The Heiress's Revenge: Get Ready to be Ruined, Superstar

"okay but... this?"

I sat cross-legged on the living room couch, holding my phone exactly six inches from my face. My thumb hovered over the screen. I had already analyzed the photo twice.

It was blurry. Paparazzi-grade static, the kind that made everything look infinitely more damning than it probably was. Julian’s hand rested low on Scarlett Vance’s waist as they walked off the studio lot. Scarlett’s head tipped toward his shoulder. Her mouth was open, laughing at a joke.

The caption underneath, posted by a fan account with forty thousand followers.

I locked the screen. I placed the phone face-down on the table.

Five seconds passed. I snatched the device right back up.

I told myself it didn't mean anything. Costars touched each other all the time. I knew that better than anyone. I had done it myself in a hundred different scenes where I couldn't even remember the blocking anymore. It was a job. It was nothing.

My thumb hovered over the photo again anyway.

The brass lock in the front door clicked.

I jumped, dropping the phone deep into the couch cushions like I had been caught stealing. It was stupid. It was my phone. He was my boyfriend. This was my life.

"Hey," Julian called out from the entryway.

His voice carried that hollow exhaustion that only came after a fourteen-hour shoot day. His keys clattered into the entryway console. Silence followed. He was checking his own phone before he even took his shoes off. For some reason, tonight, the quiet tapping grated against my spine.

He rounded the corner. He still wore his heavy jacket. His dark hair stuck out in odd angles from the wardrobe department pulling pieces over his head all afternoon.

The tightness in my chest vanished.

That was the maddening part. Even now, right in the middle of a private spiral, one look at his face and my muscles surrendered. My body just relaxed. Like it had been trained to.

"Long day?" I asked.

"You have no idea." He crossed the rug and dropped onto the cushions beside me.

Before I could fully pivot to face him, his arm banded around my shoulders. He hauled me against his side, his chin finding its familiar resting place on the top of my head.

"I saw the thing," Julian said. "The photo. My publicist already texted me eleven times about it."

"I wasn't going to bring it up."

"You were thinking about it, though."

He shifted, pulling back just enough to catch my eye. His expression shifted into the exact look he always used. Soft around the edges. A little rueful. It was the exact face that had made forty million people fall in love with him in *Coldwater Bridge*.

"Wren. It's PR," he said, his tone gentle. "The studio wants a ship trending before the premiere, so they're feeding it. That's all this is."

"I know how it works," I said.

And I did. I had been in this industry long enough to know the machine ran on manufactured chemistry. It survived on carefully leaked candids and stories that existed for exactly as long as they were useful. I knew all of that in my head.

My stomach still flipped every time I saw his hand on her waist.

"I need you to actually believe me, though," Julian said.

His thumb brushed along my jaw, tilting my face upward.

"Because I need you to know," he continued, his voice dropping an octave. "I am not going to let anything happen. Nothing. I swear to you."

He said the words while staring at a spot just past my left ear.

I noticed the shift in his gaze. I filed the details away in a mental box I absolutely refused to open tonight. Instead of pulling back, instead of asking why he couldn't quite look me in the eye when he made promises, I let my weight sink fully into his chest. I reached for the comfort he offered. The alternative felt like poking at a wound I didn't want to measure.

"Okay," I whispered. "I believe you."

Julian exhaled like he had been holding his breath for a mile. He pressed a kiss to my temple. For one warm second, the gesture felt like enough.

Then he stood up.

He grabbed the lapels of his jacket and shrugged out of the heavy fabric, tossing it toward the corner armchair.

Something slipped free from the inside pocket. It fluttered to the hardwood floor between us.

A folded slip of cream-colored hotel stationery. A room number scrawled across the center in sharp, slanted handwriting. Handwriting that definitely did not belong to him.

Julian moved fast. Faster than the moment should have required.

He crouched and snatched the paper off the floor before my eyes could even fully track the digits. He straightened up, a bright, easy laugh already loaded on his lips.

"The location's assistant left that in my jacket last week," he said, waving the paper dismissively. "Some room blocks for the press junket."

He balled the cream stationery in his fist. He lobbed it toward the kitchen trash can without looking.

The paper ball missed the plastic rim. It bounced off the lower cabinet door and rolled straight under the fridge.

Neither of us moved to retrieve it.

"Anyway," Julian said, clapping his hands together once. "I'm starving. You want Thai?"

"Sure," I said.

My eyes stayed fixed on the tiny sliver of white paper visible in the shadow of the fridge. A beat too long passed before I forced myself to look away.

I dug my phone out of the couch cushions. My fingers shook slightly as I opened the delivery app. I ordered pad see ew. I told myself, very firmly, that I was being paranoid.

Julian Cross did not lie to me. Julian Cross had shown up to my tiny off-off-Broadway show two years ago when I was a complete nobody and he was already a household name. He had texted me good morning every single day since, even through a chaotic award season and back-to-back location shoots. That man did not sneak random room numbers into his jacket pocket for no reason.

I believed that. Mostly.

Hours later, Julian fell asleep on his stomach. One heavy arm rested across my waist.

I lay wide awake. I stared at the shadows moving across the ceiling. I ran through the last three months in my head, trying to calculate exactly how many times he had asked me to just trust him.

I fell asleep before I got anywhere close to an answer that made me feel safe.

***

My phone vibrated against the nightstand at 6:47 the next morning.

I reached for it on pure instinct. My thumb swiped the notification open before I was even fully conscious. A new post trended on Twitter, sitting at number three under my "For You" tab.

The space beside me in bed was empty.

Julian had mentioned an early call time last night. He had kissed my forehead in the dark before slipping out, making sure not to wake me.

I blinked at the bright screen.

The photo was clearer this time. Julian's hand no longer rested casually on Scarlett's waist. His fingers were spread wide, gripping her hip, pulling her half a step closer as they climbed into the back of a blacked-out SUV together. They were completely alone. No crew stood in the frame. No cameras rolled in the background to justify the embrace.

The quote-tweet attached to the top of the image already had eleven thousand likes.

**"the PR excuse only works if there's a camera crew standing three feet away lol. this looks like a date."**

I sat up slowly. The heavy duvet slid off my shoulders.

I looked at the empty dent in Julian's pillow.

I read the caption again. And again.

My stomach didn't flip over this time. It didn't twist or burn. It just went very, very still.