37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lila
The car door opened, and sound hit me first.
Not music, not cheering, but a wall of voices layered over each other, sharp and hungry. Names shouted with the confidence of people who thought they owned access. Camera shutters snapped in bursts. A security guard spoke near my shoulder, telling me where to step.
I tightened my grip on my clutch and kept my face neutral as I slid out of the car.
The carpet was brighter than I expected. Floodlights washed the whole entrance in white, making the night feel staged. A long red runner stretched toward the theater doors, blocked off by barricades packed with fans and phones held high.
Paparazzi weren't present. They were feral.
They leaned over ropes, bodies pressing forward, calling out questions and commands like they were ordering coffee.
"Lila, look here!"
"Lila, who are you wearing?"
"Lila, show the leg!"
"Lila, are you dating anyone?"
"Lila, is it true you wrote it about him?"
"Lila, how does it feel watching your parents' love story on-screen?"
Grant's hand touched the small of my back, guiding me forward. A security guard moved slightly ahead, creating a pocket of space that still didn't feel like enough.
I walked anyway.
My dress was bold, chosen for myself. It clung to me in a way that made me feel sharp instead of exposed. The slit showed my leg when I stepped, and the open back kept my posture honest. I couldn't hunch. Couldn't hide. Couldn't make myself smaller without the dress calling me a coward.
Rude dress, but useful dress.
I kept my chin up. I kept my pace steady.
I was nervous about being seen as myself, and that fear tried to climb into my throat. I pushed it down with the sentence I had practiced until it stopped feeling like a line and started feeling like a weapon.
I'm proud of this film and my music, and I'm here to celebrate the work with full credit where it belongs.
Finn and Harper weren't on the carpet with me, because this part belonged to handlers and teams and industry people with badges. They were waiting inside. I could still hear Harper in my head.
Say it again and again.
Grant leaned close. "Eyes forward. Smile. Give them your best angle and nothing else."
My smile was real enough to pass.
I turned my face slightly toward the cameras when they called my name, letting them have their shots. I paused once at the step-and-repeat wall, angled my body, let the dress do its job.
"Lila!" someone shouted, louder than the rest. "Where's Evan?"
My pulse jumped. My smile didn't change. I didn't answer.
I moved on.
The carpet funnel narrowed toward the interview zone.
Reporters stood in clusters behind small branded backdrops, microphones pointed outward like weapons.
Publicists hovered at their clients' shoulders, ready to cut questions off, ready to drag people away, ready to smile like hostage negotiators in contour.
Grant handed off a quick introduction to a network reporter. I nodded, smiled, answered the safe questions about the film, about the song, about how surreal it was to hear something I had written become the emotional final note of a movie my father had written about my parents.
I did not talk about Evan.
I watched the carpet out of the corner of my eye anyway, because my body was stupid and honest.
Then I saw him.
He was near the far end, stepping out of a different car, separated by a stretch of red and a crowd of cameras. He wore a dark suit that fit him too well, collar open, no tie. His hair was brushed back. His face looked composed in the way it had on the podcast. Controlled. Careful.
He was flanked by his team, security, and a publicist who looked like she had memorized ten crisis plans and hated every single one.
He lifted his head, gaze sweeping the carpet in a practiced way.
Then his eyes found mine.
The world narrowed.
For a beat, the noise dulled, as if someone had turned the volume down. The last three months tried to crash into me all at once. The coffee shop kiss. The promise about spotlight. The sunsets. The silence.
Evan's gaze held mine from across the distance. Not dramatic in the way movies did it. More dangerous than that.
A look that said I see you. A look that didn't ask for anything.
My fingers tightened around my clutch until the metal edge bit my palm.
Grant's hand touched my elbow. "Keep moving."
I nodded and turned back toward the interviewer in front of me.
My smile stayed in place. My heart did not.
I answered a question about writing the song in a hotel room, about how I wanted the end credits to leave people with a punch of feeling.
The reporter nodded, thrilled. "Congratulations. It's beautiful."
"Thank you."
I stepped away as Grant guided me toward the next station.
Evan moved closer down the carpet at the same time, pulled by his own schedule, dragged by cameras. Our paths weren't supposed to cross yet.
The universe laughed.
A sharp voice cut through the noise.
