She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. Ben didn’t say anything, or ask any questions, or try to hurry her along. He just kept hold of her hand. Finally, she started again.

“Last year . . . I’d been working a ton—I did three movies back to back, I wanted to take advantage of the moment while I could, because I knew this stuff can be fleeting, especially for someone like me. And while I was working on Vigilantes, it’s—”

“You’re in that movie? That’s so cool!” Ben said.

She laughed and then sighed. She hoped to hell she would actually be in it.

“Yeah, though I can’t tell you much about it; I only have a handful of scenes.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, while we were in the middle of filming, I started having anxiety attacks. I couldn’t breathe, the world would go fuzzy, my heart would beat so fast. Oh God, Ben, the first time it happened, I was so scared. I was in my trailer—I’d just gotten to the set. There were a bunch of photographers outside on my way in. They yelled something rude at me, about my body, how I looked that day—they do that, to try to get a bad picture,” she said in response to Ben’s outraged glare. “And I didn’t react, I’m good at that, I just smiled. I look pleasant and blank-faced in the pictures, I saw them all later, even though they hurt to look at. But when I got to my trailer, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the walls were closing in on me, like I’d never be able to escape, like I’d have to have that blank smile on my face for the rest of my life, no matter what garbage the world threw at me.”

She swallowed.

“I made it through that day, but it kept happening. And I felt so lonely, like there was no one I could talk to about any of this. I’d achieved so much, my life was a dream, shouldn’t I be happy? Shouldn’t I be thankful? I still sort of feel like that, to be honest. I felt like an asshole complaining, or having a hard time with any of this. It’s just part of the job—shouldn’t I be able to deal with it?”

Why was she tearing up again about this? It was ridiculous. She took a few deep breaths, and Ben held tighter to her hand.

“So I didn’t think . . . once the anxiety attacks started, I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t even . . .” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I didn’t even tell my family, or my best friend. I felt like I had to be strong, and if I told them, if I acknowledged that it was happening, it would mean I was weak.”

Ben lifted her hand and kissed it softly.

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s not how it works,” he said.

She laughed, and a few more tears came out.

“Well, I know that now,” she said, and they both laughed. “But then . . . no one expected me to get that Oscar nomination, you know—well, no one except for me—and after the nomination, I was so caught up in making sure I didn’t go on to fail, to be a disappointment, that I had to work as hard as hell, and prove that I was worth the nomination and the accolades and the magazine covers and dresses, that I felt like I couldn’t give in. I thought if I just pushed through, I could handle it. That it would all stop.”

She’d felt so lonely then. With no one to talk to, no one to burden with this weight she’d thought she had to carry on her own.

“I bet that strategy worked out great, right?” Ben slid his hand onto her knee.

She laughed.

“You may be surprised to learn this, but no, it did not work out well at all.”

It felt sort of . . . freeing, to talk to Ben about this. When she’d told her family and Penny, it had been in the moment, and they’d been so concerned about her that their worries had affected her. And when she’d told Simon, she’d just been terrified for her career, and she could tell he’d been worried about that, too. But Ben had no emotions—or any other needs—tied up in her, and seemed to take this in stride. It felt almost easy to talk to him about this. Maybe it was just easier to fall apart with someone who wasn’t a part of her life.

“As a matter of fact, no, I’m not surprised that didn’t work out well,” Ben said. “I’ve tried to ignore my problems like that before; it’s never really worked.” He laughed. “But I still keep trying.”

She liked the warm, solid feeling of his hand on her knee. Even though this thing with him couldn’t go anywhere—she didn’t even want it to go anywhere—that didn’t matter right now. She’d just let herself enjoy it for the rest of the drive.

“Yeah. Well. I managed to keep it all—my anxiety, my fears, how I had trouble getting out of bed every day, all of that—a secret from everyone on set, thank God. But we were almost done filming, and I had a few weeks off afterward. I’d planned to head up to the Bay Area to see my family, but I knew they would see right through me, and I didn’t want them to worry about me. So instead I canceled. I just locked myself in my house so I could hide away from the world.”

His thumb moved back and forth on her knee. It made her slow herself down, deepen her shallow breaths.

“Did that help?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I thought I would be relaxed, you know? Not have to worry about seeing anyone, any press, any photographers—not have to think about what they were thinking about me, if they’d noticed how I was acting, what they would say about me, how bad the pictures of me would be. But instead, it just got worse. I felt . . .” She took a breath that quivered, as much as she tried to stop it. “Like I was all alone in the world with this problem—me, I was the problem, and there was nothing I could do about it.” She’d already said more than she meant to, but she couldn’t stop now. “It was . . . it was a really dark time.”

He glanced over at her, a soft, caring expression on his face. She hoped he didn’t look at her too long like that—she’d cry again. Luckily, he looked back at the road.

“How did . . .” He stopped himself. “Sorry, I hate that I can’t really look at you while you’re telling me all of this. I don’t want you to think I’m not paying attention.”

She put her hand on top of his, and he immediately turned his hand over to hold on to hers.

“No, It’s okay. I think . . . I think maybe it’s easier this way for me. I haven’t . . . this isn’t something I really talk about a lot.”

He nodded.

“That makes sense. And I hope you know, but in case you don’t—I would never tell anybody about this.”

She’d thought about that, of course she had. But he was the first person she’d even been slightly inclined to trust in a year and a half. Her therapist had kept telling her to trust her instincts about people. So here she was. Trying to trust them. She hoped to hell it didn’t blow up in her face.