Chapter 6
Jacob
The first two weeks of pre-production passed in a blur of activity.
Hair and makeup tests, dialect drills, and early rehearsals were already underway, including blocking sessions where every bit of physical movement was mapped out—where someone stood, how they crossed a room, reached for a hand, or even leaned in for a kiss.
The last rehearsal had ended over twenty minutes ago. Lights dimmed across the soundstage, one by one. Most of the crew was already gone, even Ellen had vanished, shouting something about an early call in the morning as she disappeared into the dark.
Jacob stayed. He leaned against the fake kitchen wall, water bottle cool in hand, watching the space empty itself out. He liked this part, the way the set stopped pretending to be real the moment everyone left. The quiet stripped everything bare and made it easier to breathe.
Usually he was the only one hanging back, but today Liam hadn’t gone either.
His jacket was still draped over a chair, while he sat on the counter, sneakers thudding a soft rhythm against the cabinet door.
He couldn’t seem to be still, energy leaking out of him in restless shifts of his body, every movement tugging at Jacob’s eyes before he realized he was watching.
“You always hang back after?” Liam asked at last.
Jacob turned his head. “Sometimes.”
“Why?”
He considered lying, but decided against it. “The quiet helps me switch gears. Reset.”
Liam hummed, gaze drifting to the edges of the stage. “Weird how fake everything looks once the lights are off.”
Jacob made a low sound of agreement. His eyes should have slid away, but they didn’t. Liam licked his lower lip, and Jacob’s focus caught there—something sharp flashing through him before he forced himself to look elsewhere. The fact that he’d noticed, rattled him to his core.
He didn’t want to think about the kiss, but it bled in anyway—the shock of Liam’s mouth opening under his, the startled sound he’d made.
It kept replaying when Jacob least wanted it to.
He told himself it had been nothing more than a scene, but the memory had lodged deep.
His body remembered, no matter how hard he tried to forget.
“You’re hard to read,” Liam said suddenly.
Jacob’s attention narrowed. “Does that bother you?”
The grin that answered was quick and easy. “Only a little. Means I’ve got no idea what you actually think of me.”
Jacob tilted his head. “Does it matter?”
“Let’s say enough to keep me guessing,” Liam replied, a grin lingering.
Jacob didn’t smile back, but something in him eased, as if Liam carried a light he couldn’t help but feel. He liked the sound of Liam’s voice threading through the quiet.
“You’re always so in control,” Liam said. “Like nothing touches you.”
Jacob gave a half-shrug. “That’s the job.”
Liam shook his head. “No. That’s you. You don’t just act like that while working. You are like that in every room.”
He said nothing.
“I’m the opposite,” Liam admitted after a beat.
Jacob looked over and found himself asking, “Yeah?”
“I feel everything. And when I feel something it’s big, with no middle ground. I don’t really do the in-between.”
Jacob didn’t respond, but he was focused—more than he wanted to be. Caught on the need to learn more about him.
“My dad used to say I didn’t have brakes,” Liam went on. “Everyone else could ease up, pull back. I’d just go full speed straight into the wall.”
Jacob’s grip tightened slightly around the water bottle.
Liam smiled faintly. “One time, when I was six, I found this hurt bird on the sidewalk. His wing was all bent and he couldn’t fly. I sobbed over it, tried to shove him in my backpack like I was going to save him. Wouldn’t let anyone convince me otherwise.”
The image lodged in Jacob’s chest before he could push it aside. His voice came out before he thought better of it. “What happened to the bird?”
Liam blinked. “You care about the bird?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
Liam’s smile dulled into something almost rueful.
His whiskey-colored eyes glinted in the dim light, pulling Jacob in before he could look away.
“He didn’t make it, but my mom let me sit with him until he stopped breathing.
She thought it would shatter me. It didn’t.
It just… mattered. I guess that’s kind of been my thing ever since.
If something matters, I can’t ignore it. ”
Jacob’s voice lowered. “That’s rare.”
“Inconvenient,” Liam countered with a shrug.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it hummed with the pull between them.
“You make it look easy. Being like that,” Jacob said, words slipping free before he could stop them. He didn’t know why he wanted to give Liam that. He only knew that he did.
