Page 48 of The Malibu Arrangement

He laughs. "No, I know it's not." He inhales, shoulders rising. "Can't help myself though. Put any book in front of me when I'm waiting for someone, and my fingers just start turning pages. My first-grade teacher used to catch me staring out the window instead of at the blackboard - I was always thinking of stories I’d been reading instead of what the teacher is trying to teach. Guess some part of me never outgrew that—always needing something to occupy my thoughts."

I need to steer this conversation elsewhere. "Let me guess—you were that kid staring out the window while everyone else struggled with fractions. Too smart for the classroom, right?" I flash him a knowing smile. Max shifts in his seat, and I can practically see the wheels turning behind those eyes. That's the thing about brilliant people—they never quite fit in those little desks, those rigid schedules. Did they bump him up a grade? Two grades?

He clears his throat. "Let's get back on track." He shifts closer. "You write screenplays, don't you?"

My pulse quickens, blood rushing to my face. I never mentioned screenwriting to him. Never wanted him to see the stack of rejections, the unanswered queries. "What makes you say that?"

"Those notes I glimpsed—character descriptions, bits of dialogue. I recognize the format." His hand covers mine, warm and steady, but all I feel is pity radiating from his touch. I slide my hand away. "Listen, Celeste," he continues, his voice softening. "Breaking into screenwriting is brutal. Finding representation in Los Angeles? Nearly impossible. But I might be able to⁠—"

I shake my head. "No. Stop. I'm not good." My chest tightens, my heart fluttering like a trapped bird. He'll ask for my screenplays next, read them once, then never mention them again. I can already see his polite smile masking thoughts about my wooden dialogue and predictable plot twists. We'll pass each other in hallways, him ducking into rooms to avoid my hopeful "Did you finish reading it?" I'll catch glimpses of pity in his eyes. The silence between us will grow, filled only with my unasked questions and his unspoken criticism. This screenplay thing—it'll kill whatever's starting between us before it even has a chance. I'm certain of it.

He leans back, his gaze sharpening as he studies me. Something in those eyes tells me he sees right through my evasion. "Celeste, you need to risk it. Good screenplays? I'll assemble the team to bring them to life. It's my specialty."

"No," I counter, "it's mine." The audacity. Since when does the CEO personally scout scripts and build production teams? That's literally my job description, not his corner office responsibility.

He arched an eyebrow. "Don't play coy. If your scripts have legs, Kensington Pictures can get them off the ground."

I shake my head, feeling the room tilt slightly. "You're missing the point. This particular plot twist is telegraphed from page one." I drain my glass and signal the bartender for another. "Want the sad truth? I've got fifteen screenplays gathering dust on my hard drive. Fifteen. Been writing since middle school. You know how Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours to master something? I've doubled that, easy. And what do I have to show for it? A collection of rejection emails from every agent with a pulse in this town."

The words tumble out faster than I can filter them. A tiny warning bell rings somewhere in my brain—the same bell that failed to sound during countless embarrassing nights before. I know the pattern: one minute I'm sharing personal truths, the next I'm confessing childhood secrets or crying about my mother's cancer. And then comes bitchy Celeste, where I start screaming at anybody in my purview. Bitchy Celeste comes out when I’m really loaded, after which passed-out Celeste makes an appearance. I must stop myself right now before I go through all the iterations of drunk Celeste.

I eye my fresh mango margarita—fourth? fifth?—and slide it firmly away from me. Whatever fragile connection we're building, I'm not about to drown it in tequila.

The room suddenly feels too small. My tequila-fuzzed brain registers something in Max's emerald gaze—that soft, tilted look reserved for stray cats and charity cases. Of course. He's the golden boy with the magic touch, while I'm just... what? Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. A nobody with delusions of someday. The kind of person who thinks they're special until the world reminds them they're not. That's me in a nutshell.

I mutter something about feeling sick and push my chair back. The restaurant buzzes with conversation, bodies pressed against each other like sardines, a line still snaking out the door. My chest tightens at the thought of another sixty minutes trapped here, followed by that silent car ride home with Max's judgment hanging between us. I duck into the bathroom, pull out my phone, and order an Uber. Let him figure it out. Let him hate me again. I'm done being someone's project, someone's broken thing to mend. The Max I thought I knew wouldn't have looked at me that way—like I'm a problem with a solution, not a person with feelings.

I get my Uber and hail the ride home.

