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And James, frankly, has not exactly encouraged exploration.

The reader is also bisexual or bi-curious in this fic — I have not fully decided yet how she would label it herself — but the interest is definitely there. Before James and during their break, she had a little experience with two girls.

Unfortunately, one of them was Jess, which was a high-school thing when she was around sixteen.

It was harmless and messy and not something anyone really knows about. James definitely does not know. Maddy is the only person who knows because she accidentally caught enough to work it out, because of course she did. It was probably more curiosity for Jess, but our reader was more interested in the experience (not Jess) than she admitted at the time.

Then, while she and James were on a break after New York, Our reader had a one-night stand with a woman named Laura. That was her first proper experience with a woman beyond teenage curiosity, and she liked it. It was fun. It opened another door in her head. Again, no one really knows about that either.

So, our reader is not inexperienced because she lacks curiosity.

She is inexperienced because she has spent years with a man who made her feel strange for wanting things.

**********

Reader and James

James was her first man, and for a long time, he was her only man.

That shaped her. Not necessarily in a good way.

James is lazy in bed. Selfish, too. He likes things his way. He likes control, but not in a way that feels generous or attentive. He is not especially interested in what makes our reader lose her mind. He is interested in sex being tidy, familiar, flattering to him, and not too complicated.

Our reader, meanwhile, is the opposite of tidy, as we already know.

She is not curated at all. If anything, she is anti-curated. She is impulsive, curious, distractible, excitable, and very capable of blurting out things at the worst possible moment and then wanting to vanish through the floor from embarrassment.

Sex is one of the places where her ADHD shows up very clearly.

Her brain goes:

Oh, I want to try that.

Oh, and that.

Actually, what about that?

Wait, is that a thing?

Could that be interesting?

And then James would look at her like she had personally ruined dinner.

She once suggested a nurse outfit for herself, and James made her feel weird for it. She once suggested using a butt-plug on him and he reacted like she had proposed a crime. She has brought up things she read online with absolutely no warning, including once asking over a family lunch what “pegging” meant, which made James want to walk into the sea.

So, our reader has no filter.

Maddy knows this. Maddy enables this. Maddy and our reader, and occasionally Jess, talk about sex with absolutely no shame and too much detail.

*********

Reader and Tom

Tom was only the second man our reader had ever slept with.

And she did not forget it.

New York rewired something in her because sex with Tom was not just better than sex with James — it was an entirely different language.

It was long. Intense. Focused. Not selfish. Tom paid attention in a way James never had and he was only a one-night stand. He found things in her body she did not even know how to look for. He made her feel wanted without making her feel ridiculous for wanting back.

He found her G-spot, which she has been personally annoyed about ever since because she has bought several G-spot vibrators since New York and still cannot find it herself.

Rude of him, honestly.

He also made her squirt as we’ve seen in part two of the fic, which she did not know was a thing her body could do. At first, she was embarrassed. Mortified, actually. But once she realised Tom was not put off by it — that he was very much into it — she let go.

That is important.

So, our reader can let go once she feels safe enough.

She is loud when she is actually turned on. James has not really seen that side of her, because James has never really unlocked it. Tom did, and that is part of why she could not file New York away as “just sex” either.

She was sore after six hours with him, yes.

She also absolutely would have done it again.

******

Reader’s sexuality in general

Reader is going to re-enter her exploration stage after James.

She is extremely open-minded. Not because she is trying to be shocking, but because her brain is naturally curious. She watches porn sometimes less to get off and more because she wants to know what people are doing and why, then complains that the acting is terrible.

She is high-energy. Chaotic. Impulsive. A little unhinged. She will absolutely say something filthy and then immediately embarrass herself because she did not mean to say it out loud.

She has a large assortment of sex toys because anything that looks interesting, she buys. Then she loses interest. Then she forgets where she put it. She has wondered more than once whether James knows where she hides them, and then decided she does not actually want the answer.

Our reader likes the idea of adventure.

James does not.

That has been a problem.

*******

Things Reader likes or wants to explore

Oral, giving and receiving With men and women. She is curious, enthusiastic, and not especially hung up on gender when it comes to pleasure. She has tried it with both genders. Giving and receiving. She is into it.

Role play Very much yes. Her biggest fantasies are teacher/student and doctor/patient dynamics, but unfortunately James always thought she was being ridiculous.

Restraints She thinks she would like them. She has not properly tried them, but the idea absolutely interests her.

Edging Our reader would probably be very good at edging someone if she had the right person to do it with. Hyperfocus would kick in. She would get fascinated by the reactions, the control, the build. She would also like being edged because sex is one of the few things that can make her brain switch off.

Switching Reader is absolutely a switch. She would do well as submissive and dominant, though she has not had a partner who could really bring both sides out of her. James mostly flattened that.

Sex toys She likes the idea of them, buys them impulsively, forgets about half of them, and has probably tried things in the least organised way imaginable. Mostly on her own.

Strap-on curiosity She has wanted to try this with another woman (or maybe man, at some point), but it has not happened yet.

Anal curiosity She has not really tried anything because James made her feel like it was disgusting. That does not mean she is not curious. It just means the door got shut before she could even decide.

Public-risk fantasy Our reader is into the idea of being wanted somewhere she should behave herself. Not non-consensual public exposure, but the danger of almost getting caught. The tension. The suppressed noise. The trying-to-act-normal-while-absolutely-not-normal of it all.

Cuddle sex and morning sex Our reader likes softness too. She likes lazy morning sex, sleepy touching, closeness, laughter, and sex that does not have to become a whole performance.

Naked sleeping and cuddling She sleeps completely naked because texture feels weird. Clothes twist. Waistbands annoy her. Fabric becomes personally offensive. She is also a cuddler, which makes her and Tom a very dangerous combination.

*******

Reader and women

Our reader’s interest in women is not just theoretical.

Jess was the first spark, though that was young, messy, secret, and not something the reader has fully unpacked. It was more meaningful to our reader than to Jess, though the reader probably did not have the language for that at the time.

Laura, after Tom, was different.

Laura was adult, intentional, and fun. It was the reader’s first proper experience with a woman, and it confirmed that the curiosity was not just curiosity in the abstract. She liked it. She wanted it. She could see herself doing it again.

Her parents would absolutely disapprove if they knew.

Not just of the women, but of the sex in general. The openness. The lack of shame. The fact that the reader is not nearly as neat or controllable as everyone would like her to be.

On top of that, as we have learnt, our reader’s family is not exactly open minded and her mother is even slightly homophobic, which does not help us here.

Thoughts?

Do we think Tom would be a good match?

Overall

As we have established, in this fic, Tom is bi-sexual.

He has a stronger overall preference for women, especially romantically, but that does not make his attraction to men casual, fake, or only experimental.

As we will learn later on, that curiosity developed in his late teens. Maybe the all-boys-school environment played a part in that, or maybe it simply gave him fewer places to hide from a side of himself that was already there. He experimented a bit when he was younger, then later met Ruth and fell in love with her.

But Ruth did not accept his bisexuality at all.

That mattered.

It did not make him stop being bisexual, obviously, but it did teach him to compartmentalise certain parts of himself.

That does not mean he was ever looking for permission to cheat, or that his attraction to men made him incapable of fidelity. Tom would not have cheated on Ruth. That is not how I am writing him. The things he missed in that marriage were not simply “men” or male attention. It was broader than that.

He missed sexual openness. Curiosity. Play. A partner who wanted to explore with him rather than quietly shut certain doors before he had even reached for the handle.

So yes, there were parts of him Ruth could not meet, but that was not because Tom secretly wanted to be elsewhere. It was because the sexual language between them was limited, and Tom learned to keep some of his own needs unspoken.

As for when he was not in an established relationship, he has wanted men too. He has slept with men. He has enjoyed men. Both before Ruth and after Ruth. It is not a phase, and it is not something that only exists in theory.

He just tends to imagine partnership, domesticity, softness, and long-term romantic attachment more easily with women.

Switch-Energy

In my fic, he is also very definitely a switch.

And by switch, I do not just mean in the mechanical “top or bottom” sense. I mean Tom’s whole sexual energy moves both ways.

Sometimes he wants to guide.

Sometimes he wants to be guided.

Sometimes he wants to be the one reading someone’s body, setting the pace, coaxing them out of their head, making them stop performing and actually feel. Other times, he wants someone else to take control of him. Not because he is weak, but because surrender is one of the few things that can get him fully out of his own mind occasionally too.

That is part of his problem.

Tom has had a lot of sex, but not necessarily a lot of wholeness, because the women and men he has been with so far have usually only met one side of him.

That is why, for example, Layla and Anya existing at the same time makes sense for him. To use a very simple top/bottom example: with Anya, and especially with Anya and Frank together, Tom is much more often placed in the bottom/submissive role. With someone like Layla, he is firmly in the top/guiding role.

Both dynamics give him something. Neither gives him everything.

He has rarely had one person who can meet the full range of him.

Love Language

Touch is absolutely Tom’s love language in this fic.

Not just sex, although sex is obviously part of it. Touch is how he checks in. How he reassures. How he apologises when words feel too exposed. A hand at the back of someone’s neck. Fingers against a wrist. His thumb brushing over a knee under the table. Pulling someone closer in bed without making a speech about it. Sitting too close on a sofa. Kissing someone’s shoulder as he walks past because he cannot help himself.

With casual partners, touch is easy because it does not have to mean anything beyond the moment. He can be attentive, generous, physical, even tender, while still keeping the emotional door half-closed.

But with someone he loves, touch becomes much more dangerous.

Because then it means everything.

And New York is complicated for that reason. Obviously, Tom was not in love with the reader after a one-night stand. That would be too simple, and not really how he works. But the danger of touch was still there, because it did not feel as casual as he wanted it to feel.

There was something in the way she responded to him, and something in the way he responded back, that sat with him.

That is why seeing her again on set unsettles him so much. It is not only that they slept together. It is that his body remembers the encounter differently from how his mind has tried to file it away.

He wants to call it casual.

But it did not leave him casually.

Tom is not always good at saying what he feels directly. He can joke, deflect, intellectualise, disappear into work, make the wrong thing sound casual because the right thing would reveal too much. But his body gives him away. If he loves someone, he wants contact constantly. Not necessarily in a possessive way, but in a grounding way. He wants to know they are there. He wants to feel them breathing. He wants casual intimacy: hands in hair, legs tangled, a palm under a shirt, sleepy kisses, forehead pressed to a shoulder.

And he would want sleepovers.

Because Tom is a cuddler.

That is another part of his touch-as-love-language issue. He does not only want sex; with someone he actually feels something for, he wants the after. He wants the warmth, the closeness, the half-asleep breathing, the leg thrown over his, the quiet physical proof that the person is still there.

And by now, you have probably noticed that he does not really stay over with people he has no feelings for.

Casual sex is one thing.

Sleeping beside someone is another.

Why does he have so much sex?

Again, whether in love or not, touch soothes him. Touch makes him feel comfortable and makes him switch off. This also why sex matters so much to him. It is not just release. It is communication. It is where he can be playful, filthy, careful, romantic, dominant, submissive, ridiculous, needy, and completely focused all at once.

It is one of the few places where his brain quiets down because touch gives him something immediate to hold onto.

In my fic, Tom clearly has ADHD to some extent, and so does Reader.

For Tom, sex can become something he fixates on completely. Not in a cold or clinical way, but in the sense that once he is tuned into someone, everything else can fall away. The noise in his head quiets. His focus narrows. Touch gives him something immediate to follow, and he can get almost obsessively absorbed in another person’s reactions.

It is one of the few places where he can properly switch off by switching fully on.

************

What Tom likes

He likes guiding (sometimes). This is the easiest mode for him. Not dominant in a hard BDSM sense, necessarily, but dominant as in present, confident, attentive, and quietly in control. He likes reading someone, leading them, working out what ruins them fastest.

He likes messy sex. He does not care what someone’s hair looks like. He does not care if makeup smudges. He does not want someone thinking about angles, sounds, prettiness, or performance. He likes when sex gets honest. When someone forgets to curate themselves. When they stop trying to look sexy and actually become lost in it.

He likes responsiveness. The thing that caught him with Reader in New York was not that she was experienced. She was not, really. It was that after the initial embarrassment, she switched. She stopped overthinking. She gave in to sensation. She became open, messy, curious, and present. That is rare for him.

He likes being challenged. He does not want someone passive all the time. That is the issue. He likes to guide, yes, but he also wants someone who can push back. Someone who can take over. Someone who can surprise him. Someone who can make him stop thinking. He sometimes also likes to be submissive and that is also important.

He likes oral, giving and receiving, with women and men. He does not divide that up in his head as dramatically as other people might. Pleasure is pleasure. Want is want. A mouth is a mouth. He likes the intimacy and the focus of it.

He likes exploration. Tom is extremely open-minded sexually. He is not shocked easily. He is curious. He likes finding out what someone wants before they have fully admitted it to themselves.

He likes role play. This is definitely one of his kinks. Not necessarily theatrical costumes, but the psychological element of slipping into a dynamic, playing with power, pretending just enough to reveal something real. Unfortunately, that is not something he had much experience with as yet.

He likes sensory play. Touch, restraint, anticipation, texture, temperature, being made to wait, being overstimulated or focused down to one sensation — that all appeals to him.

He likes restraints. Both giving and receiving. He likes the trust of it. He likes the psychological charge of not being able to move, or making someone else stay still. Again, for him it is not about cruelty. It is about tension, surrender, control, and trust.

He likes edging. Because of his ADHD in this fic, sex can become a kind of hyperfixation. If he is locked in, he is locked in. He could take his time to a ridiculous degree. He likes the build. The breath changes. The frustration. The moment someone stops being coherent. And again, 90% of women or men he has met would not be able to endure this.

He likes romantic sex too. This side of him is very real, but usually only with a partner. Not with a casual fling, so this part of his sex-life is currently missing. Lazy morning sex. Half-asleep sex. Comfort sex. No-effort sex where it is just closeness and skin and breathing together. He can be incredibly romantic when he feels safe enough.

He likes anal, giving and receiving. With men, yes. With women, also yes. But receiving from a woman would require a lot of trust from him, and it is something he has not really had the right relationship to explore.

He likes rimming, giving and receiving. Again, not something every partner is into, and not something he would push. But it is part of his sexuality.

He likes a filthy mouth, but he does not always have a filter. Tom can get very blunt during sex. Sometimes he has to restrain himself a little, especially with someone less experienced, because his instinct can run ahead of the person he is with.

