Page 17 of Last Chorus (A Perfect Song Duet #2)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

evangeline

R ye’s obnoxious comment comes at the perfect time, interrupting the equally unbearable and euphoric experience of being in Wilder’s arms again.

I’m likewise grateful when not five minutes later, Anita, Sandra, and the team of stylists arrive.

Despite coming straight from the airport, our publicist and PA barely stop to greet us.

Anita herds everyone to the master suite while Sandra runs through our timeline for the day, including where we’ll change after the event and the afterparties we’re expected to attend.

My last glimpse of Wilder is of him talking quietly to Rye near the windows. I shouldn’t be surprised when he turns his head, but I am. Our eyes meet, his crinkling in a subtle smile. Then Sandra’s arm steers me around a corner .

As chaos cyclones around Lily and me, I don’t miss the disgruntled looks she throws me. But there are too many strangers in the room for her to grill me about Wilder—a gift I’m glad to accept. I’m not sure I’d have the fortitude to deflect her questions or downplay the gravity of what happened.

Wilder holding me.

Me, voluntarily being held.

Soon enough, the mayhem settles into a well-oiled machine. Anita and Sandra come and go, phones glued to either their hands or ears. Lily takes pity on me, drawing me into a familiar rhythm of lighthearted banter as the stylists have their ways with us.

As we chat and laugh, more walls fall inside me, and I remember what having a best friend feels like. What having Lily feels like. And I don’t know how I survived the last six months without her.

There’s only one serious moment between us. We’re sitting on a couch with curlers in our hair and sheet masks on our faces. During a lull in conversation, she catches my eye and whispers, “I’ve missed you.”

Emotion floods me and I’m forced to blink rapidly at the ceiling to keep tears from spilling over.

The facialist rushes over in a tizzy, worried that product has dripped in my eye.

It takes me a while to convince her I’m fine, which Lily finds hysterical.

She then laughs so hard she somehow gets product in her eye.

It isn’t until the makeup artist goes to work on my face and I’m forced to stay still and silent that thoughts of Wilder intrude.

For the next forty minutes, I relive every second of this morning on a loop.

From my first sight of him at the window against a backdrop of blue, to my overwhelming impulse to see his face and talk to him.

His clear eyes, the compassion and tenderness in them.

His shockingly insightful replies to my questions and confessions.

When he hugged me, in the moment all I felt was the comfort and rightness of his embrace. I felt sheltered. Safe. Only now, in hindsight, does dangerous awareness bloom.

Sitting motionless becomes increasingly difficult as I experience a delayed physical response to his touch linked to older, still potent memories. His bare, sweat-slick chest against mine. The flex of his hips between my thighs. Fingers clenched in my hair. A hot palm on my throat.

Low, rasping whispers in my ear.

“That’s my girl. Such a good little slut, dripping all over my cock. Fuck, baby. You’re the most beautiful mess I’ve ever seen.”

Memories spiral out of control, turning my face and chest red and blotchy. My makeup artist has a silent panic attack.

“Can we turn the A/C on?” I ask weakly.

Seated a few feet away, Lily takes one look at me and her eyebrows disappear beneath her bangs.

I avoid her laughing eyes and narrow my focus on the movement of brushes on my face.

Then on the stylist showing me options for shoes and purses.

On the cheerful woman who steps forward to style my hair.

On Lily as she shares the woes of sleep regression with everyone in the room.

On Anita when she reappears to prep us for questions on the red carpet.

But no matter how hard I try to stay present, Wilder is everywhere inside me. Waiting behind every blink, in every silent moment. He’s smoke seeping through all my cracks. A skeleton key opening all of my locked doors.

“I know you feel lost right now. That’s okay. Feel what you feel. But someday soon you’re going to remember how powerful you truly are. ”

After all this time, he still believes in me. And I can’t for the life of me understand why.

Justified or not, I abandoned him at the lowest point in his life. And when he graduated from rehab and came to my parents’ house? When he tried to make amends to me? I had no compassion at all. I couldn’t see him. I could barely hear him.

In the three months he was gone, beyond shaping my pain into songs that would become Glow’s most acclaimed album, I didn’t process my heartbreak.

I chewed on it. Magnified it. Drowned in it.

Outwardly, I put on a brave face. Acted like I was coping.

Internally, I was digging and laying the foundational bricks of my first, highest wall, behind which I hoarded my misery.

I became fixated on my nyctophobia, convinced that overcoming my lifelong fear of the dark was somehow synonymous with healing.

Every night, I’d crawl into my closet and sit in catatonic terror until dawn.

Eventually, I grew desensitized to the phobia.

But there was no healing. I hadn’t liberated myself—I’d saturated myself with darkness.

When I saw Wilder again, it was the morning after a particularly bad night.

