by Max Monroe
Ivy’s face morphed into disgust, but before she could respond, Boyce laid into her harder.
“I refuse to let an actress who is insecure—because her ass is ten pounds bigger than it was during auditions—to slow this production down,” he stated snidely. “My job is to make sure we do not veer off our filming schedule. We have a lot of investors who will be severely displeased if we do.”
Her strong, confident shoulders slowly sagged forward with each word that left his lips, and I wanted to throttle the insensitive piece of shit with my fist.
I’d never seen Ivy look anything but self-assured. Determined. Strong.
His words had broken her down into something far weaker and substantially more vulnerable. Pain shot through the space below my ribs and tightened my jaw.
Boyce, on the other hand, gave zero fucks. He felt no need to stop, and apparently, had no issues with laying into her in front of everyone on set.
And her costar, the self-centered asshole, didn’t say a fucking word. He was too busy winking and smirking toward a few of the female crew members standing off to the side of the set.
“I know it’s getting hard for you, seeing as you’re twenty-eight and getting older by the day. And I understand it’s hard to compete with the younger, hotter, female actresses of Hollywood, but we don’t have time to deal with insecurity bullshit, honey,” Boyce continued. “But I promise you, while we’re filming, Hugo and I will make sure we position you in such a way that the added pounds you’ve managed to gain over the past few months won’t be so visible on the camera.”
She didn’t respond. The will to fight had left her, and her gaze stayed safely at her feet.
“Do we understand each other, Ivy?”
She just nodded, and I hated the fact that his ridiculous words had managed to break her down. Ivy had nothing to worry about when it came to her body.
Lush curves, svelte figure, she was a fucking goddess.
Ten measly pounds? What bullshit.
If anything, ten pounds would’ve only made her more luscious, more curvaceous, more perfect.
And she was young. So young. Inside or outside of Hollywood, her beauty was undeniable, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be true.
She didn’t deserve any of this.
I wanted to go to her. I wanted to save her like she’d saved me the other day, but Boyce stormed back to his chair behind the camera and plopped his ass down.
“Let’s get back to it, everybody!” he shouted, and Ivy and Johnny didn’t waste any time, slowly repositioning themselves on the bed in preparation for another run-through.
God, they were a stark contrast to one another. Johnny, confident in every aspect of the word, while Ivy’s uncertainty, fragility, discomfort read like a neon flashing sign across her face.
She wasn’t ready. But unfortunately for her, everyone else was.
“Action!” Boyce yelled, and the set grew quiet, only the sounds of the two actors on the bed filling the large space.
“I need to feel you,” Johnny whispered toward her ear. “Let me feel you, Grace.”
Ivy stared up at him, her mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. Her mind a million miles away and the lines she was supposed to say even further in the distance.
Johnny improvised, sliding his hands up her arms and into her hair, but Ivy’s movements were stiff, her mouth brittle. She couldn’t have looked any more disconnected if she tried.
When she clenched her eyes shut, Boyce’s voice filled my ears on a harsh shout.
“Cut!”
Abruptly, he stood from his seat, and the clipboard that was resting in his lap fell to the concrete floor with a clanging thud. His long strides closed the distance to the set as he stormed toward the two actors adjusting themselves to a sitting position on the bed.
“Did you forget the line?” Boyce asked, his voice harsh with underlying accusations.
It was like he thought she was doing this on purpose.
Couldn’t he see she was still reeling from his uncalled-for blowout a few minutes ago? Couldn’t he see the vulnerability etched within the normally soft and sensual lines of her face?
She didn’t look like the Ivy I had come to know.
She looked broken and battered, and fuck, it was awful.
I hated it. I hated every second of seeing her so fragile, so exposed, while all eyes were on her. Judging. Scrutinizing. Making comments under their breaths to one another while Boyce’s anger stayed directed solely at Ivy.
“N-no,” she muttered. “I—”
“You…what?” he questioned through gritted teeth. “What exactly is the problem here, Ivy?”
Enough.
Before I could stop myself, my feet were in motion, moving toward the set. And between one pounding heartbeat and the next, I was standing beside Ivy. She was still seated on the bed, only two scraps of nude-colored material covering her petite frame, leaving very little to the imagination.
God, she looked so small. So tiny. So unlike Ivy. My heart ached at the sight.
I lifted the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her slender shoulders.
Boyce’s glare turned toward me. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah,” I said, locking my gaze with his. “I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone here that she needs a minute.”
“Excuse me?” he asked, outrage shining red and fiery from the depths of his gray eyes.
Thankful that his anger was now solely fixated on me, satisfaction spilled into my veins.
Yeah, fuck you, buddy. Your anger doesn’t impress me. I feed on it. I breathe it. It’s the only thing that gets me out of the bed in the morning these days.
“You heard me,” I said. “She needs a minute.”
Boyce stared back at me, slack-jawed. Anger vibrated from every inch of his body. “This isn’t your place.”