**********

What Tom does not like

He does not like polished, curated sex. If someone is too busy performing sexiness, he checks out a little. He wants presence, not posing.

He does not like selfishness. He can do casual sex, but he is not selfish in bed. That is a key difference between him and James. Tom pays attention. James takes.

He does not like pushing people past their limits. For all his messiness, Tom is not careless. If someone is inexperienced or unsure, he will not throw his more intense kinks at them just because he wants them.

He is not into pain. Not giving it, not receiving it. That is not where the charge is for him. The charge is trust, control, surrender, anticipation, intimacy, and being fully wanted. So we won’t see heavy BDSM scenes here.

He does not like being emotionally cornered. Sex can be easy for him. Direct emotional vulnerability is harder. That is why touch often says what he cannot.

He does not like being only one thing. He does not want to be permanently dominant. He does not want to be permanently submissive. He wants variety, but this variety can come from one partner. He just hasn’t found that partner yet.

Why past partners did not quite fit

Ruth

Tom loved Ruth. There was history there, family there, and real tenderness. Their relationship was not meaningless, and it was not sexually empty in the beginning either. But over time, it became clear that Ruth was much more reserved than he was.

She was not someone he could bring the full range of himself to.

He would not have asked her for half of what he wanted, because he already knew where the answer would land. And it was not only about specific acts or kinks. It was the broader lack of sexual openness. The lack of curiosity. The sense that certain parts of him were better left unspoken.

His bisexuality was part of that too.

Ruth was uncomfortable knowing he had been with men, and she was also uncomfortable with the idea that his attraction to men had not simply vanished because he loved her. Even small things, like him occasionally being interested in films or scenes involving men, could unsettle her.

That mattered.

Not because Tom wanted to cheat. He did not. But because being faithful is not the same thing as being fully understood. Ruth had parts of him, important parts, but she never really accepted the whole picture.

Liliana

Liliana had seriousness, intimacy, and emotional weight. She mattered. Tom loved her, and because he loved her, he could live with sex that did not give him everything.

But she did not know all of him sexually.

Tom compartmentalised with her too. There were parts of himself he either did not offer, did not know how to explain, or simply decided not to bring into the relationship. Liliana was mostly dominant in their dynamic, and sex often had to happen on her terms. It was good. It was intimate. It was not empty.

But it lacked a certain intensity for him.

Not because he did not desire her. He did. But because there was not much room for the messier, more exploratory, less controlled parts of him. Liliana liked things a certain way, and Tom adapted because that is what he often does when he loves someone.

She also never knew about his bisexuality.

So again, it was not that Liliana meant little to him. She meant a great deal. But she did not know the whole picture, and Tom never fully gave her the chance to.

Jess

Jess was eager, attractive, and very focused on pleasing him, but that was part of the problem.

She was too focused on doing what she thought he wanted. Tom does not actually want someone who simply performs his desires back to him. He wants a person with their own hunger. Their own instincts. Someone who is not just waiting for instruction, but capable of surprising him.

With Jess, the sex was fine. Sometimes good. Occasionally boring. Nowhere near messy enough for him, but good enough to get off.

Sorry, Jess.

Layla

Layla is fun, attractive, and green.

But because she is green, Tom would never in the world suggest the more intense side of himself to her. He is not going to drag someone inexperienced into something just because he wants it. With Layla, he stays very much in the guiding role.

And he does enjoy that.

Layla is submissive in a way that works for him, and unlike Jess, she is not as curated or performative. She is less focused on looking like she is doing the right thing and more naturally responsive, which Tom likes. The sex is still good because she gives in easily, listens, reacts, and lets him lead without turning it into a performance.

But it is still only one side of him.

With Layla, Tom can be the experienced one. The guide. The man in control. What he cannot really be with her is the other half of himself.

He wants more than that.

And Layla, frankly, is about to get the shock of her life if she finds out certain things during her stalking, because the version of Tom she has built in her head is nowhere near the whole picture.

Anya

Anya is probably the most sexually adventurous woman in Tom’s life.

She is open, sharp, playful, and absolutely not reserved in the bedroom. In daily life, Anya can be very curated. Very controlled. She knows exactly how she looks, how she sounds, how she is being read. But sexually, she lets loose in a way Tom genuinely enjoys.

With Anya, it can be crazy.

But it is still usually crazy on Anya’s terms.

Anya is dominant. Sex with her tends to happen her way, at her pace, inside the dynamic she creates. She knows how to handle Tom, and he trusts her enough to let her. That is part of why it works. With her, he can access wildness, surrender, and a side of himself he does not often get to hand over.

But she does not really give him the full switch dynamic.

She does not often let him be the dominant one. So while Anya gives him intensity, openness, and sexual freedom, she still only gives him one part of what he wants.

She is also one of the very few people who knows about his bisexuality, and she is important because she was the first woman in his life who did not merely tolerate that side of him, but actually enjoyed it. She was curious about it. Turned on by it. Unthreatened by it.

That mattered to Tom more than he probably admitted.

Because before Anya, his bisexuality was either something he had to hide, soften, explain, or compartmentalise. With Anya, for once, it was simply part of the room.

Frank Frank understands Tom’s submissive side better than most people. Frank can take him apart. Frank is dominant in a way Tom trusts. There is real chemistry there, and the sex can be extraordinary. But Frank is still not the whole answer, because Tom’s romantic centre leans toward women. He can want Frank. He can trust Frank. He can have intense sex with Frank. But he does not naturally picture a whole life with a man the way he has pictured it with women.

Anya and Frank together This is probably the closest Tom has come to complete sexual intensity before Reader. With Anya and Frank together, he gets chaos, trust, surrender, and a level of openness he does not usually find. But even there, he is mostly placed in the submissive role. It gives him something he needs, but not everything.

So what is Tom missing?

He is missing someone who lets him be all of it.

Someone who lets him guide but also challenges him.

Someone who can be soft and filthy.

Someone who wants romance and mess.

Someone who can be touched without turning it into performance.

Someone curious enough to explore, but emotionally present enough for it to mean something.

Someone who can understand that for Tom, sex is not separate from intimacy. It is one of the ways intimacy speaks.

Someone who accepts that he likes both, women and men.

He had an early start in his head even when he did not technically have an early call. He had Ellie from around lunchtime. He had Kurt’s ridiculous French cinema punishment waiting for him on Sunday. He had a co-star he apparently could not stand within three feet of without turning the entire film into a border dispute. He had smoked too much. He was tired. He was irritable.

He also knew exactly where this was going.

That was the problem.

It was not surprise. It was not temptation arriving in some unfamiliar shape, catching him unprepared and morally winded. It was Anya and Frank. Which meant the danger was not that he did not know what they wanted. The danger was that he knew.

The hotel was five minutes away and the suite Anya had booked was exactly what Tom expected from her, which was to say expensive, theatrical, and faintly indecent before anyone had done anything in it.

Low amber lighting. Wide windows. A sitting room arranged around a cream sofa. A bedroom visible through open double doors. A bathroom beyond that, pale stone and glass, the large shower already suggested by the architecture like a dare.

On the sideboard, waiting in an ice bucket, was a bottle of wine.

Tom stopped.

“You ordered ahead.”

Anya slipped out of her coat and dropped it over a chair.

Underneath, the silver dress clung to her like liquid metal.

“I did.”

Then Anya crossed to the sideboard and lifted the bottle.

“Hmm.”

Tom raised a brow.

“What does hmm mean?”

Anya smiled, still holding the bottle.

“Hmm means that I think it is amusing how you are pretending to be annoyed while Frank is pretending not to enjoy it.”

Frank laughed under his breath.

Tom took off his jacket and threw it over the back of the sofa.

“You two are unbearable.”

“And yet,” Anya said, opening the bottle with the neat confidence of a woman who had never waited for a man to do anything useful, “you are here.”

The cork came free with a soft, obscene little sound.

Frank looked at Tom. Tom looked at Frank. Anya looked at both of them and smiled.

She enjoyed this part. She always had.

Not only being touched. Not only being wanted. Anya liked arrangement. She liked knowing exactly how a room shifted when desire entered it. She liked watching men who knew themselves well enough to stop pretending they were simple. She liked Tom with women, yes, but she liked him differently with men.

It amused her, softened her, sharpened her.

Because with Frank for example, Tom’s control did not vanish. It changed shape.

With Frank, there was less decoration. Frank did not flatter him into surrender. Frank waited. And Tom, because he was not out of his depth and had not been out of his depth with this for a very long time, made him wait just long enough to make the waiting worth it.

Anya poured three glasses.

She gave the first to Tom.

He accepted it, holding her gaze over the rim as he drank.

Anya watched his mouth touch the glass. Frank watched Anya watching. Tom saw both of them. Of course he did.

He lowered the glass.

“What?”

Anya leaned one hip against the sideboard.

“Nothing.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed.

“That means something from you.”

Frank took his own glass from her.

“Everything means something from Anya.”

“Exactly,” Tom said.

Anya sipped her wine, unbothered.

“I am enjoying the view.”

Tom’s mouth twitched.

“Of London?”

Her gaze moved from Tom to Frank, then back again.

“Among other things.”

Frank smiled into his glass.

Tom looked at him.

“Don’t look pleased with yourself.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“Usually.”

Anya gave a low laugh.

There was history in the room.

Not romantic history, not exactly. Nothing any of them could have fit into polite language or explained to a journalist without making everything sound cheaper than it was.

But history all the same.

Anya was one of the very few people who knew this side of Tom.

Ruth had known, eventually. Halfway through their relationship, after some careless late-night honesty, Tom had told her about the men before her. Not many. Two in total. Experiments at that stage as he was young, in his early twenties, trying to figure himself out. He didn’t announce it loudly. Not in the way people confessed something shameful, because he had never believed it was shameful until he watched Ruth try, and fail, to make peace with it.

She had wanted to be fine with it. That was almost worse.

For years, she had tried to accept it in theory while recoiling from it in practice. Their relationship had ended for other reasons too, bigger reasons, older reasons, the slow grinding down of love into resentment and routine, but that had been one of the fault lines beneath them. One of the places where Tom learned that honesty did not always make him safer.

So, he had never told Liliana about this side of him for example which, now, he knew was foolish.

The problem with Liliana was that everything between them had been elegant, photographed, curated. She liked men complicated in ways that made them more glamorous. Not in ways that made her question the version of herself standing beside them.

Tom’s relationship with Liliana had lasted five years. Maybe six, depending on when he counted the beginning and when he admitted the end had started. It had carried on right up until a few weeks before he met you in New York.

Then, half a year or so after Tom finally ended it with Liliana, Anya happened.

And Anya had been different. Anya had not been love. That helped.

At first, Anya had been sex and wit and no consequence beyond the room they were in. She had been older than most of the women who wanted to be impressed by him, more difficult than most of the women who wanted to save him, and far too open-minded to treat any of his appetites as a crisis.

The first time with Frank had been after an awards dinner several months earlier.

It had been a hard week for him. The kind where he smiled so well in public that anyone who loved him even a little would have known something was wrong. Anya had looked at him across a private bar, head tilted, eyes glittering with something too precise to be sympathy, and said with devastating calm:

“You are performing happiness so badly tonight.”

Tom had taken offence.

Naturally.

Frank, who was with her at the time, had laughed.

That was how it started, really.

Frank had been an old friend of Anya’s then. Someone she trusted. Someone she found handsome in a way that did not require explanation. She had brought him along casually, almost carelessly, not intending anything except company, wine, and perhaps the pleasure of putting two interesting men in the same room and seeing whether conversation survived.

It did. Barely.

Tom had disliked Frank on sight, which Anya found promising.

Frank had not seemed remotely offended, which made Tom worse.

Three hours later, somehow, they were in Anya’s kitchen. Tom’s shirt was half undone. Anya was sitting on the counter with a glass of wine, watching the two of them circle each other with increasing lack of subtlety, and Frank was telling Tom, very politely, that for a man who looked that good in a suit, he seemed bizarrely intimidated by Anya.

Tom had stared at him and laughed.

“I’m not intimidated by Anya.”

Frank had smiled.

“Of course not.”

“I’m not.”

“Sure.”

Anya had gone very still.

Because she saw it before Tom did.

Or perhaps Tom saw it and simply chose, for once, not to step away from the seeing.

The charge in the room shifted. Not toward her. Not away from her either. Around her. Through her. A current she had accidentally made by introducing the right two men and then refusing to interrupt the result.

Frank’s smile had lingered half a second too long.

Tom’s gaze had dropped to his mouth.

Anya had thought, with sudden, bright clarity: Oh.

Then, because Anya had never been the sort of woman to let an interesting thing die of politeness, she took a slow sip of wine and said, far too lightly:

“You know, I’m still here.”

Tom looked at her at once.

Frank did too.

Anya smiled.

“Don’t stop on my account.”

Tom’s brow lifted.

“Don’t stop what?”

“Whatever this is.”

“There is no this.”

Frank laughed under his breath.

Anya pointed her glass at him.

“See? That laugh means there is absolutely a this.”

Tom looked at Frank.

Frank looked back, amused and calm and entirely too handsome for someone Tom had decided to dislike on principle.

“I was only laughing because you’re very defensive,” Frank said.

“I’m not defensive.”

“You’re spectacularly defensive.”

Anya’s eyes brightened.

“He is, isn’t he?”

“Very.”

Tom looked between them and Frank’s smile shifted. Less teasing now. More deliberate.

He looked at Tom properly. Not at the suit. Not at the loosened shirt. Not at the performance of irritation Tom was wearing like armour.

At him.

“Would it bother you?” Frank asked.

Tom’s expression did not change, but something in the room tightened.

Anya noticed his hand still on the edge of the counter beside her. The way his fingers pressed once into the marble. The way his mouth parted slightly before he corrected it.

“Would what bother me?”

Frank’s gaze dropped to Tom’s mouth again.

This time, he did not pretend it was accidental.

“If I kissed you.”

Anya nearly smiled into her wine.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was perfect.

Tom did not move.

For one long second, his whole face became unreadable in that controlled, actorly way that probably worked on rooms full of journalists and people who wanted access to him.

It did not work on Anya.

It did not seem to work on Frank either.

Then Tom gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh.

“You’re asking very politely for someone who has been baiting me for an hour.”

Frank’s smile was slow.

“I’m polite when it matters.”

Anya leaned forward slightly, unable to help herself.

Her eyes moved from Frank to Tom, then back again, bright with sudden, wicked interest.