Mentally, I was still in my dark closet.

So when he took accountability for his actions and asked me what he could do to make it right, I laughed in his face.

I said heinous, unforgivable things— things that make me cringe to think about now, that stunned my parents so badly they barely spoke to me for days afterward.

But Wilder just stood there and accepted my hostility. He didn’t defend himself, not even from my worst, wildest accusations. When I ran out of steam, he said only, “I hear you,” and walked away from me like I had from him.

Or I thought he had.

As impossible as it seems, he stayed my friend from afar. My faithful shadow, even when it was so dark I couldn’t see him.

“You didn’t take your allergy medicine, did you?”

Lily’s overly bright voice brings me back to the present as I’m being zipped into my dress. I frown, about to ask what she’s talking about, then realize my eyes are burning with tears.

I sniff them back and groan. “Damn. I forgot.”

Within a minute, four people have produced antihistamines. As Lily holds in laughter, I thank them and quickly fabricate a story about the medicated eyedrops waiting for me in the limo.

The topic is quickly forgotten when someone else points out the time.

There’s a flurry of finishing touches to our hair and makeup.

We step into our shoes. Transfer our phones and mini-cosmetics into clutches.

A smiling woman who arrived twenty minutes ago unlocks a case of fine jewelry for us.

Lily and I choose a few pieces to wear, giggling because playing dress-up still hasn’t gotten old.

Anita gives us air kisses and leaves to meet us on the red carpet. Sandra oversees the room being packed up.

In the living room, Rye waits in a charcoal suit to match Lily’s dress.

She admonishes him for looking so good while she’s ovulating.

He gushes over her ethereal beauty. I laugh at their antics, feeling joyful by proximity.

But when they start playfully groping each other and whispering, the brightness inside me dims.

Looking away, I stare toward the windows, the space before them now empty.

“Did Wilder already leave?”

As the question slips out, my face heats. The shocked silence behind me magnifies not only the disappointment in my voice, but the incongruity of me asking in the first place.

With a sigh, I turn to face my friends in time to see Lily land a solid punch to Rye’s stomach. He winces and attempts a neutral expression. But his blue eyes are too bright.

“Never mind,” I say quickly. “Stupid question.”

Obviously Wilder left to meet his bandmates. It’s not like he could have ridden with us, arrived at the event with us.

The sense of loss I feel is completely irrational. So is the fact it lingers until Clay arrives. Then shame takes centerstage inside me, followed swiftly by a dance of irritation and hurt when he says, “I thought we agreed on the cream chiffon dress, not this Morticia Addams shit.”

I pull away from him, glad Lily and Rye are saying goodbye to Emma down the hall.

“For fuck’s sake, Clay. This is vintage Versace.”

His eyes flash and narrow, but before he can say anything, Lily and Rye return.

He’s immediately all gracious words and smiles.

My irritation simmers as we file out to the limo.

When Lily heads for the bench behind the driver, I take the seat beside her.

Clay’s reaction is brief—a clenched jaw and searing glance—before he starts talking sports with Rye.

What happens next is my fault.

I’m not paying enough attention to the conversation, focused mostly on quelling my internal chaos as I gaze out my window at passing scenery.

Then Rye says, “I had no idea you were into baseball, man. We should catch a few Mariners games this summer.”

“This summer?” echoes Clay .

I whip my head around, but it’s too late.

Rye smiles and nods. “You’ll be coming up with Eva, right? God knows we’ll barely see them the first few weeks they’re in the studio. Plenty of time for us to catch a game or two.”

My body flashes cold, every muscle locking, my mind blanking.

Clay’s laugh is a harsh, truncated burst. “What are you talking about? They’re not recording this summer.”

Lily sucks in a shocked breath.

Rye’s eyes dart to me. He blanches, then coughs. “I mean, I, uh—just some wishful thinking on my part. Wouldn’t that be cool?” No one acknowledges the obvious lie.

If I were braver, if I had a voice at all right now, I’d tell Rye this isn’t his fault. I’d take accountability. Come clean to Clay, to my friends, all three of whom I’ve wronged.

For weeks, I’ve offered and omitted pieces of myself as needed. All to maintain a laughable facsimile of control over my life. Now Clay knows I’ve been lying to him, and my friends are probably confused as hell.

“Explain yourself, Eva. Right. Fucking. Now. ”

Scratch that—now they know something is seriously wrong with my relationship. For the first time in front of them, Clay has dropped all pretense. His voice oozes so much menace that I flinch, Lily gasps, and Rye turns toward him with a furious glare.

Before they can come to my defense and make everything a thousand times worse, I force my numb lips to move.

“Later.” I gesture weakly to his window.

Clay glances outside to see that we’re nearing the arena. For the rest of the short drive, he stares at me and seethes.

No one says a word.