It had to.
He pulled closer and waited for the curve to break.
The pen felt wrong in Rowan’s hand.
Her fingers seemed to understand what they were being asked to do before the rest of her had fully caught up.
Rowan stared at the blank line at the bottom of the page.
The first man stood just behind her left shoulder, close enough that she could hear him breathing. The second had positioned himself near the back door they’d come through, his attention moving between the window and the room in a slow, practiced rotation.
They were both professionals. She was certain of it.
She’d played characters in danger before. She knew how to perform fear, how to let it read across her face and through her body in ways that felt true without actually being true.
This was different.
This fear was real, and it had no one to perform to.
How she wished that wasn’t the case.
She looked at the note in front of her, at the words she’d been forced to write.
I can’t keep doing this. I’m so tired of fighting . . .
The opening line stared back at her, waiting.
She thought about all the contracts she’d signed over the years. All the scripts she’d been handed and told to make her own. She’d always been good at finding the truth inside someone else’s words, at locating the real emotion underneath the written ones and pulling it to the surface.
Now someone had written her final scene for her and handed her the pen.
The irony of it landed somewhere so dark she almost wanted to laugh.
Instead, she glanced at the counter where she’d left her phone.
She squinted.
It was gone.
What . . . ?
Her gaze moved to Lauren.
Lauren pressed her lips together and looked at the floor. “I turned it off. They told me to.” She swallowed. “I’m so sorry, Rowan.”
Rowan looked at Lauren—at the guilt carved into every line of her face, at the way she held herself like someone waiting to be told she’d done enough damage for one day.
She thought about Ben. About Lauren getting a phone call from someone who had her boyfriend and a list of instructions. About how there was no version of that scenario where Lauren had a good choice to make.
“It’s okay,” Rowan murmured. “It’s okay.”
Lauren’s eyes filled with moisture. She blinked hard and looked away.
Rowan turned back to the page and set the pen to the paper.
“Keep writing,” the man beside her barked.
He’d typed up a script. All she had to do was write it in her own handwriting.