“By all means,” she said softly.

Tom looked at her.

For half a second, something like warning crossed his face.

“Anya.”

She only smiled, lifting her glass as if making a toast.

“I said by all means.”

Frank’s gaze stayed on Tom.

He did not move.

That was clever of him.

Annoyingly clever.

He had asked the question, but he left the answer in Tom’s hands. Left Tom room to retreat, to laugh, to sneer, to turn it into a joke and walk away intact.

Anya watched the calculation pass across Tom’s face.

The irritation.

The curiosity.

The pride.

The want.

Then Tom gave a low, disbelieving laugh and stepped forward.

“You’re both impossible,” he said.

Frank’s mouth curved.

“That wasn’t a no.”

“No,” Tom said, his hand closing in the front of Frank’s shirt. “It wasn’t.”

Then Tom kissed him.

Not cautiously.

Not experimentally.

Not like a man being led somewhere unfamiliar.

He kissed Frank as if the idea had annoyed him mostly because it had taken Frank so long to offer.

Anya went still on the counter, wineglass paused halfway to her mouth.

Because Frank had asked.

But Tom had chosen.

And that was hotter.

For half a second, Frank had the upper hand.

Then Tom took it from him.

His fingers tightened in Frank’s shirt. His other hand came up to the side of Frank’s neck, changing the angle, deepening the kiss, making Frank either follow or admit he could not keep up.

Frank followed.

Barely.

Anya set her glass down very carefully beside her.

“Oh,” she murmured.

Neither of them stopped and, after that first encounter, it had become occasional.

Unscheduled.

Never sentimental.

Never entirely casual either.

A hotel here. A house in Italy once. A night in Paris after a premiere where Anya had pretended not to know Tom was watching Frank’s hands all through dinner.

They knew the choreography now.

They also knew when to break it.

******

Tonight, Anya let the wine do the first work.

They sat in the low-lit sitting room, Tom on the sofa, Anya beside him, Frank in the armchair opposite at first, too relaxed, one ankle over one knee, wineglass loose in his hand.

That was deliberate.

Distance could be its own form of touch when everyone in the room knew it would not last.

Tom leaned back, legs apart, glass resting against his thigh. His shirt collar was open. His hair already slightly wrecked from the day. He looked less like a movie star here. Less polished. More dangerous for it.

Anya curled sideways, one bare foot tucked beneath her, her silver dress riding high on her thigh. She traced the rim of her wineglass with one finger and watched Frank watch Tom.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” she said.

Tom did not look at her.

“Who?”

“Frank.”

Frank lifted his brows.

“I’m sitting quietly.”

“Exactly.”

Tom looked between them.

“You’re both insane.”

Anya smiled.

“No. He’s making you come to him.”

Frank’s gaze stayed on Tom.

“Is it working?”

Tom drank his wine.

Slowly.

Then he set the glass on the table and stood.

Anya’s eyes brightened.

Frank did not move.

Tom crossed the room with the unhurried ease of a man who knew perfectly well what his body did in low light. He stopped in front of Frank’s chair and looked down at him.

Frank tilted his head back.

“Hello.”

Tom rested one hand on the arm of the chair.

“You are being very smug.”

“I have every reason to be, it seems.”

“Do you?”

Frank’s eyes dropped briefly to Tom’s belt, then returned to his face.

“Clearly.”

Anya made a quiet sound of approval from the sofa.

Tom looked over his shoulder.

“Comfortable?”

She smiled.

“Extremely.”

“You’re just going to watch?”

“For now.”

Frank’s fingers came up, touched Tom’s wrist where his hand rested on the chair.

A small touch.

Nothing hurried.

Tom looked down at it.

Then back at Frank.

Frank smiled.

And that is when Tom bent and kissed him.

Anya went very still on the sofa.

She loved that too. The change. The clean snap of it. Tom’s hand sliding from the armchair to Frank’s jaw, the kiss not tentative, not experimental, not confused. Nothing about it uncertain. Tom knew how to kiss a man. Knew where to put his weight. Knew how to make control look generous until it was not.

Frank’s hand came to Tom’s waist.

Tom deepened the kiss.

Frank made a sound low in his throat.

Anya’s thighs shifted slightly beneath the silver dress.

Tom heard.

He broke the kiss and looked at her.

His mouth was damp now. Softer. Crueler.

“Still just watching?”

Anya’s smile was slow.

“For now,” she repeated.

Frank laughed against Tom’s mouth.

Tom looked back down at him.

“What’s funny?”

“You.”

“Careful.”

“There he is.”

Tom kissed him again, harder this time, then drew back just enough for Frank to follow.

Frank did.

Of course he did.

Anya watched Frank’s control fray by increments. His fingers tightening at Tom’s shirt. His shoulders losing that beautiful lazy line. His mouth chasing Tom’s when Tom pulled back half an inch.

It was not one-sided.

That was the beauty of it.

Frank could undo Tom by doing almost nothing.

Tom could make Frank impatient by making patience look like a poor choice.

Anya set her wine aside.

“Come here.”

Tom did not move immediately.

He looked at Frank first.

Frank looked back.

For a moment, it was just them.

Then Tom straightened and offered Frank his hand.

Frank took it.

Anya’s gaze dropped to their joined hands.

Her smile changed.

Less wicked now.

More private.

The bedroom was lit even lower than the sitting room. Soft lamps. White sheets. The city beyond the windows. The bed broad enough for three people who had done this before and still knew it would not be enough once they started.

Anya stood by the bed and let Tom come to her.

He touched her like he knew her too.

Because he did.

His hand at her waist. His thumb finding the place where the dress met skin. His mouth near hers, not kissing yet.

“You are enjoying yourself.”

“Yes.”

“At my expense?”

“A little.”

Frank stood behind him now. Close, but not touching.

Anya’s eyes flicked past Tom to Frank.

“At his too.”

Frank smiled.

“I feel appreciated.”

Tom looked over his shoulder and smiled.

Anya reached between them and took Frank by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer until Tom was between them.

Not trapped.

Never that.

Placed.

Tom allowed it, because Tom liked being handled only by people who knew the difference between taking and asking without words.

Frank’s chest came against his back.

Anya’s body pressed to his front.

Tom’s breath altered.

Not because he was out of his depth.

Because he knew exactly how deep it went.

Anya noticed.

Her smile softened into something almost tender before sharpening again.

“There.”

Tom looked down at her.

“Don’t narrate.”

“You like when I narrate.”

“I like when you think I do.”

Frank’s mouth brushed the back of Tom’s neck.

“Liar.”

Tom’s eyes closed for one second.

“Everyone keeps calling me that tonight.”

Anya touched his face.

“Because you keep pretending.”

The second glass of wine sat unfinished on the bedside table.

The rest of the night unfolded around it.

Not messy at first.

Measured. Teasing. Familiar enough for confidence, unpredictable enough for heat.

Buttons opened. Fabric slid away. Frank’s watch came off and landed with a soft thud beside the wine. Anya stepped out of the silver dress and left it in a bright spill on the carpet. Tom’s shirt went last, because Anya insisted on taking her time with it, undoing one button, then stopping to kiss Frank over Tom’s shoulder, just to feel Tom’s impatience gather under her hands.

“You’re doing that on purpose,” Tom said.

Anya looked innocent.

“Doing what?”

Frank kissed the side of Tom’s throat.

“Making him wait.”

“He is very pretty when he waits.”

Tom gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Pretty?”

Anya looked him over shamelessly.

“Yes.”

Frank’s hand moved down Tom’s chest.

“Unfortunately.”

Tom turned his head and kissed Frank again, partly for the word, partly to stop him smiling.

Anya watched.

That was the part she did not always say aloud.

Watching them changed the room.

There was something deeply satisfying about Tom like that. Not softened exactly. Not submissive. Never simple enough for that. But altered. Less polished. More honest in the places he usually kept immaculate.

With Frank, he became rougher around the edges.

With her, he became theatrical.

Between them, he became something dangerously close to relaxed.

And Tom, for his part, knew she was watching and played to it without making it cheap.

He turned Frank toward her deliberately. Kissed him where she could see. Let one hand slide into Frank’s hair and hold there while Frank’s mouth moved against his. He knew the line of his own body in profile. Knew what she liked. Knew how Frank’s breath changed when he was displayed rather than hidden.

*************

The shower came later.

Or maybe before.

Time loosened after the wine.

The bathroom filled with steam and pale light, the three of them moving with that particular ease of people who had stopped needing instructions. Tom reached in first to test the water. Frank made a comment about him being fussy. Tom pulled him under the spray before Frank could finish the sentence.

Anya laughed from the vanity.

“Careful, Frank. He’s sensitive tonight.”

Tom looked out through the steam.

“I’m not sensitive.”

Frank, wet hair falling into his eyes, smiled against Tom’s shoulder.

“No. Very sturdy.”

Anya slipped into the shower with them, water catching in her hair, running over her shoulders. She fitted herself against Tom’s side and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“And handsome.”

Tom turned his head and kissed her properly.

Frank’s hands settled at his hips.

The steam made everything closer. Sound. Skin. Breath. The occasional clink of glass when Anya, absurdly, reached out of the shower for her wine and took a sip with her hair wet and her mouth swollen.

Tom stared at her.

“You are ridiculous.”

She offered him the glass.

“And yet.”

He drank from it.

Frank watched his throat move.

Anya watched Frank watching.

Then she smiled.

Eventually, Tom set the glass aside with dangerous care.

Not because he was finished with the wine.

Because he was finished being watched without answering for it.

He turned back to Frank under the water and kissed him until Frank’s shoulders hit the tile with a dull sound softened by steam. Frank laughed into his mouth, but the laugh did not last. Tom did not let it. One hand caught Frank by the jaw, the other braced near his head, and the kiss deepened into something less playful, more deliberate.

Anya came in behind him.

Her hands slid over Tom’s ribs, then lower, palms flattening against wet skin as her mouth found his shoulder. She was smiling at first. Tom felt it against him. Felt the curve of her amusement, the little pleased breath she let out when Frank’s hand caught at Tom’s waist.

Then Tom reached back for her without looking.

His fingers closed around her thigh, pulling her closer, and her laughter caught.

Turned into a breath.

Turned into silence.

The room narrowed to steam.

Water running down Tom’s back.

Anya pressed warm behind him.

Frank in front of him, hair wet, mouth swollen, eyes lifted to Tom’s with that infuriating calm beginning to break at the edges.

Tom looked down at him.

Frank’s smile came slower now.

“Still defensive?”

Tom’s mouth curved.

“Still talking?”

Frank’s gaze dropped.

So did he.

Anya went still behind Tom.

Not because she was surprised.

Because she wanted to see it properly.

Frank sank lower with unhurried confidence, one hand sliding down Tom’s thigh, the other steady at his hip. No question this time. No performance of asking when the answer was already in the way Tom’s body had gone taut and ready beneath Anya’s hands.

Still, Frank looked up once.

Not asking.

Checking.

Knowing.

Tom’s hand braced against the tile.

His fingers spread against the wet stone.

Then Frank’s mouth found him and Anya didn't interrupt. Didn't move.

Her back was against the cool tile, her nipples tight and aching against Tom’s chest while Frank went down on him and, for now, she just watched, her hand laced with Tom's where it rested at his side, her other fingers trailing along his jaw so he'd stay with her, so he would kiss her through it.

Frank had an unhurried kind of confidence, one hand sliding down Tom's thigh, the other steady at his hip. No questions. No performance. No preamble. No teasing licks along the shaft to test the waters. Frank simply took Tom into his mouth with the same easy, unflappable confidence he had shown since the moment they had first met.

His lips sealed around the head, and Tom's whole body jerked once—a full-body shudder that sent water droplets scattering from his shoulders. Anya felt it. Felt the tension spike in his hand, the way his breath turned into something that wasn't quite a word. She had been kissing his throat. Now she stopped. Pulled back just enough to watch his face. Tom's eyes were closed. His mouth was open. His jaw was so tight it looked like it might crack.

"Look at you," Anya murmured, and her voice was low and pleased and entirely for him. "He's barely started and you're already—" she didn't finish. Instead, she bit his earlobe. Just a little pressure. Teeth scraping the sensitive skin. Tom's hips bucked forward before he could stop them.

Frank took it. Took all of it. One hand on Tom's hip became a steadying pressure, and the other slid from his thigh to cup his balls, and Frank didn't gag, didn't pull away, didn't do anything but let Tom's cock slide deeper into his throat. He was good at this. They had known that. They had all known that since the first time Frank had gone to his knees after that party at which they met and Tom had watched with that same expression he wore now—shock, surrender, the slow erosion of all that careful control.

Frank pulled back. Suction breaking with a wet sound that echoed in the tiled room. He didn't go far. His lips stayed at the tip, and his tongue traced the underside, slow and flat, following the ridge of the head with a precision that made Tom's thighs shake.

 Anya watched Frank's technique with the same appreciation she would have for a painting. The way he varied pressure. The way his mouth was so wet, so warm, so utterly focused. He didn't look at Anya. He didn't need to. This was for Tom, and in a way, this was also for her—for her to see, for her to know, for her to understand exactly what kind of man had come into their bed tonight.

Frank's lips slid down again. This time, he took Tom to the base. All the way. His nose pressed against the dark hair at Tom's groin, and Tom made a sound that was no longer restrained. A guttural groan. Deep, rough, and unspooling—the kind of noise that came from a place far below the chest. His hand came off the tile and into Frank's wet hair. Not to guide. Just to hold. Just to feel.

"That's it," Anya said against his mouth. She kissed him. Deep and slow, her tongue sliding past his lips while his breath came in jagged gasps. She swallowed his groans. Tasted them. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, the tendons in his neck, the hard plane of his chest where his heart was beating like something trying to escape.

"You're so good at this. At letting go. At letting us have you."

Frank's mouth was still working. Steady, rhythmic, a pace that was neither too fast nor too slow. He was building Tom toward something, and he knew it, and Tom knew it, and Anya knew it. She broke the kiss to look down. To see Frank's head moving, his cheeks hollowed with suction. Frank's hand on Tom's balls had become something more. His fingers were pressing, kneading, and one finger had found the space behind them—the perineum. He pressed there, and Tom's hips lurched again.

"Fuck—" Tom's voice was wrecked.

Frank's response was to take him deeper. To close his throat around the head of Tom's cock. To hum something low and vibrating. Tom's hand in his hair tightened. He was close. Anya knew the signs—the way his breathing went ragged, the way his thighs started to shake, the way his fingers in her hand were now gripping hard enough to leave marks.