I ignored him and gently placed my hands on Ivy’s arms as I helped ease her to a standing position. I fixed the sheet as she stood, ensuring that it covered her entire body. She deserved some fucking dignity in this moment.
Her eyes met mine, green gaze searching and uncertain at the same time. She was too lost inside her own head to rationally work through the situation.
But that was okay. She didn’t have to. I would do it for her.
“This, what you’re doing right now, isn’t your place either,” I responded, a calm quiet overtaking my voice. “I don’t know much about filmmaking, but I’m sure your investors and director wouldn’t be too keen on the fact that you’re berating your lead actress until she can’t physically finish a scene.” I looked toward the rest of the crew on the set—the cameramen, the wardrobe team, the lighting crew—and all I saw staring back at me was understanding and relief.
The only person who appeared oblivious to it all was Johnny Atkins.
My eyes met Boyce’s again. “And seeing that I’m the liaison between this town and the film, I can tell you that our board members and our community would not be okay with the way you’re treating the actress who is portraying Grace Murphy. So, like I said before, she needs a minute,” I repeated and led Ivy off the set without another word.
No one tried to stop us. Ivy stayed silent. And for once in her stubborn life, she just let me lead her without any questions.
When we reached her makeshift dressing room at the back of the first-floor hallway, she shuffled inside, the long white sheet dragging across the tile floor as she went.
The instant I shut the door behind us, her emotions boiled and simmered over until she couldn’t hold them back any longer.
A myriad of feelings seeped from her pores. Anger. Sadness. Frustration. It was all there, in the firm, straight line of her lips, in the few tears dripping down her cheeks, and in the now-dimmed emerald of her normally bright eyes.
Silence overtook the space.
She paced the room, soft footsteps gliding on the new carpet, while I stayed standing near the door. It probably
wasn’t my place to be there, but I just couldn’t find the strength to leave her like this.
The seconds bled into minutes, and eventually, once her tears had stopped and her foggy green eyes grew clear, she stopped in front of me.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked on a whisper, her gaze unrelenting as it searched mine for an answer.
“I couldn’t not do it,” I said. And that was the truth. We’d both been in that old office two days ago, and we both knew how it ended. I couldn’t explain how we’d gotten from that moment to this one any more than she could.
She threw both hands out toward her sides. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m not sure.”
She squinted her eyes, and I knew I had to give her more than what I’d been giving. I couldn’t just slide everything under the rug and hope it’d go away. And more than that, she deserved to hear the truth from my lips, not some watered-down, numbed-out version of my own stubborn, angry, tortured making.
“I just didn’t like seeing you look so vulnerable in front of all of those people,” I said softly. “I couldn’t not step in and protect you from that.”
She didn’t say a word, only stared up at me with those big green eyes of hers.
God, those eyes. They fucking slay me.
“You’re beautiful, Ivy.” For once, I gave her the truth. “So goddamn beautiful, and Boyce Williams is a fucking asshole for making you question it. Your face. Your body. Every fucking inch of you is conscientiously stunning.”
“Oh, trust me, I know how you feel about my appearance,” she retorted sarcastically. “You made it all pretty fucking clear when you let me know you would have no issues with fucking me. It’s just that whole feeling something for me that’s way out of your depth.”
I grimaced. Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.
Not just because it made her feel bad, but because it was far from the actual truth.
It wasn’t that I didn’t feel something for her.
It was that I didn’t want to feel something for her.
I’d lost all control of my feelings when I’d pulled over her speeding, stubborn, little white-lying ass when she’d first arrived in town.
I deserved her angered words and backlash. And more than that, she deserved my apology.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” I said, and the forest green in her eyes softened to emerald. “I shouldn’t have said that. You just…you overwhelm me.” I let her see the remorse and discomfort I felt from those cruel words I’d said, exposing myself in a way I hadn’t in years. “I’m sorry about a lot of things, Ivy. There’s just so much more to this than you even realize.”
I waited while she processed my words. It took more time than I was comfortable with, but thinking any amount of time would have felt differently was bullshit. It was the openness that simmered in me, not the time.
Eventually, she gave me a small, simple nod.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked, uncertain of her far too short response.
“Yeah, okay,” she repeated. “I accept your apology.”
A breath I didn’t even know I was holding left my lungs. “Okay.”
“Thank you for stepping in today.” She wrapped the white sheet around herself tighter. “I really needed that.”
Just like I needed you during the read-through…
I startled at my own thoughts.
Anxiety crept up my throat and clamped down on my voice box like a vise.
I felt like my brain was at war with itself. One side was wanting so badly to hate Ivy, not to feel anything related to her. But the other side was completely unable to follow through.
I looked down at her, and she looked up at me, her gaze open and vulnerable again, and oh so willing, but I couldn’t reciprocate it. I couldn’t give her anything else.
What I had already given felt like too much.
Two soft knocks to the door broke our eye contact.
“Ivy! You in there?” a female voice asked from the other side.
“Yeah.”
“Boyce would like to know if you want to break for lunch or finish running through the scene first?”
