Chapter 16～You’re Avoiding Me
1161 Words
The night before departure was supposed to feel like preparation, but it didn’t. It felt like something being delayed, stretched just a little longer before it had to move forward. The team gathered for a simple send-off dinner, nothing formal, just drinks and conversation, the kind of atmosphere where everything looked easy and unchanged. Evan sat among them as he always did, composed, measured, responding when necessary, maintaining the balance people expected from him. From the outside, nothing was different.
But his attention never stayed where it should.
It kept drifting, pulled back again and again to the same place.
To her.
Lila wasn’t sitting near him. That was the first thing he noticed. Then he realized she hadn’t looked at him once—not when she arrived, not when she spoke, not even when his name came up in conversation. It wasn’t obvious avoidance, not something anyone else would question, but it was deliberate enough that he felt it immediately. He watched her longer than he should have, noticing the way she kept everything steady—her tone, her posture, the polite distance she maintained with everyone around her. It was controlled. Too controlled.
By the time the second glass was poured, he already knew.
She was avoiding him.
By the third, he stopped pretending it didn’t matter.
Lila hadn’t meant to drink that much. She had told herself she wouldn’t, but the constant encouragement, the easy rhythm of the night, the way people kept refilling her glass without asking made it harder to refuse. By the time she noticed how light her head felt, how slow her reactions had become, it was already too late. The noise around her blurred slightly, and she stood up without thinking too much, stepping out into the hallway for air.
The quiet hit her immediately. Cooler, steadier, easier to breathe in. She leaned back lightly against the wall, closing her eyes for a second, trying to settle the spinning edges of her thoughts.
“You shouldn’t have drunk that much.”
The voice came from closer than she expected.
She opened her eyes.
Evan was already there, standing in front of her like he had always been part of the space.
She straightened instinctively, forcing herself to look composed. “I’m fine.”
But her voice didn’t hold the way she wanted it to.
He didn’t answer right away. He just looked at her, too steady, too quiet, like he was waiting for something she wasn’t saying.
Then he said it.
“You’re avoiding me.”
No hesitation. No room to shift away from it.
Lila froze for the briefest moment before shaking her head. “No.”
It was too quick to be convincing.
He stepped closer, not abruptly, not forcefully, but enough to close the distance completely. “You are.”
Her breath slowed, uneven now. “I’ve just been busy.”
He held her gaze, not reacting to the words themselves but to everything behind them. She shifted slightly, her balance slipping just enough for him to notice. His hand came up to steady her by the arm, a simple gesture that should have ended there. But it didn’t.
Because he didn’t let go.
The space between them disappeared too easily, like it had never really existed. “You shouldn’t be drinking if you can’t handle it,” he said quietly, his tone low, controlled, but not entirely neutral.
“I said I’m fine…” she murmured, though her weight leaned toward him just slightly, unintentional but undeniable.
His grip tightened just a fraction.
The air shifted again.
Familiar.
Wrong.
Too close.
His gaze dropped, slowly, from her face to her lips, and stayed there longer than it should have. For a moment, neither of them moved. Her breathing faltered, uneven now, her voice softer when she said his name. “Evan.”
That was the moment he should have stepped back.
He knew it.
But knowing wasn’t enough anymore.
“Come on,” he said finally, his voice lower now. “You shouldn’t stay out here.”
It sounded reasonable. It wasn’t.
He didn’t take her back to the others. He didn’t call anyone to help. He didn’t ask what she wanted.
He made the decision for her.
The door closed behind them with a quiet finality, and the room felt too still, too contained. Lila sat down without fully realizing it, her thoughts slow, blurred at the edges but not gone entirely. Evan stood there for a moment, watching her, his breathing measured in a way that suggested control, but not enough of it. Then he moved closer, step by step, each movement deliberate, like he was choosing it and not choosing it at the same time.
“Lila.”
Her name sounded different when he said it like that.
She looked up at him, her eyes softer than before, less guarded, and that made something in him tighten even more. He should have stopped there. He didn’t. The distance between them disappeared again, and this time, neither of them stepped back.
The night didn’t stay whole after that. It broke apart into fragments—moments that lingered too long, touches that should have ended sooner, breaths that came too close without either of them pulling away. Nothing was clear enough to hold onto, but everything was clear enough to understand.
And then it crossed the point where it could be undone.
Morning came too quickly.
Too sharp. Too real.
Lila woke first, the light too bright, her head heavy, but it wasn’t the discomfort that made her still. It was the memory, returning piece by piece, incomplete but enough. She sat up slowly, her breath uneven, a quiet whisper slipping out before she could stop it. “…That shouldn’t have happened.”
Across the room, Evan was already awake, sitting in silence, watching. There was no confusion in his expression, no hesitation, no attempt to deny anything.
“You should rest,” he said, like the situation could still be managed, like nothing had slipped out of control.
She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t know how. There was nothing she could say that would undo anything, nothing that would make sense of it. So she looked away first. “…I’ll get ready.”
Her voice was steady enough to pass.
She stood, slower than usual, avoiding his gaze completely, because she didn’t know what she would see if she looked again.
By the time they reached the airport, everything had returned to structure—people moving, schedules aligning, the world functioning as it should. Lila stayed quiet, professional, careful, holding herself together in a way that felt deliberate now.
Evan watched her once, just once, before stepping closer and speaking low enough that no one else could hear.
“Stay with me.”
It wasn’t a request.
It wasn’t a question.
It was a decision.
And this time—
he didn’t pretend it was anything else.
- Writer
