He would willingly change the subject except for a lingering question he couldn’t ignore. “I have to ask. The fans, the autographs, the starring roles. It’s everything you wanted and, let’s face it, everything you were willing to risk us for. You have that now, yet you seem… sad? Stressed?”

She drew a deep breath and, with one finger, circled the top of her water glass that was already on the table. “In order to explain, I need to go back. Are you sure you’re ready for the conversation?” she asked, putting him on the spot.

Though he hadn’t meant to bring up the discussion of their past, he understood they had no choice but to talk so he could put it behind him and work with her on the movie. It wasn’t easy.

For almost a year, he’d thought he’d found the woman who would define his future. They’d broken up without real closure, and now he had to wrap things up in a public restaurant, of all places. But that was his fault for refusing to talk at his house, a decision he now attributed to the shock of seeing her again.

“I can handle it,” he finally said, his shoulders stiff, his hands in fists in his lap.

She nodded. “Okay then.” Drawing a deep breath, she started to speak. “When we got together, I was trying to make a name for myself in the industry, and the night we met exposed me to big names for the first time. I’d already had a supporting role in a movie that was due out, and I was poised, as my agent likes to say. Does that make sense?”

“It does. And I understood that.” And he really had.

He’d been in town for everything that having a say in his first movie entailed. He’d rented a house for a year, testing whether or not he liked LA, and he’d tried to be open-minded. To put his time in Afghanistan and the occasional bouts of anxiety behind him. He was home in one piece, so were his buddies, and he wasn’t going back. He’d been looking toward the future and thought that would include Sasha.

She tipped her head to the side. “I know you tried to be accepting of my running around on auditions, taking meetings, having to cancel plans we’d made.” She swallowed hard and twisted a long strand of hair around her finger. A nervous gesture he remembered well.

“Yes. But what I didn’t understand or accept was how you ended up in a relationship with another man for show”—he paused to emphasize the words with finger quotes—“or taking a limo and walking the red carpet with him because it looked good for the movie.”