Chapter 33
LEXI
The set looked exactly like it should—bright, clean, calm—and that, somehow, made it worse.
The cameras were already in position, sunlight streaming through the tall windows of the old house we’d rented for filming.
Someone had scattered fake rose petals along the floor for the morning scene.
The air smelled like coffee and fresh paint.
Nothing about it was different than usual, but everything inside of me was.
Lucas had changed me.
That thought hit as I stood near the vanity, the hum of crew chatter in the background.
My reflection stared back, all flawless skin and practiced poise, but I barely recognized her.
I’d been touched by something raw and real—something that made this world of carefully choreographed emotions feel paper-thin.
“Morning, superstar.”
I looked up to find Carrie behind me, a coffee in each hand, her curls half hidden under a baseball cap. “Extra shot,” she said, offering one. “You look like you didn’t sleep.”
“Because I didn’t,” I murmured, taking the cup. I’d already had coffee at Dominion Hall, but I needed more. “Thanks.”
At least, it wasn’t an early call time. The shoot had been pushed back a few hours—some small mercy in a week that had offered very few.
Normally, I’d be on set before sunrise, pretending to be bright-eyed while someone fussed with lighting.
Today, I was grateful for the extra time to breathe, even if breathing still felt like work.
After the day off from production yesterday and the late start this morning, coming back felt strange, like stepping into a dream that hadn’t stopped while I was gone.
“Uh-huh.” Carrie’s tone was dry, knowing. “I take it that’s not because of nerves?”
I shot her a look in the mirror. “Do you ever not pry?”
“Nope.” She grinned. “It’s one of my few joys.”
Despite myself, I smiled. Carrie had been my shadow through a dozen productions. She’d held my hand through panic attacks, powdered my nose between takes, and told off producers who treated me badly. She knew me better than most people ever would.
Still, I couldn’t tell her the full truth about Lucas. Not really. Not yet. It was too much, and I was still processing.
I sipped my coffee and tried to focus on the set around me. Crew members adjusted light rigs. Benji’s stand-in laughed with a PA. The rhythm of production pulsed steady and familiar—but beneath it ran a different current. Fear.
Security officers stood at every entrance now. A van from the private firm Noah had hired was parked outside. Their presence should have comforted me, but it didn’t. Because I knew what it was like to be watched—and this was just another kind of surveillance.
“Where’s Hannah?” Carrie asked, breaking my thoughts.
“She’s on her way,” I said. My voice came out steady, but inside, the memory of her whisper echoed: It’s gone too far. Someone’s going to get hurt.
Carrie nodded, glancing around. “You okay being here? I mean, after what happened to your sister?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to sound brave. “I have to be.”
She studied me a moment longer, then nodded and turned back to her makeup kit. “Let’s make you camera-ready then.”
The familiar ritual helped. Primer. Foundation. The brush of powder against my skin. Step by step, she rebuilt the version of me the world expected. I’d been doing this for years—constructing Lexi Montgomery, Hollywood’s darling, one perfectly blended illusion at a time.
“Lexi!”
Franklin’s voice sliced through the hum of the room. I turned as he strode in, headset askew, a scowl already forming.
“Please tell me we’re rolling soon,” he said. “I’ve got studio execs breathing down my neck about the revised schedule, and the press is circling like sharks.”
I forced a neutral smile. “Morning to you, too, Franklin.”
He ignored that. “We’ll run the balcony scene first. Benji’s already blocking. Try to keep the emotional tone consistent with what we’ve shot so far—same level, no big shifts.”
“You mean when my sister hadn’t been attacked,” I said before I could stop myself.
That earned me a hard look. “And yet the scene’s the same, which means you’ll have to act like she wasn’t. That’s your job.”
Carrie’s brush froze midair. Benji, who’d appeared in the doorway, frowned.
Franklin exhaled sharply and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I’m not heartless. I know this isn’t easy. But the studio doesn’t care about your personal life—they care about their release date. So, can we please keep the drama on camera today?”
The silence stretched.
