Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
DETERMINATION
Max
I'm hunched over my mahogany desk that Monday, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up to my elbows. The corner office feels cavernous and empty despite the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glittering Los Angeles skyline. Saturday lingers in my mind like a half-remembered dream.
Celeste and I had been getting close—the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed at my terrible joke about the Manet exhibition, how her fingertips had briefly brushed mine over dinner.
I found myself actually letting my guard down just a little, the walls I'd carefully constructed beginning to crack.
Now I'm absently turning the crystal paperweight in my palm while inhaling the rich scent of my Celeste candle—the candied orange, patchouli and vanilla fragrance that fills my nostrils and transports me instantly to the curve of her neck when she leans forward to read something.
I mean, I know what happened. Intellectually, I know.
I unwittingly pressed my thumb into the tender purple bruise of her deepest insecurity.
I had no idea that screenwriting wasn't just some hobby for her but the bleeding heart of her ambitions—dreams she's probably chased through countless sleepless nights, only to wake up feeling like they're still miles beyond her grasp.
And that's the one thing in my life that I can't relate to.
My own path stretches behind me like a red carpet, each stepping stone placed precisely where I needed it.
It started with my fascination with movies when I was only 5, sitting cross-legged too close to our projection screen, my small hands sticky with candy as I mouthed every line of dialogue.
That obsession paid off when I got my PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at 23, my dissertation bound in leather now displayed prominently on my bookshelf.
Then, of course, Kensington Pictures—its iconic silver tower gleaming in the sunlight—is a subsidiary of Kensington International, so I worked my way through the company, starting when I was 16 as a production assistant fetching coffee and making copies, then climbed through departments all through my schooling, my grandfather's name opening doors that remained firmly shut to others.
I put in the work—eighteen-hour days, missed birthdays, relationships sacrificed—but let's face it, my granddad's portrait hangs in our studio lobby.
Celeste is just another dreamer in this town, her script one of thousands gathering dust. Even with talent, you need luck not to end up another manila envelope in the slush pile.
Agents are fortresses here, their assistants human shields against hopefuls.
Most submissions barely earn a form rejection.
And rejection isn't necessarily about talent—look at John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning Confederacy of Dunces, which suffered through so many rejections that Toole committed suicide, so his book had to be published posthumously; Jonathan Larson’s career before writing the blockbuster musical Rent, which represented over a decade of failure in getting his musicals produced; Stephen King's Carrie, which was rejected so many times that he threw the manuscript in the trash and his wife had to rescue it; JK Rowling's Harry Potter, rejected dozens of times.
All masterpieces. All initially unwanted.
So. How to find out the truth about my wife?
I tap my fingers against the desk, considering the situation.
She's guarding those screenplays like they're her children.
And I get it. What if they're amateur hour—dialogue that makes you cringe, characters flatter than cardboard, plots with holes you could drive a truck through?
I've greenlit enough projects to spot the difference between gold and pyrite from fifty paces.
If I read her work and it's garbage, I'd have to be honest. That's who I am.
And then I'd become the executioner of her dreams instead of just another faceless rejection letter.
She can blame the industry's overcrowding when agents don't respond, but my verdict?
That would be final. That would be personal.
And that would be the end of whatever's growing between us. Not a role I'm willing to play.
I need to see for myself what she's capable of.
What if her writing is brilliant? What if she's that rare find everyone in this town is hunting for?
I could open doors for her overnight, though probably not at Kensington.
Producing your spouse's screenplay is risky business—even the best scripts can bomb for a thousand reasons beyond anyone's control, and I won't put our marriage in that crossfire.
But I have other options. If her pages impress me, one call to Selena Farley would change everything.
Celeste gets representation from Hollywood's top agent, never knowing I orchestrated it.
She builds her career believing it was all her own talent—which it would be.
That's the perfect scenario, isn't it? Her success, her confidence, no strings attached.
Roman's got this tech guy on retainer—a digital bloodhound who sniffs out hidden files during my brother's messier lawsuits.
One call and he could slip into Celeste's laptop without leaving so much as a pixel out of place.
I'd finally see those screenplays she's guarding like state secrets.
If they're garbage, I delete the memory from my brain.
If they're brilliant, Selena gets a call.
And Celeste? She'd never suspect a thing.
I dial my brother's number. "Rome," I say when he picks up. “I need to borrow Sven."
A low chuckle comes through the line. Roman and I have the rockiest relationship of all my siblings. Perpetually scowling, yet somehow always ready with a cutting joke, and reliable when it counts. Like right now. "Sven? What for?"
"Need to get into my wife's computer." I explain my plan. "Want to see if she can actually write or if she's just another Hollywood dreamer."
"Dude," he says, with a laugh, “ever consider just asking her to show you her scripts?"
I sigh into the phone. "Christ, Rome. Of course I thought of that.
She doesn't think she's any good—too embarrassed to let me see anything.
Maybe she's right about her talent. If so, I'd rather not humiliate her by letting on that I snooped.
But if she's got something real? I can pull some strings. "
“Okay,” he says reluctantly. “Give him a call.”
“Thanks, Rome,” I say.
I reach out to Sven, who promises to deliver her screenplays to my inbox within the hour. For someone who makes his living breaking into Fortune 500 security systems, grabbing a few documents from a personal server is barely worth getting out of bed for.
Then I get back to work. My phone buzzes with seventeen new emails since lunch, three marked urgent from the legal team about rights clearances for the Spielberg project.
Three scripts need notes by tomorrow, the marketing team is waiting on my approval for the winter slate poster designs, and somewhere in this chaos, I'm supposed to find time to placate a nervous investor who's threatening to pull out of our next summer blockbuster.
My assistant pokes her head in to remind me about the 3PM call with the London office, and the development team has left three different script drafts on my desk with Post-its requesting feedback "ASAP. "
I have plenty to fill my plate, but, somehow, this Celeste screenplay thing is paramount in my mind. I’m that anxious to find out if she has any talent.
I'm halfway through drafting an email to Chris Nolan about the summer slate when Sven's message appears in my inbox.
My cursor hovers, trembling slightly. The anticipation of opening her screenplays feels both exhilarating and terrifying—like unwrapping a gift that might contain either treasure or disaster.
Whatever waits inside those files will keep me up until dawn.
The first ten pages will tell me if there's promise; by the third script, I'll know for certain if she's the real deal.
God, I hope she is.