Then Anya pulled away from Tom's side.

She sank to her knees.

There was no hesitation. No moment of adjustment. The tile was hard and wet beneath her, and she didn't care. Frank felt her before he saw her. Her hand on his shoulder. Her body pressing in beside him. He didn't stop; he just shifted. Made room. His lips still on Tom's shaft, his eyes now open and watching her, and when Anya leaned in, her mouth found the other side of Tom's cock.

She kissed it. Pressed her lips to the base, where Frank's hand was. She licked a long stripe up the shaft, and Frank's tongue met hers at the top. Their mouths, on either side of Tom's cock. Together. Wet and warm and shared, their lips sliding against each other, their tongues tangling around the head. Tom's groan became something that wasn't even a sound anymore, just the kind of noise that came from a man who had stopped thinking entirely.

Anya and Frank took turns. One would pull away, and the other would take the full length, and they passed Tom's cock between their mouths like they'd done this before, like they'd practiced for this exact moment. Frank took the head while Anya licked at the base. Anya took him into her throat while Frank's mouth found his balls again. Then they came together at the tip—both sets of lips, both tongues, both of them sharing the same inch of skin.

Tom's hand was in Anya's hair now. The other still in Frank's. He was holding them both, and he was looking down, and his eyes were so dark they looked black.

He came like that. With both of them on him. The first pulse took him by surprise—she saw it in his face, the sudden widening of his eyes, the way his mouth fell open. Then the second, the third, the fourth, and he was coming into their mouths, onto their tongues, and Frank had the presence of mind to pull back just enough so they could share it, so Anya could taste it too. The salt. The heat. The texture.

Tom's cum was on her tongue. On Frank's. Anya turned her head, and Frank was right there, and their mouths met. The kiss was open and wet and full of Tom. She tasted him on Frank's lips. Tasted him on Frank's tongue. She pushed the cum into his mouth, and he pushed it back into hers, and they swallowed together. It was filthy. It was perfect.

Tom was still shaking above them. His hand on the tile now, bracing himself, his chest heaving. He had watched them. He had watched their kiss, watched them share what he'd given them, and his eyes were, for once, without any of that careful control. He was undone.

**********

Later. Minutes. Or maybe hours. Time didn't exist in this room.

The bed was white and wide and had, at some point, become the only place left in the world.

The three of them had moved from the shower with that particular, silent, knowing way—the kind of transition that needed no words.

Tom had dried Anya's back. Frank had stolen a towel from Tom's hands and then, in the same motion, used it to dry Tom's shoulders.

They had stood in the steam and looked at each other. Then Tom had taken Frank's jaw again—gentler this time, his thumb brushing the corner of Frank's mouth where Tom's own cum had been moments before—and kissed him.

A slow, soft, almost tender kiss.

Frank had said something into his mouth that might have been "bed" or "now" or simply "please."

So. The bed. White sheets. The city beyond the windows, and no one looking at it.

They made out like they had time. Which they did. All night. The morning was, for now, a problem for someone else.

Tom was on his back, and Anya was on her side, and Frank was on his other side, and they were all just—kissing. No urgency. No direction. Just the slow, luxurious, almost lazy exploration of mouths that had already been on each other, and bodies that had already been inside each other many times before, and still wanted more.

Tom kissed Anya. Her mouth opened under his, and her tongue met his, and it was slow and deep and full of the taste of him and her and them.

Then he kissed Frank. Frank's mouth was different—firmer, more deliberate, a kiss that was as much a conversation as it was a sensation.

Frank's hand found Tom's jaw and held it, and Tom let him.

Then Tom kissed Anya again, and her hand was in his hair, and her leg slid over his thigh, while Frank's mouth was on her shoulder. The back of her neck. His hand had found Tom's on the other side, and their fingers laced together on the sheets, and Anya was watching them—their joined hands, their mouths, the way Frank's lips moved over her skin while his eyes stayed on Tom's face.

Then Tom moved. He rolled, and in the same motion, he was on top of Anya. Her legs opened for him without thought—instinct, muscle memory, the way her body had learned to make room for his. Her hands found his back, and he kissed her, deep and slow, and then his mouth was at her throat, her collarbone, the hollow between her breasts.

She arched, and her nipples tightened again—she'd come in the shower, but not from him, not from this, and her body was already, impossibly, winding up for more.

Tom's mouth moved lower. His lips traced a slow, wet path down her ribcage, pausing at each ridge to press a kiss, to drag his tongue, to feel the way her breath caught and her stomach tensed. He crossed the soft curve of her belly. He pressed his tongue into the dip of her navel—a quick, hot, intimate flick—and she shivered.

Then lower still. Tom's shoulders were between her thighs now. His breath was on her cunt. Warm and damp and so close. He could smell her—salt and musk and the faint, lingering sweetness of her—and his mouth was already watering. But he didn't move. Not yet. He paused there, his lips an inch from her folds, and he looked up at her.

"Anya," he said, and his voice was low and rough and it was her name, just her name, and it was also a question.

"Yes," she said. Her hand found the back of his head. Her fingers threaded into his hair. "Yes, Tom. Please."

But she didn't push. She looked at Frank. Frank had moved with them. He was on his knees behind Tom, and his cock was hard again—impossibly, beautifully hard. His eyes were on Tom. On the lines of his back. On the curve of his ass. On the way Tom's whole body was poised and ready and so, so focused on Anya.

“Frank,” Anya said, calm as anything, though her voice had gone a little rough at the edges. “Stop pretending you don’t want to.”

Frank’s gaze moved to Tom.

Anya’s mouth curved.

“Give him attention. You’ll both be insufferable until you do.”

Frank didn't pretend to misunderstand. His fixation on Tom had never been a secret—not from her, not from Tom, not from anyone who had seen the two of them in the same room under certain circumstances.

He moved. He positioned himself behind Tom, his knees on either side of Tom's calves, his hands finding Tom's hips as he leaned over his back.

His mouth brushed Tom’s ear.

“I’m going to ruin you,” Frank murmured. “Again. But not yet.”

His hand slid from Tom’s hip to his stomach, drawing him back just enough to shift the angle, just enough to make Tom’s breath catch.

“First, you’re going to make her feel good.”

Frank’s voice lowered.

“I want to hear her. I want to hear what you do to her while I take my time with you.”

His lips grazed Tom’s ear again and Tom's answer was a simple groan.

Tom’s tongue then slid through Anya’s folds—one long, slow, deliberate stroke from her entrance to her clit. She was already wet from everything else they had done, from the orgasm earlier, from the way they had all been touching and kissing and building this for what felt like hours.

Her taste flooded his tongue—salt, tang, the unmistakable, visceral, human flavor of her—and he groaned into her, and the vibration of it made her hips lift to meet his mouth. She let out a long, satisfied breath. A moan. A sound that was half relief and half demand.

Tom's tongue found her clit. He circled it. Slow at first. Then faster. Then slow again—a rhythm that was as much about keeping her on the edge as it was about pushing her over.

His lips closed around the swollen nub, and he sucked, gentle, and Anya's hand in his hair tightened. Her other hand found Frank's shoulder. Held on.

"God, Tom—just like that—don't stop—"

He didn't. He wouldn't. He licked into her, and his tongue pushed inside—as deep as it could go, deep enough to make her feel filled, deep enough to make her gasp—and then he pulled back and flattened his tongue over her clit again. The rhythm was steady. Worshipful. He was not just eating her out; he was worshipping her with his mouth. And behind him, Frank was, as promised, getting him ready.

Frank's hands were on Tom's ass now. Spreading him. His thumbs pulled the cheeks apart, and the cool air of the room hit Tom's exposed hole.

“Perfect,” Frank murmured.

Tom opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something unbearable.

But Frank did not let him.

Within mere seconds, his tongue, wet and warm, pressed flat against Tom's entrance. No asking. No hesitation. Just the knowledge of what Tom liked and the willingness to give it.

Frank's tongue traced the rim—slow, deliberate circles that made Tom's whole body clench.

Then the tip of his tongue pressed inside. Just the edge. Just the barest intrusion. And Tom couldn’t help but groan against Anya’s wetness.

Tom's hips shoved back against Frank's face, and his mouth stuttered, and for a moment everything in the room was just breath and skin and the wet sounds of Frank's tongue working Tom open.

Frank was thorough. He was patient. He was, in this as in everything, methodical.

His tongue traced the rim again and again. Each pass was a little firmer, a little wetter, a little more. Then he pointed his tongue and pushed—a shallow, testing intrusion—and then pulled back. Then pushed deeper. Then pulled back. He was building Tom's tolerance. Stretching him with nothing but his mouth. Making him ready, making him open, making him his.

"Condoms?" Frank's voice eventually came.

It was a murmur against Tom's skin.

He didn't lift his mouth.

He asked the question into Tom's body, and Anya heard it through the haze of pleasure Tom's tongue was building in her. Her answer was a moan first—a sound that was half word, half gasp, all pleasure—and then her hand, the one not in Tom's hair, gestured vaguely toward the bedside table.

There. The drawer. She had left them there before the shower. And entire packet. Of course.

Frank saw the gesture. Understood it. His mouth didn't leave Tom's body. His tongue kept working—pushing, retreating, circling—and Tom kept licking, and Anya kept moaning, and the condoms were a problem for a moment from now. For after. For when they were all ready.

Frank's tongue pushed deeper. Tom's body opened for it. The resistance gave way to acceptance, and Frank's tongue was inside him now—barely past the rim, not just teasing, but there, firm and demanding—and Tom's groan was so loud it vibrated through Anya's pussy. Each stroke of Frank's tongue sent a fresh jolt through Tom's system, and each jolt translated into his mouth on Anya—his tongue on her clit, his lips on her folds, the rhythm of his licking becoming more desperate, more driven, more unhinged.

“Tom.”

Anya’s voice cut through him.

“Tom, stop. Look at me.”

Her fingers tightened in his hair, not hard, just enough to lift his head. He came away from her breathless, mouth wet, eyes unfocused.

Behind him, Frank did not stop.

Anya caught Tom’s jaw in her hand and held him there until his gaze cleared enough to find hers.

“I want you with me,” she said, low and steady, want roughening the edges of every word. “I want you inside me while he takes you from behind.”

Tom's answer was not a word. It was a sound. A rough, eager, desperate sound that came from somewhere deep in his chest. He was already reaching back for Frank. His fingers, fumbling, finding Frank's shoulder.

Frank gave a low chuckle against Tom’s skin.

“Message received.”

Then his mouth left him.

Tom made a rough, involuntary sound, but Frank was already pulling back, lips wet, eyes dark, looking far too pleased with himself for someone who had just been ordered around.

He glanced at Anya.

Anya looked back at him.

For a beat, nothing passed between them except understanding.

Then she gave one small, sharp nod.

“Get yourselves ready,” she said, calm and absolute. “Now. Both of you.”

Frank’s mouth curved.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Tom, still catching his breath, shot him a look.

“Don’t encourage her.”

Anya’s eyes flicked to him.

“Too late.”

Frank laughed under his breath and moved at once, crossing to the bedside table. The drawer opened with a soft scrape. Foil packets shifted beneath his fingers.

He came back with two.

One for himself.

One for Tom.

Then, instead of giving Tom his, Frank held it out to Anya.

Tom blinked at him.

“I can actually do that myself, you know.”

Frank leaned in as he passed close, kissing him quick and filthy, mouth still curved with amusement.

“I know.”

“Then why are you handing it to her?”

Frank’s eyes flicked to Anya.

Anya took the packet from him, calm as anything.

“Because he knows I like doing it.”

Tom went still for half a second.

Frank’s smile widened.

“See?” Frank murmured. “I do listen.”

Tom looked between them, flushed and suspicious and far too affected.

“You’re both enjoy bossing me around, aren’t you?”

Anya tore the packet open with steady fingers.

“Obviously. Now hold still.”

Tom chuckled, but his laugh turned into a groan as soon as Anya reached down between their bodies and found Tom's cock.

She was still under him. Still open. Still wet. Her legs were still around his waist.

She rolled the condom onto him with a slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial care.

Her fingers traced the length of him through the latex. Squeezed the base. Smoothed out the air.

“There,” she said, her voice soft with satisfaction. “Perfect.”

Tom huffed out a laugh that did not quite manage to sound steady.

“Perfect, huh?”

Anya looked up at him through her lashes.

“Very.”

Behind him, Frank’s hand slid over Tom’s hip, warm and possessive, his mouth brushing the side of Tom’s neck.

“She’s right,” Frank murmured, smiling against his skin. “You are perfect like this.”

Tom made a low, disbelieving sound.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Frank asked, far too pleased with himself. “Compliment you? Appreciate the view?”

Anya’s mouth curved.

“Frank.”

“I’m behaving.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No,” Frank agreed, his hand tightening briefly at Tom’s hip. “But he likes it.”

Tom opened his mouth, probably to deny it.

Anya did not give him the chance.

She reached for him, not roughly, but with absolute certainty. One hand curved around the back of his neck, drawing him down until his forehead nearly touched hers. The other settled at his waist, guiding him closer, bringing him between her thighs.

Tom needed no more encouragement then.

He positioned himself. The head of his cock found her entrance—found her wet opening—and he pushed. Slow. So slow. An inch, and then he stopped, and he was looking at her face, watching her, feeling the way her body stretched to accommodate him. She was tight. She was always tight, and it was always this moment—the moment of entry, the moment of her body making room for his—that undid him.

Anya's hands were on his back. Her nails digging into his skin, just barely.

Her voice was at his ear.

“That’s it. Slow.”

Her fingers tightened at the back of his neck, holding him close enough that every breath hit his skin.

“I want to feel all of you. Every inch. I want to feel what it does to you when you try to stay still.”

Her teeth grazed his earlobe.

And Tom couldn’t bear it much longer, so he pushed deeper. Another inch.

 Anya's words dissolved into a moan. Her head fell back. Her hips lifted. The feeling of him—the stretch, the fullness, the weight—was so familiar and so new and so exactly what she'd been wanting since the moment he had first lowered his mouth to her. Tom's forehead dropped to hers. They were breathing the same air. His eyes were on hers, and hers were on his, and behind him, Frank was watching. Waiting. Giving them this moment.

Then Frank’s hands were on Tom’s hips again.

Steady. Warm. Possessive without rushing him.

