Chapter 18
Chapter 18
“I’m going to hang this pawn, aren’t I?” the spark asked Scarlett, with the kind of grimace that said he already knew the answer. Knew it and hated it.
“Telling you would be cheating.” It would also mean telling him that the writing had been on the wall from his third move on. He was an expert at lighting—maybe he ought to stick to that.
The guy examined the chess board, unblinking, for a few long minutes. Then he buried his face in his hands. “I’m totally screwed.”
“Yup.”
“Damn.” He pushed his king over in the universal sign for resignation.
“Hey, you made it longer that time.” Scarlett offered him a hand, and he shook it vigorously.
“I thought I was decent, but you’re on another level.”
That was kind of the point. But Scarlett only offered a demure smile, one that felt unfamiliar on her mouth. “I’ve got to find Clara, but let’s play again soon.”
“We’ll see if my ego can take it.”
Every day, Scarlett found herself sitting across a board from the show’s hairdressers and makeup people, the caterers who brought in the food, and the grips who moved things around. Seemingly everyone on the set of Queen’s Kiss was learning to play, and they all wanted to challenge Scarlett.
Everyone except for Jaime freaking Croft, who couldn’t stand to look at her.
Good riddance . Scarlett had wanted to sneer. But it wasn’t good, and she and Jaime weren’t rid of each other. Honestly, they would probably never be either of those things.
Bad togetherness was more like it.
As they’d marched through the rehearsal period, Scarlett had tried to give Jaime a wide berth. He’d asked for space (sort of). Except she’d confessed what she’d done almost a year ago now—how much more of a break from her did he need?
Whatever. She couldn’t make him get over it. Maybe it wasn’t one of those things where getting over it was even an option.
Nate tried to fill the gap between Jaime and Scarlett, making sure she got to all the meetings she was expected to attend and she understood the production. But mostly, Scarlett handled her slapped-face feelings the way she always did: by playing a lot of chess.
Being on set was great. Everyone had a job at which they were amazing, and they all worked together to produce magic. Chess itself was solitary, so it was somewhat flabbergasting that making a television show about chess took an army.
Scarlett had never been part of an army before, and it was kind of awesome.
Yeah, she couldn’t believe it either.
She knocked on Clara’s dressing room door.
“Come in.” The actress was contemplating the game they’d suspended yesterday. Every day, they squeezed in several quick games in between Clara’s fittings and rehearsals.
“You ready to pick up where we left off?” Scarlett asked.
“Yup.” Clara reached for a bishop.
“Not that one.” With everyone else, Scarlett just played, but with Clara, she instructed .
Clara, her pointer finger still resting on the top of her piece, glanced up. “Why not?”
“What would that do to your king?”
A few seconds clicked by, and then Clara saw it. When they’d started, this would’ve taken a good five minutes. She was getting better. “He’d be unprotected.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, now what the fuck am I going to do?” But there was amusement in Clara’s voice, not disappointment.
It was exactly what Scarlett would’ve been thinking in the same situation.
“Take as long as you need. I’m not in a hurry.”
Jaime would probably say more time between plays gave Scarlett more time to scheme—or at least that was what she imagined he would’ve said if he’d been speaking to her.
Except while she waited for her opponents to figure things out, Scarlett had more time to contemplate her last conversation with Jaime. She’d meant to bait him mostly because she couldn’t take another moment of the silent treatment from him without screaming. But instead, his reaction had made her question everything.
Scarlett had correctly taken the measure of things back at his cabin: she was the bull, and he was the china shop. Telling him about the call she’d made to the police had been a massive mistake. She ought to have taken that story to the grave and left Jaime alone. It would’ve been so much better for both of them. Only she could be so selfish as to have spit it out to him because she’d deluded herself into thinking they could be together again.
“What do you think about?” Clara asked, her eyes still glued to the board, searching for the best move. “During a tournament?”
“The game.”
That was mostly true. At least it was true when Scarlett was focused. She definitely hadn’t been focused in Stavanger. She’d played decently, if uninterestingly, and won the tournament. Her performance should secure another invite to Candidates—at least if PAWN didn’t screw her over again. She’d know either way in a week.
“Not, like, your clothes?” Clara asked.
“That’s for before the tournament.” Scarlett wasn’t going to deny caring about her appearance. Sue her. “What do you think about when you’re acting?”
“Honestly, during most of my best performances, my mind was blank. I wasn’t acting. I was being .”
“Ah, that sounds—lovely.” It did, actually. Scarlett didn’t know if she’d experienced a single moment when she hadn’t been gaming out every choice, weighing every option.
Nope, that wasn’t quite true. The times, few that they’d been, when she’d managed to turn down the constant churn in her brain and be fully, totally present, had been moments with Jaime because he had simply consumed all of her.
Sometimes literally.
