Chapter 42
Bex
On the day before the marathon, I enter the hotel lobby with my stomach in knots.
There hasn’t been a word from Theo, who was due here yesterday. He didn’t swing by. He didn’t even call.
Clearly, he’s not planning to appear on my doorstep ready to proclaim his love.
Instead, he’s going to slink away with a wince and an apology, yet here I am, searching the lobby, hoping for a glimpse of him—his finely wrought face, that lovely soft mouth.
Here I am, already saying, It was unreasonable to ask so much of him, Bex.
You can’t demand he declare himself when you’ve only slept together for a couple of months.
But that’s bullshit because it was so much more than that. Maybe we only started sleeping together in July, but we’ve been together in every other way since March. It was more than enough time for me to choose him.
If he doesn’t feel the same way, there’s nothing more to be said. I’ve spent enough of my life pretending I’m something I’m not in order to be loved.
Katrina waves from across the lobby and jogs over to where I stand. “Our final shoot!” she squeals, giving me a hug. “I’m just on my way to set up our dinner.”
Yeah. Our final shoot. I’m far less jubilant about it than she is.
I have no idea who I’ll be once this is done.
I thought I knew…but now I’m back at square one.
It’s hard to imagine how the show will even air—multiple articles are quoting a “source” behind the scenes saying that Theo is a violent guy and that he and I weren’t even together when filming started.
I’m fairly certain I know who that source is.
I take the room key from the front desk clerk, forcing a smile as I turn to Katrina again. “Save me a seat. I’m just going to run upstairs and change.”
She frowns. “Have you heard from him at all?”
I hoist my bag over my shoulder and take a few steps away from the check-in desk, leaning against a red velvet chair.
“It was just more of his vague bullshit. I told him to figure out what he wants. Given that he hasn’t contacted me since, it’s pretty clear what he wants… or more accurately, does not want.”
She sighs. “He watched things backfire pretty dramatically for his brother, you know? And he’s a private sort of person.”
That’s exactly the problem, though. I’m someone who’s never been sure where she stands with anyone, who’s never been put first, and he’s someone who’d never admit it even if it were true. Try to get him to say he loves his own mother and he’d only admit to regarding her with fondness.
I can’t go through the next twenty years of my life uncertain that the most important person in my world even cares.
“He made no effort, Katrina,” I reply. “That probably says plenty, right there.”
I’m admitting it mostly for my own sake, in the hopes it’ll start to sink in.
She pulls me into a quick hug. “It’s going to be okay, Bex.”
I nod, but I don’t think that’s true.
In my room, I comb through the two outfit options I brought for tonight. There will be no more assistance from Mindy, unfortunately, but I’ve cobbled together a Mindy-like outfit: a beige lace skirt, paired with a white blouse.
I like the woman I see in the mirror. She looks healthy, but also certain of herself in way I wasn’t before.
My self-assurance, in the past, was mostly bravado, fueled by the fact that I had nothing to lose.
This is different: I know I bring something to the table, even if I’m not entirely sure what it is.
That won’t make tonight and tomorrow easier, however.
I take a deep breath as I walk to the elevator and head down to the restaurant—will he look at me and glance away? Will I see the end written on his face before he’s ever said it aloud?
The hotel has placed us in a private room for our dinner. I press a hand to my stomach as I enter and search the table for Theo.
He isn’t here. And there’s only one seat left at the table, the one Katrina has saved for me, which must mean he’s not planning to come.
“Where is he?” I whisper to Katrina as I slide into the seat beside her.
She bites her lip. “He had something else to do tonight. Don’t worry, though. I mean…I know he’s here somewhere. He’ll be at the race.”
My eyes fall closed. God. And here I was, wondering what I’d do if he begged me to take him back. He’s not going to beg. He couldn’t even bother to show up.
I’m treated the way I was after the funeral—gentle smiles, a wince as they ask how I’ve been.
I was scared of becoming an object of pity, but it’s happened anyway.
Somehow, they all know how I felt about him, and everyone on the planet now knows he was sleeping with a married woman until very recently.
Even if there was no overlap, he’s not here and that says it all.
“It’ll be okay, Bex,” Paula assures me. “Lars is a magician, and the show isn’t slated to come out until spring. People will forget and even if they don’t…this latest crisis will only make more people eager to watch Theo’s downfall.”
Except I’ve got no desire to watch Theo’s downfall, and it’s not the show I’m worried about. It’s the prospect of enduring a life without Theo in it.
When dinner concludes, Lars tells us he has something for us to watch. A new, long version of the trailer. There’s nothing I want to do less—even running twenty-six miles tomorrow seems easy by contrast—but I bite my tongue as we head toward a ballroom Lars has reserved just for this viewing.