“Uh…” She glanced at me and then back at the door. “Tell him I’ll be out in two minutes.”
Her eyes met mine again, but for as mesmerizing as they were, I found my gaze flitting briefly to her lips.
Fuck. She needed to get back on set, and I needed to put some distance between us before I did something crazy like kiss her again.
“I guess that’s my cue,” I said and turned toward the door, but her hand on my shoulder stopped me.
Our eyes met again, and my heart felt like it was pounding inside my throat.
“Thanks, Levi,” she said. “Thank you for today.”
“You’re welcome,” I responded, the words thick on my tongue.
She felt too close. I needed distance.
So, I found the much-needed space by leaving her dressing room.
But it didn’t matter. The damage had already been done.
Ivy Stone was a permanent track in my life, and someone had set it to repeat.
I stripped out of my clothes and stepped over the edge of the tub and under the hot spray of water from the shower head.
Ah yes. I nearly moaned.
There were two certainties in life: there was nothing better than a hot shower after working all day, and there were no certainties in this life.
There were possibilities. There were options. There were mistakes. There were a million “what-ifs?” But nothing was ever certain.
Over the past several weeks, I’d started to wrap my mind around Grace Murphy. I’d focused on understanding her, her motives, her personal convictions, her life, with the sole purpose of giving the most accurate portrayal of her that I could.
Now, with Hugo Roman, Cold’s director, officially in the trenches of our production and two days into actual filming, I was starting to understand the whole “there were no certainties in life” sentiment. Despite the last-minute script changes and the blowouts with Boyce Williams and the everyday chaos that sometimes came with filming a movie, that realization had nothing to do with filming.
It was all Grace Murphy-motivated.
I was fully invested in her. I was living and breathing her. And the fact that one day she’d been on this earth, and the next she’d been gone was becoming a complex thing for my brain to comprehend.
She’d been a beautiful, special, amazing human being who was surrounded by a town of people who’d loved her dearly. She’d had aspirations. She’d had dreams.
At twenty-six years young, she’d had her whole life ahead of her.
But, in an instant, all of those things had been snuffed right out.
There are no certainties.
It was these kinds of realizations that could keep us up at night. They could consume us until we felt suffocated and helpless. Hell, I was pretty sure I’d freaked my sister Camilla out last night when we’d talked on the phone about the philosophical, life-related thoughts I’d been having while filming Cold.
“You’re scaring me, Ivy,” she’d said. “Are you okay?”
“I swear I’m fine,” I’d responded. “And these aren’t bad realizations to have, Cami. They’re soul-searching kinds of questions, and they’re necessary to have from time to time. They make you realize that, although there are no certainties, we should savor every minute of this ride of life we’re on.”
“Well…they sure as fuck feel depressing to me.”
Her response had urged the corners of my lips to rise and a soft laugh from my throat. I’d quickly changed the subject after that, to my recent online Sephora splurge, as a matter-of-fact. Which, holy hell, it was a freaking mystery of the modern world how it was possible to spend so much on so little.
Makeup, man. That shit could make anyone go bankrupt.
By the way Camilla’s tone had eased and a smile had made a reappearance in her voice, I’d kn
own she’d appreciated the much cheerier change in conversation.
To her core, my sister was a real softie. She often avoided watching or reading the news just because it would take her days to shake stories of violence or tragedy. Where I was sometimes a little rougher around the edges, she was sensitive. I had a quick temper, and she hardly ever raised her voice. She was quiet as a mouse, and I could easily slide into boisterous and outspoken without any effort.
We might have been identical twins, but we were very, very different.
Opposite, but right.
In my opinion, a perfect mix. We rarely fought, and we balanced each other out. She could calm my red-hot-tempered ass down, and I had no qualms about doing whatever I needed to protect her fragile heart.
She might have been my assistant, but she was also my sister. My world.
It’d only taken me a good twenty minutes of being lost in my own head before I decided to actually take a shower versus just stand under the water. Quickly, and with efficient movements, I washed my hair, my body, and turned off the faucet before I used up all of the hot water.
I’d learned pretty quickly that Grace’s house, while cozy and adorable, was old as fuck, and the water heater had probably seen better days.
Twenty plus minutes in the shower was pushing it.
Red splotches covered my freshly washed skin, and the delicious aroma of Herbal Essences shampoo permeated the bathroom. I’d been a fan of that product since I was a teenager and saw the commercials of the near-orgasmic women in the shower with their soapy hair piled high on their heads.
I guess I was a sucker for a good marketing campaign.
As I dried my body, slid off my towel, and slipped on my new favorite fleece robe I’d ordered off of Amazon, I realized there really was nothing better than a hot shower after working all day.
Twelve hours on set and even my bones ached with exhaustion.
Hugo Roman, Cold’s director, was a freaking workhorse.
I honestly had no idea when the man actually slept, and because of his workaholic tendencies, what should’ve been an eight-hour day had been extended an additional four hours.