“Christopher,” Alexander says, his deep blue eyes widening as he looks at me. He reaches over and sets a hand over my knee. “I’m so sorry about everything. The MNDA, the dossier… I never meant for you to feel like I didn’t trust you.”
The warmth radiating from his hand as it meets my knee sends a surge of electricity through my body. My grip loosens on the pillow.
I catch myself wanting to go down the old familiar path of using sarcasm to fend off my feelings, and stop before the words come out of my mouth. I take a deep breath instead, and I see Alexander’s jaw clench in response.
“This whole dating a pop star thing, it’s a completely different world to me,” I say, slowly. “I even looked it up online, but there’s no instruction manual, no how-to guide. So I’m shooting blind here. I don’t know what the norms are, or what expectations come with this.” I lift my hand from the pillow and wave it in the space between us.
Alexander’s jaw relaxes and squeezes his hand more tightly on my knee.
“I get it. It’s a lot. I appreciate that, and I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did. Heck, I’d probably have reacted even worse if it was the other way round.” The corners of his mouth lift.
The warmth in his eyes melts away the residual resentment that I didn’t realize was still there.
Maybe I underestimated him.
Maybe he can take responsibility and ownership of what he did.
Unlike my father. Unlike Ryan.
“I actually owe you an apology too,” I say, removing the pillow from my lap and spinning to face him. “I’ve been worried sick about you all day. I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up. I thought I caused all this, and that you didn’t want to speak to me.”
Alexander shifts back slightly, extends his arm, and grabs his phone off the table next to us, handing it to me.
“I smashed it in a drunken rage last night,” he says. I take in the shattered screen. “I only got a new phone after the show, but the backup didn’t restore your number. I actually thought thatyoudidn’t want to speak tome.”
His hand trembles slightly as I pass the phone back to him, and I see a slight purple bruising on the back of it as he sets the phone on the table again.
“What happened?”
He follows my gaze down to the mark on his hand.
I guess this is the real test.
If he will open up. Tell me the truth. Be more intimate with me.
After a long pause and a deep breath, he begins.
“After you left, didn’t return my messages, I started to spiral. Everything from my past came flooding back and I couldn’t deal with it, so I kept drinking. I wanted to quiet the thoughts. Numb the pain. Next thing I knew, I was waking up next to a puddle of vomit with a light in my eyes and a drip in my arm.”
I go to reach for him, to comfort him. But I pull back.
Would I be comforting him or am I just trying to quell the tension in my muscles?
The guilt swirls in my stomach.
His eyes are still locked on the table.
“What came flooding back?” I ask, when he finally lifts his head. He turns his face toward mine. His eyes well up, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, you deserve to know. And I need to talk about it, to get it out.” He lets out a heavy sigh and rubs his eyes before continuing. “I lost my old assistant, Samuel, in a car accident. It was my twenty-first birthday and we were out celebrating. Everyone thinks it happened after he dropped me off at my house, but I was in the car with him.” There’s a lost look in his eyes as his gaze drifts from me to the window. It’s one I know all too well. “We were having an argument, and he wasn’t paying attention to the road. A car came at us, he jerked the wheel, and we collided with a palm tree.”
Alexander’s chest begins to rise and fall quickly, and he reaches for his eyes again. Tears start to roll down his cheek.
“The rest was a blur. The way I handled it was all wrong. I left him there to die. Paul said—” he pauses, but doesn’t finish the sentence. “The guilt has consumed me ever since, but I couldn’t talk about it to anyone. So, I started drinking instead.”
Jesus.
The poor guy.
