Page 97 of Best Supporting Actor

Maybe, Tag thought bleakly,because you were being such a fucking shit to him.

“I always knew you were a selfish dick!”

Tag winced, the words in his memory sounding crueller in the ruthless light of day. Whatever else Jay might be, he had never been selfish. The total opposite, in fact. Tag had let his temper get the best of him last night, and it had made him mean.

With a groan, he swung his legs off the sofa and sat up. As he did so, his gaze fell on Jay’s box of pills sitting on the kitchen counter where Tag had thrown them in disgust. They too looked different this morning. Just an ordinary box of pills with a prescription sticker on the back. Medication prescribed to Jay, presumably by an actual doctor treating an actual mental health condition. Stage fright, Jay had called it, but what was stage fright if not a form of anxiety?

Tag had a sudden flash of memory, not of acting with Jay but of being in bed with him. Jay, tense and self-conscious, riddled with performance anxiety, unable to ask for what he wanted. Christ, Tag should have realised then, shouldn’t he? Well, hehadrealised. He’d known right away that someone—Seb, it turned out—had done a number on Jay’s sexual confidence. How much bigger impact had that bastard had on Jay’s professional confidence? On his personal confidence?

No wonder Jay suffered from stage fright.

And what had Tag done to help? Fuck all, that’s what. He’d accused Jay of being a diva, when Tag was the one ranting at Jay for screwing uphisbig break,hiscareer,hisplay. Not once last night had Tag considered that Jay had an actual fucking mental health condition, one for which he’d sought help.

Help Tag had stolen, and then blamed Jay for using. No, worse:bannedJay from using.

Christ.

Dropping his phone, Tag buried his face in his hands. “Shit,” he breathed. “What the fuck have you done?”

A moment later, he was on his feet, pacing backward and forward in the little flat. Jay’s flat. There were traces of him everywhere: his sweatshirt on the back of one of the dining chairs, the mug he always used for coffee by the sink, his dog-eared script on the nightstand by his bed—the bed Tag hadn’t wanted to sleep in alone last night.

But Jay was gone, and his absence suddenly felt raw, like a hole in Tag’s heart, bloody around the edges. Everything about the last few days was unravelling in Tag’s memory, reforming to reveal a new picture. Jay’s tension at Dame Cordelia’s party, his desperate neediness afterwards, his restlessness and refusal to talk about the play all weekend—all of it, Tag saw now, was Jay’s way of trying to cope with his anxiety. Asking for Tag’s help the only way he knew how. But Tag had been blind to it, too caught up in the glamour and excitement of opening night, unwilling to see what was in front of his nose.

He saw it now, though, and he was ashamed of himself.

What did the bloody play even matter next to Jay’s wellbeing? Next to Tag’s feelings for him? And, yes, that was something else he’d been trying to ignore, wasn’t it? Hisfeelings, the ones that had erupted into hurt fury last night, the same ones that were now churning so painfully inside him that he felt physically sick with guilt, and fear that he’d lost Jay over this. Lost the man he’d maybe—

Oh, fuck it,notmaybe. Time to stop lying to himself and just fucking own it.

He was in love with Jay. Stupidly, crazily in love with him.

Tag let out a bleak, helpless laugh as he finally admitted it to himself, staring unseeingly out of the apartment window at the river. It wasn’t that he hadn’t suspected it before, but just like with everything else that he deemed secondary to his ambition, he’d ignored the inconvenient truth because it was difficult, because Jay might not feel the same, and because it was simpler to focus on his career plan and his big fucking break.

Well, he couldn’t ignore it now, could he? It was eating him alive.

He was completely, helplessly in love with Jay Warren. Jay, with his posh accent and kind heart, his generous talent, and his unexpectedly sensitive soul.

Tag loved him, and he’d hurt him, and all he wanted now was to make things right again. Not with the play.Fuckthe play. That came as another shock—realising that he didn’t care whether or not Jay performed tonight, or even about his own big break, not if it came at the price of Jay’s happiness. Right now, this minute, all hedidcare about was that Jay was okay, and that maybe, if Tag grovelled enough, he might forgive Tag for being such a selfish, thoughtless shit.

Snatching up his phone from where it had fallen on the floor, he was about to call Jay when he remembered the time. Not even six o’clock. Jay would have got back to London in the small hours of the morning—hopefully he was asleep now. God knew he’d looked exhausted when he left last night. Tag wasn’t about to wake him up at the crack of dawn just because he desperately needed to soothe his own guilt.

Instead, he fumbled open his messages, then paused. Not knowing what to say—there was somuchto say—he went with the most urgent.

I’m sorry. Are you okay?

There was no answer, and he could tell the message hadn’t even been read. Which was good, because it probably meant Jay was sleeping. Or ignoring him. He pushed that thought to one side for now. He’d try calling later, and then he’d know.

In the meantime, the question was, what to do next? Mostly he just wanted to jump on a train to London and bang on Jay’s front door, but he didn’t even have Jay’s address. Besides, the play was opening tonight, and Tag knew Jay would want him to go on. That he wouldn’t want Tag to let down Bea and Henry.

Okay, so he couldn’t leave York, which meant he had to find another way to help Jay. Someone needed to check on him today. Tag didn’t know anyone he could ask, but Henry would; he was friends with Dame Cordelia, after all. Not that Tag wanted to confess to Jay’s mother what a crap friend he’d been to her son, but he’d suck it up if it meant someone could be there for Jay.

Squirming with discomfort, he checked the time again—almost six—and decided that was late enough for Henry. Pacing again, he dialled.

Henry picked up after a couple of rings, sounding bright and breezy. “It’s completely normal for first-night nerves to strike this early,” he said by way of greeting.

“Yeah,” Tag said. “Look, have you heard from Jay?”

“No, about what?”