Tom felt him shift behind him, felt the press of him there, sheathed and slick and ready. The blunt head of him found the place Frank had already made soft with his mouth, the place that was still wet, still open, still sensitive enough to make Tom’s whole body tighten.

Frank did not push.

He only held himself there, mouth brushing Tom’s shoulder blade.

“Ready?” he murmured.

Tom’s fingers tightened against Anya’s waist.

Frank’s thumb stroked once over his hip.

“Tell me when.”

Tom dragged in a breath, forehead dropping briefly against Anya’s.

“Now,” he said, voice rough. “Slow.”

Frank kissed his shoulder.

“Always.”

And then Frank pushed inside him.

The head pressed past the rim. The resistance was there—the tight, involuntary clench of Tom's body—and then it gave. It opened. Frank slid in, and Tom's mouth fell open, and his eyes closed, and his breath left him in a rush. An inch. Two. Frank stopped when Tom's breath caught, when his body tensed, when the line between pleasure and too-much blurred.

“Breathe,” Frank said.

His hand stayed firm at Tom’s hip, grounding him. His voice was low, steady, almost gentle.

“That’s it. Breathe for me.”

His mouth brushed Tom’s shoulder.

“Don’t fight it. Let me in.”

Tom breathed.

Once.

Then again.

His body eased by degrees, the tension loosening under Frank’s steady hand. His forehead stayed pressed to Anya’s, their mouths close enough that every shaky exhale brushed her lips.

Her hands came up to his face, palms warm against his jaw, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones.

When she spoke, it was barely more than a whisper. Just for him.

“That’s it. You’re doing so well.”

Tom’s eyes fluttered.

Anya held him there.

“You feel so good,” she breathed. “I can feel you trying to stay with me. I can feel how badly you want this.”

Behind him, Frank moved carefully, still giving him time.

Anya kissed the corner of Tom’s mouth.

“Let him in,” she whispered. “Don’t run from it. We’ve got you.”

Tom made a broken sound against her mouth.

Her thumbs brushed his face again, soft and sure.

“There,” she said. “That’s it. Just like that.”

Frank pushed deeper. Tom's body opened. The sensation was intense. There were no words for it. The pressure. The stretch. The heat. The way Frank's cock filled him, not just physically but in some other, deeper, more essential way.

Frank's hips came flush against Tom's ass. Balls-deep. All the way. And Tom was still only halfway inside Anya, and he was holding himself there, and his whole body was, for a long, suspended moment, just feeling it. Processing it.

Then Anya’s voice broke through, low and breathless.

“Now, Tom.”

Her hands tightened on his face, keeping him with her, keeping him looking.

“Fuck me.”

Tom’s breath shuddered.

“Fuck me while he fucks you. I want to feel both of you. I want to feel what it does to you.”

Her mouth brushed his, not quite a kiss.

“I want to feel you come apart.”

Tom pushed further into her. All the way. The rest of the way.

Her pussy swallowed him, and her walls clenched around him, and the feeling of being inside her while Frank was inside him was almost too much. So much that he thought, for one brief, irrational second, that he might actually lose his mind.

Frank's hips found a rhythm quite quickly. Slow. Deep. The kind of fucking that was about feeling rather than finishing. He pulled back, and Tom felt the drag of his cock against his inner walls. Then he pushed back in, and Tom felt the pressure, the fullness, the way Frank's body moved inside his. Every thrust pushed Tom deeper into Anya. Every time Tom pushed into Anya, she tightened around him. And every time she tightened, Tom's own body clenched around Frank.

It was a chain reaction. A feedback loop. A circle of pleasure that had no beginning and no end.

Anya felt it. Felt all of it. Her legs were around Tom's waist, and her arms were around his neck, and when Frank's thrusts turned harder, faster, she felt it in Tom's body—the way he moved inside her, the way his rhythm stuttered.

He was being fucked while he fucked her. She was the center of it. The point where both of them converged.

Anya’s voice came against his ear, low and shaking now, meant for him, meant for Frank, meant for all three of them.

“How does it feel?”

Tom’s breath hitched.

Her hand slid into his hair, holding him close, keeping him there with her.

“Tell me, Tom.”

Frank moved behind him, slow and deep, and Tom’s whole body shuddered.

Anya felt it. Her mouth brushed his jaw.

“How does it feel to be inside me while he’s inside you?” she whispered. “To be right here, between us. Wanted by both of us.”

Tom’s fingers tightened at her waist.

“Anya—”

“No.” Her voice softened, but the command stayed. “Tell me.”

Her lips grazed his ear.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Good.”

Tom’s voice was wrecked.

“So—so good—Anya, I can’t—”

He broke off on a breath that sounded almost like a laugh and almost like pain.

His rhythm had gone uneven, every movement into her stolen and shaped by Frank behind him, by the relentless, careful precision that kept taking him apart no matter how hard he tried to hold himself together.

Anya’s hands tightened on his face.

“Yes, you can.”

Tom shook his head, eyes dark and ruined.

“No, I mean—fuck—I mean I can’t think.”

Frank’s mouth brushed his shoulder.

“Good.”

Tom made a broken sound.

“It’s – fuck,” he said, and the words came out rough, helpless, honest.

Anya’s breath caught.

Tom’s forehead dropped to hers.

“Don’t make me say anything clever,” he whispered. “I haven’t got anything left –“

Anya kissed him then and swallowed the rest of his broken sentence.

Her own pleasure was building now, hot and unsteady, gathering low in her body with every broken movement between them.

Tom inside her.

Frank inside him.

The way Frank’s rhythm drove through Tom’s body and into hers, the way Tom tried to keep control and failed by inches, the way every thrust made him shudder against her — it was too much and not enough and exactly, devastatingly right.

Anya’s hands slid from Tom’s face to his shoulders.

Her breath caught.

“Tom.”

He lifted his head just enough to look at her.

She swallowed, eyes dark, voice rough with want.

“I want to watch.”

Tom went still for half a second, breath trembling.

Behind him, Frank slowed, but did not stop.

Anya’s fingers tightened on Tom’s shoulders.

“God, Tom, I want to watch him fuck you.”

Frank’s hand flexed at Tom’s hip.

Tom’s mouth parted, but no sound came out.

Anya searched his face, softer now despite the heat in her voice.

“Can I?” she whispered. “Let me see you like that.”

Tom’s eyes flicked over her face, ruined and wanting and caught somewhere between embarrassment and surrender.

Then he gave a rough, breathless laugh.

“You’re both going to be impossible after this.”

Anya’s mouth curved.

“Probably.”

Frank leaned in, lips brushing Tom’s shoulder.

“Definitely.”

Tom closed his eyes for a second.

Then he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, voice low and wrecked. “You can watch.”

And with that, Tom pulled out of her.

Not reluctantly.

Urgently.

Obediently, almost — not because he had stopped wanting her, but because he was so far gone now that if Anya asked him for something, he gave it to her. No argument. No clever comment. No delay.

He stripped off the condom with a quick, efficient motion and shifted onto his knees on the bed, breath unsteady, shoulders rising and falling as he tried to gather himself.

Anya moved with him.

She came up behind him, close beside Frank, her eyes fixed on the place where Frank still held him. Her hands settled on Tom’s hips first, then slid lower, over the tense curve of him, possessive and reverent all at once.

Tom made a rough sound under his breath.

“Anya.”

“Let me see,” she whispered.

Frank had slowed, but not stopped entirely. His hands were still on Tom, his body still close, his cock still sheathed and slick where it pressed against him.

Anya’s fingers spread Tom’s cheeks open with a careful, certain pressure, the same way Frank’s hands had done earlier, only now she was watching. Watching the way Tom trembled. Watching the way Frank held himself there, right at the edge of entering him again.

Frank’s eyes flicked to hers.

A question.

Anya swallowed, then nodded.

Tom looked back over his shoulder, ruined and flushed and almost defiant despite the way his body shook.

“You wanted to watch,” he said, voice wrecked.

Anya’s fingers tightened.

“Yes.”

Frank leaned down, mouth brushing Tom’s shoulder.

“Tell me if it’s too much.”

Tom gave a broken little laugh, but there was no humour in it. No distance. No defence.

He pushed back a fraction, impatient and shaking, his hands fisting in the sheets.

“Frank.”

Frank went still.

“Use your words.”

Tom’s head dropped forward, breath ragged.

“Don’t stop.”

Anya’s fingers tightened where she held him open, and Tom shuddered hard enough that she felt it through both hands.

“Tom,” she whispered.

He looked back at her again, eyes dark and desperate, all the cleverness burned out of him.

“You wanted to watch,” he said, voice wrecked. “So watch.”

Frank’s hand slid over his hip, steadying him.

“You’re sure?”

Tom made a sound that was almost a curse.

“Fuck, yes.”

His voice cracked on the last word, needy now, urgent, humiliatingly honest.

“Please.”

Anya’s lips parted.

Frank’s restraint snapped by inches, not carelessly, never that — but enough that Tom felt the change in him.

“There he is,” Frank murmured.

His hand slid down Tom’s spine, slow and grounding, before settling at his hip again. Then he lined himself back up, close enough that Tom felt the pressure of him and shivered before Frank had even moved.

Anya saw it.

Saw the way Tom’s shoulders tightened. The way his head dropped. The way his hands fisted in the sheets, knuckles pale, as if he needed something to hold on to.

Frank pushed in.

Slowly.

Carefully.

And Tom’s whole body gave him away.

The line of his back. The clench of him under Anya’s hands. The broken sound he tried to swallow and failed to hide.

Anya held him open and watched Frank take him again, watched Tom’s body yield inch by inch, watched the way he accepted it, the way he shook with it, the way every careful push seemed to strip another layer of resistance out of him.

Frank’s hand tightened at Tom’s hip.

“Breathe.”

Tom did.

Barely.

Anya’s throat went dry.

She watched Frank sink deeper, watched Tom take him like he had finally stopped pretending he did not need it, like being wanted this openly had undone something vital in him.

Tom’s head turned just enough for her to see his face.

Flushed. Wrecked. Beautifully lost.

Frank’s hands were on Tom's hips, and his thrusts were not faster than before, but different. Deeper. More deliberate.

Without Anya's body between them, without the need to coordinate, without the chain of connection, it was just Frank and Tom. Just the push and pull of one body into another. The wet sound of it. The way Tom's back arched and his shoulders rolled and his breath came in rough, jagged, helpless gasps.

Anya watched. She watched Frank's cock slide in and out. She watched Tom's body take it over and over again. She watched the way Tom's own cock hung heavy and ignored and leaking between his thighs.

Eventually though, Anya took pity on it and wrapped her fingers around Tom’s cock with deliberate intent while Frank continued to fuck into him. She stroked him in time with Frank’s deep thrusts, her grip firm and slick from his leaking pre-cum. Tom’s body jerked between them, caught between the steady pounding in his ass and the tight, rhythmic pull of Anya’s hand on his shaft.

Frank’s hips snapped harder, driving into Tom with increasing urgency. His breathing grew ragged. Tom groaned helplessly, his cock throbbing in Anya’s fist as she worked him faster, twisting her wrist over the swollen head with each stroke.

And then it happened.

Tom came first. His cock pulsed violently in her hand, thick ropes of cum spurting across the sheets and coating her fingers. The sight pushed Frank over the edge fairly quickly. He buried himself to the hilt and groaned, filling the condom deep inside Tom’s ass as his body shuddered through release.

Anya lifted her cum-slick fingers to her mouth while Frank recovered slowly and, eventually, pulled out causing Tom to gasp.

Anya licked her fingers clean one by one, tongue dragging slowly over each digit, gathering every drop of Tom’s load. Frank leaned in, cupped her jaw, and kissed her hard. His tongue slid into her mouth, tasting what remained.

“God,” Frank breathed against her lips. “He tastes good. He really does.”

Tom made a sound from somewhere in the sheets.

“I am still here.”

Frank glanced over at him, mouth wet, eyes bright with satisfaction.

“We know.”

Anya laughed softly and kissed Frank once more before pulling back. Her body was loose now, flushed and trembling, but her eyes were still sharp. Still hungry.

Tom had collapsed onto his side, one arm thrown over his face, breathing hard as though he had survived something undignified and was trying to decide whether to be grateful or offended.

Frank sat back on his heels and reached for him, one hand smoothing over the damp curve of his spine.

“Alive?”

Tom shifted his arm just enough to glare at him.

“Unfortunately for your ego, yes.”

“Good.”

“Don’t sound so proud.”

“I am a little proud.”

Anya crawled toward the edge of the bed, still smiling, still beautifully wrecked, and picked up Frank’s discarded shirt from the floor. She pulled it around herself without buttoning it, then reached for the cigarettes on the bedside table.

Tom lowered his arm.

“Are we pretending this is a civilized pause?”

Anya put a cigarette between her lips.

“Absolutely not.”

Frank took the lighter from her hand before she could reach for it and sparked it for her. She leaned in, eyes on him, and inhaled.

For a few minutes, there was only the open window, the night air, the smell of smoke and sex and warm skin. Anya sat cross-legged in Frank’s shirt. Frank stood beside the bed, naked and pleased with himself, one hand braced on the sill. Tom stayed sprawled against the pillows, flushed and bare and trying not to look as thoroughly used as he felt.

It did not work.

Anya noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Her gaze moved over him slowly, and Tom’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t.”

She exhaled smoke toward the window.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

Frank chuckled.

“She does that.”

Anya looked between them, then took another drag, unhurried.

“I’m thinking,” she said, voice calm, “that I still need you both inside me at the same time.”

Tom’s mouth parted.

Frank’s grin came slowly.

“We knew that was coming.”

Tom turned his head on the pillow to look at him.

“Did we?”

“Yes.”

Anya tapped ash neatly into the glass Frank had handed her.

“You knew.”

Tom stared at her, breath catching despite himself.

“Of course I knew.” His mouth twitched, rough and smug despite how wrecked he still looked. “And, for the record, I enjoy that part quite a lot myself.”

Anya’s smile widened.

Frank laughed under his breath.

“Careful, Tom,” he said. “Don’t say it with such eagerness or she’ll make you beg again.”

Tom’s eyes flicked to him, still dark, still dazed around the edges.

“I did not beg.”

Frank and Anya looked at him.

A beat.

Tom sighed.

“Fine. Once.”

“Twice,” Frank said.

“No one asked you.”

Anya stubbed out the cigarette, then crawled back onto the bed with that same deliberate certainty that had undone him earlier. She came to Tom first, leaning down to kiss him slowly, softer than before but no less demanding.

