Page 25 of Bodied

It was agony, being unable to help her. He stared down at his hands. “Maybe… Do you need a friend right now?”

Apparently, that was the right button to push. Lauren bawled. “Yes!” Then she shot across the couch and threw her arms around his shoulders.

Wesley froze, unsure what the right thing to do here was. Then he told himself to stop being a coward and wrapped his arms around her. It was just a hug in the end. Nothing to get worked up about. Except he was getting worked up. He shoved his desire back down and squeezed her tighter. She needed a hug, and that’s all he was going to give her right now. He was going to be there for her in all the ways she needed him and none of the ways she didn’t.

“I always had kind of a complicated relationship with my mother, too,” he said when she finally sat back.

“Didn’t know you had a mother,” she said with a mischievous half smile. “I thought you just spawned from a swamp somewhere.”

The fact that she had energy and humor enough to tease him gave him some hope that he might actually be able to cheer her up. “Who says I didn’t?” He winked.

She laughed quietly and shook her head. “Okay, touché. Sorry. I tend to use humor to deal with… pretty much everything that makes me feel vulnerable, I guess.”

Wesley arched an eyebrow at her. “Oh, that was supposed to be humor?”

She slapped his arm playfully. Good. Her mood was improving.

“I’ll try to remember to laugh next time,” he said, and she upgraded her slap to a kick.

While she used more tissue to dab away the last of her tears, he decided to let her in. She needed to know she wasn’t alone right now. “What I meant to say is… I understand what it’s like to love someone who maybe isn’t good for you.”

She looked up, listening.

“My dad left when I was pretty young,” he said, “so I grew up in a single-parent household, technically. But my mother made sure she was never alone. I don’t think she could stand the idea of living single. She was always in a new relationship, and she wasn’t choosy about who she brought home. So I got an endless rotation of boyfriends as a father figure. I don’t know what it was about my mother that attracted the worst kind of men, but they always seemed to find her.”

He leaned back and looked away. It was never easy to talk about this part of his life, but he also knew it was the right thing to do. “I grew up watching them treat her… badly, I guess. And she either couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up for herself. I admit I never really understood what she was going through. It couldn’t have been easy, dealing with the aftermath of my father. I think she made some bad choices, but I never doubted her love for me. I thought she deserved so much more out of life, and I was determined to protect her however I could.”

Lauren had leaned in, and was listening intently. As far as Wesley could tell, opening up to her was working. “Protect her, huh?” she said. “Is that why you got into this business?”

He hadn’t ever considered that as a possibility before, but now that she mentioned it… Wesley was the type of person to just act and not go into any kind of deep analysis about why he made the choices he did. He went with his gut over his head more often than not. This served him well in his profession, where split-second decisions made all the difference and thinking too long about anything could actually get you killed. But it didn’t do much for his mental health in the end. “It’s definitely possible,” he finally answered. “I went into the military because I wanted to be stronger.”

“For her?” Lauren asked.

Wesley thought about it. “Yeah, probably. After I got out of the military, protecting people just seemed like the logical next step. That’s what I always wanted to do since I was a kid, so I guess it makes sense that my situation with my mother probably had something to do with my choices. I always felt kind of useless, not being able to protect or provide for her. Like maybe that was why she always felt the need to have a romantic partner, no matter how bad they were.”

“You were a kid.” Lauren slid closer to him and let her hand come to rest on his leg. “It wasn’t your job to protect or provide for anyone, not at that age. That’s what parents are supposed to do for their children.”

“Try telling ten-your-old me that.” He laughed. “Nah, I was the one who stayed. I saw how hard she cried after each relationship ended, one way or another. All I ever wanted was for her to finally be happy because she deserved it, I thought. After what my dad did, she deserved it. I didn’t realize until later that she wasn’t the only one missing something in her life, but by then…” He shrugged.

Lauren finished his thought for him. “By then, you had already planned your life around what was missing?”

“Yeah, basically.” He picked her hand up off his leg and held it in his own instead. “So, I mean, I think I can understand a little of what you’re going through. Maybe not to the same degree, but… I still love my mother, so much. Now that I’m older, though, I can see that my relationship with her was just not healthy. I lost a lot of my childhood because of the choices she made. She could have done better, but then again, I wouldn’t be who I am without all that. It’s a complicated feeling.”

“It is…” Lauren sank into the couch a little. “I spent so much of my life working to make my mom’s life easier. The thing is, when I was younger, I went through this rebellious phase. I partied pretty much every night. My grades suffered. I tried everything. I just wanted to be free, I guess. But the tabloids found out, and from that point on, it felt like that was all they could ever talk about. I saw my mom’s career suffer as the result ofmyactions. That’s a lesson I think most kids don’t have to learn until later. The choices I made didn’t just affect me. They affected my mom, too, and her entire team by extension. From that point on, I didn’t allow myself to self-destruct. It didn’t matter how badly I wanted to. I had to keep it together for my mom, so her career wouldn’t suffer.”

She leaned closer, and Wesley saw her eyes well up. He put an arm around her and pulled her in. “What’s going on, Lauren?” he asked one last time.

This time, she actually answered. “This afternoon, my mom tried to encourage me after I lost the part from that audition. But I never told her about having lost it. You were the only person who knew, and I didn’t think you would have told her. When I accused her of it, she admitted to the sabotage. She said the role was bad for the ‘family brand.’” She sniffed and pulled a fresh tissue out of the box. “I had gotten the part, after all. She just killed it for me. How could she? How was killing my career so easy for her to do when I punished myself so hard for even putting a dent in hers?” She sobbed and caught her breath. “It feels like she can’t possibly love me the same way I love her, and that just… It really hurts.”

Despite his profession, Wesley was not a violent man by nature. But now his fists were clenched, and he needed to punch something. He’d thought maybe Lauren and her mother had gotten into some kind of spat, nothing out of the ordinary. It was possible Lauren was just taking it harder than usual because her mother had said something particularly mean. But this… Honestly, how dare Anne Bartlett do something like this to her own daughter? Was Lauren really not allowed to have a life outside her mother’s career? Wesley had watched Lauren’s heart break the day she received that call, and he wasn’t going to forget it any time soon. The fact that her own mother had done it to her made him want to scream.

“She was wrong to do that,” was all he could think to say. “But she hasn’t killed your career. You’ll get another audition, and we won’t even tell her you’ve taken it. It’ll be a bigger and better part than the last one, but no matter what, you’re going to kill it. I know you will. You’re way too good to fail, princess. I’m so certain of it that I’m going to insist on keeping in touch after this job ends, just so I can tell everyone I’m friends withtheLauren Bartlett… or whatever your stage name happens to be. Trust me on this one.”

When he glanced down at Lauren again, he found her looking up at him with tears in her eyes and the warmest, most sincere smile he’d ever seen on her face. “Thank you,” she whispered, “farm boy.”

CHAPTER12

LAUREN

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