Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
My pulse starts to settle a little. This man isn’t trying to save himself. He’s trying to be here for me.
“I feel so stupid,” I say weakly as I slump against the stone wall.
“You’re not stupid. Or if you are, I’m stupid too.” He shrugs helplessly. “Whatever you need, just tell me. I’ll protect you. I’ll follow up with her. Your father won’t know. Bridger won’t know.” He gulps but keeps his chin up.
I hate that he has to lie. I try desperately to swallow my tears. “I should go,” I say, frowning.
“Jules, I’m sorry you feel this way. Especially because…” He pauses to draw a breath and slides his thumb along my jawline. “I’m falling for you.”
My heart soars at his admission, but then crashes when my phone buzzes. I look at it. There’s a note from Solange.
Can you have lunch today?
27
WATCH YOUR BACK
Jules
We’re shooting on one of the bridges over the Seine. It’s a pivotal scene where our heroine debates her next move with her best friend. I go through the motions like a robot, executing every request Solange makes of me till lunchtime rolls around. The harder I work, the faster I move, the more perfect I do every task, the sooner—perhaps—she’ll forget what she saw this morning.
When we take a break, she tips her forehead to the ribbon of water snaking through the city where I stupidly fell in love. How cliché am I? Traveling to Paris for work and falling for an older man. He might not be emotionally unavailable, but he’s unavailable all the same.
“There’s a café I like a few blocks away,” she says in the crisp tone of a woman accustomed to being in charge. “We’ll walk,” she says.
More like walk the plank.
This isn’t a simple work lunch to pass the time. This is a correction. Or worse.
We pace along the waterside, passing bouquinistes in green wooden stalls peddling very French-looking posters of the Moulin Rouge and the Eiffel Tower. Solange makes idle small talk about New York. “It’ll be good to be back there next week. I need the faster pace of Manhattan.”
“I can see that,” I say, wishing she’d get to the point and dreading it at the same time.
“I like the go-go-go rhythm of New York,” Solange says as a tour boat lolls by in the river, tourists snapping photos of the sights from the deck. They’re so far away, I know no one can reasonably capture us. But if they did, I imagine the picture would be labeled Before The Shoe Drops.
“You’ll be there, I presume?” she asks.
Unless you get me fired.
Is falling for someone in the business a fireable offense? I don’t think it is, for all the reasons Finn pointed out, but logic doesn’t stop the scenarios unfolding in my head over my office-adjacent romance.
She’ll tell Bridger, and he’ll be disappointed. My stomach roils at the thought. I’ve already been living with my father’s disappointment for years—I don’t know if I can stomach his too.
She’ll have me removed from the production. Can she though? Bridger’s company is producing the show, but TV production hierarchy can be a tangled skein.
Solange stops at a stone parapet along the river. Quickly, I scan the scene, and I’m safe enough from my thoughts. There are too many layers of steps and staircases heading down to the river for my mind to imagine terrible things.
But my mind doesn’t have to because reality supplies them.
“Jules,” she says, in a sharp, clear tone. The chitchat is over.
“Yes?”
Solange stares over the water, a faraway look in her eyes. “When I was younger, probably your age, I fell in love with an older man.”
Oh. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I swallow past the uncomfortable knot in my throat. “Okay.”
“He was in the business. A director. I didn’t report to him,” she says, and for the first time, she doesn’t sound cool and together. She sounds like she’s reminiscing. Like she’s wistful. “He was…”
She shakes her head like the thought of him is too much to bear. She squeezes her eyes shut briefly, as if she’s erasing the images of him, then turns to me. “He was wonderful, and I was swept away.”
Clearly her love story doesn’t have a happy ending. “What happened?”
I brace myself for her to say she lost her job, or he was Harvey Weinsteining.
“Nothing,” she says.
I furrow my brow. “Nothing?”
“Like I said, he wasn’t my boss. Just like Finn isn’t yours. There are degrees of separation.” Her comments are both reassuring and not. She’s saying the insulation is ultimately irrelevant. “But that’s not always what matters.”
I say nothing. She called this meeting. I’m just waiting for the blade to drop.
“I don’t want you to lose your way,” she says, and now her pensive tone has vanished, replaced by a passionate one. “You’re a hard worker. You’re diligent. You’re focused. That matters more than talent in this field.”