The words slip out before I can brace them. Bare. Exposed.
I hadn’t planned to say it like that.
Evelyn doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t rush to fill the silence.
She waits.
Then, carefully, “Is that what you wanted?”
I stare at the floor. The scuffed tile. The shadow of my own shoes.
“I don’t know anymore,” I whisper.
But I do.
I know exactly how fear twisted my words. How pride sharpened them. How fast he took them at face value.
I press my forehead to the wall and breathe.
Evelyn doesn’t rush me.
She doesn’t soften the silence or fill it with strategy. She lets it sit between us, steady and patient, like she knows this is the moment that actually matters.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, knees drawn in, water bottle forgotten at my side.
“I didn’t want him to go,” I say finally. The words feel strange in my mouth. Too honest. Too late. “I wanted him to fight. I wanted him to stay.”
Evelyn exhales quietly. “But that’s not what you said.”
“No,” I whisper. “It isn’t.”
Silence again.
This one feels heavier. Like a door closing somewhere far away.
“I can put the dissolution on hold,” Evelyn says. “Temporarily. But I need to know what you want, Lila. Not what feels safe. What’s true.”
My throat tightens. My vision blurs.
“I think,” I swallow. “I think I lost him.”
My voice cracks.
Evelyn stays quiet.
And on the other side of the wall, the band starts rehearsing again without me.
I stay on the floor.
Cam is gone.
And I don’t know how to call him back.
Chapter thirty
Cam
The first snap tells me everything.
