Chapter 13
GRACE
The trailer door slammed behind me. I collapsed onto the leather couch, my whole body shaking with sobs I couldn’t control. Pathetic. I was absolutely pathetic.
I pressed my face into the throw pillow and let the tears come.
Mascara was definitely running down my face.
Or maybe not. The makeup artist had said she had special cleanser to remove it.
My carefully styled messy hair was probably a real disaster that didn’t look sexy.
None of it mattered because my career was over before it had even started.
The worst part was that I knew exactly why.
I could feel it happening in real time, like watching a car crash in slow motion and being powerless to stop it.
Every take, every line, I could tell I was coming off forced.
Stiff. Like a robot programmed to recite dialogue instead of a living, breathing character.
And it was all because of Jack fucking Montana.
During private rehearsals with Micah, everything had clicked. The emotions flowed naturally. The words felt like my own thoughts. I could react, adapt, live in the moment.
But Jack? Jack was a black hole.
When the cameras were rolling and it was his coverage, he was electric.
All that movie star charisma cranked up to eleven.
But the second the lens pointed at me? The moment it was my turn to deliver?
He went completely deadpan. Just stood there with this blank expression, staring through me while he waited for me to finish so he could get back to being the center of attention.
I had nothing to work with. No chemistry. No emotion. No compass.
How was I supposed to find Elena’s fear and desperation when my scene partner gave me less than a cardboard cutout would?
At least a cardboard cutout wouldn’t actively radiate contempt.
Jack’s mood swings were legendary. One minute he was flirty and playful and the next he turned into a spoiled brat.
I grabbed a tissue from the box on the side table and blew my nose, the sound echoing in the tiny trailer. Humiliating. All of it. A hundred people had watched me fall apart. A hundred people who would go home tonight and tell their friends about the amateur who couldn’t handle her first big role.
The whispers I’d heard as I fled the set echoed in my head.
I should probably brick my phone. I didn’t want to see the social media notifications that were sure to blow up very soon.
Maybe Jack was right. Maybe I didn’t belong on a production of this magnitude. Had I fooled myself into thinking I had what it took when really I was just a pretty face with delusions of grandeur?
I curled into a ball on the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. The cargo jacket felt suffocating. I was still in full wardrobe. Fran was going to kill me for sitting down and creasing everything.
Did it even matter? I’d probably be fired by the end of the day anyway.
Should I just quit? Save everyone the trouble? I could walk out of here, drive home, and pretend none of this ever happened. Go back to playing corpses and baristas with secrets that never got revealed. At least I was good at those roles. At least nobody expected anything from me.
A knock on the trailer door made me flinch.
“Grace?” Micah.
Oh God. Not now. Not when I looked like a trash bandit.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
I wiped frantically at my face, knowing it was useless. “Can you come back later? I just need a few minutes to compose myself.”
There was a pause. I could picture him standing on the other side of the flimsy door, probably debating whether to respect my wishes or push through anyway.
“You can have as much time as you like,” he said finally, and there was something in his voice that made my chest ache. Genuine kindness. “But I really don’t want to leave you alone like this.”
I stared at the door for a long moment. Every instinct screamed at me to send him away. To hide until I could paste on a professional mask and pretend I hadn’t just had a complete meltdown in front of the entire crew.
But something about the way he said it—I don’t want to leave you alone—broke through my defenses.
I got up on shaky legs and opened the door a few inches.
Micah stood on the narrow steps, his face etched with concern. He wasn’t wearing the headset anymore. I noticed for the first time how tired he looked. Dark circles under his eyes. Tension in his jaw.
I stepped back to let him in, and I couldn’t help noticing the way his shoulders filled out the narrow doorway as he stepped inside. The trailer suddenly felt very small. Very intimate.
He closed the door behind him and turned to face me. I braced myself for the lecture. For the disappointment. For the I made a mistake casting you speech I’d been dreading since the moment I tripped on that cable.
I gestured to the recliner chair that sat across from the couch.
He didn’t sit in the recliner. Instead, he leaned against the counter, giving me space but staying close enough that I could see the genuine concern in his eyes.
“Talk to me,” he said simply.
And something about those three words broke the dam.
“I’ve wanted this my whole life,” I heard myself saying, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “Since I was a little girl watching my—watching movies. I used to stand in front of the mirror and practice acceptance speeches. I had a whole routine.” I laughed bitterly. “Pathetic, right?”
“Not pathetic,” he said quietly.
“I worked so hard to get here. Years of auditions. Years of rejection. Playing dead bodies and characters who got cut before anyone saw them.” I swiped at my eyes. “And now I finally get a real role. A leading role. And I’m blowing it.”
“Grace, I wouldn’t say that.”