When she pulled back, her mouth stayed close to his.

“Still with us?”

Tom swallowed.

His answer came quieter this time.

“Yes.”

Frank’s expression softened at that, just briefly, before the heat came back.

“Then lie back.”

Tom looked at him.

Then at Anya.

Then, because apparently he had reached the point of the evening where obedience felt less like surrender and more like relief, he did.

That was how they found themselves ten minutes later with Tom on his back against the pillows, breath already uneven again, Anya straddling him with her thighs braced on either side of his hips.

Frank was behind her, one hand on her waist, the other smoothing down her spine as he kissed the back of her shoulder.

Tom looked up at her, ruined and watchful.

Anya looked down at him, her hair loose around her face, Frank’s shirt long since discarded somewhere near the foot of the bed.

“You look wrecked,” she murmured.

Tom huffed out a breath.

“I look practical.”

Frank’s mouth curved against her skin.

“That’s not what you look like.”

Before Tom could respond to Frank’s comment, Anya leaned down and kissed him as Frank moved closer behind her, and Tom felt the shape of it then — all three of them finding the same rhythm again, slower this time, deliberate, inevitable.

Frank chuckled softly near Anya’s ear.

“There,” he murmured. “Now we’re all where she wanted us.”

Tom’s fingers tightened on Anya’s thighs.

“She is very bossy.”

Anya smiled against his mouth.

“And yet,” she whispered, “here you are.”

And with that, they pushed in together.

Tom into her pussy and Frank into her ass.

And the feeling, for Anya, was like nothing else.

The fullness. The stretch. The way her body had to make room for both of them at once, had to accommodate two cocks at the same time, had to open until there was nothing left of her but the space they filled.

Tom's cock was in her cunt, so deep and familiar while Frank's cock was in her ass, deeper than that, fuller than that, a kind of pressure that was its own, separate, overwhelming kind of pleasure. And together they were a single, unbroken, devastating sensation.

Tom felt it too. Felt the difference. In her pussy, he could feel Frank. Through the thin wall of tissue that separated them. He could feel the shape of Frank's cock moving inside her ass. Could feel the pressure of it. The way it made her tighter. The way it made everything—the friction, the heat, the sensation—more.

He pushed in, and Frank pushed in, and they were, for a moment, just one motion. One body. One rhythm. Tom's forehead was on Anya's, and Frank's mouth was on her shoulder, and Anya's hands were on both of them.

Her voice was, for once, just sounds. Just moans. Just the kind of noises that came from a woman who had stopped being able to form words.

Her orgasm built quickly. They had known it would. They had known it would, because it always did, because double penetration always did this to her, because her body was, in this one specific way, perfectly, beautifully, reliably easy.

Slow then suddenly all at once.

Tom felt it. Felt the way her pussy clenched and spasmed and pulsed. Felt the way her walls gripped him and released and gripped again. Felt the way her whole body went rigid and then, in the next breath, went liquid.

She cried out.

Not Tom’s name. Not Frank’s.

Just sound.

A helpless, broken sound torn out of her as pleasure took her completely. Her body tightened around both of them, trembling hard, rhythm lost, breath gone, her hands clutching uselessly for something to hold on to as she came.

For one long, bright, endless moment, there was nothing else.

No thought.

No control.

Only Tom beneath her, Frank behind her, and the shattering force of being held between them as she came apart.

Tom laughed then.

Not mockingly. Not smugly.

It was pure, delighted affection, rough around the edges because he was still breathless, still wrecked, still half gone beneath her.

“There she is,” he murmured.

Anya made a weak sound against his chest, too undone to answer properly.

Tom’s hand came up to the back of her neck, holding her there, his mouth brushing her hair.

“She always goes quickly like this,” he said, voice low and fond. “Never takes long once she has both.”

Anya managed to lift her head just enough to glare at him.

“Tom.”

He smiled at her, helplessly tender.

“What? It’s true.”

And it was.

He knew her body. Knew the things that ruined her fastest. Knew the exact sharp little breath she took before she lost herself, the way her hands stopped knowing where to go, the way she clung afterward like she had been dropped back into herself from a height.

He loved that he knew it.

Loved that he got to be here for it.

Loved that Frank got to see it too.

Behind her, Frank had gone still, but not soft. Not finished. His hands were still on her hips, his body pressed close, his eyes not on Anya now, but on Tom.

“I want a bit longer,” Frank said.

Tom’s gaze shifted to him.

Before he could answer, Anya gave a breathless laugh against Tom’s chest.

“Of course you do, you stud.”

Tom laughed.

Frank laughed too, low and helpless, and the movement made Anya tense sharply between them.

“Ow—stop, stop.”

Frank froze at once, hands tightening on her hips without moving her.

“Sorry. Sorry.”

Tom’s hand came immediately to the back of her neck.

“You all right?”

Anya exhaled, then laughed again, softer this time.

“Yes. Just don’t make me laugh while you are both still inside me.”

Frank dropped his forehead briefly to her shoulder.

“Noted.”

Tom looked far too pleased despite himself.

“Very romantic, all this.”

Anya lifted her head enough to look at him, eyes still dark, mouth curved.

“You’re one to talk.”

Then she looked back at Frank over her shoulder.

“Have Tom,” she said, voice roughening again. “If he wants.”

Frank’s eyes flicked immediately to Tom.

Not assuming.

Waiting.

Tom’s amusement faded by degrees, replaced by something hotter, quieter, more exposed.

“Yeah,” he said, voice low. “I want.”

Anya’s smile widened.

“Good.”

She shifted carefully, letting Frank ease out of her slowly, his hands steadying her the entire time. Tom helped her down beside him, one hand on her waist, another brushing the hair away from her damp cheek.

For a moment, the three of them only breathed.

Then Anya rolled onto her side, propped herself on one elbow, and looked between them with open, shameless interest.

“You two can have each other for a bit,” she said. “I’ll gladly watch.”

Tom huffed a laugh, already flushed again.

“Generous of you.”

“Very.”

Frank’s hand slid over Tom’s thigh, not pushing yet, just asking.

Anya’s eyes dropped to the movement, then lifted again.

“And when you’re both done,” she added, voice turning silk-soft and filthy, “you can come in my mouth.”

Tom went still.

Frank’s mouth parted slightly.

Anya smiled like she had just handed them both a gift.

“What?”

Tom stared at her, wrecked and delighted.

“You are a menace.”

Frank leaned in, kissing the corner of Tom’s mouth.

“She is perfect.”

Anya’s eyes gleamed.

“I know.”

*******

Seconds later, Frank’s voice cut through the room.

“Tom.”

Tom looked at him.

Frank’s eyes were dark, steady, all amusement gone now.

“On your back.”

For half a second, Tom looked like he might argue.

Then Anya’s hand slid over his chest, warm and knowing.

“Go on,” she murmured.

Tom swallowed, breath catching despite himself.

“You’re both getting very comfortable ordering me around.”

Frank’s mouth curved.

“And you’re getting very comfortable obeying.”

Tom stared at him.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he lay back against the pillows. His chest rose and fell, his body still flushed and trembling, but his eyes stayed on Frank.

“Happy?”

Frank moved over him, one hand braced beside Tom’s head.

“Getting there.”

Then he kissed him.

Not softly. Not sweetly. A deep, claiming kiss that made Tom’s breath catch and his hands lift instinctively to Frank’s back.

Anya shifted closer, settling beside Tom’s shoulder, her mouth brushing his cheek, then the line of his jaw, then the sensitive skin beneath his ear.

“Look at you,” she murmured.

Tom gave a rough laugh against Frank’s mouth.

“Don’t narrate.”

“I like narrating.”

“I’ve noticed.”

Frank smiled into the kiss, then pulled back just far enough to reach for another condom. Tom watched him tear it open, watched him roll it on with quick, practised efficiency, and something in his expression shifted — heat, nerves, anticipation, all tangled together.

Frank noticed.

Of course he did.

His hand slid down Tom’s thigh, then curled beneath his knee, guiding him open with steady pressure.

“Still with me?”

Tom swallowed.

Anya kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Answer him.”

Tom’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Frank.

“Yes.”

Frank held his gaze as he settled between Tom’s legs, careful and close, aligning himself with the same deliberate patience that had undone Tom earlier.

Anya’s hand moved into Tom’s hair, stroking once, then tightening just enough to keep him present.

“Good,” she whispered against his neck. “Stay with us.”

Tom exhaled shakily.

“I’m here.”

Frank’s mouth curved, dark and fond.

“I know.”

And, with that, the blunt head of Frank’s cock pressed against Tom's entrance, and Tom tensed, just for a moment, before forcing himself to relax.

Frank pushed. The ring of muscle yielded again, slow and tight, stretching around the girth of him.

Tom's breath caught, a sharp hiss through his teeth as Anya’s mouth crashed onto his, swallowing the sound with a searing kiss.

"Easy," Anya murmured against his mouth.

She nipped his bottom lip, tugging gently. "Let him in."

Frank sank deeper—inch by deliberate inch—watching himself disappear into Tom's body. The heat was incredible, clenching around him like a fist. Tom's hole stretched taut around his shaft and, when Frank's hips finally pressed flush against Tom's ass, he paused, letting Tom adjust.

Tom's cock twitched against his stomach then, leaking a clear thread of pre-cum that pooled in the dip of his navel.

Frank drew back. Thrust in.

Tom knew that feeling well. But not in this position. This position was new.

Tom groaned into Anya's mouth, his back arching off the mattress with every stroke of Frank’s cock. Frank set a rhythm—not gentle, but measured. Each thrust drove deep, punching a sound out of Tom that vibrated against Anya's lips. The wet slap of Frank's hips against Tom's ass filled the room, rhythmic and obscene.

Anya kissed him through it—swallowing his moans, licking into his mouth, her hand drifting down his chest. She pinched one nipple, rolled it between her fingers, and Tom jerked, clenching hard around Frank's cock.

"Fuck, you feel good," Frank gritted out, hips stuttering. Watching tom like this did something to him, made him loose control, but he steadied himself, then gripped Tom's hip with one hand, and fucked Tom harder. The angle shifted—deeper—and Tom's whole body jolted.

"There," Tom gasped, breaking the kiss. His head fell back against the pillow, throat exposed. "Right there—don't stop—"

Frank obliged. He drove into that spot again and again, the head of his cock grinding against Tom's prostate with ruthless precision. Tom's thighs trembled and his cock stood rigid, flushed, pre-cum now leaking steadily down the shaft.

Anya watched his face—the furrowed brow, the bitten lip, the way his eyes squeezed shut with each thrust. She could see him unraveling. Her hand wrapped around his cock then, and Tom's hips bucked—trapped between Frank's pounding and her grip. Again.

She stroked him once, twice, then let go.

Tom whimpered at the loss.

"Shh," she soothed. She shifted, lowering herself between his legs, her hair spilling across his thigh. Her breath ghosted over the head of his cock, hot and damp, and Tom shuddered.

"Anya—please—"

She took him in. One smooth motion, her lips sealing around the shaft, tongue pressing flat against the underside. She sucked—hard—and Tom's hips jerked up, driving himself deeper into her mouth. She adjusted, relaxing her throat, taking him until her nose pressed against his pelvis.

Frank didn't stop. He kept fucking, each thrust rocking Tom's body, driving his cock deeper into Anya's throat. The dual sensation—Frank's thick cock splitting him open, Anya's hot wet mouth swallowing him down—was too much. Tom's hands flew to Anya's hair, gripping tight, holding her in place as his hips began to stutter.

"I'm close," he choked out. "Fuck—I'm gonna—"

Anya hummed around him, the vibration sending sparks up his spine. She pulled back until just the head remained in her mouth, her tongue swirling over the sensitive ridge, her hand working the shaft in quick, tight strokes.

Frank slammed home—once, twice—and Tom's whole body seized. His back arched clean off the bed, a broken cry tearing from his throat as he came. His cock pulsed against Anya's tongue, thick ropes of cum flooding her mouth. She swallowed around him, milking every drop, her throat working as she took it all. Tom's hips twitched with each aftershock, oversensitive, but she held him steady until he was spent.

Tom collapsed, chest heaving, arms falling limply to his sides. His cock slipped from Anya's lips, softening, glistening with her saliva.

Frank pulled out. The condom clung to him, the latex stretched and warm. He stripped it off with a quick motion, tossing it aside, and wrapped his hand around his own cock—still hard, still aching. He stroked himself, fast and rough, his jaw tight.

Anya looked up at him from between Tom's legs, her lips swollen and wet, a faint smear of cum at the corner of her mouth. She opened her mouth—tongue out, waiting.

Frank groaned. He stepped closer, his hand a blur on his shaft, and then he was coming—thick white spurts lashing across Anya's extended tongue, her lips, her chin. She stayed still, eyes locked on his, as he painted her face. The last pulse dribbled onto her tongue, and she closed her lips around his head, sucking gently, draining him.

Frank hissed through his teeth, hips jerking at the overstimulation. He pulled free, breathing hard.

Anya sat back on her heels. She made a show of it—swirling the mixture on her tongue, letting Frank see the white pool gathered there—before swallowing slowly, her throat bobbing. She licked her lips, catching the stray drop at the corner of her mouth.

Tom lay motionless beside them, one arm thrown over his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, voice completely wrecked.

Frank, still catching his breath, reached down and carded his fingers through Anya’s hair. His touch had gone gentle now, almost tender.

“Good girl,” he murmured.

Anya went still for half a second.

Then she slapped his thigh.

“Don’t start.”

Frank burst out laughing.

Tom lifted his arm just enough to look at them, exhausted and appalled and far too fond.

“You two are impossible.”

Anya wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, still smiling.

“You keep saying that like you’re not one of us.”

Tom dropped his arm back over his eyes.

“I need a cigarette and possibly a priest.”

Frank laughed harder.

Anya crawled up between them, smug and soft and beautifully ruined.

“Make it two cigarettes.”

The house was quiet.

Ellie was at Ruth’s, which meant there were no trainers by the door, no schoolbag abandoned in the hall, no half-empty glass of water on the coffee table because apparently his daughter believed hydration was a decorative concept. There was only the low hum of the fridge and Tom’s own restless inability to settle.

He should have gone to bed.

Instead, he took the pasta into the sitting room, put the television on, and found himself staring at the same ridiculous Netflix show from the night before.

The psych ward one. The loop one. The one with too many plot holes and one infuriatingly good performance.

He hovered over the next episode for half a second. Then pressed play.

“Research,” he muttered to absolutely no one.

