LOGINI walk straight in.
Felicity is still standing between Adam and his workstation like she owns the square footage, and I don't give her the chance to regroup. I walk past her, stop directly in front of Adam, and look him in the eye.
"I want you to be the male lead in my play."
Felicity makes a sound like someone just threw cold water on her.
"Excuse me?" She steps forward, voice climbing fast. "Allie, are you serious right now? You're his aunt-in-law. Do yo
---By day eight of the exposure sessions, Adam doesn't flinch.The cameras fire — six of them, from three angles — and he stands center stage with his shoulders level and his jaw set and his eyes open, and he keeps running his lines without losing a single word. The flash hits his face like a slap and he absorbs it the way a person absorbs cold water: fully, without pleasure, but without breaking.The team watches him the way people watch something they don't entirely believe is real.I watch him and feel something sharp and warm and complicated move through my chest that I have gotten very good at pushing back down."Good," I say. Even. Professional. "Again."He runs it again.And again.The cameras don't stop him anymore.Three days before the Showcase, the rehearsals follow us home.It starts practically — the blocking has specifics we keep second-guessing, dialogue rhythms that only work at full run-through spee
The smell hits me before I even reach the kitchen.Rich, slow-cooked broth, the kind that takes hours and patience and a person who actually knows what they're doing — which, it turns out, Liam Hart does. He's standing at the stove in a white henley with his sleeves pushed up, and I stop in the kitchen doorway and just watch him for a second, because there is something deeply disorienting about the most controlled man I've ever met reducing a wild chicken to something that smells like the best thing I've ever stood near."You made broth," I say."You said you were starving." He doesn't look up from the pot. "Noodles are almost ready."My stomach makes a sound that is not dignified.He glances back. The corner of his mouth moves."Go get Adam," he says. "Tell him there's enough."I hesitate — remember the closed door, the one syllable, the click of the latch — and then I go anyway, because Liam made three portions and
I start to stand.His hand shoots out and catches mine.He doesn't look up. Doesn't lift his head from his knees. Doesn't say a word. He just — grabs my hand with both of his and holds on, the way a person holds on when they're out at sea and have found the only thing left that's solid.I stop moving.I sit back down."I'm not going anywhere," I say softly. "I'm right here."The auditorium breathes around us — dim and gray, the ghost light throwing its pale circle over the empty stage — and Adam Hart, who has kept every wall up and every door locked since the day I met him, sits curled on the floor of Aldridge Auditorium holding my hand like it's the only thing keeping him inside his own body.So I stay.I don't talk. Don't fill the silence with reassurances that would ring false, don't perform comfort at him the way people do when they're scared of the quiet. I just stay — shoulder close to his, hand in
Liam's voice, when he talks about that day, drops to somewhere barely above silence."He was a different kid before it happened." He doesn't look at me. He looks at his hands, at the space between us, at something I can't see. "Loud. Ridiculously curious about everything. He used to chase the dogs around this yard laughing so hard he'd fall over." A pause. Long. Heavy. "I took him to the amusement park. I was thirteen. I thought I was old enough to be responsible for a six-year-old for one afternoon." His jaw tightens. "I wasn't."I don't say anything.I don't try to fix it, because you can't fix twenty years of a guilt that has calcified into something structural — something a person builds their sense of obligation around, quietly, without naming it. I just sit close and hold his hand and let the silence be what it is.After a while, he exhales.I lean my head against his shoulder."He came back," I say softly. "He's here. That matte
He steps through the auditorium doors like the sunset itself sent him.White shirt. Black backpack slung over one shoulder. The last amber light of the evening following him in through the gap, catching the sharp angles of his face as he moves down the aisle — unhurried, self-contained, carrying that particular quality of stillness that makes every room he enters feel like it's been waiting for him.Three girls in the second row audibly stop breathing.I feel my own heartbeat do something I choose to ignore."You're here," I say.Adam stops at the foot of the stage and looks up at me. "Didn't you say rehearsal starts today?"Not good to see you. Not sorry I'm late. Just that — blunt, clean, matter-of-fact — as if showing up was never in question even though every part of me spent the last forty-eight hours convinced he wouldn't."Yeah," I manage. "Welcome to the cast."Rehearsal begins
I walk through the front door dripping, shoes squelching, hair plastered to my neck, and Elizabeth Hart takes one look at me and says absolutely nothing for a full three seconds.Liam is on the couch beside her. His gaze travels from my face to my soaked shirt to the small puddle forming around my feet, and something in his expression moves — caught somewhere between concern and the very specific, private amusement of a man who is absolutely not going to say what he's thinking."Oscar," I explain, before either of them can ask."Of course," Elizabeth says, like this is a reasonable explanation for the state I'm in."I was helping with the bath. He shook." I gesture vaguely at myself. "This happened.""Go change," Liam says. Quiet. Easy. The tone of a man who is not worried about me but would like me to be dry.I head for the stairs.I'm halfway up when the front door opens again behind me. I turn.Adam walks
After leaving the hospital, Allie couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret for agreeing so quickly.There were so many factors she hadn’t considered—especially with Julian Ford being such a high-profile figure. The paparazzi were always lurking, waiting to snap something that would feed into the w
“Allie, what’s going on with you?” Scarlett leaned in, gently patting Allie’s flushed face.Allie’s skin was burning, and Scarlett quickly realized something was seriously wrong.“Allie, you’ve got a fever—a bad one,” Scarlett murmured, her voice tinged with worry.Earlier that day, an offhand comm
Allie’s heart pounded as Liam’s sharp gaze bore into her. The intensity in his eyes made her uneasy, though she’d never admit it.Her skin was dotted with an embarrassing rash, covering more than she cared to mention. The idea of asking Liam for help? Out of the question. Yet, here he was, standing
Julian Ford shut the car door with a casual grin. "What’s wrong with me this time, Allie?"Allison "Allie" Brooks folded her arms, trying to steady herself. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone once and for all, but she knew Julian well enough to know that wouldn’t work. He wasn’t the type to