“No, I am. I saw their faces out there. I heard what they were saying.” My voice cracked. “Jack’s right. I’m an amateur. I don’t belong here.”
Micah was quiet for a moment, just watching me with those intense blue eyes. I expected him to agree. To gently let me down, maybe offer to help me pack my things.
Instead, he said, “Can I suggest something?”
I blinked at him, thrown by the lack of judgment in his tone. “What?”
“It seems to me the problem isn’t you.” He crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head slightly. “The problem is Jack.”
My brows shot up. “Jack?”
“You don’t click with him. There’s no chemistry there, and it’s throwing you off.
” He pushed away from the counter, starting to pace the small space.
“This is exactly the kind of thing we would have caught in screen tests. We’d put you two together, run some scenes, see how you played off each other.
But because you were a last-minute replacement, we never had the chance. ”
I stared at him, processing. He wasn’t blaming me. He wasn’t telling me I was a disaster. He was actually trying to figure out why I’d bombed.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” I admitted.
“When we rehearsed together, just you and me, everything felt right. But out there, with Jack?” I shook my head.
“He gives me nothing. It’s like acting with a wall.
A wall that actively hates me. I’d be better off against a green screen. A broom handle.”
“I noticed.” Micah’s jaw tightened. “And for what it’s worth, that’s on him, not you. A good scene partner lifts you up. Jack’s too focused on his own performance to help anyone else’s.”
“So what do I do? I can’t exactly ask him to care.”
Micah stopped pacing and turned to face me fully. “Can we go back out there and try your scenes with just you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Jack’s sulking in his trailer. Probably won’t come out for another hour at least. Let’s see how you do when he’s not on set with you. We’ll shoot your coverage, your angles. You can react to someone off-camera reading his lines. Toby. He’ll be the broom handle.”
My lips twitched. “I shouldn’t have called him a broom handle.”
“I’ve called him worse.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, mulling the offer over.
It would be a lot easier to prove I was capable if Jack wasn’t glaring down the length of his nose at me the entire time.
If I didn’t have to feel his contempt radiating across the set like a physical force.
I didn’t hate the guy, but it took energy to manage him.
Energy I needed to devote to the character.
But going back out there meant facing the crew again. All those people who’d watched me fall apart would be waiting for me to literally fall on my face.
“They all think I’m a joke,” I said quietly.
“Then show them they’re wrong.” Micah’s voice was firm but kind. “I know what you’re capable of, Grace. I’ve seen it. Now let’s give everyone else a chance to see it too.”
I looked at him and saw the tension in his shoulders. He was standing here in my trailer when he should be out there managing a hundred other problems. He was betting his entire movie on me. His career. His reputation.
And he still believed I could do this.
I couldn’t let him down.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Let’s try it.”
His face relaxed into something that might have been relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I stood up, wiping my palms on my cargo pants. “But I probably need to get touched up first.”
Twenty minutes later, I was back on the catwalk.
The makeup artist had worked miracles, erasing all evidence of my breakdown. The crew had filtered back in. I could feel them watching, waiting to see if I’d crash and burn again.
Toby stood off camera with the script, ready to read Jack’s lines. Micah was back at the monitors, headset on, all business.
“Whenever you’re ready, Grace,” he said.
I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. Let Elena settle into my bones the way I’d practiced a thousand times in my living room.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t Grace Stone anymore. I was a woman who’d been fighting for her life for three days. A woman who was terrified and exhausted and running on pure adrenaline.
“Action.”
I rounded the corner and delivered my first line.
The words came out exactly right. Sharp with panic, breathless with desperation.
A desperate woman needing saving. I could hear Toby reading Jack’s lines from somewhere below, but I wasn’t really listening to him.
I was listening to the character in my head, the version of Jack’s character that existed in the world of the script.
“Cut! Moving on!”
We reset for the next angle. Then the next.
Scene after scene, I threw myself into Elena’s world.
Somewhere around the fourth setup, I became aware of a shift in the energy on set.
The whispers had stopped. People were actually watching now.
Not with the morbid curiosity of rubberneckers at a car crash but with genuine interest.
I stayed in the zone, stayed in Elena’s skin. When Micah called action, the rest of the world fell away. There was only the character, the story, the truth of the moment.
We finished the last setup. I could smell chicken and knew craft services had lunch ready. I stood on the catwalk, breathing hard, feeling like I’d just run a marathon.
“Let’s set the rope rappel scene,” Micah called out. “Beautiful work, everyone.”
I looked beyond the cameras to where Micah sat in his director’s chair. He was watching me with those sharp blue eyes, his fingers running gently along his jaw in what I was starting to recognize as his thinking pose.
I offered him a grateful smile. He tipped his head in a silent gesture. Just a small nod, barely perceptible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it.
But I understood exactly what it meant.
I told you that you could do this.