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Cat paused. Megan hardly knew what she was saying. She only knew the words wouldn’t stop coming. She couldn’t halt them. She couldn’t care about them.
“Okay,” Cat said, quieter now. “So I’m a monster. That doesn’t change what the papers are saying about you. I didn’t make that happen. You’re not thinking clearly, because if you were, you’d see—”
“I’m not thinking clearly because I don’t agree with you? Yeah. That’s what I thought. I’m not doing this anymore,” Megan said at the exact same time as she realized it. “I’m sorry I’m younger than you by a lot. I’m sorry you had to raise me. I’m sorry Mom and Dad died.”
“Meg!” Cat’s voice was scandalized.
“I’m sorry I got to work at Fielding Paper and you didn’t.”
“Meg!”
No oneeverbrought that up. “I’m done being the good girl,” Megan said. “I’m done trying to live up to some ideal no one’s even explained to me.” And she hung up.
She sat for a second, her head dropped, her hands slack. Her phone began to slip out of her hands, and all of a sudden, she stood and threw it across the room. It hit the rack of clothes and disappeared into their folds.
She let out a cry she didn’t know she possessed. Stalking back across the room, she clutched her head with her hands. “She wouldn’t let up! It’s my fault! It’s always our fault! She doesn’t even see it! God, I should have done this years ago!”
The raised step at the entrance to the apartment tripped her. She let herself fall, twisting so she could sit on the step, though she bruised her butt. She grabbed her hair in both hands and pulled until she felt a few hairs tear away. “I’m sick of it! I’m sick of being the happy one! Fuck, if they knew what it does to me!”
She was shaking again. And crying. She hadn’t realized that. Years of tension seemed to leach out of her all at once, and all she could do was sit with tangled legs and a sore scalp and sob and cry and yell.
And if she’d been Alessandro, she’d have tiptoed around her and left the apartment.
But he didn’t. She became aware that he’d padded across the room when his bare feet appeared in her blurred vision. He sat next to her. She gulped and cried some more. Then his hand touched her shoulder and gently moved to her back. He rubbed her back with wide circular strokes. Megan couldn’t resist them. Whatever chill she’d hoped he’d think she had was shot to hell anyway. She collapsed against him.
“It will be okay,cara,” he murmured into her hair.
“I’m so tired,” she said.
“Yes. You have been acting for a long time. Perhaps it’s time to take a break between movies.”
She laughed and the tears slowed. “I was just thinking I’ve been the greatest actor in the world. And that’s after being in the same room as you.”
His body shook with a laugh. “I get to choose when I act. I think you only just realized how little of yourself you have shown people.”
He was putting it into words better than she could. She was done smiling. She was done taking her lunch hours to help people with their jobs because social protocol dictated she should.
She was done with Sundays under Cat’s scrutiny.
Her sore heart shied away from makingthatdecision.
“Go back to bed,cara,” Alessandro said. “Sleep for today.”
God, that sounded good. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “You didn’t sign up for this.”
He squeezed her, hard enough to make her gasp. “I am honored that you allowed yourself to let go around me. I do not want to see you so sad, but perhaps this is necessary. When you don’t answer the question of what you want for so many years, the answer may frighten you.”
She shivered again. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said into his chest.
“Me too.”
She might just change her name to Cara so she could hear it over and over again when he wasn’t around. Because surely he wouldn’t be after this meltdown.
“I will make sure you are asleep, then I will call the car to take me back to the hotel,” he said.
She nodded. She’d figured as much.
“I will change,” he went on. “And then I will come back with more clothes. Do you have a gym here?”
