Chapter 24
Chapter 24
Scarlett and Nate were on set, watching Jaime do a run through with Clara and the DP before the camera started to roll. Since the sequence in question didn’t require Scarlett or Nate to weigh in, they were placing bets on how many takes Jaime was going to do of Emily’s critical monologue.
“You’d be stupid not to take the over on five,” Nate said. “So by all means, take the under.”
Scarlett snorted. “Your best friend is a wee bit meticulous.”
“No, he’s a massive glob meticulous.” Nate’s expression went serious. “But that’s why we love him.”
It wasn’t a question. It was very much a question.
“Yes it is,” Scarlett said solemnly.
Nate twisted his mouth into a sly grin, as if to say I knew it .
But before Scarlett could think of a smart, evasive comeback, Jaime’s phone, which was sitting on the chair in between them, rang.
“That might be Larry Gomez. We’ve been expecting him to check in,” Nate said.
Gomez was the main point of contact between Videon and Jaime and Nate’s production company. Jaime had been very clear with everyone that they should kiss Gomez’s butt as much as possible.
Scarlett reached for Jaime’s phone, intending to hand it to Nate to answer. Except the caller ID read Musgrove Messenger .
This could be about Jaime’s dad.
Without even really deciding to, Scarlett pressed the green Talk button. “Hello?”
“Is Jaime Croft there?” a man asked.
“He’s busy. Can I take a message?” And please feel free to be as detailed as possible.
“Oh, sure. This is Daniel Douglas.”
“From the Musgrove High class of 2008?” She vaguely remembered someone with that name from her chemistry class.
“The very same.”
“This is Scarlett Arbuthnot.”
“Oh, hiya, Scarlett. I heard that Jaime was adapting your book.”
“He is. What do you need him for?”
“I was calling to see if he wanted to weigh in on the lockdown at FCI Petersburg, to talk about how the families are handling it.”
Scarlett suspected that in the wake of The Devouring Sun , this kind of request must be common, but she also knew that Jaime didn’t need to deal with this right now. Filming was wearing him down. He was the first person on set every morning, and the last to leave every night. The sheer number of plates he was spinning in the air and the list of decisions he had to make every day—it was a lot.
She had watched in alarm as the bags under Jaime’s eyes had swollen and gone purple. He was losing weight too. His muscles stood out in stark relief on his back and abs. If there was anything Scarlett could do to help Jaime, of course she was up for it.
“Is everything okay with Dr. Croft?” she asked Daniel.
“As far as I know. But I figured Jaime and the Crofts might have some things to say about it.”
Scarlett blew out a long breath. She was intimately familiar with how ruthless the press could be when they wanted a story. Daniel’s questions wouldn’t be about the facts of what had happened, which the Crofts didn’t know anyhow. No, what he was after was sensationalism. He wanted them to share their fears and worries and tears so that he could print them for their neighbors to tsk over.
Daniel quickly added, “And I’d love to chat with you, too, about Queen’s Kiss . You’d make a great profile subject. There’s a lot of local interest.”
Scarlett might not have believed him before going back to town, but she’d exchanged several emails with folks from Emery’s book club. She knew Daniel was telling the truth: at least some people in Musgrove would lap up a profile of her.
Her best play here was to use that to redirect Daniel away from Jaime, Evelyn, and Mrs. Croft.
“I’d love that,” she gushed. “And we could catch up too. Let me get your number.” She typed it into the Notes app on her own phone. “I’ll call you back in a bit,” she assured Daniel.
After hanging up, she tossed Jaime’s phone back onto his chair.
“Clearly that wasn’t Larry. Anything I should know about?” Nate asked.
“Nope. I’ll handle it.” It was the very least she could do.
A few minutes later, Jaime came over and collapsed into his chair. He was rubbing circles into both temples, and his eyes were pressed closed. He still looked good—it was impossible for the man to look bad—but he was pale and clearly worn out.
“Headache?” she asked gently.
“A bit.” He was totally lying. His head was clearly throbbing.
If it wouldn’t make him dig in and deny that anything was wrong, she would’ve tried to get him to go back to the hotel and let Nate or Walter take over for the rest of the day.