And then prepare myself for the fallout.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

DETERMINATION

Max

I'm hunched over my mahogany desk that Monday, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up to my elbows. The corner office feels cavernous and empty despite the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittering Los Angeles skyline. Saturday lingers in my mind like a half-remembered dream.

Celeste and I had been getting close—the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed at my terrible joke about the Manet exhibition, how her fingertips had briefly brushed mine over dinner. I found myself actually letting my guard down just a little, the walls I'd carefully constructed beginning to crack. Now I'm absently turning the crystal paperweight in my palm while inhaling the rich scent of my Celeste candle—the candied orange, patchouli and vanilla fragrance that fills my nostrils and transports me instantly to the curve of her neck when she leans forward to read something.

I mean, I know what happened. Intellectually, I know. I unwittingly pressed my thumb into the tender purple bruise of her deepest insecurity. I had no idea that screenwriting wasn't just some hobby for her but the bleeding heart of her ambitions—dreams she's probably chased through countless sleepless nights, only to wake up feeling like they're still miles beyond her grasp. And that's the one thing in my life that I can't relate to. My own path stretches behind me like a red carpet, each stepping stone placed precisely where I needed it.

It started with my fascination with movies when I was only 5, sitting cross-legged too close to our projection screen, my small hands sticky with candy as I mouthed every line of dialogue. That obsession paid off when I got my PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at 23, my dissertation bound in leather now displayed prominently on my bookshelf. Then, of course, Kensington Pictures—its iconic silver tower gleaming in the sunlight—is a subsidiary of Kensington International, so I worked my way through the company, starting when I was 16 as a production assistant fetching coffee and making copies, then climbed through departments all through my schooling, my grandfather's name opening doors that remained firmly shut to others.

I put in the work—eighteen-hour days, missed birthdays, relationships sacrificed—but let's face it, my granddad's portrait hangs in our studio lobby. Celeste is just another dreamer in this town, her script one of thousands gathering dust. Even with talent, you need luck not to end up another manila envelope in the slush pile. Agents are fortresses here, their assistants human shields against hopefuls. Most submissions barely earn a form rejection. And rejection isn't necessarily about talent—look at John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning Confederacy of Dunces, which suffered through so many rejections that Toole committed suicide, so his book had to be published posthumously; Jonathan Larson’s career before writing the blockbuster musical Rent, which represented over a decade of failure in getting his musicals produced; Stephen King's Carrie, which was rejected so many times that he threw the manuscript in the trash and his wife had to rescue it; JK Rowling's Harry Potter, rejected dozens of times. All masterpieces. All initially unwanted.

So. How to find out the truth about my wife?

I tap my fingers against the desk, considering the situation. She's guarding those screenplays like they're her children. And I get it. What if they're amateur hour—dialogue that makes you cringe, characters flatter than cardboard, plots with holes you could drive a truck through? I've greenlit enough projects to spot the difference between gold and pyrite from fifty paces. If I read her work and it's garbage, I'd have to be honest. That's who I am. And then I'd become the executioner of her dreams instead of just another faceless rejection letter. She can blame the industry's overcrowding when agents don't respond, but my verdict? That would be final. That would be personal. And that would be the end of whatever's growing between us. Not a role I'm willing to play.

I need to see for myself what she's capable of. What if her writing is brilliant? What if she's that rare find everyone in this town is hunting for? I could open doors for her overnight, though probably not at Kensington. Producing your spouse's screenplay is risky business—even the best scripts can bomb for a thousand reasons beyond anyone's control, and I won't put our marriage in that crossfire. But I have other options. If her pages impress me, one call to Selena Farley would change everything. Celeste gets representation from Hollywood's top agent, never knowing I orchestrated it. She builds her career believing it was all her own talent—which it would be. That's the perfect scenario, isn't it? Her success, her confidence, no strings attached.

Roman's got this tech guy on retainer—a digital bloodhound who sniffs out hidden files during my brother's messier lawsuits. One call and he could slip into Celeste's laptop without leaving so much as a pixel out of place. I'd finally see those screenplays she's guarding like state secrets. If they're garbage, I delete the memory from my brain. If they're brilliant, Selena gets a call. And Celeste? She'd never suspect a thing.

I dial my brother's number. "Rome," I say when he picks up. “I need to borrow Sven."

A low chuckle comes through the line. Roman and I have the rockiest relationship of all my siblings. Perpetually scowling, yet somehow always ready with a cutting joke, and reliable when it counts. Like right now. "Sven? What for?"