The room is large, already set with chairs and a screen and the lights on a dimmer.
While everyone else veers toward the open bottles of wine in back, I move toward the rows of chairs—just as Theo rises from one, more worried than I ever remember seeing him.
My heart gives a hard pulse when his gaze meets mine, and tears spring to my eyes.
I’m screwed. I love him so much that I’m already slipping, ready to settle for whatever half measures he offers.
I’ll be just like Wendy, pining away for the next two decades over a man who doesn’t care quite enough and would never admit it if he did.
The way he stares—as if I’m something he can’t get enough of—might give me hope, except he could have gotten plenty of me. All he had to do was come to my fucking house last night.
I turn away and find a seat near the back, ready to bolt out of here as soon as this trailer is done, and possibly sooner if I can’t get through it without crying.
Lars sets something up and then walks to the front of the room. “You all saw the original cut of the trailer in Madeira. This is a longer—and very special—version. Particularly special to me because my daughter created it.” He holds out a hand. “Katrina, take a bow.”
What?
There’s a collective gasp across the room, so I’m not the only one who was in the dark.
That explains why she was so adamantly opposed to dating him, I suppose.
She grins at me as she rises.
“I didn’t want to look like a nepo baby,” she says with a shrug, “even if I am one. And I might have done the editing, but credit for the spin we put on this belongs to Theo.”
Theo’s been watching me throughout this conversation. Is that pain on his face, or is it guilt?
“Going with this version of the story is a gamble,” Lars says, “which is why we’re leaving the decision about it to you, Bex.”
Yep. They’re about to make me look really bad. And it was Theo’s idea.
I grip the edges of my seat, more upset and shocked than I’d have thought possible. I’d expected better of these people. I’d expected better of Lars, of Paula and Katrina. I thought we were friends.
Most of all, I expected better of Theo. Because I thought we were a lot more.
Paula hits the lights and we turn to face the screen.
Within a few seconds the story begins: footage of the train crash; Kylie telling her followers our company is cursed; Lars saying, “They need to do the show if they’re going to stay afloat.
” There’s Theo on our wedding day, asking if he has to kiss me; me in Iceland, pointing at the waterfall and saying, “That’s how wet it makes me when I picture our divorce. ”
What the hell? Their plan is to tell everyone it’s fake at the outset? How is that possibly a better solution?
But then Theo’s wrapping an arm around me in the van—Lars must have been filming us on his phone—and saying, “I like you just fine the way you are. You’re quite possibly the best fake wife I’ve ever had.”
There’s us laughing on a balcony and in bed. Our airport kiss in Amsterdam and the stunned look on our faces as we separated.
A conversation between Lars and Paula, one we weren’t privy to. “They’re crazy about each other but Theo is never going to pull the trigger,” Lars tells her.
And Paula says, “What if we forced them to share a room?”
Which I guess explains Paris.
The two of us in the tiny camper in Geiranger, shifting shapes in a darkened room, tripping our way into the bathroom together and shutting the door, followed by our admission that we’d broken the sink and cracked the toilet.
Me in Madeira, saying, “He was always meant to be Bronwyn’s anyway.”
And finally, there’s Theo being interviewed by Lars, but it’s not the interview he did in Madeira. It’s in Lars’s office. Given how worried Theo looks, I imagine it’s very recent.
“I love her,” he says. He’s staring at his hands, unable to look at the camera. “I want the company to make it for our employees’ sake, and for Rick and Kieran, but beyond that I couldn’t care less.”
Something warm and sweet starts to slip through my veins. He didn’t just say he loved me…he put me first. And he told the whole world.
“How do you hope this will end?” Lars asks, off camera.
Theo swallows and runs a hand through his hair, looking up reluctantly. “I just want to end up with her. It hasn’t felt fake to me in a very long time. I just want to end up with her in whatever capacity she’ll have me.”
Everyone applauds as Lars turns on the lights. Theo’s gaze meets mine, even more worried than it was before.
“There you have it, Bex,” says Lars. “It’s risky to present this story instead of the one we’d intended to.
You’ll be admitting it began as a lie, which isn’t ideal, I know.
It also only works if the story ends happily.
Let’s get through tomorrow and you can think about whether we go with Katrina’s iteration or the story as originally planned. ”
I smile at Theo with tears in my eyes. He did this for me. It couldn’t have been easy for him.
And telling the truth isn’t necessarily something I’ve done a lot of…but I’ll do it for him.
I don’t need the weekend. Katrina’s cut won the moment Theo said he loved me.