Chapter 25: The Unexpected Ally
The wine bottle sat on her counter like an artifact from another world. Condensation beaded on its green glass, tracing slow paths through the label. Dee watched one droplet fall, then another, her vision blurred.
He cried.
The words reverberated in the silent studio. The lavender scent was suddenly cloying. The golden glow from the desk lamp felt theatrical, a stage set for a performance that had just been brutally cancelled.
She wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands, a rough, angry motion. She didn’t want his tears. She didn’t want Elara’s pity-party apology, delivered like some twisted gift. She wanted her old reality back, the one where his affection was a steady, platonic sun, warm and safe at a fixed distance. Not this scorching, unpredictable star that burned everything it touched.
Her phone buzzed on the vanity. A text from her assistant, Noah: Saw the pics from the Wilshire. You look fire. Him too. Obvs. Media is eating it up.
She threw the phone into her leather tool bag. It landed with a soft thud among her shears and combs.
The knock on the studio door a moment later was so quiet she almost didn’t hear it. One tentative tap, then another.
“Go away, Elara,” she called, her voice thick. “Your redemption arc is closed for the night.”
“It’s not Elara.”
The voice was low, muffled by the door, but instantly, painfully familiar.
Every muscle in Dee’s body locked. She stared at her reflection in the dark mirror—eyes puffed, mascara smudged, the emerald gown now seeming ridiculous in the intimate clutter of her workspace. She looked like a party casualty.
“Dee. Please.”
She didn’t move. She could pretend she wasn’t here. The lights were low. She could just wait him out.
But he knew her car was in the lot. He knew she came here to hide, to think, to repair herself. He knew her too well.
With a resignation that felt like lifting a concrete block, she walked to the door and unlocked it. She didn’t open it. She stepped back.
The door swung inward.
Matt stood on the threshold, still in the charcoal tuxedo, but the bow tie was undone and hanging loose around his neck. The top button of his shirt was open. He looked like he’d driven here fast, with the windows down. He held a small white paper bag in one hand.
He looked at her face, at the ruin of her makeup, and something in his own expression fractured. “Oh,” he said, the single syllable full of a misery that mirrored her own.
“If you’re here for a touch-up, I’m booked,” she said, crossing her arms. It was a weak line, but it was all she had.
He didn’t smile. He stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. The familiar space seemed to shrink with him in it. He took in the room—the single lamp, the packed tools, the bottle of wine.
“She came here,” he stated.
“With a full disclosure and a decent Sauvignon Blanc. It was a whole thing.”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “She shouldn’t have.”
“Why? Because it ruins the mystery? The whole ‘it wasn’t what you thought’ routine?” Dee’s voice gained an edge. She was too tired, too raw, for their usual dance. “She spelled it out for me. You were ‘wrecked.’ You cried. Bravo. A stellar performance. Should I applaud?”
He flinched. A real, physical recoil. He set the paper bag down on the counter next to the wine. “It wasn’t a performance.”
“Then what was it, Matt?” The question burst out of her, loud in the quiet room. “What is any of it? You let me believe you were with her. You let me walk out of your life for weeks. You show up at a gala and put your hands on me like nothing happened, and then you have the gall to look hurt when I can’t play along. And now I find out, via your ex-fling, that you were allegedly heartbroken? What am I supposed to do with that?”
He was silent for a long moment, just looking at her. The intensity in his blue eyes was unbearable. “You were supposed to fight,” he finally said, his voice quiet. “You were supposed to yell at me, throw something else, demand an explanation. You weren’t supposed to just… disappear. You’ve never just disappeared from me before.”
The honesty was disarming. It stripped her defenses bare.
“I was tired,” she whispered, the fight draining out of her. “I was so tired of wanting you. Of pretending I didn’t. Of seeing you with everyone else. It felt easier to just stop.”
He moved then, closing the distance between them in two steps. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, close enough that she could see the faint lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the pulse in his throat. “Nothing about this has ever been easy,” he said. “For years, Dee. For years, it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Sitting in that chair, with your hands in my hair, making you laugh, and wanting… God. Wanting so much more. And being so terrified that if I reached for it, I’d lose you completely.”
The air left her lungs. The confession hung between them, fragile and immense.
“Elara was a mistake,” he continued, the words coming faster now, tumbling out. “A stupid, drunken, pathetic mistake because I saw a picture of you with that finance guy on some boat, and I felt like the world was ending. I invited her over to prove to myself that I could feel something for someone else. And the second she walked in, I knew it was the worst idea I’d ever had. We talked. That’s all we did. She asked me why I looked so miserable, and I told her. I told her everything. About you. When you showed up… Christ. You looked so betrayed. And then you slapped me. And you left.”
He reached into the paper bag and pulled out two small cardboard containers. He opened one. Inside were two perfect, golden beignets, dusted with powdered sugar. The scent of fried dough and vanilla filled the space, cutting through the lavender.
“You brought me beignets?” she asked, incredulous.
“From that all-night place on Fairfax you like,” he said, a helpless shrug in his voice. “I didn’t know what else to bring. I’m not good at this. I’m good at scripts. At saying other people’s words. These are the only words I have.”
Dee looked from the pastries to his face. The carefully constructed image of Matt Bomer—the unflappable movie star—was gone. In its place was just a man, standing in her salon, holding a peace offering of sugar and grease, looking utterly terrified.
She reached out, not for him, but for a beignet. Her fingers broke off a piece. The sugar coated her fingertips. She took a bite. It was still warm, meltingly soft inside.
“They’re good,” she said quietly.
He let out a breath that was almost a sob. He put the container down. “Dee.”
She looked up at him, her mouth full, her heart a wild, wounded thing in her chest.
“I love you,” he said. The words were simple. Clear. No banter, no filter, no practiced charm. “I am in love with you. I think I have been since the day you called me a ‘walking hair disaster’ and charged me double.”
A laugh hiccuped out of her, tangled with a fresh wave of tears. She swallowed the sweet dough. “That was our first session.”
“I know.”
She wiped her sugar-dusted fingers on a towel. The world had narrowed to this circle of lamplight, to the smell of beignets and his cologne, to the terrifying, beautiful truth in his eyes.
“It’s a really bad idea,” she whispered.
“The worst.”
“We’d ruin everything.”
“Probably.”
She took a step forward. He didn’t move. She reached up, her hand trembling slightly, and touched his cheek where she had struck him weeks before. His eyes closed at the contact. His skin was warm. He leaned into her palm.
“Say it again,” she breathed.
His eyes opened. Blue and depthless and full of a truth that shattered her last remaining wall. “I love you, Dee Waldorf.”
She kissed him.
It wasn’t like she’d imagined. There was no slow build, no cinematic sweep. It was a collision—of relief, of years of pent-up longing, of fear and sugar and desperate hope. His arms came around her, crushing the silk of her gown, pulling her against the solid wall of his chest. He tasted like whiskey and salt and home. Her fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, and he made a low, broken sound against her mouth, a vibration she felt in her very bones.
When they finally broke apart, breathless, her forehead resting against his, the studio felt different. The same, but irrevocably changed. The tools of her trade, the bottles, the mirror—they were all silent witnesses to the end of one story and the terrifying, exhilarating beginning of another.
He held her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “What now?” he murmured.
She looked at their reflection in the dark mirror, two figures fused together in the golden light. “Now,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt, “we finish the beignets. And then we figure out how to tell the internet that their favorite friendship just blew up the script.”