“I’ll get you some water and aspirin,” she said instead, knowing that was as much assistance as he would accept from her. But she would definitely keep the Musgrove Messenger thing off his plate. Diverting the press was one of the things she did best.
A few hours later, she slipped away and phoned Daniel back. “Look, the Crofts have been through enough, don’t you think? If you promise not to bug them again, I can offer you something pretty juicy.”
“I’m listening.”
And just like that, Scarlett had Daniel.
The press were so easy, when it came down to it. All you had to do was to remember your interests were not the same as theirs and to never say anything that didn’t serve you .
When Scarlett had left Musgrove and gotten famous, she’d taken control of her image. Or at least she had learned how to use what people already assumed about her for her own ends. The press were going to write about her, no matter how she felt about it. She was just too much of a novelty, and she’d been too successful for them to ignore her. As she told Clara: in life, you could play offense or you could play defense—and no one with any power would choose defense.
The chess world didn’t seem to understand that attention was currency, but Scarlett did. And thanks to her, chess had a younger, sexier vibe. Honestly, PAWN ought to worship the ground Scarlett walked on, but she’d been entirely too much of a mosquito bite on their butt for that.
The point was, she was going to have no trouble giving Daniel Douglas plenty of things to write about that weren’t the Crofts.
“Get your tape recorder and a pile of napkins ready, Daniel, because I’m about to spill a whole pot of tea about one of the biggest scandals in chess. Your exclusive interview with me is going to get picked up everywhere .”
“You’re willing to go on the record about the Kratos Staniades story?” the reporter asked, proving that he got outside of Musgrove every now and again.
The scandal in question had been at least as big as anything Scarlett herself had gotten mixed up in. Staniades had been publicly accused of cheating, and the tournament organizers had brought in a machine to detect silicon electronics in case he’d secreted anything on his person that might be able to receive messages.
Yeah, that was right: they thought Staniades had been hiding a device of some kind where the sun did not shine.
“Honey, I’m going to tell you the tale of how I tried to convince the tournament staff that we should all play naked as a precaution.” And every word of it would be true too.
Jaime ought to like that.
He ought to like all of it.
Unlike Christmas morning—which never seemed to arrive, no matter how hard she had wished for it as a kid—the final days of filming for Queen’s Kiss came before Scarlett was ready for them. Which was to say before she knew where she stood with Jaime.
Back during those first weeks on set, when he’d been as jumpy as a cat and twice as cantankerous, she’d wanted nothing more than to go home. Now, not only had filming gone well, but Scarlett and Jaime had spent months having incredible sex. The night when he’d shown up wanting to eat and watch basketball together and nothing else, she’d known she as good as had him.
He was so close to crumbling and letting her all the way back in, Scarlett could almost taste it. She needed, like, one more week, tops.
But since an extension wasn’t in the cards, Scarlett was watching him direct Clara for the final time in what was normally one of the restaurants in the STRAT in Vegas. There were a few more days of filming, but this was going to be Scarlett’s final day on set. It was a great way to go out.
The production had transformed the restaurant into a chess tournament, while out the panoramic windows, one of the world’s most famous skylines flickered and gleamed. Scarlett would’ve sworn it was a dollhouse village decked out with a million twinkle lights, if she didn’t know better.
“That take sucked.” Clara didn’t sound as distraught about it as she would’ve early on in filming. Instead, she offered this assessment with a kind of wry, matter-of-fact humor that reminded Scarlett of how she rated her own poor performances after brutal matches.
“Let’s reframe that with a growth mindset,” Jaime said as he watched the playback on the monitor.
“It sucked, and maybe in the next one, I’ll find a new way to suck,” Clara said cheerfully.
“That’s not quite what I meant,” Jaime replied.
“Super helpful, Dad ,” Scarlett put in.
But actually, it was. Jaime never let the cast or crew beat themselves up; his focus was always on what they could do differently to evolve and get closer to the goal. It was like Jurassic Park , but with fewer raptors.
Clara reached out and played absently with one of the rooks on the board, a move Scarlett had seen her do a hundred times in the last few months. She was nervous, uncertain.
