She assured her friends that they didn’t need to come over, assured herself that the devastation she felt was unjustified. It washer pride that was bruised, that was all. She’d forget about it by next week.
Except he didn’t stop.
For the next several days, Shane was photographed out and about with a different woman every night—some famous, some not. Even though the PDA got slightly more tasteful after that first night, it was obvious that they were purposely showing up where they knew there’d be paparazzi or hungry fans. There was no other way to interpret it: he was doing it to hurt her.
She visualized her heart hardening like a stone and tried to distract herself from how well it was working.
The worst part was, she couldn’t even do the same thing to him. If she was out with a different guy slobbering all over her every night, she’d be seen as trashy, branded a slut, her image and potentially her career irrevocably tarnished. And though a few feminist-skewing gossip outlets called out Shane’s behavior for what it was (pathetic, messy, try-hard), the biggest sources lauded him as a stud and an icon, a one-man Poon Squad all on his own.
On the fifth day, alone in the middle of the night, she finally allowed herself to cry about it.
7
Now
When Walt called Lilah and Shane into his office during their lunch break the week after the photo shoot, Lilah was sure she knew why. They’d shot their first major scene together a few days before, and it had taken them all day to get through three pages—a disaster on a strict TV schedule, causing them to run behind for the whole week.
She’d been mortified, painfully aware of how many people’s days she was ruining as she fucked up one take after another. Shane’s barely concealed amusement at her struggles had only made things worse. Her embarrassment had compounded on itself, making it impossible to recover, getting in her head sobadly that eventually she was messing up lines that she’d delivered perfectly before.
After a while, the director had come up to her and kindly asked her if she needed to take a few minutes to regroup, bringing in her stand-in while they shot coverage of the other actors. Her cheeks had burned as she’d slunk off the set.
But when they sat down in Walt’s office, both of them bearing guilty sent-to-the-principal’s-office expressions, Walt flopped a tabloid onto the desk without a word. Lilah glanced at Shane, who seemed equally confused.
“Sorry to hear about Peyton’s…baby drama?” he said tentatively, looking up from the cover. Walt grabbed the magazine and thumbed to a dog-eared page, folding it back onto itself and sliding it over to them again.
MATCH MADE IN HELL:Intangible’s Dream Team is Back—and a Behind-the-Scenes Nightmare!
Lilah’s stomach lurched when she saw the photos. One of each of them, taken at completely different times and locations, but superimposed together in a way that implied their unhappy expressions were directed at each other. Based on the fact that Lilah was in her Hangoveralls (the oversized Carhartt overalls she wore whenever she had an especially bad hangover, as dubbed by Pilar), her picture was from three months earlier, when she’d gotten a flat tire on her way to pick up breakfast tacos. Of course she looked annoyed.
Flicking her eyes to Shane’s photo, she idly wondered what had made him look so tormented. Probably racked with guilt that he’d had to tell a waiter they’d messed up his order or something.
They both inched forward in their seats so they could readthe article without picking it up from the desk. It was mostly padding—basic facts about her return to the show—ending in a breathless claim from an anonymous source that their photo shoot hadallegedlybeen cut short after the two of them got into a furious screaming match on set.
“It’s not true,” Lilah said meekly. “We didn’t scream at each other.” Even though Dario and Mercedes had been the only people in the room with them at the time, there were at least a dozen witnesses to Shane’s hasty exit through the main area of the suite. The story could have been fabricated by any one of them.
Walt sighed. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. The network is pissed. We need to nip this in the bud.”
“You don’t want us to pretend we’re dating, do you?” Shane grumbled.
“Of course not,” Walt said. “Nobody’s trying to meddle in your personal lives. They just have a big old press tour lined up for you two, but it’s going to be a big old waste of everyone’s time if it’s obvious you hate each other.”
“We don’t hate each other,” they replied, robotically, in unison.
Walt sighed again. “Right. Well, I’ve been talking to the network, and they think it might be a good idea for you to do a few sessions of couples counseling to work out whatever…whatever’s going on here.”
“We’re not a couple,” they said, once again in unison.
“That’s very cute. You should take it on the road,” Walt said with a humorless chuckle. “Yes. I know you’re not a couple. You’re a couple of pains in my ass, is what you are.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s not just the story. It’s how you’ve been on set, too. At this rate, we’re going to be shooting this season for the next three years. I know you’ve had somepersonal issues in the past, and that’s none of my business. But once it affects your work,thenit becomes my business, and my problem.”
Lilah stared down at her hands, abashed. She’d never been reprimanded like this before. That was something she’d always taken pride in: no matter the circumstances in her personal life, she showed up and nailed it. She burned with resentment toward Shane for fucking that up for her, too—though, of course, she had to accept responsibility for her part in it. A match wouldn’t light without something to strike it against.
“Okay,” she said abruptly. “We’ll go to therapy.”
She glanced over at Shane, who was already looking at her.
“Sure,” he said, his voice gravelly. “Right. Sorry. Whatever you want.” He actually sounded remorseful. He should—it was his tantrum that had landed them in the tabloids, exaggerated or not.
A few minutes later, Lilah followed him out of Walt’s office, pulling the door shut behind them. They both paused there, his eyes searching her face with an indecipherable expression. She thought he might say something, but instead, he turned and strode down the hall. She scampered to catch up with him.
