Chapter 24 Maren
My kitchen table was the most secure conference room in Los Angeles.
Detective Chen sat at one end with the studio's head of security on speakerphone. Thomas sat at the other with a legal pad and the fountain pen.
"The carrier's position is firm," said the lawyer's voice, thin through the little speaker. "We strongly advise Ms. Calloway skip the premiere entirely."
"And the studio's position," said the security chief, overlapping, "is that there is no premiere without Ms. Calloway. Those are the two facts in tension."
"Wonderful," I said. "Two grown institutions, and they've handed me a custody dispute."
Brady, leaning on the counter with a dish towel over his shoulder, raised a finger. "I have a third position. It's snacks. Nobody negotiates well hungry."
"Sit down, Brady," said Damian, without looking up from his laptop.
"I'm providing morale."
Thomas tapped the pen once on the pad, and the room found its center the way it always did. "Your call, Maren. The premiere is still a month away. We build around whatever you decide."
I looked at the two glowing phones and the four faces and the dog, who had positioned himself under the table to catch anything that fell.
I thought about a parking lot. I thought about an inbox.
I thought about a dead man's voice in my email and an orchid on my car seat, the exact flower my father used to send my mother in a hospital room nobody was supposed to know about.
"He has taken a lot of things," I said. "My lot. My mail. A colleague who can't defend himself anymore. My father's flowers." I set my mug down. "He doesn't get the red carpet too."
The lawyer started to say something about liability. Chen talked over him with the warm voice she used right before she did something decisive.
"Then we don't argue with him," Chen said. "We give him exactly the stage he says he wants, and we own every inch of it. Controlled ground. We audit every credential. We build a net, and we leave one gap, and we wait to see who walks into it."
Thomas was already writing. I watched the pen move and felt something settle in my chest that I would have called calm if calm weren't such a strong word for a woman planning her own premiere like a sting.
The household split the work without a meeting about splitting the work.
Damian disappeared into vendor lists and credential databases and a forum he refused to discuss at the table. Brady appointed himself director of wardrobe logistics, which mostly meant he spent an afternoon at the fitting with Inez and conducted a feud with Damian over speakerphone.
"It goes in the updo," Brady was saying, holding the phone at arm's length so we could all suffer. "The earpiece tucks under the twist."
"It cannot go in the updo," Damian's voice said. "Sweat, hair product, and a four-hour event. It fails by hour two."
"Then we use less product."
"Then the updo fails by hour one. You've created a worse problem and named it a solution. This is your whole personality."
Inez, pins in her mouth, ignored both of them and built me a gown with a secret. There was a flat-shoe option hidden under the hem and a slit cut so I could run if I had to, and she pinned it without making a single comment about why a woman would need to run in a gown.
She did say one thing, low, kneeling at my feet with the chalk.
"I've dressed a lot of frightened women," Inez said. "You don't move like one anymore."
I had to look at the ceiling for a second. "That's the men," I said. "I outsourced the bravery."
"No." She marked the hem. "You let them carry the fear. That's different. That takes more spine, not less."
Jackson arrived in the afternoon with a folder and the careful face of a publicist.
"There are companions," he said, sliding it across the table. "To the sidewalk photo. Long lens. Someone's shopping a set of you four around, and one outlet is close to running."
I opened the folder. There we were on a sidewalk, leaning together, four people and a streetlight, happy and unaware. I felt my stomach drop and then, oddly, climb back up, because the photo was lovely. We looked like people who liked each other.
"Do you want it killed or shaped?" Jackson asked. "I can do either. I have favors."
"Neither," I said. "The story is mine, Jackson. I'll tell it. When I'm ready, on my terms, with my timing."
He studied me for a moment, then closed the folder and nodded.
"Then I hold the line until you say go," he said.
Polly arrived at dusk with a second bottle and a laminated binder, and the household's mood changed the way a room changes when the substitute teacher leaves and the cool aunt walks in.
"The interview protocol," she announced, sitting at the head of the table. "Promised since the thermostat treaty. I'm a woman of my word and a danger to yours. Gentlemen, please be seated."
Brady treated it as open-mic night. Damian answered every question with documentation.
