It wasn’t a surprise, not really. Still, hearing him say it outright like that made Lilah feel like her lungs had been vacuum-sealed. She stared straight ahead, keeping her face as neutral as possible.
“And did you ever talk about it?” Dr. Deena prodded gently.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shane nod. “I told her.” He swallowed. “And she ignored it.”
Lilah inhaled deeply and refrained from rolling her eyes again. He was obviously playing up the melodrama, trying to get Dr. Deena back on his side. “He told myshoulder bladehe loved it. During sex. That doesn’t count.”
“Why not?” asked Dr. Deena.
“Because it’s just…it just doesn’t,” Lilah finished lamely, before changing course. “He didn’t love me, he barely knew me.”
“Bullshit,” Shane said. “I spent more time with you than anybody.”
“So what? That’s not how it works. You’re not automatically an expert on me once you log your ten thousand hours, or whatever.”
“You think you make it easy, Lilah?” he blurted out, turning to face her for the first time the whole session. She just looked back at him, stunned at the intensity behind his words. “You don’t think Iwantedto know you? Maybe I got tired of waiting around for the drawbridge to lower, to finally get permission to cross the moat to Lilah Island.”
“Why would an island need a moat?” she muttered under her breath, unable to help herself.
Shane exhaled loudly, bordering on a groan, dragging his hand over his eyes in frustration. “See? This is exactly what I mean.”
Dr. Deena held her hand up to silence them.
“I’m curious why you’re so eager to invalidate Shane’s feelings for you, Lilah.”
“I don’t doubt he had feelings for me. But it wasn’t love.”
“Why not?”
Lilah crossed her legs, adjusting herself to sit upright on the couch. She spoke slowly, selecting her words carefully. “To me…love needs a degree of reciprocation. Of mutual openness. Choosing to let someone in, letting them see all of you.”
Dr. Deena nodded, making a note in her pad. “So you don’t believe unrequited love is possible, then?”
She shook her head. “A crush, maybe. Infatuation, lust, whatever. But that’s not love. It’s not even about the other person, really; it’s just about projecting some weird fantasy of who youthinkthey are.”
Shane scoffed, and both their heads turned toward him.
“You can’t control other people’s feelings, Lilah,” he said. “If I said I fell in love with you at—I don’t know—our first audition, you can’t tell me I didn’t.”
“At ouraudition?” she exclaimed, louder than she meant to, unable to hide her irritation that he was obviously fucking withher while she was trying to take things seriously. Sure enough, his eyes were sparkling with mischief, even as the rest of his expression remained innocent.
“It was just an example.”
“You’re both entitled to have your own perspectives,” Dr. Deena said before turning back to Lilah. “But as you were saying. You and Shane weren’t in love—by your own definition—because you weren’t open to it.” It wasn’t a question.
Lilah felt herself flush. “I think that’s a little reductive.”
“Did you ever develop any kind of romantic feelings for him at all, though? Ever consider pursuing something more?”
“Sure. I mean, yeah, of course.” She shrugged, trying to keep her voice casual, like it wasn’t her first time admitting anything of the sort in his presence. “I’m not, like, arobot. We were sleeping together for months. Of course I…” She trailed off, looking down at her lap. Next to her, Shane’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, his posture tense.
She realized, then, what Shane had meant by his outburst at the party:Because he didn’t know. It hadn’t been an unforgivable crime for Dean to go home with her, because as far as he knew, things hadn’t been serious between her and Shane. But as much as they’d tried to deny it—then, now, and every moment in between—they both understood, deep down, it was more complicated than that.Thatwas why her betrayal had been worse.
“We’re just…really different,” she said after a long beat. “The only thing we had in common was the show. It happens all the time, people bonding in a high-pressure situation like that. That doesn’t mean it’s real. It can’t sustain itself long-term.”
“And that was the only thing holding you back from taking things to the next level?” Dr. Deena prodded gently.
Lilah glanced at Shane, who was already looking at her, his gaze impenetrable.