"Lila Russell!"
My head snapped toward the sound before I could stop it.
River Hale was walking straight toward me. Of course he was.
The lead actor of Wedding Crasher didn't move through a premiere so much as commit grand theft attention. Every camera on the carpet seemed to swing toward him at once, like metal filings to a magnet with cheekbones.
He was tall in the unfair, studio-lot way movie stars were tall.
Dark suit. Open collar. Hair styled to look careless in a way that had probably taken forty-five minutes and three assistants.
He looked every inch the leading man who had spent the last six months staring out from billboards as the fictional version of Oliver Russell.
He also looked like a publicist's sleep paralysis demon.
River Hale had already gone viral twice that week. Once for telling a morning show host that his favorite part of playing Oliver was "weaponized yearning and excellent pants." Once for accidentally revealing he had stolen a prop ring from set because he got emotionally attached to it.
Hollywood loved him. His PR team did not.
River cut through the carpet traffic with a grin sharp enough to count as a liability. His publicist trailed two steps behind him, mouthing something that looked a lot like don't you dare.
River dared.
"Lila," he said, reaching me with both hands out like we were old friends meeting for brunch instead of two people standing in the crosshairs of seventy cameras. "There she is. The daughter. The soundtrack. The emotional damage."
I blinked. "Hi."
River took one of my hands and bowed over it like we were in a period drama and he had misplaced his horse. Camera flashes exploded.
Grant's smile tightened beside me.
River straightened, eyes bright. "I need to tell you something before they drag me to another microphone and ask me how it felt to kiss a woman playing your mother."
My mouth twitched despite myself. "That does sound haunting."
"It was art," River said. "Also, your dad hovered beside the monitor looking like he wanted to murder me professionally."
"That sounds like him."
River pressed a hand to his heart. "Which is how I knew I was playing Oliver correctly."
Grant cleared his throat. "River, we're on a tight schedule."
River looked at him, delighted. "You must be Grant. You have the energy of a man who has confiscated three phones and a vape today."
Grant stared at him.
River's grin widened. "Four phones?"
"Five," Grant said.
River pointed at me. "Good. You need that energy around you."
I should have been annoyed. I almost was. But River's chaos was so unfiltered, so wildly unbothered by the machinery around us, that it knocked something loose in my chest.
He was not subtle. He was not safe. He was not part of Evan's orbit. He was the movie's lead actor, the beautiful disaster currently playing the fictionalized version of my father, and he looked like he had decided the red carpet was a board game he intended to cheat at.
River leaned closer, his grin dropping into something almost sincere. "For what it's worth, your song wrecked the whole cast. We heard it during the final cut, and half the room pretended they weren't crying."
I looked at him, thrown. "Really?"
"Absolutely. I had to look at the ceiling for three full minutes. Very masculine. Very contained."
My laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
River's expression sharpened with satisfaction, like he'd won something.
Then his gaze flicked past me. I knew before I turned.
Evan was close now, pulled down the carpet by his team. His eyes were on me, then on River's hand still loosely holding mine, then back on my face.
Not jealousy exactly. Awareness.
Cameras swiveled immediately, predators catching motion.
River noticed too. His face lit with a terrible idea.
"Oh," he said.
Grant's head snapped toward him. "No."
River's grin turned lethal. "Yes."
"River," his publicist warned from behind him.
River ignored her entirely and offered me his arm with the theatrical gall of a man who had never met a consequence he couldn't charm into a headline.
"I have been instructed to create wholesome film-family moments tonight," he said. "This seems wholesome adjacent."
"Does it?"
"No," he admitted. "But it will photograph beautifully."
Grant leaned close. "Your call. Not his."
I could have stepped back. I could have laughed it off. I could have let Grant do his job and move me along.
Instead, I looked toward Evan.
He had stopped, eyes on me, not River. Waiting. Not pushing. Not claiming. Just waiting.
I slid my arm through River's.
His grin turned victorious. "Excellent. The plot thickens, but in a legally defensible way."
"I feel like your publicist should have a tranquilizer dart," I said.
"She does. I switched it with a vape pen."
"River," his publicist snapped.
"Kidding," he called without looking back. "Mostly."
Evan's publicist started to step forward. River beat her to it.