“Chess isn’t like that for me. Not even blitz.” Scarlett relied on reflex in speed games, but it wasn’t blissful or natural. No, playing blitz made her feel like a finely honed knife.
“Does all that thinking get exhausting?”
“I didn’t really have the chance to not do it. And I guess stopping, at this point ... it would feel scary. Here’s the thing.” Scarlett paused, searching for the words she needed with Clara. “Always thinking through fifty scenarios before choosing one ... can be tiring. But I don’t regret it because it was the only way to get out of where I was. I’ve never been able to just drift on the breeze and assume things would be okay. Being calculating was the only way to give myself choices. Now that I have them, it would be disrespectful, maybe, to stop being deliberate. It’s not that I’m conventional or safe.” Scarlett was clearly neither of those things. “But since I managed to get some power, I have to use it. I want to use it.”
“I would think taking action wouldn’t be hard for you.”
“And I would think you could figure out what move to make here.” Scarlett said that lightly enough that it wasn’t a rebuke, not really, and Clara knew it.
“Fair,” Clara said with a snort. After a moment of hesitation, she moved a knight into the gap that Scarlett had purposefully left open, wanting to see if the actress would notice it.
“Very good.” Scarlett advanced a bishop.
“Damn it, those always come out of nowhere.”
Not really—but Scarlett wasn’t going to say it, not to Clara.
“If you’re all about deliberate action, carefully using your power and all that, does that mean that I’m a drifter?” Clara threw this out like a joke, and Scarlett couldn’t tell if the actress was just talking or if she was really asking.
“You’re a product of where you grew up, you know? The same as I am. I wouldn’t wish my hardscrabble childhood on anyone. But sometimes when I look at people who grew up safe, who always knew where their next meal was coming from, I suspect they can’t understand my choices.”
This amused Clara. “And vice versa?”
“Yup. So no, you’re not a drifter, Clara, and I do envy you.”
Scarlett certainly envied that if she had been a little more like Clara, she might have held on to Jaime, back when they’d been kids, possibly—and now, certainly. She wanted to find Jaime and point out she could be restrained. She didn’t always choose to plunge the knife in. But the problem was that with Jaime, she hadn’t always schemed. And look where that spontaneity had gotten her.
It was impossible to convey that she’d let go because she loved him. She’d been more real and less premeditated with Jaime than with anyone else, because she cared about him.
But admitting that made her feel as cruel as he thought she was.
If Scarlett hadn’t felt as if she needed to act, she might not have called the cops on Dr. Croft. If she had been less certain of herself, she might have let Jaime in more. Or if she had trusted that he could know what had happened and still love her, she might have told him the truth earlier.
But the unfortunate reality was that Scarlett hadn’t been anyone but herself. And so she’d done what she’d done, without regrets.
Without real regrets.
“But?” Clara prompted, because the girl was as bright as a new penny.
“I worry about you,” Scarlett admitted. “Not in terms of your acting—you’re gonna be great on the show. But I worry you’re that cinnamon roll who’s too sweet for this world. Babe, you work in Hollywood . You need to learn chess if only for backbone-strengthening purposes.”
“It isn’t always a kind world to the meek,” Clara agreed.
“It isn’t always a kind world for anyone.” At the end of the day, that was what Scarlett had been born knowing.
She would always hate that what she had done had taught Jaime this lesson in the most brutal way possible, and as a result, he wasn’t going to be able to forgive her.
“They’re crap lessons to absorb, Clara, but you always have to be looking over your shoulder. You can’t assume that the people around you have your best interests at heart. And sometimes, you have to strike first to keep yourself safe.”
“Like this?” And with a flick of her wrist, Clara took one of Scarlett’s bishops: a vulnerability Scarlett hadn’t even seen because she’d been too wrapped up in mourning Jaime.
Scarlett could only laugh. “Exactly.”
Clara looked up from the board with a crooked, proud smile. “I see what you’re saying, but being on defense constantly and assuming that everyone’s about to attack you all the time—doesn’t that get lonely?”
You have no idea, Scarlett wanted to say, but the vehemence with which the words jumped up in her stomach surprised her.
Scarlett had spent a lot of life operating as a free agent. Her dad was gone, her mom was more of a friend than a parent, and her relationships had always felt transitory. Deep roots, people who had your back—those were ideas for the movies, not for Scarlett’s life.
But all of that was darker than the lessons Scarlett wanted to teach Clara. And at some level, the mess that she’d made of things with Jaime: it had made Scarlett doubt herself.
She knew how she’d come to see herself as an army of one, poised against the rest of the world. But she didn’t like it.
“Nah,” Scarlett said, moving to protect her king from the attack Clara was mounting. “I can’t be lonely when there’s more chess to play.”
Except both Scarlett and Clara knew the words were a bluff.