Chapter 9 #2
In the hallway, I make it to the bathroom before the first tear falls.
It’s not a breakdown. I refuse to call it that. Breakdowns require a level of commitment I no longer have the energy to maintain. This is just my body releasing steam before something important explodes. I lock myself in a stall and press my hand over my mouth.
For a second, I want Sebastian so badly I almost double over.
Not the Sebastian from the headlines. Not the man leaving another woman’s hotel suite after midnight.
Not the husband who let his mother dress my humiliation in pearls.
My Sebastian. The one who climbed into a hospital bed without caring what the nurses thought.
The one whose shirt was damp from my tears.
The one who said, over and over, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, as if presence could become medicine if he repeated it enough.
Then I hear his voice again, furious and raw. Do you think I wanted to have to hold my wife through three miscarriages?
The pain changes shape. It doesn’t get bigger. It doesn’t need to. It’s already the size of the room.
I wipe my face with toilet paper because community theater doesn’t provide luxury tissues for women having inconvenient emotional moments. Then I stand at the sink until the mirror gives me back someone I can work with. Pale. Shaken. Upright. That will have to do.
I’m halfway to the exit when Braden steps into the hallway.
“Chloe.”
My shoulders tighten before I turn. “Hi.”
He holds up both hands slightly. “I’m not chasing you out. I promise.”
“I wasn’t fleeing. I was exiting with theatrical urgency.”
He almost smiles. “Noted.”
A few people pass behind him, heading toward the theater. He waits until they are gone.
“Can you stay after auditions?” he asks. “Just for a few minutes.”
There it is. The private kindness. The gentle correction. The you’re talented, but. My stomach drops, but I keep my face even. I’ve been trained by Janine Austen. A community theater director with kind eyes can't possibly be my final boss.
“Sure,” I say. “I can stay.”
“Thank you.” He pauses. “And Chloe?”
“Yes?”
“That was not too much.”
The words hit so cleanly I have to look away. “Okay,” I say, because anything more will embarrass us both.
He goes back inside.
I sit on a bench beneath a bulletin board and wait through the rest of auditions.
I hear laughter, snippets of scenes, a woman with a gorgeous rasp in her voice, someone dropping what sounds like an entire purse of coins.
I text Jessica that I’m alive before she can escalate to a wellness check involving law enforcement and frosting.
Jessica:
Did they appreciate you properly?
Me:
Unclear. May have traumatized them.
Jessica:
Good. You're overdue for being the one who does the traumatizing.
By the time the last audition ends, my nerves have burned down to a low, tired buzz. People leave in clusters, comparing notes and pretending not to care too much. I know that walk. I’ve done that walk.
Braden appears in the doorway. “Chloe? Come on in.”
The black box feels different empty. Smaller. More honest. Lila is packing up her bag. Mark gives me a little nod and leaves with a stack of folders. Then it’s just Braden and me near the taped-out stage.
I brace myself.
He looks down at his notes, then back up. “I’m going to offer you M’Lynn.”
For a moment, the words don’t arrange themselves into meaning.
“I’m sorry?”
“I want you for M’Lynn.”
“On the spot?”
“On the spot.”
I laugh once. It comes out thin with shock. “Is that allowed?”
“I’m the director.”
“Oh.” I press my fingers to my lips for a second. “I thought you were going to tell me I should practice at home and maybe consider returning to theme park work where children are less likely to notice emotional instability.”
Braden’s expression warms. “Children notice everything.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
“And I’m offering you the role because what you did in there was not instability.
It was truth.” He steps closer, not too close.
Just enough that his voice can lower. “You have technique. I saw that before you stopped yourself. But after you stopped performing at us, Chloe, you were impossible to look away from.”
My chest tightens. There is admiration in his voice. Open, direct, unhidden. I don’t know what to do with it.
“Thank you,” I say carefully.
“You sound like you’re accepting condolences.”
“I’m out of practice with compliments that don’t come with a family brand strategy attached.”
His brows lift, but he doesn’t pry. “Then let me be clear. You earned this. I’m casting you because you walked into that room and made everyone believe you.”
I look down at my left hand. Bare. Still mine.
“I haven’t acted in a long time.”
“I know.”
“I might be a mess.”
“Most interesting people are at least partly a mess.”
His gaze holds mine for a beat too long. Not rudely. Not greedily. Just enough that I feel the old, startled awareness of being a woman in a room with a handsome man who is looking at me because he wants to, not because someone told him where I should stand.
“You should know,” he says, “I’m very glad you came today.”
There is flirtation in it. Gentle, unmistakable. Something inside me lifts toward it on instinct, hungry for the warmth of being seen. Then, just as quickly, the lift becomes ache.
Because I’m still in love with my husband. Even now.
Even after the hotel suite and Katrina in my sitting room and the sentence I can't stop hearing. Even with my ring off and my name shortened on an audition form, my heart still turns toward Sebastian like a plant toward a window. I hate that. I honor it.
“I’m glad I came, too,” I say. Then, because he deserves honesty and I deserve to practice giving it, I add, “But I’m not really available for anything except the play right now.”
Braden’s face changes, not with offense. With understanding.
“I figured,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t going to make that your problem.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I can admire a woman and still behave myself.”
“That shouldn't sound revolutionary, and yet.”
He taps the folder he's holding on his thigh and smiles. It is, unfortunately, a devastating smile. It's also not Sebastian's smile, which once made me forget what I was saying mid-sentence not long after we'd just met.
He picks up the script from the table and hands it to me. “Rehearsal starts tomorrow at seven. We’ll do a read-through first. No pressure to be brilliant.”
“I make no promises.”
“Good. I distrust promises from actors.”
I hold the script against my chest. It’s just paper. Ink. A rehearsal schedule clipped to the front. But standing there, under cheap lights in a room with scuffed floors, I feel something settle inside me that is not happiness. Happiness is too clean a word. Too simple.
This is determination. A thin wire of it. Stronger than it looks.
“Tomorrow at seven,” I say.
Braden nods. “Tomorrow.”
Jessica isn't home when I let myself in. There’s a note on the counter telling me there’s soup in the fridge and that if I don’t eat it, she’ll know. I believe her.
The house is dark except for the light over the stove. I set the script on the kitchen table where the audition notice sat this morning. For a second, I only look at it.
M’Lynn.
The role should scare me. It does scare me.
But beneath the fear is something else, something I haven’t felt in months. Maybe years. A sense that my pain might have somewhere to go besides inward. That I might be able to make something with it other than proof I survived.
I warm the soup because Jessica will absolutely interrogate the level in the container. I eat half of it standing at the counter, then the rest sitting down because my legs remember auditioning all at once.
My phone buzzes. I freeze.
It’s a gossip alert from one of the sites I forgot to mute. A thumbnail flashes across the screen before I can turn it over.
Katrina. Beach. White cover-up. Sunglasses. One hand resting low on her stomach.
My body goes cold so quickly it feels chemical. I shouldn't open it. I know that. I open it anyway.
The photos load one by one. Katrina walking along a private stretch of beach not far from the resort.
Katrina laughing over her shoulder at someone off camera.
Katrina in profile, the loose fabric of her cover-up rounded by wind or angle or intention.
Her palm rests on her stomach in every other shot, delicate and deliberate.
The caption beneath them is bold enough to be cruel.
Katrina Haviland Carrying the First Austen Heir.
For a moment, there’s no sound. Then the spoon slips from my hand and hits the floor.