“What—messy?” Liam teased, though his voice wavered.
“Alive.”
The word dropped like a confession. Liam froze, lips parted, but for once, nothing came out.
“It’s not always,” he said eventually. “But… thanks.”
Jacob tightened his grip until the plastic bottle crackled.
He needed something solid in his hands when everything else shifted in ways he didn’t like.
He needed to remind himself this wasn’t him.
He didn’t notice people like this, but his attention kept snagging—on the way Liam never stilled, on his full mouth, on eyes that carried too much warmth.
Why was he looking at this boy when he normally didn’t like looking at people too closely?
He cleared his throat, forcing his voice steady. “Early call tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
Jacob gave a small nod, like that was all there was to say, and turned. His footsteps were quiet as he disappeared behind the set wall.
He didn’t look back.
* * *
Early mornings in the Wolfe house were sacred.
Not because of some rigid tradition, but because Caroline had drawn the line years ago—no staff before nine a.m. No soft-soled footsteps ghosting down hallways, no polite questions about toast or tea, no silent bodies blending into the background and pretending not to hear.
“This is family time,” she’d told him once, when Jacob suggested letting the housekeeper handle breakfast.
She stood barefoot at the stove, drowning in an oversized sweatshirt, blond hair twisted into a bun that hadn’t bothered to hold. Pancakes flipped golden on the skillet, the air thick with butter and sugar.
Rose was perched on a kitchen stool, babbling to her stuffed unicorn between bites of banana. Across the marble island, Asher’s plate held no pancake yet, only a flood of syrup. He drove a toy truck straight through it and declared, with great pride, that the syrup was a river of lava.
Jacob stood with his coffee, saying little. He rarely did in the mornings. Not because he was tired—he was always up before dawn—but because he liked to watch. To take in the kind of warmth that didn’t come from money. The security he hadn’t known growing up.
He remembered chaos and a kitchen that reeked of mildew and cigarettes, where the fridge was empty and the linoleum clung sticky to his bare feet.
He remembered yelling that rattled the walls, a mother who loved hard in all the wrong ways, and a parade of strangers who never stayed long enough to bother with his name.
This wasn’t anything like that; he had made sure of it.
Caroline glanced up, catching his gaze, and smiled. “You’re staring.”
He only hummed, a low acknowledgment that she was right.
She didn’t press. She never did. That was one of the things he loved about her—sharp as hell, but never invasive.
She knew when to let silence be its own kind of comfort.
He watched her slide a pancake onto a plate and ruffle their son’s hair as she placed it in front of him.
He didn’t look up, too intent on his toy truck.
His daughter, all sticky-fingered, held up her stuffed animal. “Daddy, Sparkle says she wants more ‘nanas.”
Jacob walked over and dutifully peeled another banana, slicing it into pieces with mechanical precision and placing it on her plate. “There. Tell Sparkle she’s welcome.”
“She says thanks!” she sang, returning happily to her game, tiny bites vanishing into its plush face.
Caroline slid a plate in front of him without asking how he wanted it. She already knew: two pancakes, no syrup, and black coffee. He pulled out a chair and sat, fork in hand, letting his gaze drift across the room. This was his—every inch of it. He had built this life from nothing.
Still, some mornings the memory of what he’d come from pressed in close, echoing like it might find a way back in if he so much as blinked.
He knew better than anyone how fast stability could collapse and how fragile safety really was.
So he held on tighter. In his mind, control was the only thing standing between his family and the chaos waiting on the other side.
He understood it was a scar left by trauma, but understanding didn’t make the grip loosen.
Except lately his control was slipping, and Liam was the cause of it.
They had been shoved into a string of private rehearsals, one after another, and they’d been brutal.
Not because of the pages—he’d walked through darker scripts without flinching—but because of him.
Liam got under his skin in ways he couldn’t name or shut out.
The pull between them was insane, raw and consuming, sparking hotter each time they circled a scene. He carried it with him afterward, even now, bleeding into the peacefulness of his kitchen. He hated that. Hated that Liam followed him home when nothing and no one else ever had.