Chapter 9
GRACE
Ipulled up to the gate at Limitless Pictures with my printed pass stuck to the windshield and my stomach doing gymnastics that would have impressed an Olympic coach.
The security guard checked my name against his list, and for one terrifying second, I was sure he was going to shake his head and tell me there’d been a mistake.
Sorry, miss. You’ve been fired before you even started. Please exit the way you came.
“Soundstage Fourteen,” he said instead, handing the pass back. “Straight down, take a left at the water tower.”
“Thanks.”
I’d been on studio lots before. Plenty of times. I’d done the corpse episode on a lot just like this one, and the medical drama, and two short-lived sitcom pilots that died quiet deaths. I knew my way around a water tower.
But this was different.
Those other times, I’d been a guest. A day player.
A body lying on a slab with a toe tag. Nobody cared if I showed up or not because nobody’s movie lived or died on my performance.
I was furniture. Set dressing that occasionally got a line.
I’d grown up on sound stages, hiding in the background and watching my father work.
Now I was number one on the call sheet. My name might be on a trailer if I lasted that long.
I parked in the spot they’d assigned me with a little sign taped over whoever’s name had it before me. My heart pounded as I climbed out of my car and walked toward Soundstage Fourteen with my bag slung over my shoulder.
Micah promised he was going to help, but I didn’t know him from Adam. It could be some weird way of firing me. Showing me what I couldn’t have.
The soundstage loomed in front of me, one of those massive hangar-like buildings that looked like nothing from the outside and contained entire worlds on the inside.
I remembered the first time I got to visit my dad on a fantasy film.
It had felt like walking into another world.
Maybe that was when I fell in love with the magic of Hollywood.
The heavy door was propped open, and the sounds of construction spilled out onto the pavement. Drills. Hammers. Someone shouting measurements.
I stepped inside and stopped dead.
Holy crap.
They were building a ship. Or at least the inside of one.
The skeleton of it rose up in front of me—steel walls riveted together, narrow corridors, a control room taking shape off to the left with a bank of panels and switches.
Sawhorses and lumber were scattered everywhere.
A crew of maybe fifteen people swarmed over the structure, hanging wires and welding seams.
It wasn’t finished, but it already looked real. The walls had that weathered, industrial gray of an actual cargo vessel. Someone had even stenciled serial numbers and warning labels on the bulkheads. A catwalk ran along the upper level, complete with rust-colored railings.
This was the ship. The one from the third act, where Elena gets taken by the kidnappers and held below deck while Jack’s character fights his way through an army of mercenaries to get to her.
I’d pictured it when I read the script. My imagination had done a decent job, but to see it in living color was incredible. Another reminder of why I’d chosen this career.
“Grace.”
I turned. Micah was crossing the floor toward me, weaving around a stack of steel beams. He was dressed down today—jeans, a faded black t-shirt, and Nike’s. He looked different than he had at the table read. More relaxed. More in his element.
Damn, that t-shirt did things for his arms. And chest.
Focus, Grace.
“Hi,” I said. “Sorry, am I early? I can wait in the car.”
“You’re right on time.” He stopped in front of me and followed my gaze up to the set. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s incredible.” I walked a few steps closer, craning my neck. “It looks like an actual ship.”
A guy on the catwalk above us fired a nail gun, and I flinched. Micah smiled.
“That’s the point,” he said.
“Most directors would’ve just done this on green screen.” I ran my hand along a section of hull. It was cool and solid under my palm. “Slap some plywood up, paint everything green, fix it in post.”
“Most directors didn’t start out in set construction.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, watching the crew work with obvious pride.
“You were a set director?”
He grinned. “Eventually, but I built the sets.”
“Oh.”
I hoped I didn’t sound too surprised, but I knew who he was. To know he’d been a grunt did surprise me.
He gestured at the set. “I prefer the real thing. Or at least a physical version of the fake thing. Actors do better work when they’ve got something to react to. You can’t give a genuine performance staring at a tennis ball on a stick or running on a walking pad.”
“Some people can.”
“Not well.” He turned to face me fully. “Grab your script. We’ll start on the catwalk scene, work our way through the act two confrontation, and see where we land.”
“I don’t need the script.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I don’t need it.” I set my bag down on a sawhorse. “I memorized it.”
“Your scenes?”
“The whole thing. Everyone’s scenes. Every line of dialogue in the movie.
” I shrugged, trying to play it cool, like I hadn’t spent the entire night mainlining coffee and recording myself on my phone like a lunatic.
“I figured if I knew what everyone else was going to say before they said it, I’d stop waiting for my turn to talk and actually listen. ”
He stared at me for a long moment and then smiled.
Damn, he was attractive. A part of me knew that, but he was my boss. I was so focused on the work I hadn’t allowed myself to really look at him. “Okay. That’s great.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, everybody! Take twenty! Grab some food!”
The crew reacted like he’d announced free puppies. Tools powered down. The nail gun went blessedly silent. Within two minutes, fifteen people had filed out through the side door.
And then it was just us.
The silence felt enormous.
“So,” I said.
“So.” He climbed the steps to the catwalk and gestured for me to follow. “Come on up.”
I followed him up the metal stairs, happy that I’d worn my tennis shoes. The catwalk ran the length of the ship’s interior, overlooking the unfinished hold below. Up close, the detail was even more impressive—fake rust streaks, painted condensation stains, and a row of gauges with actual needles.
A fresh wave of self-doubt and terror rolled through me. The details weren’t cheap. There was so much riding on the line.
No pressure.
“Scene forty-one,” Micah said, positioning himself a few feet away from me.
