Jacob’s silence cut sharper than denial.
“Say it.”
Still nothing. Still that wall. So Liam pushed harder, his voice shaking with frustration. “You didn’t think about the cameras or the crew. You didn’t think about your wife. You just kissed me like you couldn’t stop yourself. Don’t stand here now and pretend it didn’t mean a damn thing.”
Jacob’s hand clenched tighter around the bottle, plastic groaning beneath his grip. His face turned away. “Go home,” he said hoarsely.
“No.”
“Liam—”
“Don’t tell me to walk away. We’ve been circling this too long—I’m not doing it anymore.”
At last Jacob responded, not with words but with action. He stepped around him, opened the trailer door, and walked out into the night without a single backward glance.
Liam didn’t follow. He stood rooted where Jacob had left him, hands shaking, the faint trace of cologne still clinging to the air like a ghost.
That was when the guilt struck. He hadn’t thought about his wife or the baby. Not once. Not until now. He’d come in here running on adrenaline, acting before thinking—like he always did. Jumping straight into the fire without stopping to ask if he’d burn. Ready to fight for something he couldn’t even name. When the rush faded, all that was left was the question twisting in his chest—what kind of man did that make him?
***
The buzzing wouldn’t stop. Liam groaned and fumbled across the sheets, fingers clumsy until they closed around his phone. The screen lit up, blinding in the dark. Notifications stacked one on top of the other—texts, missed calls, headlines flooding in so fast it looked like wreckage piling up in real time.
Trending #1: “Leaked kiss from Wingspan set—Liam Hart & Jacob Wolfe?!”
No.
His stomach lurched as he sat up too fast. He slipped out of bed without disturbing Emma, padding barefoot into the kitchen. The tile was cold under his feet, and his body was still unsteady with sleep and dread.
His fingers trembled as he tapped the link on his phone. Eighteen seconds. The clip began fuzzy, showing only blurred shapes and light, until the frame steadied and sharpened on him and Jacob—locked in a fierce kiss.
Someone had filmed them; not officially and without permission. Just some asshole with a phone, catching them from the edge of the set. Close enough to capture his mouth on Jacob’s and the sound of him moaning into it. A stolen moment, and now it belonged to the internet.
The clip started mid-kiss: his lips pressed hungrily to Jacob’s, and his body leaning in as if he couldn’t get close enough. Jacob’s hand clutched his jaw, and then—God—the wrecked sound that tore from him when Jacob kissed him deeper. The most damning part wasn’t even that. It was the way they didn’t stop when Ellen called cut. The way it only grew hotter, rougher, as if no one else existed.
By the time the clip ended, Liam was on the floor without remembering how he got there. His back was pressed to the kitchen cabinet, the phone still in his hand, frozen mid-frame. No one could pretend the kiss wasn’t electric. The press didn’t, and neither did the fans.
“Liam Hart is NOT straight.”
“If that’s acting, give them a fucking Oscar.”
“Liam Hart’s gay awakening caught on film.”
He scrolled, feeling dizzy. It was already everywhere; YouTube breakdowns, TikTok loops, slow-motion replays of Jacob gripping his jaw, even fan edits cut to heartbreak songs. His stomach dropped further with every swipe.
He couldn’t breathe. His phone buzzed again, vibrating against his palm. He didn’t look. He dropped his head into his hands, lungs seizing as his mind ran loops—Emma, the baby, headlines, his career, Jacob—everything at once.
That was how Emma found him, sitting on the kitchen floor. She stood in the doorway, her own phone clutched in her hand, her face pale and unreadable. She didn’t come closer, only pressed play. He sat there, forced to watch her take it in. At first her face was neutral, but as the seconds ticked by, the stillness cracked, shock giving way to hurt. When it ended, she looked straight at him, her voice cutting. “You kissed him after they called cut. You didn’t stop.”
Liam exhaled. “I know.” There wasn’t an argument to make, no words that could twist what she’d seen into something else. She’d watched it with her own eyes.
They remained in silence, the kitchen suddenly too small to hold the distance between them.
“I knew what this job was,” she said at last. “I read the script. I knew there would be intimacy.”
He nodded, throat dry, body stiff against the cabinet.
“What I didn’t expect,” she continued, voice like glass, “was to feel like I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see. Like it wasn’t for the cameras.”
