I don’t have to think. “Here,” I say. “But, like, without the photographers. Or the pressure to be interesting.”
She laughs, genuinely delighted. “No one ever says here.”
“They do when they’re with you,” I say.
Emma inhales sharply, and I watch her face cycle through surprise, embarrassment, and something softer before she shakes her head. “That was...” She laughs, looking away. “Wow. You really know how to lay it on thick, don’t you?”
We drive back with the windows down, and I don’t care that the wind is ruining my hair, or that there will probably be a headline tomorrow: ASHER DIXON AND EMMA ROWAN—IS THERE A NEW HOLLYWOOD POWER COUPLE? I don’t care, because for the first time in a year, I feel like I’ve gotten away with something impossible.
We reach her place. She’s holding her phone, not checking it, just rotating it in her hands. She glances at me, and the look is so open it makes me swallow hard.
“Want to come in?” she says.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
We walk inside. There are three texts from Emma’s manager, one from her mother, and a notification from some tabloid that already has our picture up, blurry but unmistakable: two silhouettes on a rooftop, our heads tilted toward each other.
“Look,” I say, and hold up my phone to show her the screen.
She squints, then groans. “Jesus. They even got my bad side.”
I’m laughing when I say, “You don’t have a bad side.”
She doesn’t laugh. She looks at me with this exhausted, grateful smile, and it’s so rare to see her off-balance, I let it linger. Then she steps forward and kisses me—soft, but fierce around the edges, the kind of kiss that means ‘thank you for not being who I expected; thank you for letting me be, too’.
After, we stand in her kitchen, making silent tea, not saying much. The city is still alive all around us, but in her quiet home, it’s just us, two astronauts looking for home.
Before I leave, she pulls my hand and says, “You’re not so bad, you know?”
I say, “You’re the only one who thinks that.”
She smiles. “Not true. There’s probably at least three astronomers who like you now, too.”
I leave her at the door and walk out to the car. The sky has cleared. Above the towers and haze, Orion is visible, drawing his bow. I breathe in the chilly air, suddenly aware of how alive it tastes. I want to call Craig, my manager, and tell him that for once—just once—I think I did something right.
Instead, I start the car and drive nowhere for a while, watching the city shrink in the rearview, then disappear. For the first time in years, obscurity doesn’t scare me at all.
CHAPTER 5
EMMA
I makea vow as I cross the slick floors of the LAX private terminal: no matter how many times I do this—this awkward dance of sunglasses and beanies and heads-down hustle through the gauntlet of strangers who pretend not to stare—I willneverget used to the way a secret becomes currency here.
Every single person in this glass-walled waiting room has heard at least one true story about another person’s marriage, or medical history, or sexual preference, and the real power isn’t in broadcasting it––it’s in those subtle, loaded looks. The glares I get while carrying my own overnight roller case, as Asher strides half a step ahead with precise, agent-bred confidence and the air of a man who’s done some dark things for a living.
Our PR team’s itinerary is on my phone, open as a talisman in my right palm—land in Austin, go straight to the Four Seasons, change for the SXSW junket at the Stateside Theater, and then a dinner with Eclipse Run’s director and a busload of film critics who could, in theory, help or destroy me. But before any of that, before I can even blink myself fully awake, I have to navigate this hour of Los Angeles morning with Asher Dixon, step-for-step, in sync. He’s setting the cadence, and I’m just nimble enough to keep up.
We’re supposed to look like lovers, but more often, we resemble a pair of well-dressed prisoners in the world’s blandest escape film.
He flashes his signature grin at the man in the avocado suit behind the check-in desk. The effect is so immediate and so practiced that I almost miss my own cue. Still, I manage a kind of soft smile—yes, that’s right, I’m the ingenue in the leather leggings, the one with the fresh blood-and-milk complexion from yesterday’s facial, and yes, youhaveseen me on every billboard west of Highland. No, I can’t tell you the ending, because evenIhaven’t seen it.
“Morning,” says Asher, with the casualness of someone greeting his neighbor at the gym.
The attendant does a little micro-bow, presumably the first of many humble gestures in a morning full of celebrities who look at him like he’s a lamp. “Mr. Dixon, Ms. Rowan. Plane is ready; your pilot is already prepping the cabin.”
I glance at the manifest on the counter, and there it is: Doyle, Ciaran, in crisp Helvetica, directly above our names. That’s either a fun surprise or an evil omen, but just as I’m registering the spike of anxiety, Asher has already handed over my carry-on, as if it’s his sworn duty, and that’s the problem with him—he makes the act of taking care of me look both reasonable and necessary, which means I have to spend half my energy appearing not to notice.
As we walk the corridor toward the tarmac, he leans in. “Smile. Someone’s definitely watching.”
