He dropped his bag onto the first available seat and rifled through its contents, but where the hell his charger had gone, he couldn’t say. He could buy or borrow another, of course, but … he could handle being offline for a few hours. It might even do him some good.
Leaving his bag in the chair, he slid his cell into his pocket and claimed a plate at the end of the buffet. Then another, when he couldn’t fit everything he wanted on the first. After a moment’s thought, he ladled out a bowlful of yogurt too, because he was hungry and his stomach hurt.
He hadn’t been eating enough at breakfast. Not for a long time, except with Wren.
His ADHD sometimes made remembering things like that difficult, but he’d had years of targeted therapy to help him deal with similar issues. The disorder might have been a contributing factor in his negligence, but it wasn’t the root cause.
He understood that now.
Wren or no Wren, he would take more care in the future, because he hadn’t earned that pain. He hadn’t. No matter what had happened to his mother. No matter what had happened on the show.
Wren had told him that. His mom had told him that.
And he was finally ready to believe them.
30
MUCH TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING, LAUREN WOKE TO someone leaning on her doorbell.
Alex, she thought wildly, the relief hitting her brain like a narcotic. Alex is here to—
But no. He’d let her go almost a week ago, and there had been no texts or phone calls or visits from him since. Not one.
Throwing back the covers, she knuckled away her tears and summoned her new mantra.
“I did the right thing,” she repeated for the millionth time, then forced herself to shuffle to the apartment’s entrance. “I did the right thing.”
She didn’t even bother to check the peephole before flipping the deadbolt and opening the door, because it wasn’t him, and if it wasn’t him, she didn’t care. Whoever it was, she’d send them away so she could be alone in her misery once more. Even if it was Sionna, whom she’d somehow managed to successfully avoid for six entire days now.
Only that was a lie, because as soon as she actually saw her best friend on her doorstep, she bent at the waist and burst into uncontrollable sobs and stumbled into Sionna’s arms.
An indeterminate amount of time later, she surfaced enough from her haze of desolation to notice they were sitting on the couch now. Lauren hiccupped and blew her nose with tissues that had miraculously appeared in her lap, Sionna’s hand gentle on her back.
“I saw your car in the garage this morning and decided I was tired of you dodging me, so I called in sick.” Her friend’s voice was quiet. Soothing. “What happened, babe?”
Between sobs, Lauren told her. All of it.
Sionna listened patiently, as she always did. Then, after one last rub of Lauren’s back, she settled against the couch cushions and looked thoughtful.
“That’s it?” she asked. “You’ve told me everything now?”
At Lauren’s nod, Sionna continued, her voice dry but not unsympathetic. “Allow me to summarize, then: After noisily fucking Alex, the man you clearly adore and who seems to adore you in return, you got a little angry at him for making unilateral decisions and a lot scared he’d destroy his professional future, so you made a unilateral decision to leave him, called him inconsiderate, and dumped his ass without warning in the middle of his ex’s wedding reception, thus destroying any possibility of a romantic future with you.”
The words dropped into Lauren’s belly like a lead weight, and her stupid eyes prickled again. Fuck, that dispassionate summary made her sound like a monster. A hypocritical one too.
She tore her tissue in half. “I didn’t call him inconsiderate.”
The rest she couldn’t deny, much as she wanted to.
“You questioned whether he took you and your preferences into account when making all his grandiose plans.” Sionna’s mouth quirked. “Which was an absolutely fair point, because he clearly didn’t. But it’s still an accusation of selfishness, or at least self-absorption.”
Lauren froze.
That accusation … he’d leveled it against himself before. Spat it out like dirt in his mouth.
He’d called himself selfish. An asshole. A self-absorbed Hollywood brat.
Because he’d failed to notice his stepfather’s abuse. Because he’d acted in his show’s final season.
For those self-proclaimed sins, he’d damned himself and scrambled to make amends. But for him, it wasn’t enough. Might never be enough. His continued self-loathing had been heartbreakingly clear that evening in Olema, when he’d nearly collapsed at the sight of his injured mother.