All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(95)

Swiftly, she turned away from him and headed for her closet. Her suitcase.

Maybe she hadn’t been crying, but he was, openly, because fuck pride. Fuck anything that didn’t bring her back to him somehow.

“What about—” He dragged in a hitching breath. “What about us, Lauren?”

She stilled, her back to him. “I—I care about you. You know that.”

“Yeah.” He laughed, and it was loud and ugly and bitter enough to hurt his ringing ears. “I thought I did. I thought I knew that.”

Her head bowed, but her words were uninflected. Emotionless.

“This—what we had …” Another pause. “It was an interlude. A vacation from reality. But vacations end, and we have to return to our real lives. Yours is in Hollywood. Mine is in the ER.”

From everything she’d told him, her lengthy stint in the ER hadn’t been a life. It’d been an existence. Self-abnegation for a paycheck, and the thought of her returning was like having his heart gripped in a vicious fist.

“It doesn’t have to be just a goddamn interlude.” He surged to his feet and paced in front of the sofa, his pulse hammering at his temples. “I got an offer for a travel show today, and I want you to be my cohost. We could explore the world together, Wren. That could be your real life. I could be your real life.”

She was still bent over her suitcase, unmoving, and he rushed on before she could respond. Before she could refuse him and cast him aside.

“Or if you’d rather be my PA, if you don’t want to be on camera, we can make that work instead. I don’t care. As long as you’re with me.” He raked his fingers through his hair and fisted a handful hard enough that several strands ripped free. “I need you, Wren. Please.”

Her chest expanded with a deep inhalation. Then, finally, she turned to face him again, and her features might have been carved from stone. Those round cheeks were bloodless but dry. Her gaze landed somewhere over his shoulder, off in the distance, where she evidently saw something more important than him.

“This vision you have for our future,” she said slowly, deliberately, “what made you think it would be something I’d want? Something I could live with?”

What—what did that mean?

“I thought—” He threw his hands in the air, panicky, his scalp afire. “I thought you liked traveling with me and filming our videos.”

Her fingers clutched the handle of her suitcase, and the plastic creaked under the pressure. “I do. I did. But that doesn’t mean I want to travel with you indefinitely, as my job.”

“We can make it work, Lauren. Just tell me what you need.” The plea was raw enough to scour his throat. “You could set our itinerary, or have your own trailer. Hell, if you wanted to specify a maximum number of days per month we could spend on the—”

“Alex.” She closed her eyes for the length of a slow breath, then opened them and pinned him with that clear stare. “Haven’t you thought at all about who I am? Haven’t you noticed how important my work as a therapist is to me?”

He stopped dead.

“You haven’t listened.” Her lips pressed tight. “You haven’t listened to me.”

All his impassioned protests withered on his tongue.

The shame descended on him, so heavy his legs locked beneath him. He trembled beneath its weight, its inexorable press downward and downward again.

Selfish. He’d been unforgivably selfish again.

She was right. He hadn’t listened. Hadn’t paid attention.

Instead, he’d fucking assumed. That what she wanted was the same as what he wanted. That his work would make her happy too. That she loved him—or could grow to love him—the same way he loved her.

He’d failed to hear her, and he’d misunderstood. He’d misinterpreted her affection as something more than a friendship and some casual sex.

Only sex wasn’t casual for him. It never had been.

But that wasn’t her problem. He wasn’t her responsibility anymore.

Soon, she’d be burdened and staggering under the mental, physical, and emotional weight of her work once again, and he wouldn’t make her life harder with his neediness. His self-centered demands for her time and energy, when soon she wouldn’t have either to spare.

I’ll miss you, she’d said, and now he understood.

Soon, she’d have no space in her life for him anymore. Which was as it should be.

He’d long thought she was too good for him. This conversation only proved it, and good for her, really. Good for her for realizing it.

“Alex?” She’d moved a step closer, and was studying him now, her brow furrowed.

He wasn’t her patient, though, or her lover. He was just a friend she’d fucked, and she didn’t need to waste her concern on the likes of him.

“I didn’t listen. I didn’t think. I didn’t notice.” He laughed, and it didn’t contain bitterness this time. Only defeat. “Then again, when do I ever?”

She bit her lip, and he couldn’t bear her scrutiny a moment longer.

His eyes dry through sheer force of will, he tried to smile at her.

“Why don’t you pack while I give your best wishes to Stacia and her husband?” Turning away, he reached for the door handle. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes to help you carry your bags down to the entrance.”