He has virtually no awareness of Daphne returning from the back room, her makeup redone, taking her place between Angie and Lauren, but he knows it must have happened. He knows he picks up a tiara and calls her name, and that she steps forward. When he asks, “Are you interested in becoming my princess?” Daphne Reynolds says yes, despite everything. He knows he gives Angie the second tiara and sends Lauren home, but he can’t recall any of the particular details of that or anything else, because the anger is ringing too loudly in his ears.
After, Ryan tries to talk to him. Skylar pulls him aside. Jules apologizes. The anger drowns out all their words.
He ends up in the back of a town car. He ends up in an elevator. He ends up outside of his hotel room door. When he fumbles with his card key and gets the door open, he finds Dev there, sitting on the edge of the bed they wrecked together the night before. And Charlie is angry, but he’s also hurt, and he can’t quite help himself from falling into Dev’s arms as soon as they’re alone.
“That was awful,” Charlie cries into the crook of Dev’s neck.
Dev runs his fingers through Charlie’s hair, teasing apart the curls like he always does, but when he speaks, it’s with his hollow voice. “I know, love. I know. I’m so sorry.”
Charlie lets himself cry a bit longer, lets himself enjoy the feeling of Dev’s arms and Dev’s body before he pulls back. “What are we going to do?”
Dev’s eyes are glassy. Faraway. “There’s nothing we can do. We all signed contracts. You’ll propose to Daphne and get engaged, and the show will air, and then you’ll finally get everything you want.”
“I want you,” Charlie says. Because he does. Even though Dev stood there like a coward while Maureen threatened him, and even though Charlie is angry right now, he understands. Dev spent six years—hell, Dev spent most of his life—thinking this show was the perfect fairy tale, and he only just witnessed the ugly truth of it for the first time. Charlie understands why Dev couldn’t stand up for him, couldn’t stand beside him.
What he doesn’t understand is why Dev is pulling away right now.
“We both knew how this was going to end, Charlie,” he says, as he slides out from beneath Charlie’s weight. He walks over to the hotel desk and rubs his finger along the edge of a Courtyard Marriott notepad. “We both know this has an expiration date.”
“What if I don’t want it to end? What if I want”—he almost says forever, but Dev is standing in front of the desk with his closed-off posture, and the word can’t make it past his lips—“more.”
Dev folds his arms across his chest. Charlie sees it for what it is: a feeble attempt on Dev’s part to protect himself. “There isn’t any more to have. We want different things.”
“I thought we both wanted that house in Venice Beach?”
“That was a fantasy!” Dev erupts. “It would never work!”
“Because of me?”
“Because of both of us! Because you’re a reality television star and I’m your producer!”
“Only for another week.”
Dev rakes his fingers violently through his hair.
“Do you want kids, Charlie?”
It’s the last thing he expected Dev to ask him, and any attempt at an answer gets sealed off inside his dry throat.
“Because I want kids. Four of them. And I want marriage. I want to walk down the aisle wearing a heinous white tux that would embarrass the shit out of you, and I don’t want to spend another six years with someone who doesn’t want what I want.”
It’s all spinning so far out of Charlie’s control. He thought, stupidly, that their uncertain future was something they could step into together, but now it feels like they’re pulling in opposite directions, a dysfunctional team in a three-legged race.