It was not research. It was masochism with subtitles.

The second episode was somehow worse than the first. A doctor explained trauma using a whiteboard. Someone discovered a mysterious key in a sink. The lighting seemed to have been designed by a man who had recently learned the colour blue existed and wanted everyone to know.

Then you appeared again. And again, annoyingly, the whole thing changed.

You were in a recreation room this time, sitting at a plastic table with a deck of cards in front of you. Your character’s hands were shaking, but only slightly. Enough to notice. Not enough to announce itself. You kept arranging the cards into rows, then stopping halfway through and starting again, lips moving around numbers that did not seem to belong to the game.

Another patient accused you of cheating. You looked up. For one second, your face emptied. Then you smiled. Not kindly. Not sanely.

“I already lost this one,” you said on screen. “You just haven’t caught up yet.”

Tom stopped chewing. That was the thing, then. You could do that. You could make a terrible line land like a threat and a confession at the same time. You could take nonsense and make it feel inhabited. You could sit in the middle of a cheaply dressed set and make the whole scene lean toward you.

How could you be that good and then look so lost with him?

He put the bowl down on the coffee table.

On screen, your face froze in close-up.

The doorbell rang.

Tom looked toward the hall. Then back at the screen. Then toward the hall again, irritated already.

No one came over unannounced. No one sane, anyway.

He paused the show and got up.

When he opened the door, Sam and Rob stood on his doorstep with a six-pack of beer and the expressions of men who had decided concern would be less embarrassing if disguised as intrusion.

Tom stared at them.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Rob lifted the beer.

“Good evening to you too.”

Sam smiled.

“You seemed miserable and quiet, so naturally we came to make that worse.”

“I’m busy.”

Rob looked past him into the hall.

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re wearing socks and an expression of spiritual damp. Let us in.”

Tom remained in the doorway.

“I don’t remember inviting either of you.”

Sam clapped him once on the shoulder and stepped around him.

“That’s because you didn’t. We’re being loving and invasive.”

“Mostly invasive,” Rob added, following.

Tom shut the door with more force than necessary.

“This is why I don’t tell people where I live.”

“You’ve known us twenty years,” Sam said.

“Exactly. Plenty of time to learn boundaries.”

Rob was already halfway into the sitting room.

Then he stopped.

Sam nearly walked into him.

There, paused on the television, was your face.

Large.

Haunted.

Lit in blue.

Rob turned very slowly.

A grin began to spread across his face.

Tom saw it and hated him immediately.

“Don’t.”

Sam leaned sideways to see past Rob.

Then his eyebrows shot up.

“Oh.”

“No,” Tom said.

Rob pointed at the screen.

“It’s hamster girl.”

Tom closed his eyes.

“Do not call her that.”

Sam looked delighted.

“That is absolutely hamster girl.”

“I hate both of you.”

Rob walked into the room properly, beer still in hand.

“Why are you watching hamster girl’s show?”

“It was on.”

Sam looked at the paused screen, then at Tom.

“Netflix broke into your house and selected it?”

“I was bored.”

“You were bored, so you chose to watch the woman you keep claiming is a professional catastrophe?”

“I wanted to see if she was any good in something else.”

Rob made a soft, obscene little sound of satisfaction.

Tom pointed at him.

“Stop making that noise.”

“That was the sound of evidence arriving.”

“There is no evidence.”

Sam sat down on the sofa without being asked.

“There is a paused close-up of her face in your sitting room.”

“Because I paused the television to answer the door.”

“You answered the door like a man caught with pornography,” Rob said.

Tom gave him a flat look.

“I will physically remove you from my house.”

“You won’t. You love us.”

“I tolerate you through habit.”

Rob opened a beer and handed it to him.

Tom took it because dignity had limits and the beer was already cold.

Sam nodded toward the screen.

“Is it good?”

“No.”

“Is she good?”

Tom drank.

Too long.

Rob laughed.

“Oh, she is.”

Tom lowered the bottle.

“She can act. That was never the question.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed with theatrical interest.

“Actually, I believe that was very much the question last week when you accused her of nepotism.”

“Yes, well, perhaps she can act and still be a nepo baby. Human beings contain multitudes.”

Rob sat on the arm of the sofa.

“You complain about her too much.”

“Because she is irritating.”

“No, because you want her.”

Tom’s head snapped toward him.

“Don’t be stupid.”

Sam looked amused now, but not unkind.

“He’s not being stupid.”

“Thank you, Samuel.”

“You’re being obvious.”

Tom stared at him.

“I am not into her.”

Rob laughed.

“No, of course not. You just talk about her constantly, watch her terrible Netflix show alone at night, reread books because she had them in her bag, and look personally wounded whenever anyone mentions her fiancé. Very detached. Very healthy.”

Tom went still.

“Who told you about the book?”

Sam and Rob exchanged a look.

Tom’s expression darkened.

“Who?”

Rob took a sip of beer.

“Your sister. Because you borrowed it from her.”

Tom closed his eyes briefly.

“Oh, fuck off.”

Sam grinned.

“This is wonderful. I’m having a lovely time.”

Tom walked past them and grabbed the remote, switching the television off.

The room went dark for a second before the lamp beside the sofa reclaimed it.

“There. Happy?”

“No, now we can’t look at her,” Rob said.

Tom pointed toward the door.

“Out.”

Neither of them moved.

Sam’s teasing softened around the edges.

“Tom.”

“Don’t.”

“You’ve been weird for days.”

“I’m working.”

“You work all the time. This is different.”

Tom’s jaw tightened.

He stood by the television, beer in hand, looking suddenly too restless for his own body. His fingers tapped against the bottle. His knee had started moving. He caught himself, stopped it, then started again half a second later.

Rob watched him.

“We love you, you miserable prick. That’s why we came.”

“That’s unfortunate for everyone involved.”

“Yes. Deeply. But here we are.”

Sam leaned forward.

“What happened?”

Tom looked away.

For a moment, he almost said too much.

The failed scene.

Your face.

The reshoot.

The way you had looked at him outside makeup and said you had not been scared of him, as if reading something he had not wanted visible.

Instead he said, “Nothing happened.”

Rob stared at him.

Sam did too.

Tom exhaled sharply.

“That desk scene I told you about was bad. Kurt wants it reshot. She froze. I was apparently horrible, or maybe I looked horrible, which is often treated as the same thing. She is engaged, twenty-four, the producer’s daughter, and, regrettably, someone I may have underestimated professionally. She is also a problem. Because we can’t get the intimate scenes done. There. That’s the summary.”

Rob blinked.

“That was not a summary. That was you having a breakdown.”

“I’m not discussing this.”

“You are already discussing it.”

“I’m done, then.”

Sam studied him.

“You said regrettably.”

Tom looked at him.

“What?”

“You said you regrettably underestimated her.”

“Yes, because now I have to respect her work while still finding her unbearable. It’s inconvenient.”

Rob smiled into his beer.

“And sexy, apparently.”

“She is engaged.”

“That wasn’t a denial.”

“She is twenty-four.”

“Also not a denial.”

“She lied to me.”

Sam’s expression shifted slightly.

Rob’s grin faded.

Tom saw it and hated that too.

“In New York,” Tom said, clipped. “About her age. About enough. And before either of you start giving me that face, yes, I know I sound like a hypocrite, considering Jess and maybe Layla, and perhaps some others. I am aware of the moral geometry. It is ugly from every angle.”

Sam leaned back.

Rob’s mouth tightened.

“It is ugly indeed. And it’s messy.”

“Yes, Robert. Thank you for your forensic contribution.”

“Still doesn’t mean you don’t want her.”

Tom gave him a look.

“You are very committed to being punched in my home.”

Rob shrugged.

“You’re annoyed with her and you want to fuck her against a studio wall. Both can be true.”

Tom stared at him.

“Jesus Christ.”

Sam laughed under his breath.

“He’s not subtle, but he may be correct.”

“He is not correct.”

“You thought about it before denying it.”

“Because it was a disgusting sentence.”

“But vivid.”

“I am begging you both to develop inner lives.”

Rob raised his bottle.

“This is mine.”

Tom sat finally, not because he wanted to, but because standing had started to feel like losing.

“She’s not some romantic inconvenience,” he said. “She’s a complication. A big one. She’s engaged. She’s the producer’s daughter. She’s too young. She apparently cheated, which I don’t respect, even if I’m not exactly standing on a moral mountain myself. And she makes the work harder.”

Sam was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “Does she make the work harder, or does wanting her make the work harder?”

Tom looked at him.

“Careful.”

“I am being careful.”

“No, you’re being clever. I hate when you do that.”

Sam smiled faintly.

“Rare treat.”

Tom leaned back and rubbed both hands over his face.

“Can we not talk about her?”

Rob opened his mouth.

Tom pointed at him without looking.

“No.”

Rob shut his mouth.

For approximately seven seconds.

Then Tom’s phone lit up on the coffee table.

All three men looked at it.

Layla.

A photo appeared under the notification, cropped enough that no one had to guess the intent.

Rob’s eyebrows climbed.

“Oh. Coffee shop girl.”

Tom snatched the phone up.

“Don’t look at my phone.”

“It lit up in public.”

“This is my sitting room.”

“Which has now been declared a public space,” Rob said.

Sam tilted his head while Tom opened the message.

A photo. Then:

Thinking about last night.

Another message followed before he replied.

You around?

Tom stared at it.

Layla was pretty.

Available.

Easy in the way that was never actually easy but could pass for it if everyone agreed to perform their roles properly.

A week ago, he would have gone.

Maybe not even a week.

Yesterday, perhaps.

Tonight, the idea made him tired.

Not disgusted.

That would have made him feel nobler than he was.

Just tired.

He typed:

Long day. Tired.

Then, after a beat, because he was not cruel enough to pretend the photo had done nothing:

Very sexy, though.

Three dots appeared almost instantly.

Thursday?

Tom stared at the message.

Rob was still watching him.

“Stop looking at me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m looking near you.”

Tom typed:

Maybe. I’ll let you know.

Then put the phone face down.

Sam’s voice was careful.

“You don’t have to keep doing that, you know.”

Tom looked at him.

“Doing what?”

Sam did not answer immediately.

That was how Tom knew he would hate it.

“Punishing yourself with women you don’t actually want.”

Tom’s face closed.

Rob, for once, said nothing.

The room went quiet.

Then Tom picked up his beer.

“I thought we weren’t talking about my inner life.”

“No, you begged us to develop one. Different thing.”

Tom drank.

“You’re both unbearable.”

Sam smiled.

“Yes. But we brought beer.”

Tom did not smile.

But he did not ask them to leave again.

That was something.

The following morning….

Tom knew something was wrong the next morning before he even got through hair and makeup.

Not because anyone said it.

Because sets had a rhythm, and this one was off.

Too many conversations cutting out when he passed. Too many eyes flicking up and away. Too much carefulness in the air, the kind that made the whole place feel thin-skinned and brittle before the day had even properly started.

He signed in with coffee still too hot in one hand, script folded under his arm, thumb already worrying at the edge of the pages without him meaning to. His knee had been bouncing in the makeup chair ten minutes earlier; now all that restless energy had moved into his hands instead — tapping the paper, shifting the cup, dragging once at the sleeve pushed up his wrist.

Then he saw Kurt standing by the monitors with your father. That, on its own, would have been enough to put him in a foul mood.

Your father was not usually there unless there was a reason. He drifted in and out when needed, usually avoiding you because he was the producer and because the entire production tilted, however subtly, around his presence.

But he was not normally waiting. Not like this. Not with Kurt beside him already looking fed up, and not with Marie stepping out from behind one of the flats at the exact wrong moment.

Tom stopped dead.

For half a second, no one moved.

Then Kurt gave him the sort of nod that was not a greeting so much as a summons.

“Tom. Meeting room. Now.”

Tom stared at him.

“Good morning to you too.”

No one smiled.

That irritated him instantly.

He took one last swallow of coffee, set the cup down on the nearest crate with more force than necessary, and followed them.

The room they led him into was one of the temporary production offices. Folding chairs. Beige walls. A bottle of water already open on the table. Someone’s abandoned highlighter beside a stack of revised pages.

It smelled faintly of stale paper and bad coffee.

Your father shut the door behind him.

Tom stayed standing.

He always did that when he already felt cornered. Standing made it easier to leave. Easier to pretend he had options.

“What’s this?”

Kurt folded his arms.

Marie stayed by the table, steady and composed in the way intimacy coordinators got when they were trying to make clear that something was serious without yet calling it disciplinary.

Your father looked at him directly.

“We’ve had a concern raised.”

Tom’s jaw tightened.

“About?”

Marie answered.

“The intimate work. Specifically whether there has been any pressure, overstepping, or pushing beyond what was agreed. Rehearsals, blocking, notes, private interaction between takes. Anything outside established boundaries.”

For one second, Tom genuinely thought he had misheard.

Then he laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because the alternative was smashing something.

“Sorry — what?” He looked between them. “No. Y/N and I argue, sure, but nothing like that.”

Kurt’s face stayed flat.

“That wasn’t the question.”

Tom looked at him sharply.

“Then ask me properly.”

Your father’s expression changed.

Not much.

Just enough.

“Did you at any point pressure her?”

“No.”

“Did you touch her outside agreed choreography?” Marie asked.

Tom’s eyes flicked to her.

“No.”

“Did you continue scene discussions after she indicated she wanted to stop?”

The answer came too quickly.

“No.”

Then he caught on the edge of it.

His jaw shifted. He looked away for a second, dragged a hand back through his hair hard enough to disturb what styling had already been done.

“No,” he said again, less neatly. “Not like that.”

Silence.

Kurt noticed.

Of course he noticed.

Tom saw that he noticed and felt his temper kick harder.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He rubbed at his mouth, then dropped his hand and started picking at the label on the unopened bottle of water without even realising it. “Maybe once or twice, yeah, I asked what was going on when she was clearly in her own head. We argued. But I didn’t pressure her into anything.”

Marie glanced at her notes.

“When did those conversations happen?”

“Between takes. Rehearsal. Blocking.”

“Alone?”

That made him laugh again, shorter and uglier.

“Not secretly, no. We’re on a set, Marie, not having clandestine meetings behind the props truck.”

“Tom,” Kurt said.

Tom looked at him.

Already too wound up. Already feeling the shape of the morning turning against him.

“What?”

“Did she appear uncomfortable?”

Tom gave a humourless laugh and shifted his weight, then shifted it back again a second later, incapable of being still for more than a beat.

