Page 72 of For My Finale
“She thinks she can’t have a normal life. The press showed up after the party at the cafe. She doesn’t want to drag me into that mess. She left because she thought it was the right thing to do.”
“And you believe that?” Ives said, thoroughly unimpressed.
Blossom hesitated for a millisecond. “I think so.”
Ives watched her for a long moment and then sighed. “Then you’re an idiot.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Ives said. “She left, Blossom. She made that choice. Maybe she thought she was protecting you, maybe she was just running away. Either way, you let her go and she went.”
Blossom’s throat tightened. She tried to swallow down thelump that was forming there, but it was no use. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, and before she could stop them, they spilled over. And then she was sobbing, the cries coming from deep inside.
“Oh, love,” Ives said. She shifted closer, wrapping her arms around Blossom, holding her. “I know, I know it hurts.”
Blossom tried to get a breath. “I just… I couldn’t ask her to stay. She’s Lilah Paxton, and who am I? I couldn’t beg her. I just… I let her go.”
Ives rubbed small circles on her back. “And yet you had the confidence to boss Gloria around on that stage like you’d been doing it all your life,” she said. She sighed. “I was no Lilah Paxton fan.”
“I know,” Blossom said. “I know but… But it seemed like you were starting to like her.”
“Maybe I was,” Ives said thoughtfully. “You really believe that she left to help you and not to hurt you?”
“I do,” said Blossom, hiccuping as she wiped her eyes.
“Christ,” said Ives, rubbing her face. “This is all a mess.”
“Yeah,” said Blossom, letting out a wet laugh.
They sat in silence for a while, the hall around them empty and quiet save for the occasional creak of the old wooden beams.
Eventually, Ives gave Blossom’s shoulders a squeeze. “Maybe the best thing for now is to focus on designing your bookshop, directing the play, other things.”
Blossom took a shaky breath and nodded. “Yeah. Maybe.”
But even as she said it, she knew that no amount of distractions would make her stop thinking about Lilah. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever stop thinking about Lilah. Stop wishing for her to walk back through the door.
She said goodbye to Ives and finally started to make her way home, her feet dragging with exhaustion. The night was quiet, the stars stretched out above her in an endless sky. And as she neared her cottage, her eyes drifted across to Lilah’s.
The windows were dark. The house was empty.
Blossom stopped in the middle of the path, staring at it,trying to make herself understand that she’d never see Lilah come striding out of that door again. That she’d never hear Lilah’s voice calling her name across the garden, never hear Lilah scream as Billy nosed his way through the hedge. Trying to make herself understand that Lilah Paxton was really, truly gone.
She turned away quickly, before the ache in her chest could consume her, eat her up until nothing was left but her sadness. She had to keep moving. It was the only thing she could do now.
Chapter Thirty
Lilah sat across from Simon DeLaney. She’d known the journalist in passing for years, he wasn’t a friend, but he wasn’t quite the enemy either. They were in a plush hotel suite, a quiet setting for what was supposed to be her big return to the industry interview. Cameras were set up, already recording her every movement, the lighting was so bright that she could look nowhere but at Simon’s face. She took none of it in, it was like being in her own living room she was so used to it.
Simon smiled in that easy, practiced way that TV journalists always did, his signature clipboard of questions resting on his knee. “So, Lilah, the real question, the real reason that we’re sitting here. You left Hollywood at the height of your career. Why?”
She’d rehearsed this answer with Margot a thousand times since agreeing to this interview. “I needed a break,” she said smoothly, flashing a charming but detached smile. “I wanted to take a step back and breathe for a bit.”
Simon tilted his head, scrutinizing her for the cameras. “Some might think this was a publicity stunt. That you vanished for dramatic effect, only to return to be lauded later.”
Lilah sucked a breath in. In her head, she wanted to shout and yell and tell him that leaving was the realest thing she’d ever done. She’d gone in genuine desperation, she’d been searching for something real. But that wasn’t what the world wanted tohear. She was supposed to be larger than life, a woman who controlled every aspect of her image.
So instead, she raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “Then perhaps that’s what it was.”