Finally, Benji crossed the room, draping an arm over my shoulder in a gesture that was half comfort, half camaraderie. “Hey, Franklin, maybe you could dial it down a notch. The world’s a mess right now. We can still hit our marks without being robots.”
Franklin glared at him, but Benji’s easy grin disarmed him, like always.
“Fine,” Franklin muttered. He stalked off toward the monitors.
I let out a slow breath. “Thanks.”
Benji shrugged. “Somebody has to keep him from combusting.”
He looked better than he had the last time I saw him—the bruises along his jaw fading, his usual swagger dimmed but not gone.
Still, I caught the tension under his smile.
For a moment, I thought he might bring it up again—how the headlines about me and Lucas had dragged the whole production into chaos, how the attack on him had felt like fallout from my life bleeding into his. But instead, he just sighed.
“Guess we were all targets, huh?” he said quietly. “After what happened to your sister … I don’t know.”
Something in his tone—soft, resigned—told me he wasn’t angry anymore. Just tired.
“You good?” he asked, his voice lowering as the crew reset lights. “I mean, really?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Just feels strange. Being here. Acting like it’s another day.”
He leaned against the vanity. “Yeah. Like waiting for a cue in a scene you didn’t audition for.”
That made me smile despite everything. “Exactly.”
He tilted his head, his reflection meeting mine in the mirror. “Except in real life, there’s no director yelling cut when things go sideways. You just keep rolling, even when you’re bleeding.”
I huffed out a soft laugh. “And no guarantee the next take will be any better.”
“Yeah,” he said. “No lighting resets. No second chances. Just the one shot, and half the time, you don’t even know who’s holding the camera.”
We fell quiet for a beat, the truth of it sitting between us—how much easier it was to pretend on cue than to survive unscripted.
“I guess that’s the difference,” I said finally. “On set, I know what’s coming. Out there …” I gestured vaguely toward the world beyond the studio walls. “Out there, I don’t even know what story I’m in anymore.”
Benji’s gaze softened. “Maybe none of us do.”
He smiled faintly. Then he pushed off the vanity, shaking it off like an actor slipping out of character.
“I heard they’ve doubled security,” he said. “That’s good, right?”
“Sure.” The word came out flat.
Benji watched me for a moment, then said, “You don’t believe that.”
I didn’t answer. Because how could I explain that safety had become an illusion? That Lucas had shown me what real protection felt like—and how fleeting it was?
“I’ll be fine,” I said instead. “We both will.”
He nodded, but his eyes said he didn’t believe it, either.
Carrie finished with my lipstick and stepped back. “There. Back to flawless.”
“Thanks.” I stood, smoothing the soft dress wardrobe had chosen—a pale pink thing that made me feel more fragile than I wanted to.
Franklin clapped his hands. “Let’s move, people! Places!”
The words hit like muscle memory. The crew shuffled into position. Cameras whirred. Someone called for silence.
And just like that, I became her again—the character who wasn’t scared, who didn’t love a man who killed for a living, who wouldn’t lie awake wondering if her sister was the enemy or the victim.
“Rolling,” the first AD said.
Benji and I moved to the balcony set, where a warm breeze drifted through the open doors. I was supposed to deliver a monologue about forgiveness—a line about letting go of fear, about trusting love to survive.
The irony burned.
When the camera rolled, I found the mark and delivered the lines, but something in me cracked halfway through. The words felt too real. Too close.
“Cut!” Franklin snapped. “You lost focus.”
I swallowed hard. “Sorry.”
“Again. From the top.”
We reset. I drew a deep breath and tried to quiet the noise in my head. Lucas’s voice came back to me instead: You don’t owe anyone the version of you they made up.
I didn’t push it away. I let it settle inside me like a truth I’d been too afraid to say out loud.
That was the realization—small, simple, seismic.
I’d spent my whole life playing versions of myself for other people: the good girl, the starlet, the survivor. Even my strength had been a performance. But with Lucas, I’d been real. Raw. Unguarded.
And maybe that was what love really was—being seen, completely, and not running from it.
