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Not with loving him, despite my better judgment and best efforts.
I have to say something.
“It’s real in my mind,” I say. “I love you, Shane. I didn’t mean to let it happen, but it did. And if you love me back, or if you wanted to try?—”
His face goes dark. It’s just a flash. He seems to get control of it almost right away.
Actors. They have amazing self-restraint. Amazing mastery over their emotions.
If I hadn’t gotten to know him so well, I might have missed it completely.
But I didn’t.
And I remember what I let myself forget, like a lovesick, dopey teenaged girl: this man told me, from the very beginning, that he doesn’t fall in love.
He told me that it hurts him to try and fail.
“Oh God,” I say. “Shane. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have?—”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. Waving a hand. “It’s okay. Look. Ivy. If there was ever anyone worth trying for, it would have been you.”
We stand there, in the parking lot. A few drops of rain fall and spatter on the gravel, raising the scent of freshly moist earth. A car pulls into the parking lot, and a couple gets out. They clasp hands and swing them, beaming at each other before heading inside. There is moisture on my face; I don’t know if it’s rain or tears.
“But it isn’t,” I say. “It isn’t me.”
He doesn’t argue. He just…looks away.
Right.
I twist the flower ring on my left hand until it slides off. I open my hand to him. When he doesn’t take it right away, I reach for his hand, spread his fingers open, and drop the ring into his palm.
38
Shane
Factually, I know LA—or at least the LA I circulate in—has always been like this. Busy, bustling, its freeways a snarl of traffic, its people perpetually concerned with their hair, makeup, clothes, networking, partying—and ultimately, their rise to the top.
But since my wedding got canceled and I came back here from Rush Creek, LA feels oppressively huge. Bogged down in its own machinations. And—so, so fake.
I’ve caught myself thinking a few times, I want to go home.
But this is home.
And Rush Creek isn’t.
It’s been a week since I made love to Ivy in her bed, since I slept next to her. A week since I woke up next to her.
A week since I did what I said I would never do again and hurt someone I care about because I couldn’t be what she needed.
Quietly, still in a bit of a daze, not quite looking at each other or talking to each other, Ivy and I agreed that we’d wait to tell anyone besides Hanna that our “engagement” was off. Just…in case. Because January and Tobias had flaked out on us once. But once they were safely married, we’d tell our fans that we’d realized our worlds weren’t compatible.
January did an amazing job. Her video announcing the wedding went megaviral. She told the world that we were incredibly gracious and generous and she’d be eternally grateful to us for letting her and Tobias preempt our wedding so they could become husband and wife in the eyes of all their wonderful fans and the whole world. Celebrity influencers picked it up and went nuts over the second-chance romance of Tobuary.
By that point, it was pretty clear Ivy didn’t want to see me or talk to me. We’d had a few brief meetings, but the last had ended with her running away, and I’d learned from the disaster with April that I was only hurting her more by forcing it. Tim Ernst reached out to me a few days after our breakup in the Hott Springs Eternal parking lot to ask me to come to LA to read opposite potential co-leads, and I jumped at the opportunity.
I went back to LA and threw myself into Ernst’s project. My dad called to tell me how disappointed he was in me. He begged me to change my mind, and then he said that since we clearly didn’t see eye to eye on my career, maybe it was time for me to find a different manager.
I said that maybe it was, and we hung up. After that, I didn’t hear anything from him.
