All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(32)
“Ron and R.J. will invoke your contract terms and get their lawyers involved.” She sighed. “I remember.”
“So I need you to protect yourself. For my sake. I don’t care much about you, but I care very much about myself.”
There. That should do it.
She emitted a sort of disgruntled hmph.
Then she angled herself toward him, and her shoulder brushed against his arm, and he shouldn’t feel it so precisely. Every atom of contact sharp and distinct. But he did.
“You don’t fool me.” Her voice was low and sure, and if she extended her accusing forefinger another inch, he could bite the tip of it. “I talked to Desiree while the medic treated me. I know what you did to make the auction a success. I know all the auction items you supplied and all the people you personally called. I know you keep the vast majority of your charitable donations quiet, and after talking to Carah, Peter, and Maria during dinner, I know how your friends and colleagues feel about you.”
He dismissed that with a snort of contempt. “Of course the charity said nice things about me. I occasionally give them money. And actors don’t tend to bad-mouth their colleagues. That’s a good way not to find work ever again.”
They also stayed silent when fellow actors complained about directors and showrunners, no matter how justified those complaints might be. He knew that for a fact.
He also knew why. If you raised a fuss, you quickly found yourself persona non grata at casting calls. The necessity of that fuss didn’t mean a thing to the power brokers in Hollywood. Which explained why, when he somehow landed the role of Cupid despite the All Good Men debacle, he’d considered it a stroke of unbelievable good fortune. Then again, he was often an idiot.
Lauren—a fucking therapist, for God’s sake—should know that by now.
“I’m a thirty-nine-year-old man who dresses up and plays pretend for a living, and I’m paid an absurd amount of money to do so,” he told her. “That’s it. That’s all there is to know about me. No matter what you believe, I’m not trying to fool you, so don’t fool yourself.”
And for seven years, he’d dressed up and played pretend on a show that told viewers they couldn’t escape from abusive relationships. Not for good. Not even after years of trying.
He was nothing compared to her. She needed to know that, so she never risked her safety for him again.
“I see,” she said, her gaze steady on him.
“I hope you do,” he told her, and meant it.
Then, without another word, he led her back to the ballroom.
11
RON WAS AN ASS ABOUT THE ENTIRE INCIDENT, OF COURSE.
Alex hadn’t expected better, which was fortunate, as he didn’t receive it, and neither did Lauren. The email he got early the next morning simply read, Congrats on effectively distracting the media from your drunken bar brawl. Ron had included a laughing-to-tears emoji and exactly zero inquiries about his cousin’s health or post-attack well-being.
After that message landed in his inbox, Alex stomped to the exercise room and worked out almost to the point of vomiting, because if he didn’t, he would write something he’d regret in response to his boss. Although, honestly, he wasn’t even sure he would regret it, despite the legal and financial ramifications.
For days afterward, he and Lauren mostly hung around the parts of his property hidden from public view, waiting for media interest in the story to die down. With predictable, gag-inducing discipline, she stayed offline and didn’t google herself even once, as far as he knew. And apparently, the paparazzi couldn’t manage to locate her number or email address, so she wasn’t getting phone calls or messages from randos. His lawyer kept him updated on the asshole who’d knocked Lauren down, and that seemed to be proceeding as predicted too.
Everything was calm. There was nothing to do, really, except hang out with his minder. By all rights, he should be bored out of his goddamn skull.
It was fucking awesome.
Months and months ago, dimly aware he was nearing total physical and emotional exhaustion, he’d ignored his agent’s hectoring messages and refused to schedule new jobs for this odd stretch of time, the gap between the end of Gates’s filming and the press junket that would accompany the airing of the final season. More work awaited him after the series finale had come and gone, but for now: nothing.
He had no call times. No auditions. No need to set three separate alarms.
Mostly, he just slept and read and worked out and browbeat Lauren into binge-watching baking competition shows with him and eating all their meals together.
To his shock, it didn’t even take a lot of convincing.
Something had changed between them during that hotel-hallway confrontation. She talked more. Smiled more. Snapped at him more. She seemed present more.
And somewhere in that lazy stretch of time after the auction, she started laughing too. Not by accident. Not because the world became a significantly more amusing place over the course of a week or two.
No, she started laughing because he’d formulated a new goal to define his days: He wanted to make her laugh as often as he frustrated her. Which was to say, frequently.
Both outcomes were equally enjoyable. Very enjoyable.
When she laughed, it was loud, her face turned pink, and she covered that face with her hands as she made little snorty sounds through her crooked nose, and it was the best. Sometimes, watching her laugh made him laugh too, for no fucking reason.