“Action!” Franklin barked.
This time, I didn’t move.
The silence stretched a few beats too long. Franklin frowned, his headset slipping down around his neck. “Lexi?”
I blinked, but the words that were supposed to come out weren’t there.
All I could feel was the weight of my own exhaustion pressing down like a hand on my chest. I’d been running on fumes—fear, adrenaline, obligation—but standing there under the hot lights, it finally hit me: I couldn’t do this. Not right now.
I needed a break from acting. Not gone. Not forever. But a break. To build what was real, and figure out the rest.
“Cut,” I said quietly, lowering my hands. “I’m sorry, Franklin. I can’t.”
He blinked. “You can’t what?”
“Do this scene. Any scene. Not today.”
His mouth opened, but for once, he didn’t speak right away. Around us, the set went still. A grip froze mid-step, Carrie’s eyes went wide, and Benji’s hand found my shoulder in quiet support.
“I just …” My throat tightened, but I forced the words out. “I need a break. I thought I could come back and make it work, but it’s too much. Everything with Hannah, the attacks, the press—it’s all bleeding into this. And I can’t pretend it’s fine.”
Franklin dragged a hand through his hair, looking torn between anger and understanding. “Lexi, the studio—”
“I’ll work something out with them,” I said before he could finish. “With you. I’ll make it right. Hell, I’ll shoot extra scenes later if that’s what it takes. But I need some time to remember who I am when I’m not acting like someone else.”
Benji gave my shoulder a small squeeze. “She’s earned that,” he said. “Hell, we all have.”
Franklin exhaled, long and low. “You’re serious.”
I nodded. “Completely.”
The room felt different now—lighter somehow, even as the tension thickened. For years, I’d built my world around other people’s schedules, other people’s stories. But the life I wanted—the one that had been quietly blooming inside me since Lucas—didn’t fit inside a call sheet.
I wanted mornings without makeup chairs and long hours pretending to be someone else. I wanted coffee in bed and laughter that wasn’t scripted. I wanted to find out who I was when the cameras stopped rolling—and maybe, if I was brave enough, build something real with him.
I could already imagine the conversation with Lucas. He’d give me that look, the one that said You already know what you need to do, and I’d laugh, pretending I didn’t. But I did. I wanted a life, not just a career.
“Take a few days,” Franklin said finally, his tone resigned. “I’ll smooth it over with the execs. Don’t make me regret it.”
“You won’t,” I said softly. “Thank you.”
I turned to Carrie, who was pretending not to tear up, and gave her a small smile. “Keep my chair warm?”
“Always,” she said.
Benji leaned in and kissed my temple. “Go figure out your happy ending, Montgomery.”
The words caught me off guard, and I had to swallow past the lump in my throat.
I stepped off set and into the hallway, the hum of production fading behind me. Each step felt like peeling back layers of someone I used to be. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t walking toward a scene. I was walking toward myself.
Toward him.
I’d just reached for my phone to text Lucas when a sound shattered the quiet—an unmistakable crack that didn’t belong anywhere near a film set.
Then came the scream.
High. Sharp. Real.
The kind that sliced straight through the air and lodged in your bones.
The crew froze. My coffee hit the floor, spilling dark liquid across the polished wood as I turned toward the noise.
“Everyone stay put!” someone yelled, but my body was already moving. I ran back toward the set, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Smoke drifted from somewhere near the side entrance. A light rig had crashed to the floor, sparking against the tile. Security rushed past me, shouting orders. And through the chaos, I heard Franklin’s voice—strained, panicked.
“Call 9-1-1! Somebody’s hurt!”
Benji was kneeling beside one of the grips, blood seeping through the man’s sleeve.
But that wasn’t what made me stop cold.
Near the doorway, half-shadowed by the smoke, was a single red rose. Not from the props department. Not plastic. Real.
And tucked beneath it—a note scrawled in black ink.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED AT DOMINION HALL.
My blood ran cold.
The message wasn’t for Franklin or Benji or the crew, obviously.
It was for me.