And then, at midnight, when the apartment was too quiet and the walls were too close and she couldn't avoid it any longer, she opened her phone and started watching the footage.
Alex's face filled her screen, golden in the morning light, talking about tide pools and his mother and why fragile things were worth protecting. His voice washed over her like a wave, and Lily let herself sink into it—the memory of salt air and warm sand and the way he'd looked at her when he thought she wasn't watching.
She watched for hours. Every clip. Every frame. The way his eyes crinkled when he almost smiled. The unconscious gesture of running his hand through hishair when he got excited about a topic. The moment—captured accidentally—when he'd reached out to brush a curl from her face, his expression so tender it made her chest ache.
By 3 AM, she was crying.
By 4 AM, she was editing the final cut—the one she was ready to post for the world to see.
And by the time the sun crept over Los Angeles, bleeding pink and gold through her unwashed windows, Lily had created something she'd never made before.
Something honest.
At 6 AM, the video went live.
She was just stepping out of the shower, towel wrapped around her hair, when her phone rang.
Not a text. Not an email. An actual phone call, from the one number that still made her stomach clench with complicated dread.
Dad.
She glanced at the time. 8:03 AM. She had less than an hour before she needed to be at Jessica's office.
She could let it go to voicemail. She should let it go to voicemail. Whatever he wanted to say, she wasn't in the right headspace to hear it—not after the night she'd had, not with her defenses this low.
Her thumb hit accept anyway.
"Lily." John St. John's voice was clipped, the same tone he used in boardrooms and conference calls. "Your assistant said you were unreachable for two weeks. I assume there's an explanation."
Hi, Dad. Nice to hear from you too. How's the weather in Connecticut?
"There was a booking error," she said, keeping her voice carefully neutral as she padded toward her closet. "I ended up on the wrong island. No cell service."
"For two weeks?"
"It's a protected conservation area. Very remote."
A pause that somehow conveyed disappointment more effectively than words ever could. "I see. And I suppose it didn't occur to you to find a way to contact anyone? To let peopleknow you were alive?"
"The supply boats only come every two weeks, Dad. There wasn't exactly a FedEx drop box."
"This is exactly what I mean, Lily." His voice sharpened. "This career of yours—if we can even call it that—has made you completely irresponsible. No contingency plans. No professional infrastructure. You disappear for weeks and expect the world to just... wait for you."
She'd heard variations of this speech a hundred times. Usually, she weathered it in silence, waiting for him to run out of steam. Today, something felt different. Rawer. Like the protective layer she usually wore had been scraped away somewhere between Alex's dock and this moment.
"Your mother called me," he continued, and Lily's stomach dropped. "She saw some video online this morning. Something about an island and sea turtles and—" He made a dismissive sound. "She's worried you're throwing away your career over some environmentalist phase."
Phase.
She immediately bristled.
"It's not a phase, Dad."
"Isn't it? First it was photography. Then YouTube. Then 'influencing.'" He said the word like it tasted bad. "And now, what—you're going to become a conservation activist? Chain yourself to trees?"
"Would that be so terrible?"
"It would be unfocused. Unrealistic. Just like everything else you've?—"