Thomas answered in single sentences. And the funny thing, the thing that got me, was that the questions were ridiculous and the answers came out devastating, because every man in that room, asked to describe himself, kept describing me instead.
"Thomas," Polly read. "Describe your ideal Sunday."
"Quiet house," Thomas said. "Everyone accounted for. Her on the bathroom tile after a junket, not having to be anything."
"That's her Sunday," Polly said. "I asked about yours."
"That is mine," Thomas said.
Polly looked at me over the top of the binder. I shrugged like I had nothing to do with it, which was a lie, and she knew it was a lie. She wrote something in the margin.
She closed the binder eventually and declared the household certified.
"I have officiated less convincing weddings," she told the room, and Brady applauded, and Damian said thank you in the voice of a man receiving an award he believed was rigged.
Then she took me out to the back patio with the second bottle, and she got to the actual point, because the protocol had only ever been the delivery system.
"Why three?" Polly said.
"You've met them. It’s the chemistry."
"No." She poured. "Try again."
"Timing, the situation, the whole strange spring of it."
"Absolutely not. One more time, and this time say the true thing."
I held my wine and looked at my father's roses, and I told her the true thing because she had earned it and because saying it out loud might make it solid.
"Each of them sees a version of me the other two can't quite hold," I said.
"Brady sees the one who laughs. The one who did the indie at twenty-three for no money because the work was joy.
Thomas sees the one who's tired and doesn't perform, who comes home wrecked and sits on the floor.
Damian sees the one who's loved without earning it.
The one who doesn't have to buy her seat at the table.
" I drank. "I've spent a whole career being one woman at a time. I'm done doing it in my own house."
Polly set her glass down and didn't tease me, which from Polly was a standing ovation.
"That," she said, "is the thing you should be saying to them. Not to me."
That night the four of us were in the big bed, lamp low, Keith exiled and aggrieved on the armchair.
I did the thing Polly told me to do.
"Brady," I said into the dark. "You're the one who sees me laugh."
"I know," he said. "I'm very good at it. It's my best work."
"Thomas. You're the one who sees me when I can't hold anything up."
A pause. Then his hand found mine. "I like that one," he said quietly. "She doesn't owe me a performance."
"Damian." I turned toward him. "You're the one who sees me loved before I've done anything to deserve it."
He was quiet for a long beat. "That's the version I needed someone to see in me," he said. "So I'd know where to find it in you."
I lay there held on three sides and said the rest of it, the part I'd been building toward all week.
"For months a stranger has been writing me a scene I didn't agree to be in," I said. "On premiere day, I'm going to finish it. My way. I'm done being the woman in the script."
Nobody told me to be careful. They knew better. Thomas's thumb moved once across my knuckles, and Brady exhaled like a man bracing, and Damian's hand settled warm at the small of my back.
I was sandwiched between them, skin already tingling from the casual brushes and lingering touches. Brady's hand slid up my thigh under the thin sheet, Damian's breath warm against my neck, Thomas's steady gaze watching me with that quiet command that always made my pulse race.
I kissed Brady first, deep and playful, our tongues tangling as his charm melted into pure heat. He tasted like the whiskey we'd shared earlier, laughing low into my mouth when I nipped his lip.
Then Damian, turning my head to claim me...
whispering how good I tasted before devouring me.
Thomas was last, patient and intense, his kiss grounding me even as my body arched between them.
We made out like that, hands roaming, breaths mingling, the air thick with growing need.
My nipples hardened against their chests, my pussy already slick and aching.
"Listen," I gasped finally, pulling back with a wicked smile. My voice came out breathy but firm. "Tonight, I want to be in charge."
Brady's eyebrows shot up, that handsome face breaking into a grin. "Oh, hell yes. Boss lady mode activated."
Damian chuckled, but his eyes darkened with anticipation. "You sure you can handle all three of us, Maren?"
Thomas simply nodded, his fountain-pen precision giving way to trust. "Whatever you want."
I pushed them back onto the pillows, arranging their big, muscled bodies in a row across the bed. They were all shirtless already, those powerful frames I'd come to know so well on display.
I started with Thomas, straddling his lap and peeling his sweatpants down slowly. His cock sprang free, long and straight, already half-hard and twitching under my gaze.