Chapter 9

David

David had turned his phone off when he got out of the car the previous evening and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on this morning. He looked outside the hotel window, saw that the city was waking up, and decided he wanted a run.

David was tying his shoes when he heard a card key open his door. He wasn’t surprised when he saw his mother.

“You are alive,” she quipped as she walked in and locked her eyes on his.

“Morning, Mother,” he said, feeling his anger start to rise.

David was thrown off-balance when his mom laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Why don’t we skip the fight, and you just tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’ve learned my lesson on that. I’m not about to discuss my love life with you,” David fired back with a bit more heat than he’d intended.

Then he did a face-palm when he realized he’d just opened Pandora’s Box by revealing that his going off the grid had to do with his love life. He got up because he needed to be anywhere but there at that moment. His mom took a step back to block the door.

David considered forcefully moving her out of the way, but he knew that would be a grave mistake. She wasn’t about to let him leave this room without talking to her. He shook his head and went to get his phone. David turned it on and saw he had like a bazillion messages, so it took him a moment to find the ones from Isabel.

“Here. Look at that one and the next.”

Carol took his phone and looked at it for a long moment, then looked at the second picture. She mumbled a few words, but the only one he managed to understand was ‘die.’ He wasn’t sure who she meant. If David had his way, it would be both Lexi and Ben.

Then his mom looked at him with real sadness in her eyes. It reminded him of how she’d looked when she discovered his dad had fathered his younger half-brother.

“Do you love her?” Carol asked.

His knees went weak, and he had to sit down on the edge of the bed.

’Is that why this hurts so much?’

His mom went quiet because she knew David had to process things at his own pace.

What had started out as friends with benefits to help each other must have changed at some point. Every time one of them had made a subtle push for more, the other reminded them of what they were doing: just helping each other out. At the time, David appreciated it, and he thought Lexi did, too.

At first, he’d been getting over Brook leaving. Then they’d been busy making movies.

And it wasn’t just about sex. Lexi was his best-ever PA because she’d come to know him so well. She could anticipate his every need and would often have it met before he realized the need was even there. She was also smart and funny and had become a close friend.

Yes, everyone had warned him that she could be a bitch and would take advantage of him at some point. But when David was with her, he never saw it.

Then, a week before he wrapped up his Star Academy commitment, Lexi had admitted her love for him. David had responded by sending her home. Looking back, he recognized he hadn’t handled that well. After he moved to LA, she had said that the reason for the ‘love’ confession was that she was worried that if he went to school at Oklahoma, she would never see him again.

At that point, David had accepted Lexi back as his PA. He’d thought everything was back to normal when she reinserted herself into his life.

He hadn’t actually seen Lexi in over a month, which bothered him. Before, they’d seen each other all day long on set and then weekly at a minimum while he was in school. They’d even acted like a couple over spring break.

When they returned home from break, though, things changed. David suspected that she’d met a guy. The two of them had agreed that if either of them ever got serious with someone, they would end it, at least the sexual part of their relationship.

He’d thought that they would reconnect come summer. Then Lexi took the PA job to help Ben with his movie. The funny part of it was that David knew Ben’s reputation. He’d gone after David’s friend Halle James when they made Love Letters.

But the idea that Ben and Lexi would end up in bed had never crossed his mind. He’d watched many men hit on Lexi, and she’d turned them all away. David had assumed she would do the same with Ben.

Then David caught his mom’s eye.

“I think I do love her,” he finally admitted.

His mom gave him a sad look as she slowly shook her head.

“Then you have to figure out what kind of love it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you truly love her, you have to do whatever it takes to fix this. If it’s just love, then you have to let her go. And if your ego gets involved, you have to figure out how to let that go as well. The hard part is figuring out what, exactly, you feel for her,” Carol explained.

David looked toward the ceiling, took a deep breath, then looked back at his mom.

“That’s the problem. I’m not sure.”

“Then that’s your answer. Let her go,” his mom advised.

“It’s not that simple,” he quickly retorted.

Carol gave him a slight smile.

“Believe me when I tell you I fully understand. Your head is swimming with emotions and ‘what ifs.’ When I faced my own ‘what ifs’ with your father, I figured out the bottom line, that I truly loved him. From that point forward, I could see my way through.

“Don’t get me wrong. You are going to, at some point, start to feel okay again, but the okay days will still be followed by some dark ones. Getting past a betrayal like this can eat you alive. What saved me was that even in my darkest moments, I knew that in the end, your father and I would be all right.

“It will be the same with your feelings about Lexi,” his mom promised. “For you, though, working through those feelings means working past her and moving forward.”

“Should I call her?” David asked.

“Why? So she can wind you up with her lies?” Carol asked.

That struck him as funny, and he actually laughed. It was a quirk of his personality that he would sometimes get the giggles when he was in a stressful situation. His whole family found that amusing, which had many times helped to break the tension.

Just as quickly, a thought came into his head that had him near tears. He’d been well on his way to being worse than Ben. If the night had continued as it had, David knew that he would have slept with Brook. What made it worse was that he had a moral code to guide him that he was willing to shred to be with his ex.

“What’s wrong?” Carol asked.

“I was going to sleep with Brook.”

Initially, his mom didn’t get it, until she did. David expected her to rage at him for almost breaking his promise to her. When she pulled him into her arms, he felt like he was ten years old again and began to cry. But it was just a few tears.