DON’T STOP (Lila and Darrell) novel Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Chapter 100

Norman

The apartment was too quiet after she left.

I sat on the couch and stared at nothing in particular. The television was still on, but I wasn’t watching it. The plates wer on the coffee table from dinner, and the basil she’d brought was sitting it, a glass of water on the counter because she ha found a vase and had done that instead without making a fuss about t

She hadn’t made a fuss about anything, actually. She’d come over with groceries and cooked and laughed and asked on simple question, and I had yelled at her like she’d done something unforgivable. She hadn’t even raised her voice back She’d just picked up her bag and left with her chin up, and I’d stood there and let her:

She didn’t deserve that. Any of it.

I rubbed my face with both hands and stayed like that for a moment. She had only been trying to understand me better That was all. And I had made her feel like that was something to be punished for.

I picked up my phone.

Norman: I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry.

The three dots appeared almost immediately. Then it disappeared. Then it appeared again. I waited.

Evelyn: Wow, an apology from Norman White. Someone mark the calendar.

Norman: Evelyn.

Evelyn: I’m just saying I want proof this happened.

Evelyn: A screenshot isn’t enough; I need a notarized document.

Norman: Are you going to accept the apology or not?

Evelyn: Hmm.

Norman: ?

Evelyn: Fine, yes, I accept.

Evelyn: But you have to know that was really not nice, Norman.

Norman: I know. It won’t happen again.

Evelyn: Okay.

Evelyn: Also, you left the basil in water, so it should stay fresh for a few days, just say you know

Norman: I saw that

Evelyn: Good Don’t let it die

Norman: I won’t

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Chapter 19

Evelyn Tulds a smiling emoji) Goodnight. Norman.

Normafi: Goodnight.

GALA NIGHT

The car pulled up to the venue at eight fifteen, and I helped Evelyn out onto the pavement without rushing. She’d worr deep emerald – a dress that was elegant without trying too hard, her hair pinned up with a few strands loose around he face. She looked beautiful. I told her so in the car and meant it.

She’d smiled and straightened my tie without being asked.

The California Clean Energy Gala occupied the entire top floor of the Meridian Grand – a sprawling space of high ceil and warm chandelier light, floor to ceiling windows showing the city spread out in every direction like something arran purely for effect. Round tables dressed in white linen, candles, the low hura of two hundred industry professionals doin what they did at every event like this – talking about money while pretending to talk about everything else.

I knew half the room before we reached the entrance.

Handshakes, brief exchanges, the familiar rhythm of working a crowd I’d worked a hundred times. Evelyn stayed at my naturally, contributing when invited, stepping back when the conversation required it, reading every room within the ro with that quiet accuracy of hers.

She was good at this.

I introduced her to three board members, two investors and a California state energy commissioner who talked for too about offshore wind. She smiled through all of it.

Dinner was served at nine.

We were seated at a table near the front, which was either an honour or a target depending on how you read the room read it as both. The conversation moved around the table – the contract, the initiative, and White Industries posing he market. I answered everything with the same measured confidence I always brought to rooms like this

Evelyn’s hand found mine briefly under the table at some point, and I turned to look at her, and she must simuler back at her plate.

–

The evening moved the way these evenings always moved — predictably, purposefully with everves version of themselves under chandelier light.

By ten thirty I had spoken to everyone worth speaking to. I picked up my glass and let my eyes more time. A habit. A scan. Something I’d been doing all evening without fully acknowledging was d

The same faces. The same clusters. The same conversations migrating from table to browinow Un

I looked at the entrance.

Empty.

I set my glass down.

She wasn’t coming It had been nearly three hours, and the room had long smee fillest to capacity and Dansk Wright wisine! here. Maybe she’d sent a representative Maybe the contract loss had made this particular rem feel too tropfortable Maybe she was home with Steve, the good paediatric surgeon, living the uncomplicated hits stuif decided she wanted

It was fine. It didn’t matter

AT

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Chapter

Huthed back to the table and rejoined the conversation

Evelyn said something that made the people around us laugh, and I smiled and reached for my glass enti

A shift moved through the room. It wasn’t loud, and it also wasn’t dramatic just style charive in the revity of the t way a room adjusts when something has entered it that it wasn’t quite expecting A fele beards turned neat the meracy

Then a few more.

I didn’t turn around immediately.

I finished what I was saying to the man across from me, set my glass down, and then toned toward the s

She stood at the top of the short staircase that led down into the main floor.

Floor length. Black. The kind of gown that had no embellishment, no detail, nothing to hide behind – just de devastating lines that fell straight to the floor and made every other dress in the room suddenly feel like it was in ing too hard. Her hair was up, neck bare, and shoulders straight. No Steve. No team. No armor beyond the dress self and the

expression she wore with it.

She looked like she owned the building.

She stood at the top of those stairs and let her eyes move across the room with the calm. unhurried assessment of liometr who had arrived exactly when she intended to and not a moment before.

And then her eyes found mine.

Across the entire room. Through two hundred people and a sea of candlelight and three years and everything the A between us that neither of us had ever properly named.

She held it for exactly one second.

Then she lifted her chin slightly, looked away, and descended the stairs.

I realized I hadn’t moved.

Evelyn’s voice came from beside me, warm and close. “Norman?”

I turned.

She was looking at me with that quiet, perceptive expression that meant she had seen evervie to say nothing about it.

I picked up my glass.

“Sorry.” I said. “You were saying?”

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Chapter 04-