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“See you. I’ll talk to Sean…and is there going to be any off-the-cuff revelation at the interview, like the one you made after you got married? He’d like to prepare for something like that, you know?”
When I got married.
I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. I was happy then. It was exuberance.”
“And now?”
I didn’t reply, but the words hung in my head. Now, there was only loss.
Twenty-Five
Braden
“You know, you always were so clever. You’re so smart in everything else that it boggles my mind how you can be so inexplicably and irredeemably dumb about love.”
“Mother!” I glared at her over the gleaming marble countertop, and she shrugged. I’d arrived the previous night and found her alone in her apartment. After the entertainment over Christmas, she’d given Clayton the rest of the holidays off, and now she had the house all to herself for New Year’s Eve.
“What? I can’t comprehend how you spend the better part of a week with Allison and then let her slip through your clumsy fingers again.”
“What was I supposed to do? Chain her to me?”
“No! Convince her to stay. Surely with the handsome face I gave you, you can convince a woman who’s already in love with you that you’re worth sticking with.”
I rolled my eyes. “I look like Dad.”
“Yeah, but slightly more handsome because of my genes.”
I chuckled then my mind went back to Allie and I sobered. “She always loved her work more. That will never change, but anyway”—I got up—“I don’t want to talk about Allie.”
Talking about her tore me apart inside. Thinking about her made me feel weak and helpless, and I hated that. I hated it almost as much as I hated the fact that I was without her, yet again.
My mother wasn’t prepared to back down. “Face it, Braden, you’re letting the love of your life walk away, and you don’t want to. Instead of doing something about it, you’re here, blaming everyone but yourself.”
“I’m not the one who thinks our relationship is a hobby for when there’s a little break between shooting movies.”
“Neither is Allie. Maybe you should stop focusing on your anger and try listening to her.”
“I have listened to her. Even if I go back to the house right now, Mother, we’re just going to get into another fight and end up in the exact same place.”
“Oh, she’s not at the house anymore.”
I frowned. “Where is she?”
“She’s here in Manhattan, at her hotel. That’s all the gossip news is talking about. She hasn’t left the hotel, though.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
She pursed her lips. “I consider Allie to be my friend independent of her relationship with you, or her relationship to me as a daughter-in-law, so I’m not going to betray her confidences.”
“You’re almost as infuriating as she is.”
My mother giggled. “She’s canceling most of her events, but I believe she’ll be at a particular New Year’s Eve charity gala, and then it’s off to LA.”
My heart tightened at the thought that she would leave so soon. “Thanks,” I said.
“Are you going to see her?”
“If she’ll see me.”
