She wasn’t here. Neither was Lizanne’s father. They’d been gone for years, a fact Lizanne had made peace with it long ago. But today? There was a bitterness in her because they should be here. They should be. It wasn’t right that they weren’t.
“You’re quiet,” Pat said from her post by the window.
“I’m allowed a few minutes of silence, Pat.”
“You are. I’m just observing the rarity of it.”
Lizanne turned away from her reflection. The room was crowded—the makeup artist snapping brushes into her kit, the hair stylist fussing over a loose pin, two production assistants near the door. People she paid. People who were in this room because she had signed the front of their checks.
“How many out there?” she asked.
“Five hundred and twelve. Confirmed.”
“And how many of them do I actually know?” Lizanne turned back to the mirror. “Co-stars. Producers. Network suits. People who want a selfie or a favor. I’m being walked down the aisle by my agent, Pat.”
“Craig is loyal,” Pat said. “And he’s family, in the way this town defines it.”
“He’s my agent,” Lizanne repeated. She smoothed the lace at her wrist. “There are forty-seven thousand fan letters in the office this month, and not one of them is for the girl who spent fourteen months scraping gum off theater seats because she couldn’t afford to quit. They love the Duchess of Aryndale. They love the biker bitch, Bess. Sandi the sassy nurse. They love the version of me that lives in a script.”
Pat was quiet.
“I want something real,” Lizanne said. She hadn’t meant to let the thought out. She’d felt that since the make out session in the bridal shop. Maybe before. She’d thought being with Trina had been real, but now she knew it hadn’t been. It had been a picture she’d painted on a canvas.
Pat watched her carefully. “Does ‘something real’ have a name?”
Lizanne didn’t answer.
Naming it was an admission she wasn’t ready to make—not while standing in an ivory costume an hour before a televised performance. But she’d been watching Rose. She’d watched the way Rose moved through this disaster with a competence that was almost violent. She was coordinator and bride, architect and inhabitant, never letting the mask slip long enough for the cameras to catch a mistake.
She’d watched Rose with Quinn—that easy, lived-in shorthand. She’d watched her with Kayla. And she’d watched her with Daisy.
There was a version of Rose that only existed for that little girl—quicker, softer, the professional armor stripped away. She’d seen Rose crouch down to discuss playroom politics with total gravity. She’d seen her hold Daisy’s hand, her thumb moving across the girl’s knuckles in a rhythm that looked as natural as breathing.
Lizanne wanted in. Not the show’s version of that world, but the actual thing. It was a hunger that felt sharper and more terrifying than anything she’d felt in years.
“Pat,” she said.
“Mm.”
“I forced her into this.”
“You gave her a choice with a very heavy thumb on the scale. It’s a nuance, but it’s there.”
“It’s a distinction without a difference.”
“She could have walked.”
“She couldn’t afford to walk. That was the whole point of the pitch.”
“Maybe. But she hasn’t bolted, has she?”
Lizanne thought about the confessional. Rose’s hand in hers. The way she’d squeezed back. The way Rose had delivered her lines not to the lens, but directly into Lizanne’s eyes.
“No,” Lizanne said. “She hasn’t bolted.”
“Then get through the ceremony,” Pat said. “The rest will find its level.”
***