It fit with what they were filming. The show was going to end with one of Scarlett’s wins in the Candidates Tournament four years ago. Everyone in the room had been rooting for her to lose. It had been wall-to-wall haters in the audience, which had made it one of the hardest games of Scarlett’s life.
She’d never felt as alone, had never wanted to have an ally or a friendly face in the room, more than she had in that moment. But at the same time, she’d known that if she didn’t play well, it would’ve been all too easy for PAWN to dismiss other players who didn’t fit the traditional mold. The stakes had been so high.
Even now, Scarlett was ashamed of finishing sixth out of eight in that tournament, and she was doubly determined that the upcoming Candidates Tournament would have a different ending.
Clara threw Scarlett a look. “I don’t know how you got through this one.”
“I did what I needed to do to protect my own headspace.”
Scarlett had asked for the tournament organizers to clear the room and to remove the cameras from the table. Even just knowing the people who’d paid to watch from home didn’t have access to a close-up so tight they could’ve practically counted her eyelashes had helped. There was still an overhead shot of the board and a wide shot of both players sitting across from each other, so the “fans” at home still would’ve been trashing her in the comments, sure. But Scarlett didn’t have to let them into her personal space.
A dozen editorials in chess magazines and blogs had called her a diva and said she’d initiated the delay as a mind game against Ilya Morozov. But the truth was Scarlett had just needed to draw a boundary, and it hadn’t mattered if anyone else could understand or not.
“Weren’t you worried about what they were going to say?” Clara asked. “I would’ve been.” Clara still cared what strangers said about her online, because she was still young.
“No,” Scarlett said. “I didn’t.”
Jaime crouched down next to Clara. “Here’s the thing about Emily ...” He was good at reframing this so that it wasn’t about Scarlett, but about the character. “She always does what she needs to do. Every action, no matter whether the bozos at PAWN might call it selfish, makes sense when you look at it from the inside. She’s not likable in that Emma Stone, girl-next-door way. She’s so much more interesting than that, and she has more integrity than that.”
Scarlett almost ruined the moment by guffawing. Jaime thought Scarlett had integrity ? That was funnier than a clown slipping on a banana peel—but okay, most things were. You could never trust a clown.
Then, as what Jaime had said actually penetrated into Scarlett’s brain, everything went fuzzy. In her chest, Scarlett’s heartbeat started to trot along faster. If he thought she had integrity, that meant he might be open to other things, like accepting certain choices she’d made with all that integrity.
Breathing faster, Scarlett leaned closer to listen to what else he was saying.
“So much of what we call ethics is actually about being polite. Will this make a social situation more or less uncomfortable? Not will this hurt someone or exploit them, but will it be awkward . Emily is more honest than other people because she just doesn’t care about that, and it makes her ... free. When you’re on the other side, when you are more comfortable with the way things are, you’ll go along with whatever PAWN says and the way they run things. Emily is threatening because she wants to take the man apart. Honestly, some people will look at her, at your performance, and say Does she have to be so abrasive? But what they really mean is I don’t mind how things are . Emily would never accept that. It’s why she’s so brave.”
He addressed that last bit not to Clara but directly to Scarlett. He looked right at her, speared her with those dark-chocolate eyes of his, and he called her brave.
Scarlett’s heart was in her throat, or at least her pulse was. As loud and insistent as a timpani, booming away in the back of an orchestra and flattening everything else.
Jaime got it. He got her.
In the end, he’d finally grasped what she had been trying to tell him. He’d finally understood who she was.
He must get it now—that everything she’d done, the mistakes the same as the triumphs, she’d done for good reasons. She’d wanted to build a better world, a more just one. A world in which someone like her didn’t have to be extraordinary in order to crawl out of the dumpster. A world where ordinary was enough to get dignity.
She’d stepped on some toes to do it, and she’d stubbed her own pinkie toe a time or ten. But her motives had been good.
If Jaime knew that, if he could say it out loud, then he understood it. He understood her .
For the rest of the afternoon, Scarlett had trouble keeping her head out of the clouds as she watched Clara nail the scene.
