Chapter 4

By the time I got home, Los Angeles was sinking into its strange, golden twilight — that hour where the city hums softer but never truly rests. The glow from the hills bled into the sky like spilled ink, and traffic streamed below in endless ribbons of red.

I dropped my bag just inside the door of my condo and kicked off my heels, the relief immediate but unsatisfying. My shoulders ached from hours of holding myself in that perfect, poised posture. My jaw ached from keeping my expression neutral. And somewhere beneath all that tension was the echo of Rowan Hart — in my pulse, in my mouth, in the part of me I tried to shut down years ago.

The wine was already waiting.

I opened a bottle without checking the label, pouring into a glass as though the ritual itself might quiet the storm in my chest. I took a long first sip, then a second, before I even made it out of the kitchen. The taste was sharp and dry, settling low in my stomach, but it did nothing to smooth the edges inside me.

I carried the glass to the windows and stared out. Floor-to-ceiling glass spilled the city back at me, a million glittering lights pulsing like restless stars. I tried to let it swallow me, tried to breathe in the expanse until the memory of Rowan blurred into the view.

It didn’t work.

Every time I closed my eyes, there she was.
The way she’d said and yet here I am.
The deliberate brush of her fingers against mine.
Her lips on mine, moaning exactly as scripted — but igniting something so unscripted it scared me.

I drained the glass and refilled it.

“It was acting,” I muttered to myself, voice echoing faintly in the quiet. “It was scripted. That’s all.”

But even as I said it, I could taste her.

By the time I settled onto the couch, the bottle was half-empty. My laptop waited on the coffee table, silent and accusing. I tried to ignore it, curling into the cushions, letting the wine warm my limbs. But curiosity gnawed at me, relentless.

If Rowan Hart was going to be my co-star, I needed to know more. That was the excuse I fed myself as I pulled the laptop into my lap and typed her name.

The search results were lean compared to mine. No scandals, no carefully staged magazine spreads, no endless scroll of red-carpet appearances. Just fragments.

Photos from a small indie premiere — Rowan in a simple black suit, her hair in an unruly knot, smiling like she wasn’t aware anyone was taking her picture. Clips from interviews where she wore the same beat-up leather jacket I’d seen her arrive in, answering questions with blunt honesty.

One critic had called her “fearless.” Another, “raw talent.”

And then, a quote from a profile in some obscure arts magazine:
Rowan Hart doesn’t believe in half-measures. You go all in, or you don’t go at all.

The words landed in me like a stone.

I sipped again, realizing too late the bottle was nearly gone. My chest warmed, my thoughts fuzzy at the edges, but Rowan’s image stayed sharp on the screen. The sharp line of her jaw. The freckles scattered across her nose. The way her smile was always crooked, like she knew something no one else did.

I leaned back, the laptop glowing in the dim room, the cursor blinking like it was daring me to keep going. I wanted to. I wanted to click through every image, memorize every line of text, catalog every grainy piece of her the world had already captured.

But I slammed the lid shut instead, the sound too loud in the quiet.

I sank deeper into the couch, wine glass dangling from my fingers, the city lights blurring beyond the glass.

It should have ended at the audition. I should have shut the door in my mind as easily as I had in the scene.

But the wine loosened me, left me open, and the thought I couldn’t silence circled back again and again, quiet and relentless.

I felt it too.

And the truth was, no matter how much I drank, no matter how many times I told myself otherwise — I couldn’t stop feeling it.