Chapter 43 - Tick Tock

The morning after felt deceptively quiet. Light spilled in through the penthouse windows, golden and soft against the scattered trail of clothes and half-drunk glasses of wine.

Celeste lay curled against Damien’s chest, the steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath her palm anchoring her to something she still didn’t know how to name. Safe. Whole. Claimed. She hadn’t felt that way in years.

Damien stirred beside her, the arm wrapped around her waist tightening reflexively. “You’re thinking too loudly,” he murmured against her hair.

Celeste smiled faintly. “Am I?”

“You always are after sex like that.”

“Sex like what?”

He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so she sprawled half across his chest. “Like it meant something. Like it broke you open and stitched you back together at the same time.”

Her breath hitched. He wasn’t wrong.

She traced the line of his jaw with her fingertip, savoring the stillness between them. “I didn’t know we could still do that.”

“We always could,” he said simply. “We just forgot how.”

A beat passed.

“I don’t want to lose this,” she whispered. “Not just the sex. Us.”

Damien’s hand slipped into her hair, guiding her gaze to his. “Then we won’t. Not again.”

There was no hesitation in his voice. No fear. No ifs or maybes. Just certainty. That was the thing about Damien Sinclair, when he decided you were his, he moved mountains to keep you safe. And she was tired of running from that.

The soft buzz of Damien’s phone on the nightstand shattered the bubble. He glanced at the screen, then grimaced. “It’s Hunter. He wouldn’t call this early unless—”

“Work,” Celeste said, already reaching for the robe at the foot of the bed. “We should get up anyway.”

Damien caught her wrist, tugged her back to him for a lingering kiss that curled her toes.

“You’ll get your coffee after that,” he muttered, smirking.

“Not before?”

“Where’s the incentive in that?”

She laughed and kissed him again, softer, this time. Grateful.

Ten minutes later, Damien stood at the edge of the living room, phone to his ear, pacing shirtless while Celeste sipped coffee and pretended not to stare at him like he was a living sculpture.

“I want full legal on it before noon,” he said sharply. “Yes, NDAs, vetting, the works. I don’t care if it’s a legacy producer, no one touches her without my team’s approval.”

Celeste tilted her head. “Who’s ‘her’?”

Damien hung up and turned to face her, something glinting in his eyes, something fierce.

“You.”

He crossed the space between them in three long strides and dropped a leather folder onto the coffee table.

“What is this?”

“A project,” he said. “Offered by someone who doesn’t scare easy and still believes in what you bring to the screen.”

Celeste’s brows drew together as she opened the folder. The script title stared back at her in bold serif font: The Astrid Method.

She flipped through the first few pages, scanning.

Psychological thriller. Lead role: Astrid Vale. Complicated, cerebral. Damaged but powerful. A woman unraveling the mystery of her own identity while battling institutional manipulation and internal demons.

Written by Evan Sartor.

She blinked. “He doesn’t do women-led projects.”

“He does now,” Damien said. “He’s pivoting post-retreat. Wants something real. He saw your last independent and said you ‘burned the lens down.’ His words.”

Celeste let out a low, stunned breath. “This could change everything.”

Damien knelt in front of her, resting his hands on her knees. “Then let it.”

“But I’ve been blacklisted, Damien. Veronica didn’t just come for me in the press. She seeded doubt. She made people think I was unhireabl and unstable.”

“Then we burn her myth to the ground.” His voice dropped, fierce and intimate. “I didn’t build Sinclair Media just to play defense. This is your comeback. No more playing by their rules. We do this our way. With control. With strategy.”

Celeste searched his eyes, heart pounding. “What’s the catch?”

“She wants a screen test.”

“Fine.”

“Tomorrow morning. Private studio. My team will vet the room. You walk in like you own the role. Because you do.”

She closed the folder slowly. “What if I choke?”

Damien leaned in, brushing his lips against her knee. “Then we pivot and come back stronger. But I don’t think you will. I think this is what you’ve been waiting for.”

Celeste nodded slowly, her pulse beginning to race with a different kind of thrill. Not fear. Possibility.

Across the city, the mood was anything but hopeful. Veronica Hale slammed a crystal tumbler against her bar cart, splashing bourbon across her sleeve.

“What do you mean the leak didn’t land?” she snarled.

The man on her couch, her mole in Black Quill’s legal department, shrugged nervously. “Sinclair’s lawyers shut it down before it spread. The networks are scared to touch it without confirmation.”

“Then give them confirmation.”

“We forged the files, Veronica. Push too hard and—”

“I said give them confirmation,” she snapped, stalking across the suite. “Leak the ‘uncut’ NDA. Plant doubts about Celeste’s past breakdown. Hell, spin it like she fabricated it to get out of a contract. The internet doesn’t need proof, just suggestion.”

The man hesitated.

“And while you’re at it,” she added, voice icing over, “find me the weakest point in Sinclair’s board. Someone ambitious. Greedy. Unfaithful.”

She turned toward the window, eyes on the horizon. “If we can’t discredit her, we burn him from the inside.”

Behind her, the man made a quiet call. Names were spoken. Promises exchanged.

Veronica Hale was far from finished.

By the next morning, the world was already stirring with speculation.

Rumors of Celeste’s new project swirled on private forums and gossip sites, whispers of a genre-defining performance brewing beneath the radar. No one had seen the footage yet. No one had confirmation.

But the idea alone was enough to shift momentum.

Inside the private studio at Sinclair Media’s downtown lot, Celeste adjusted her coat and stepped onto the minimalist set where a single chair and spotlight waited.

Damien stood behind the glass with the director, Evan Sartor, a lanky man with sharp eyes and a cigarette tucked behind one ear like a relic.

“She’s ready?” Evan asked.

Damien didn’t flinch. “More than.”

“Let’s see if the myth lives up.”

Celeste stepped into the light, the camera already rolling. She sat, let her shoulders relax, her breath even. Her hands trembled once, then went still.

When she spoke, her voice was low, careful. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

The silence afterward wasn’t silence, it was breath held in awe.

Evan leaned forward, transfixed as Celeste unraveled Astrid’s descent into fractured memory and raw vulnerability. Her performance wasn’t perfect, it was better. It was human. She didn’t play broken. She played brave. Defiant. On the edge.

By the time she finished the monologue, no one moved behind the glass.

Evan slowly turned to Damien. “You were right. She’s not a comeback.”

“She’s a revolution,” Damien said.

Celeste stepped off set, still trembling with adrenaline. Damien met her halfway, catching her in his arms without a word. She pressed her face into his chest.

“You didn’t even blink,” she murmured.

“You didn’t give me a reason to.”

They left the studio together. The first call from the producers came twenty minutes later.

That night, Damien poured them champagne on the balcony, the skyline glittering like the future he could finally see.

“You realize,” he said, raising his glass, “that the minute this gets out, Veronica will come for us twice as hard.”

Celeste didn’t flinch. She lifted her glass, tapped it lightly against his. “Let her. I’m done hiding.”

He grinned, slow and proud. “That’s my girl.”

But neither of them saw the quiet notification ping on Damien’s tablet behind them, an anonymous message with a single image:

A security still of Celeste entering a private rehab facility years ago. Watermarked. Timestamped.

The sender’s message: How much is her truth worth to you now?

And beneath it, another line:

Tick tock, Sinclair. Your past is catching up.