Chapter 16

The clock read 11:04 p.m. when I gave up on pretending I could sleep.

I’d tossed. I’d turned. I’d stared at the ceiling until I could’ve traced the cracks in the plaster from memory. None of it mattered. Rowan’s face kept flashing in my head. Her voice. Her smirk. The feel of her lips.

My chest was buzzing, restless, and before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my phone and hit her name.

She picked up on the second ring.

“Celeste?” Her voice was soft, husky from the hour, but steady.

I bit my lip, suddenly fourteen again, calling a crush past curfew. “Hey. Sorry. I… couldn’t sleep.”

There was a beat of silence, then a warm laugh rolled through the speaker. “Guess what. Neither could I.”

Something loosened in me. I sank back into my pillows, smiling into the dark. “Figures.”

And just like that, the night carried us away.

We talked about everything. The first time Rowan realized she wanted to act—sneaking into the only theater in her small town, memorizing entire scripts just to feel close to them. My first audition disaster, when I forgot my lines halfway through and recited a shampoo commercial instead. We traded the kind of stories you don’t tell at parties, the ones that shape you in quiet, sometimes painful ways.

At some point, Rowan made me laugh so hard I had tears running down my cheeks when she told me about the time she sneezed mid-monologue and tried to turn it into a dramatic beat. “Casting director didn’t buy it,” she admitted. “But hey, at least I committed.”

I made her quiet when I admitted that even after the flashing cameras, the red carpets, the applause… the loneliest sound in the world is the silence of a hotel room door shutting behind you.

We didn’t notice the hours slipping by.

At 3 a.m., Rowan asked softly, “Do you realize we’ve been talking for hours straight?”

“Yeah.” I yawned, grinning into the dark. “And I don’t even want to stop.”

“Me either,” she murmured. Then, after a pause, “Are you ready? For all of this to finally be real?”

My heart jumped. “Are you?”

“Yes,” Rowan said, steady as anything. “Because then I can officially start the countdown.”

I swallowed, my chest tight. “Countdown to what?”

Her answer came without hesitation. “To the day filming ends. The day I get to have you without worrying about scripts or cameras.”

My breath tangled. For a second, I couldn’t find words.

Rowan chuckled softly. “Don’t worry. I can wait. But that doesn’t mean I’m not counting the days.”

We kept talking until the sky outside my window started to pale. When the sun finally broke the horizon, I realized I hadn’t slept at all—and for the first time in years, I didn’t care.