“That’s good, everyone,” Jaime said, his eyes still attached to the monitor, rewatching the last take. “We can pack it in for the day.”
Scarlett removed her headset and gave an exaggerated yawn. She couldn’t wait to get back to her hotel room ... and then into Jaime’s hotel room.
“I saw this,” Nate said to Scarlett, passing her his phone. “I can’t believe that you finally broke your silence on the Staniades thing.”
Scarlett beamed as she read. A quick skim of the piece confirmed that Daniel Douglas hadn’t run anything on the Crofts, but he’d also only used half the quotes she’d given him. She might be losing her touch.
“What’s this?” Jaime asked as he walked over to them.
“An interview I did with Daniel Douglas from the Musgrove Messenger about the show.”
Nate was wrinkling his nose at Scarlett. “Is this interview really about the show?”
“Hey, I said lots of good things about Queen’s Kiss .”
“They didn’t make it into the piece. The link’s on the chess subreddit, by the way.”
“It’s made it to Reddit?” she asked.
“It’s everywhere.”
Jaime had taken Nate’s phone from Scarlett and began scrolling rapidly. She could tell when he hit the money section—the part about the salacious details of the allegations against Staniades.
“Jesus, Scarlett, kids read this paper.”
“Um, print media is dead, so I seriously doubt that. But it’s not my fault there’s no polite way to imply vibrating butt plug . You have to say it.”
With an annoyed shake of his head, Jaime handed Nate his phone.
“Hey.” Scarlett stepped closer to Jaime, putting her body in between him and Nate. Under her breath, she said, “I talked to Daniel in order to protect your family. He called you to ask about the prison lockdown, and so I offered him this story instead.”
Lots of reporters had asked Scarlett about this over the years. It was a good thing she’d kept it in her back pocket. She’d been happy to exchange it for the Crofts’ privacy.
Jaime’s eyes flared. “And you didn’t think to come to me?”
“Why?” she asked, confused. “You were overworked, and I could take care of it—”
“You could make yourself the story, you mean. It’s gone viral.”
“No kidding.” Going viral was what Scarlett did . Here, at least, she’d gone viral for a good reason.
“Whatever,” Jaime said as he began to stalk off. “I need to talk to Walter about tomorrow.”
“You know you love me,” Scarlett shouted at Jaime’s retreating back as he crossed the set to talk to an assistant director. Having admitted as much to Nate a few weeks ago, it seemed funny not to say it to Jaime. Scarlett could only hope he wouldn’t stay miffed at her for too long. She had other plans for them tonight.
It took Scarlett a long time to say goodbye to the cast and crew. Clara hung back, waiting until Scarlett had talked to everyone else.
When Scarlett crossed over to her, the actress was trying very hard to smile. But even she wasn’t talented enough to manage it.
“I am still in denial that you aren’t going to kick my ass at chess every day anymore,” Clara said, wrapping her arms around Scarlett.
The hug that Scarlett gave her back was painfully genuine. Scarlett couldn’t remember feeling a part of, well, anything before. One of the many things Jaime had given her when he’d adapted her book was a sense of belonging. The set of Queen’s Kiss had been ... if not a family, then certainly a team.
“We can still play on CheckMate.com,” she said, pulling back.
“We can?”
“Of course. And we can text about nonchess and show stuff.” For starters, Clara had stronger and more informed opinions about Korean skin care products than anyone else Scarlett knew. “Also, I live in New York, where I assume you work sometimes.”
“My agent thinks I should do Broadway.” Clara went a little green. “The thought of a live audience makes me want to puke.”
Clearly, Scarlett hadn’t managed to fix the girl’s ego deficiency. “I bet you’d be amazing. You were a better me than I am.”
“You are a freaking exemplary you,” Clara said, aghast. “It was an honor to even try.”
“I promise that you haven’t seen the last of me,” Scarlett said, because that was less cheesy than the truth: the real honor had been Clara becoming Scarlett’s friend.
You could’ve knocked her over with a feather, but Scarlett had become fond of everyone —well, maybe not Gloria—on set, and she hadn’t figured out how she was going to fill the hole the wrapped production was going to leave in her life.
If Jaime decided to forgive her, that would go a long way.