“Great. Better than I have in a really long time.”
“Good,” he says, thumbing through what looks like texts. “That’s good.”
“What are you doing with his phone?”
“Evidence erasure and setup. Making it look like he ran. Planting seeds. Tying up loose ends. Got a full day of this ahead.”
Guilt niggles away at me and I frown. Because of me, Silver has taken on the burden of covering up a whole murder.
This is my fault.
“Listen, I can handle it. Let me fix my own mess?—”
“It’s alright,” he cuts me off, still not looking at me. “I’ll handle it. Just remember—not a soul. This never happened.”
“Um… there’s… there’s stuff on his phone. The pics and videos…”
“Already deleted the album. I’ve got to log onto his cloud and delete them from there too. I didn’t look at them and you shouldn’t either.”
I swallow against the thick lump in my throat and nod. “Yeah, I don’t think I want to even know. I saw enough from the stills. Silver… thank you. For everything. For last night, letting me stay here, letting me sleep in your?—”
“You better get ready for your audition,” he interrupts, standing abruptly, like I’ve crossed some invisible line. “Big day. Don’t want to be late.”
He’s already walking out of the kitchen, coffee abandoned on the table.
“Silver—”
“We’ll talk later, Solana.”
But the way he says it, the wall that’s suddenly between us, tells me we won’t. He’s pulling away. After holding me all night—after everything we’ve shared—he’s obviously shutting me out.
He’s shutting down. But why?
I sit alone in his kitchen, drinking his coffee, wearing his clothes, and realize what’s happening. We got too close. We’ve crossed too many lines. Now that the immediate danger is over, he’s trying to rebuild the boundaries between us.
The problem is, I don’t think either of us actually wants them anymore.
But want and should are two different things. Silver’s always been better at should than want.
“—and I’ll wait for you, Samuel Moonshine Hayes, even if it takes a lifetime. Even if the war never ends. Because that’s what you do when you love someone more than life itself,” I drawl, delivering the final words of Magnolia’s climactic monologue. Tears gloss my eyes, threatening to fall but held back by sheer will.
This is the moment that makes or breaks the audition—Magnolia’s profession of undying love as Moonshine leaves for war, not knowing if he’ll return.
Silence stretches for a few heartbeats, then scattered applause breaks out from the handful of people watching auditions.
The three judges lean together at their table, consulting each other. Mr. Davies, the director who’s run the community theater for twenty years,actuallysmiles.
That’s either very good or very bad.
“Thank you, Miss Youngblood,” he says, making a note on his clipboard. “Please wait in the lobby with the other callbacks.”
The next five minutes feel like five hours. Five other girls auditioning for Magnolia stand with me in the lobby, all ofus pretending we’re not sizing each other up, calculating our chances.
Some of them, like Jennifer, have been in every community production since middle school. Others, like Maya, have studied at some fancy theater camp in upstate New York.
“Ladies, please return to the stage.”
We file out, standing in a line facing the judges. My hands shake, but I clasp them in front of me, chin confidently raised. After everything I’ve been through, this shouldn’t scare me.
