Read Chapter 37: The Confession

She stood in the doorway of the suite, one hand still on the frame, as if the physical threshold might give her the courage to say what needed saying. Theo was still on the couch where she’d left him, his elbows on his knees, his tie loosened and hanging crooked. He looked less like a man who had just proposed and more like a man who had just lost something he hadn't realized he was holding.

“I need you to hear me,” Elise said, her voice quieter now, stripped of the heat from her earlier exit. She stepped back inside and closed the door. “Not as your co-star. Not as your—whatever we are to the press. Just as me.”

Theo raised his head. His eyes were rimmed with exhaustion, the kind that came from too many nights spent calculating outcomes. “I’m listening.”

She walked to the armchair opposite him and sat, not close enough to touch, but not so far that he could mistake this for abandonment. “You didn’t propose because you love me, Theo. You proposed because you’re afraid.”

“That’s not—” He started, but she held up a hand.

“You found out about Los Angeles and something in you snapped. I saw it. You didn’t ask me what I wanted to do with the offer. You didn’t ask me how I felt about eighteen months apart. You just tried to buy me with a ring.”

Theo flinched. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“Then what were you doing?” Elise leaned forward, her gaze unflinching. “Tell me. Because from where I’m sitting, it looked like you were trying to write me into your script so I couldn’t leave. And I’ve spent my entire career being written into other people’s visions. I won’t do it in my own life.”

Silence stretched between them. On the street below, a horn blared, distant and indifferent. Theo ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she’d come to recognize as his tell when he was working through something he didn’t want to say out loud.

“My mother left when I was nine,” he said finally, his voice low. “One day she was there, making breakfast, signing me up for school plays. The next, she was gone. No note. No explanation. Just a suitcase and a cab to the airport. My father never talked about it. He just went to work and came home and went to work, like she’d never existed.”

Elise’s chest tightened. She’d known Theo’s childhood had been marked by his parents’ separation, but he’d always spoken of it in passing, a footnote to his biography. Not like this.

“I convinced myself it didn’t matter,” he continued. “That I didn’t need her. That I was fine. And I was. For years. I built a whole career on being the steady one, the reliable one, the guy who shows up on time and never makes a scene. Because if I was that guy, no one would ever have a reason to leave.”

“Theo…”

“Then you came along,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “And you made me feel like I was actually in my own life for the first time. Not performing it. Not managing it. Just living it. And it terrified me, because I knew—I knew—the moment I let myself need that, I’d lose it. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.”

Elise felt the sting behind her eyes and blinked it back. She’d spent so long focused on her own secrets, her own shame, that she’d missed the shadows he was carrying. “I’m not your mother.”

“I know that.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I know that. But I don’t know how to stop my brain from telling me that everyone leaves eventually. That if I give you a reason—if I’m not perfect enough, not supportive enough, not enough—you’ll walk out the door and I’ll never see you again.”

“So you proposed,” Elise said, not unkindly. “To keep me from leaving. Like a clause in a contract.”

Theo laughed, bitter and humorless. “Ironic, isn’t it? I spent three months pretending to be in love with you for the cameras. And then I couldn’t tell the difference between real love and panic.”

Elise sat with that. She thought about her own fear—the dread that her past would catch up with her, that her father would look at her with disappointment, that Theo would see the whole truth and flinch. She had hidden the Marcus text from him, tucking it away like a shameful secret, and that omission sat on her chest like an anvil.

“I understand fear,” she said. “I woke up every morning for two years afraid of what people might find out about me. Afraid of what my father would say. Afraid that the person I loved would look at me and see someone broken.” She paused, letting the weight of the words settle. “But I also know that a partnership built on fear isn’t real. It’s just two people holding each other up so they don’t have to face their own ghosts.”

Theo looked at her, his eyes searching. “What do you want, Elise? Not the press version. Not the Instagram version. Not what you think I need to hear. What do you actually want?”

She let the question hang in the air. For a moment, she was tempted to give him the easy answer—that she wanted him, that they could figure it out together, that love was enough. But she had spent her life performing, and she was done.