“Elena’s escaped her cell. She’s crawling through the ship trying to find a radio, and Jack’s character is coming from the opposite direction.
Neither of you knows the other one is here.
You round the corner and nearly run into each other. ”
I nodded, already running the lines in my head.
“She’s terrified, running on adrenaline, hasn’t slept in two days,” he said. “Ready?”
“Yep.”
He didn’t count us down. He didn’t say action. He just became the character. One second he was Micah, standing there in his jeans and t-shirt. The next, he was a man moving through hostile territory, every sense on high alert.
He came around the corner of the fake bulkhead, and I reacted without thinking.
I swung my imaginary gun up, my breath coming in sharp gasps, my hands shaking just enough to sell it. My voice cracked on the words. Just like I’d practiced at two in the morning in my living room, except it didn’t feel practiced. It felt like it was actually happening.
Micah wasn’t really acting, but I didn’t need him to. I’d rehearsed the scene, knowing it was going to be one of the ones that made or broke the movie.
I held the moment. Let the fear and the exhaustion my character would be feeling after her ordeal bleed into my actions. I let my arms drop, and my whole body sagged. The line came out barely above a whisper.
“Scene,” I said softly after the long gaze written into the script.
And just like that, he was Micah again. The character fell off him like a coat.
But he didn’t say anything right away. He just looked at me, and there was something in his expression I couldn’t quite read.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Was that bad? I can do it differently. I have like three other versions. Too much, right?”
“That was great.”
“I can make the fear bigger. Or smaller. I wasn’t sure and obviously it will depend on Jack’s mannerisms.”
“Grace.” He held up a hand. “That was great. Do you not believe me?”
“I do,” I quickly said, because he was the director and I didn’t want to go against him.
But I expected criticism.
“Let’s do the generator room scene. Act two, the argument.”
We ran the generator room scene. Then the radio scene. Then the scene where Elena confronts Cole about the lie at the center of their partnership—the one where she has to be furious and betrayed and still desperately in need of him, all at the same time.
And it worked. Every scene worked.
With Micah playing opposite me, everything clicked into place in a way it hadn’t at the table read. He gave me something real to react to. He wasn’t reading lines off a page or delivering them in that flat, checked-out way some actors did in rehearsal.
He was present.
And without the script in my hands, without Jack Montana’s judgment boring into the back of my skull, the words came out like thoughts instead of recitations.
We finished the marina scene and I sat down on the edge of the catwalk, letting my legs dangle. My heart was pounding. My palms were sweaty.
I felt amazing.
I felt like an actress.
Micah dropped down beside me. “That is the woman who auditioned for me.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Relieved.” He stretched his legs out, leaning back on his hands. “I’ll be honest with you. After yesterday, I was worried.”
“After yesterday, I was worried too.”
“You shouldn’t have been. That was on me.” He looked over at me. “I threw you into a room with a script you’d had for less than a day. I expected you to perform at the level you auditioned at. That’s not fair.”
“It’s Hollywood. I thought that’s just how it worked.”
“What you just did in those scenes? That’s the performance I knew was in there.”
Pride bloomed in my chest. I tried very hard not to let it show on my face and failed completely. I couldn’t stop the smile.
“So I’m not fired.”
“You were never fired.”
“Thanks for trusting me.”
“Is there anything you’d like to go over before we do the next rehearsal with the cast?” he asked.
I chewed my lower lip. We’d skipped around and did the more dialogue-heavy scenes, but there were a few I was nervous about.
“Can we run through the scene where I find Jack’s character tied up and have to cut him loose?”
“Let’s do it,” he said and got to his feet.
I nodded and followed him down the catwalk stairs to the lower level where the generator room set was taking shape.
The space smelled like fresh paint and sawdust. Micah positioned himself against a metal beam and put his arms behind his back with an imaginary rope and slipped right back into character.
I approached slowly. The lines came easily now.
I could feel Elena’s panic, her desperation, the way the stakes pressed down on her.
Micah reacted perfectly, his voice rough with pain and relief as Cole warned me about the guards closing in.
We moved through the exchange, the tension building exactly as it should on the page.
When it came time to cut him free, I mimed slicing the ropes and helped him up, our bodies close in the confined space.
The script called for the kiss right there—Elena’s impulsive grab for connection in the middle of chaos, Cole pulling her in before they both remembered the danger.
I didn’t hesitate. The scene had me in its grip, and Micah’s eyes were right there, intense and focused.
I leaned in, closing the distance, and pressed my lips to his.
Nothing about it felt fake. His mouth was warm, the kiss soft at first then deepening as he responded without breaking character.
Heat rushed through me, making my pulse spike harder than any line delivery ever had.
His hand came up to my waist, and for one suspended second I forgot we were rehearsing at all.
I liked it.
Too much. My body leaned into his without thought.
He pulled back first, breathing a little uneven. “That’s good,” he said, voice low. “Really good. Let’s call it there for today.”
The shift was abrupt, professional again. I blinked, the spell breaking, and stepped away, my cheeks burning. “Okay. Yeah.”
He ran a hand through his hair, already moving toward the door. “You’re in great shape now. Monday will be solid. Get some rest.”
I nodded, grabbing my bag with hands that suddenly felt clumsy. “Thanks. For today. For everything.”
“Anytime.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “See you then.”
I left the soundstage without looking back, the afternoon sun hitting me like a slap as I crossed the lot to my car. My lips still tingled. I slid behind the wheel and started the engine. I’d liked kissing him. Not the character. Him. And that was a problem I had no idea how to fix before Monday.