Jace
“What?” Lennox’s voice is loud, accusatory. “What do you mean by that?” He’s pissed, but I know what I need to do. What I should have done. I let this go too far tonight and it needs to all end now.
Lennox isn’t the type of guy to back down. I need to push back harder than he will.
I shake my head, indicating it’s nothing as I tie my shoe.
“What did you come over here for?”
I swallow thickly, pressing my elbows into my knees. I lean forward, keeping my eyes locked on the carpet between my feet as I brace myself to say the words.
“I came over here to tell you we can’t keep doing this.” I don’t look up. I can’t.
“Funny, you barely made it through my door before you wanted to jump on top of me,” he says with so much confidence, feigning like he’s invincible and my words don’t hurt him.
They probably don’t.
“Like I said, I make stupid decisions around you. I can’t have the media all over my ass about everything right now. This needs to die down and it doesn’t make sense for us to spend time together when we’re not filming. It looks—”
“It looks like what, Jace? Like were friends? Like we like each other?” He exaggerates a gasp. “Guess what they do. It’s fucking obvious how much we like each other, so what’s the real problem, because you can’t convince me you don’t want me.”
“I have a date tomorrow.”
“Excuse me?” He’s stunned, as if my statement slapped him in the face.
“Elodie. Elodie St. John. We dated a few years ago and reconnected recently.”
He laughs. “You don’t want Elodie.”
I don’t, but I'm not admitting that to him.
“She’s great. She’s exactly the type of person I should be dating.”
“Ah, yes. Good on paper. Great for the golden boy image,” he says, mockingly.
“Stop,” I spit back, not wanting to hear anything more.
He freezes, squinting as if he’s thinking through something. He shifts his gaze to the floor, huffs out a knowing laugh then takes a step in my direction.
“You’re pushing me away on purpose,” he says, as he continues his process of elimination, refusing to relent. “I don’t think you're scared to come out and I don’t think you’re ashamed of me. I think you feel like you don’t have a choice.”
He’s right about all of that, but I remain quiet. My brain is screaming to tell him I don’t want him, to convince him there’s nothing between us, but my heart is breaking, lurching so deep in my chest it aches at the thought of it.
“I do have a choice. This is my choice.”
“You’re lying to me.”
My eyes close as I suck in a deep breath.
“I don’t have feelings for you,” I reply with a whisper, because the words feel like razor blades on my tongue.
“Right, mate. Whatever you say. I know this was more than friendship and filming, Jace, but go ahead and keep lying to yourself.”
“You don’t know anything, Lennox.”
“I don’t, because you’re not fucking telling me anything.”
“I am! I’m telling you this is nothing!” I gesture my finger aggressively between the two of us. “We are nothing!”
He flinches back, like my words physically punched him in the face. We stare at each other, my breath is labored and I’m stunned to silence at my own retort. I don’t mean a word, I don’t mean any of it, but I need to do this. I have to.
I lift my chin, confidently gazing back at him.
“Wow.” He looks down at his feet, placing his hands on his hips. “So, what was tonight then? Some pity fuck for you with your poor smitten co-star.”
Tonight was everything for me.
We stand staring back at each other. Silence passes through a thick fog of tension.
I hate myself for doing this to him, to myself.
For the first time in my life I care that I can’t choose him.
I want so badly to make that decision for myself, but I can’t have him the way I want, proudly telling everyone that he’s made me feel alive for the first time in my life.
“I don’t want to end things this way, Lennox.”
“Well…can’t really end something that never really started, right mate?”
My heart fumbles to my stomach as he grabs his jeans and shirt, quickly dressing before snatching his wallet and phone off the counter.
He steps to the exit door of his trailer and glances around the room like someone would do when they are checking out of a hotel for the last time.
His eyes lock on mine and it hurts. Everything fucking hurts.
“See you at the press tour,” he says, stepping through the doorway. The small click of the closure sounds more like a prison door slamming shut, reminding me of the world I live in.