A week had gone by since the trailer dropped. It hadn’t felt like one. Time was elastic now: some days dragged by impossibly slow, others disappeared before he could catch his breath. But the truth was this: seven days had passed since that first phone call with Jacob in the middle of the night, when things shifted from something physical and chaotic to something more intimate.
Each night, once the house had gone quiet and Emma was asleep, Liam would sit in his living room with his phone in hand. He didn’t bother texting first anymore; he would call, and Jacob would answer. Always. There were no rules, no promises, yet somehow they found each other every night as if it were inevitable.
The conversations were safe on the surface: stories of old auditions, clumsy interviews, and childhood scrapes. Innocentthings they could pretend were harmless, but beneath the surface, Liam felt something building. Something quiet but insistent—a tether he didn’t know how to cut.
Meanwhile, his PR team was circling the drain. This was a wildfire. The trailer had exploded across the internet. Not because of the plot or the cinematography, but because of them—the way they moved together and looked at each other. The trailer alone would have been enough to start the gossip mill, but the leaked clip had fanned it into an inferno.
Headlines changed daily, and new theories spread like a contagion. Liam had lost count of how many times he’d seen his own face frozen mid-breath, mid-flush, mid-something he couldn’t even name.
Jacob was caught in it too, but the flames licked at him differently. To the world, Jacob was untouchable. The ladies’ man who turned steady husband. The closed book who gave nothing away. The mystery of him made people speculate, made them lean in closer, but it didn’t mark him in the same way it did Liam.
Liam’s publicist had already called multiple times, each conversation clipped and urgent. It was all about strategy, online perception, and “don’t say anything without our approval.” None of it mattered to him. Not because it wasn’t serious—he knew it was—but because he was drowning in deeper waters.
Emma was over seven months along now, her body moving more slowly, and her nights getting more restless. Liam hated lying to her and swallowing words he couldn’t say out loud. She deserved more than silence, but how could he hand her this truth? How could he confess what had taken root in his chest when she was already carrying so much? He couldn’t add this weight on top of hers. Not with the baby so close.
So he kept his mouth shut, and the silence slowly poisoned him. Every glance at her came with guilt sharp enough to sicken him, and every touch with shame he couldn’t scrub away.
The possible career fallout, the gossip, the endless noise—it all faded into the background. This wasn’t about headlines or PR. It was about the two people he was terrified of failing: Emma and the life still growing inside her.
The treadmill slowed to a stop. He grabbed a towel, bent over, and tried to catch his breath. His phone buzzed on the console beside him. He hesitated a second before answering. “Hey, Dad.”
“Morning, son! You sound like you’re dying.”
“Just running.”
“You still do that? Jesus. You get that from your mother. She never sits still for five seconds either.”
A voice shouted from somewhere behind him. “Don’t blame me! He got your stubborn streak!”
Liam smiled despite himself. “Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, honey, hi! You sound out of breath. Are you eating enough?”
“Mary,” his dad cut in. “He’s fine.”
“Well, I’m just saying, he should take care of himself. He’s working too much again, I canhearit.”
Liam pressed the towel to his face to hide a laugh. “I’ll work on it.”
“Good.” There was a rustle, then his dad again, voice dropping slightly. “Your sister says that trailer thing’s all over the news. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He wiped the back of his neck, trying to sound casual. “Just noise.”
His dad grunted, unconvinced but not pushing. “Don’t let them get in your head. People will always talk.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Your mother’s been bragging about you, by the way,” his dad added.
“I have not!” she yelled.
“You told the cashier at the grocery store that he’s in a movie with Jacob whatever-his-name-is.”
“Well, she asked!”
Liam laughed, shaking his head. “You two never change.”
“And you better not either,” his dad said. “We’ll come see you soon, all right?”