“I want to finish this run of press,” she said. “I want to take the Cobalt Sky meeting and decide for myself whether that role is mine. I want to have dinner with my father tomorrow and tell him the truth about Ibiza, even if it means he walks away again. And I want to heal the parts of myself that think I’m only valuable when someone else is propping me up.”

Theo nodded slowly. “And me?”

Elise’s throat tightened. This was the hardest part, the one she’d been dreading since the moment she walked out the first time. “I want you to do the same. I want you to face the fear that’s been running your life since you were nine years old. And I want you to come back to me when you don’t need me—when you want me.”

“That’s—” Theo started, but she pressed on.

“I won’t be another escape route, Theo. I won’t be the thing you cling to so you don’t have to look at the void inside you. That’s not love. That’s distraction.” She swallowed. “And I’ve been a distraction before. For my father. For the public. For Marcus. I refuse to be one for the man I actually love.”

The word hung in the air between them. Theo’s expression flickered—loss, hope, and something like recognition passing through it in rapid succession.

“You love me?” he asked.

“I do.” Her voice cracked, but she held his gaze. “And because I love you, I won’t let you ruin this by rushing into something you’re not ready for. I won’t let you use a ring to paper over the wound your mother left. You deserve better than that. We both do.”

Theo was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rough, trembling with the effort of keeping it steady. “What if I don’t fix it? What if six months of therapy and introspection and whatever else isn’t enough? What if I’m still afraid?”

Elise reached out and took his hand. The contact was warm, grounding. “Then you come back to me anyway, and you tell me the truth about it. And we figure out the next step together. No contracts this time. No cameras. No deadlines. Just us, being honest about what we can and can’t give each other.”

Theo looked at her, his thumb tracing a slow circle over her knuckles. “Six months.”

“Six months,” she echoed. “You take the time to find out who you are without the performance. I take the time to decide if I even want Hollywood or if I’m just chasing it because I’m afraid no one will offer me anything else. And then we meet back here.”

“Here?”

“London. The first week of March.” She smiled, faint but real. “I’ll be doing a stage run at the South Bank. Consider it a standing invitation.”

Theo’s mouth quirked, almost a smile. “You’re going to make me buy a ticket.”

“Front row,” she said. “I’ll know if you’re not there.”

The tension in the room eased, not entirely, but enough for them to breathe. Theo stood and pulled her to her feet. He cupped her face in his hands, his gaze holding hers with an intensity she hadn’t seen in him before—not the intensity of someone about to perform a scene, but the intensity of someone actually seeing her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For making it a transaction. For being so afraid of losing you that I forgot to just be with you.”

“I forgive you,” she said. And she meant it.

He kissed her forehead, slow and tender. Then he let his hands drop and stepped back. The distance between them felt deliberate, achingly so, but not cruel. It felt necessary.

“I’ll see you in March,” he said.

“March,” she repeated.

He grabbed his jacket from the back of the couch and paused at the door, one hand on the handle. He didn’t turn back. “Thank you. For not letting me settle for my own bullshit.”

“Theo.” He stopped. “The script you’ll write—if you write it—I want to read it. When the time’s right.”

He glanced over his shoulder, and for a moment she caught a glimpse of something lighter in him, something unburdened and unguarded. “I’ll hold you to that.”

The door clicked shut behind him. Elise stood alone in the suite, the quiet settling around her like snow. She hadn’t known what she’d say when she walked back in, but somehow the words had found their way out. She pressed a hand to her sternum, feeling her heartbeat steady and solid.

For the first time in months, she wasn’t performing. She wasn’t negotiating. She wasn’t managing someone else’s fear.

She was just Elise. And that, she realized, was enough to be getting on with.

Tomorrow, she would face her father. Tomorrow, she would face the truth of Ibiza, whatever it cost her. And tonight, she would sleep—not soundlessly, not without dreaming, but alone and unbroken in a way she hadn’t been since long before the cameras ever found her.