We both freeze for half a second because the synchronization is muscle memory, years of it. That has Mrs. Mac clinching her pearls. People around us are starting to glance over.
I don’t care.
Za’s breathing is uneven now.
“You know what hurt the most?” she continues. “It wasn’t even that you slept with him. It wasn’t that you fell in love. It was that you let me find out like that!”
I blink rapidly. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”
“But you did,” she says. “You let me look stupid in my own house.”
“I was scared,” I admit. “I was scared if I told you, I’d lose you immediately.”
“And you thought lying was better?” she demands.
“I wasn’t lying,” I say weakly.
“You were hiding it,” she counters. “And hiding is lying with extra steps.”
That almost makes me laugh because it’s such a Za thing to say, but the moment is too raw.
“I hated you,” she says suddenly.
My chest caves in.
“I hated you for a minute,” she clarifies, voice breaking. “Because I kept thinking, ‘Out of everyone in the world, why him?’”
“I didn’t plan it,” I whisper.
She lets out a hollow breath. “That’s what you don’t get. It doesn’t matter if you planned it. It happened.”
Silence stretches between us for a second. Then she looks at me properly.
Not at my jacket with his number. Not at the cameras.
At me.
“You look tired,” she says.
“I am.”
“Are you happy?” she asks again.
I hesitate.
“Yes,” I say. “And no.”
She nods slowly. “Same.”
Another roar from the crowd. Another shift in the game.
“I don’t have it in me to beef with you anymore,” she says finally.
I blink. “What?”
“I’m tired too,” she repeats. “I don’t want to carry this around with me on tour.”
I swallow back the tears.
