Page 7 of Last Chorus

Lily sighs. “Is the point of this story coming anytime soon?”

The moment’s reprieve passes, heaviness sliding back into my chest. “Sophie called my mom freaking out because Evangeline wouldn’t tell her why she wanted an eyepatch. She asked for the number of the child therapist I was seeing.”

Lily’s jaw drops, and I wave dismissively. “Yeah, I was already a mess at seven. Anyway, that weekend I cornered Evangeline and got the truth out of her. Some kid at school had called her a freak and hurt her feelings. I made up a story about how her gray iris meant she was related to fairies. It worked and she took off the eyepatch. But the point is, she’s always locked down her emotions. Compartmentalized them.”

“That’s when you started calling her Fairy,” she surmises.

I swallow the sudden knot in my throat. “Yeah.”

A loaded silence falls, broken only by the soft, rhythmic whistles of Emma’s deep breathing.

Rye’s stare narrows thoughtfully on me. “Except with you.”

Lily looks between us, frowning. “What?”

He turns to her. “Eva has always locked down her feelings around everyoneexcept Wilder. Think about it. In all the years you’ve known her, has she ever really lost it in front of you? Like full-blown emotional meltdown?”

Lily sucks in a breath, glancing at me. She doesn’t have to say anything. I know exactly what day she’s thinking about.

I’d relapsed the night before and hid it as best I could from Evangeline. But she still knew instinctively that something was wrong. The next afternoon, I walkedinto her house full of shame and crippling fear. Lily was there. Evangeline had been crying, her eyes swollen and bloodshot.

After Lily left, she told me she was afraid of the dark, both tangibly and metaphorically. That when I’d shut her out the night before, I’d felt like a darkness she couldn’t find her way out of.

I was too desperate to keep her to tell her she was right. Iwasthe dark, and I was swallowing us both.

Memories and regrets clatter inside me. Fighting for calm, I look up at the knot on the ceiling beam. The afternoon shadows make it look like an eye. I squint, and it seems to wink at me.

Inhale—two, three, four.

Exhale—two, three, four.

I repeat the exercise until my body lets go of the fight-or-flight response. Until my heart stops racing. Until my disjointed thoughts blend and finally ring with a single, harmonious note.

Everyone close to me knows I don’t carry a mere torch for Evangeline.

My entire soul burns for her.

Like I told her when we were kids: everything else,everyone else, will always be background noise. At least for me.

I’ve kept my distance for over six years out of respectfor the very clear boundary she set when I came home from treatment. It was the only form of amends she’d accept. But something else is equally true: my distance was dependent on the conviction she was okay. Healthy and happy. That not only did she not want me, she didn’tneedme.

After today, that conviction is smoke.

I lower my gaze from the ceiling. “If you tell me where Evangeline will be on New Year’s, I’ll teach you how to make the best Nikujaga your parents will ever taste.”

Lily blinks in surprise, then smiles. “Deal.”

CHAPTER THREE

evangeline

Your love was overrated

Way too complicated

A trap to force compliance

Numb all of my defiance

---