Stopped. For once, I let the silence sit.
Then I knocked.
Once. Again.
No answer.
"Lila."
Nothing.
The bass from the next transition thudded through the walls. The show was still alive behind me, feeding on whatever it could find.
I rested my palm against the door, flat, not pushing.
"I know I messed up."
No answer.
Good. I deserved the door.
"I'm not asking you to open it so I can explain."
A pause. Maybe. Or maybe I invented it because hope was an idiot.
"I'm asking because I need to know you're safe."
Silence.
Then, very faintly, from the other side.
"I'm safe."
My knees nearly gave. Ridiculous. Rock stars should have stronger knees. Someone should put that in the contract.
"Okay," I said.
I should have left. That would have been the grown-up thing. The respectful thing. The thing a man did when he understood that not every closed door was an invitation to bleed on the carpet.
I stayed. Because I was still me. Because love did not magically turn a person into someone with good timing. Because I had just watched her walk away mid-song and my body had not gotten the message that chasing was making it worse.
"Open the door," I said.
On the other side, I heard a small shift. Maybe her back against the wood. Maybe her breath. Maybe nothing.
"No," she whispered.
One word. No spotlight. No chorus. No room to misread it.
I dropped my hand from the door.
And this time, I listened.