“She was uncomfortable with the work, yes. We all know that.”

Kurt didn’t blink.

“Did you push for more contact? More realism? More improvisation? Anything physical when camera wasn’t rolling?”

Tom stared at him.

Then at your father.

Then at the wall for a second like he was trying not to say the first thing that came into his head.

“No,” he said flatly. “I didn’t.”

Your father held his gaze a second too long, and that was the part Tom felt like a splinter under the skin.

Not just the questions.

The fact that they were being asked at all.

The fact that he had been hauled in before first shot and made to stand in a stale little room defending himself against something he had not done.

The fact that your father was there for it.

The fact that because you were his daughter, everything immediately became bigger, touchier, more political than it would have been for anyone else.

Tom folded his arms.

Unfolded them again two seconds later.

His fingers found the edge of the highlighter on the table and spun it once before he stopped himself.

“Did she actually say that?”

Nobody answered straight away.

Which was answer enough to be infuriating.

“Did she?” he asked again, sharper now.

Marie chose her words with the kind of caution he hated.

“A concern has been raised. We are following process.”

“By whom?”

Kurt exhaled.

“That’s not how this works.”

Tom stared at him.

“Right. So someone gets to imply I’ve behaved inappropriately, I get dragged in here like I’m one step off a disciplinary review, and nobody’s going to tell me where it came from?”

Your father’s voice cooled another degree.

“Watch your tone.”

Tom actually laughed at that.

A short, incredulous sound.

“My tone?” He looked between the three of them. “You bring me in here before first shot, suggest I’ve been pressuring my co-star, and now the concern is my tone?”

“The concern,” your father said, “is your professionalism.”

That landed badly.

Tom went very still.

Which, on him, was always worse than shouting.

His jaw locked. One leg started up beneath him, a small angry bounce that made the folding chair nearest his knee tremble slightly.

“My professionalism,” he repeated. “Right.”

Marie stepped in before he could get properly vicious.

“No one is making a finding. We are asking questions and putting boundaries in place while we do that.”

Tom looked at her, then let out a quiet laugh that had nothing warm in it.

“So I’m not being accused of anything,” he said. “I’m just being treated like I might have done it.”

No one answered.

That silence did more damage than words could have.

Tom looked down once, then back up, expression flatter now, more controlled in exactly the way that meant he was angrier, not less.

“Fine,” he said. “Then let me save everyone time. I didn’t pressure her. I didn’t overstep. I didn’t touch her outside choreography. I didn’t try anything when cameras weren’t rolling. If she was uncomfortable with the scenes, that’s one thing. They were difficult scenes. But I did not make them unsafe.”

Your father held his gaze.

“Marie and Kurt will keep a closer eye on it.”

Tom stared at him.

“On what?”

Kurt answered bluntly.

“On both of you. No private conversations about scene work. No extra rehearsal without one of us present. No deviations. No physical improvisation unless it’s cleared in the room.”

Tom looked away, pressed his tongue once against the inside of his cheek, then dragged a hand through his hair again. He looked like he wanted to put his fist through the cheap plasterboard and was instead settling for tearing himself up by increments.

Then he nodded.

A small, hard nod.

“Okay.”

“Good,” Kurt said.

Tom glanced at the door.

“Are we done?”

Marie exchanged a look with Kurt before answering.

“For now.”

Tom gave a short nod.

“Right.”

But he didn’t move.

That was the danger with him sometimes — not when he snapped immediately, but when he held it all in long enough for everyone in the room to see the effort of it.

The restraint.

The fury being forced back down.

He looked at your father again.

“Just so we’re absolutely clear,” he said, voice lower now, flatter, “whatever concern has been raised, it did not come from anything I actually did.”

Your father didn’t soften.

“Then you should have no issue with oversight.”

Tom’s mouth twitched in something too sharp to be a smile.

“That isn’t the point.”

“It is today,” Kurt said.

Tom looked at him.

Then at Marie.

Then back at your father.

For one brief second he seemed on the verge of saying something catastrophic — something about you, about production, about how very convenient it was that this had all become a matter of urgent process now that it involved the producer’s daughter.

He stopped himself half a second before it happened.

Which did not mean the thought failed to show.

Kurt saw it.

So did your father.

That made the room tighten all over again.

Tom gave one short nod. Not agreement. Not acceptance. Just acknowledgement that he had heard every word and hated every second of it.

Then he turned and left.

He did not slam the door.

That would have been simpler.

Instead he shut it with far too much control, walked down the corridor without looking at anyone, cut past costume and lighting cases and out through the side access door into the cold air behind the soundstage.

Only then did he stop.

The morning had that miserable film-set chill to it — wet concrete, old cigarette ends ground into the wall-side gravel, low grey sky pressing down over the lot. Tom shoved a hand into his coat pocket, found his cigarettes, then his lighter, then lost the lighter for a second because he’d put it in the wrong pocket and forgotten.

He swore under his breath, found it, lit up, and dragged smoke into his lungs hard enough to make his chest ache.

That helped.

Not much.

But enough to stop him from walking straight back inside and saying something career-ending to someone’s face.

He stood there with one hand on his hip and the other holding the cigarette, jaw tight, eyes on nothing. His knee had started bouncing again. His thumb kept flicking the lighter open and shut between drags. Every movement quick, clipped, restless.

The door opened behind him.

Kurt.

Of course.

Tom didn’t turn immediately. He took another drag first, exhaled slowly, then said without much interest, “What?”

Kurt came to stand beside him, not quite looking at him.

“Set two in five.”

Tom laughed once under his breath.

“After that little performance in there, I need fifteen.”

Kurt glanced at him.

“You’ll get five.”

Tom finally looked over.

“Kurt.”

There was enough in the single word to make clear that this was not a request and not really a negotiation either.

Kurt exhaled through his nose.

“Fine. Fifteen. Then I need you switched on, and I need you professional.”

Tom took another drag.

“I’m always professional.”

That earned him a look.

But Kurt didn’t argue.

He simply left him there.

Tom stayed where he was, cigarette burning down between his fingers, anger cooling into something meaner now that it had somewhere to settle.

*********

Inside, meanwhile, you were staring at the revised call sheets which were handed to you by Kurt’s assistant like they might rearrange themselves if you looked hard enough.

It didn’t.

The office scene was gone for the next week. And so was a scene involving a kiss.

You frowned at that.

Yesterday the scenes had been there. Yesterday Kurt had spoken about a reshoot. And now? Nothing.

Now, the desk scene was struck out in thick black marker.

You looked up just as Kurt came back through the side corridor, already walking too fast, already carrying too many pages, already looking like a man whose morning had gone off the rails before nine a.m.

You stepped in before he could vanish again.

“Hey, Kurt.”

He stopped.

Barely.

“What?”

You lifted the call sheet.

“The office scene’s been struck out.”

Kurt looked at it.

Then at you.

Something hard flashed across his face.

“Really?”

You frowned.

“Yeah. Why?”

He gave a short, disbelieving breath.

“You’re asking me why?”

You blinked.

“Yes?”

His mouth flattened.

“You know, Y/N, next time you’ve got an issue with someone you work with, you come to me. You do not go straight to your father.”

For a second, you just stared at him.

Your brain snagged on the sentence and failed to catch up.

“What?”

Kurt looked away, already irritated, already late.

“I haven’t got time for this now.”

You stepped after him.

“No, sorry, what are you talking about?”

That made him stop more abruptly.

His expression had gone tired and curt and not especially fair.

“I’m talking about the fact that half my morning has disappeared into production nonsense because concerns about your scene partner apparently went everywhere except through the people actually running the set.”

You went very still.

“What concerns?”

Kurt gave you a look that suggested he didn’t especially believe you or no longer had the patience to sort out who had said what to whom.

“Y/N, next time, spare me the surprise.”

Then he was gone.

You stood there in the corridor with the call sheets still in your hand, heart suddenly hammering too hard.

For a strange second, you felt half a beat behind your own body.

Like if anyone spoke to you now — Olivia, hair and makeup, anyone at all — they would be talking to a version of you that hadn’t quite caught up yet.

Because what?

Because someone had said something.

Because Kurt thought it was you.

Because your father was involved.

Because the office scene was gone.

Because none of it made sense.

You looked toward the side door.

Then, on instinct more than decision, you headed for it.

You did not even especially want a cigarette. But you needed out of the building, out of the corridor, out of the weird new shape the morning had taken. Your fingers were already pulling at the corner of the call sheets, folding and unfolding them as you walked.

The cold hit your face the second you stepped outside.

And there he was.

Tom.

A little way down by the wall, coat open, one hand in his pocket, cigarette in the other, lighter clicking idly in his fingers between drags. His head turned at the sound of the door.

You saw the exact moment he recognised you.

Something in him hardened immediately.

You stopped.

You had not meant to walk straight into him. Had not even considered he might be out here.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Then you said, because the silence was unbearable and because yesterday he had been almost human and because you were still naïve enough to think that might matter this morning, “Hi.”

Tom looked at you.

Then looked away again and took another drag as though he hadn’t heard.

That should have been warning enough.

You still stepped fully outside and let the door shut behind you.

Your pulse was climbing now, quick and uncomfortable. You got your cigarettes out with clumsier fingers than usual, nearly dropped the lighter, caught it, then cursed quietly at yourself and lit up anyway.

You rarely smoked. But today you felt like it.

The first inhale burned.

Still, stupidly, you tried again.

Then you turned to Tom.

“Do you know why the office scene got pulled?”

Tom laughed.

Once.

A short, ugly little sound.

Then he turned his head and looked at you with such open contempt your stomach dipped.

“Really?”

You frowned.

“What?”

He flicked ash onto the concrete.

“That’s what you’re going with?”

You stared at him.

“I’m asking a question.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I bet you are.”

The cold felt suddenly sharper.

You lowered your cigarette.

“Tom, what the hell is your problem?”

He turned properly then, one shoulder coming off the wall, expression flat and furious.

“My problem,” he said, “is that I’ve had a fantastic start to the day, thanks.”

“What does that even mean?”

He laughed again, no humour in it at all now.

“Means if you’ve got something to say about me, maybe have the decency to say it to my face next time before running to your father.”

For a second, you couldn’t answer at all.

Because the accusation was so immediate.

So loaded.

And you still didn’t have enough information to understand it.

“I haven’t spoken to my father in a week.”

“Right.”

“I haven’t.”

He looked at you for another beat, and something about the way he did it — like he had already decided what sort of person you were in this moment — made anger spark through your confusion.

Then he said it.

Flatly.

Cruelly.

“The office scene is gone because apparently I make you feel unsafe, so if that’s how you feel, it’s probably better that way.”

For a second, the sentence didn’t even land as one piece.

It hit you in fragments.

You stared at him.

“You make me feel unsafe?”

Tom’s mouth twisted.

“That’s what your father seemed to think this morning.”

Your cigarette had gone completely still in your fingers.

You looked at him as if he’d slapped you.

“What?”

Tom laughed once.

Short.

Ugly.

Nothing amused in it.

“I was called into an ambush meeting with Kurt, Marie, and your father before first shot and asked whether I’d pressured you. Whether I’d overstepped. Whether I’d pushed you through the scene when you were uncomfortable.”

Your face went blank.

Not calm.

Blank.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Tom, I didn’t—”

“And apparently the reason the office scene’s gone is because there are now concerns about whether I make you feel unsafe.”

The last word landed like something dropped from a height.

Unsafe.

You stared at him.

“I didn’t say anything, Tom.”

His eyes hardened, but something flickered underneath it too.

Not belief.

Not yet.

Just the smallest interruption in his fury.

“Then someone did.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Right.”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t look at me like I’m lying. I didn’t say that. I didn’t tell my father anything. I didn’t ask for a meeting. I didn’t say you pressured me.”

Tom’s jaw worked.

“Well, that’s fucking fascinating, because somehow I still spent my morning being asked to defend myself against it.”

You barely heard him when he said that.

Because suddenly your mind was moving too fast.

Kurt in the corridor.

His face.

The office scene gone.

The way he’d spoken to you.

Your father.

Then James.

James asking too many careful questions the other night, when you were drunk. James wanting to know whether Tom had been respectful, whether the scenes had crossed lines, whether your father knew how badly things were going.

Your breath caught.

“Oh my God.”

Tom’s expression darkened at once.

“Don’t.”

But you weren’t really looking at him properly now. You were looking somewhere just past him, pieces slamming together so quickly they made you feel sick.

“James.”

He frowned.

“What?”

You looked back at him, horrified.

“James,” you said again, voice thinner now. “I told James I was struggling with the scenes. That I hated them. That I kept tensing up and everything felt awkward and awful. He must have –“

Tom stared at you.

You saw the shift in him then.

Not forgiveness.

Not even softness.

But the first flicker of anger changing direction.

“You involved your fiancé?”

You shook your head quickly.

“No. I did not involve him. I didn’t ask him to step in and I didn’t say you made me unsafe. I never said that. I said I was struggling with the work. And I would not have expected him to – oh my god.”

Tom looked away, swore quietly under his breath, then scrubbed a hand over his mouth.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just furious enough to tell you he believed at least that part.

“Unbelievable.”

“It wasn’t me.”

He looked back at you.

Still furious. Still tightly wound. But now the fury had somewhere else to go too, which did not actually make him kinder. It only made him more cutting.

“Y/N, I don’t particularly care who did the translation,” he said. “It still landed on me.”

That hurt.

Because he was right enough to make it sting.

And unfair enough to make you angry all over again.

“I know, Tom, and I am sorry.”

“Don’t,” he said, voice low and clipped, “just get your fiancé under control, alright?”

You actually flinched.

His eyes flicked to the movement.

He saw it.

He said it anyway.

“Because this has now affected my work, Kurt’s work, the schedule, the whole bloody set, all because your fiancé decided to play hero with information he clearly didn’t understand.”

You stared at him.

“He had no right.”

Tom let out a short, bitter laugh.

“No. He really didn’t.”

You shook your head, almost to yourself.

“I can’t believe he did that.”

“Believe it,” Tom said.

He dropped the cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his shoe.

“And while you’re at it, make sure he understands he doesn’t get to stroll into production making allegations because he’s being a jealous dick about his fiancée doing sex scenes with another man. Because that is fucking absurd.”

Your face tightened.

“He’s not my keeper, if that is what you are implying.”

Tom’s mouth twisted.

“Isn’t he?”

“No.”

“Then maybe tell him that. Because from where I’m standing, he looks very comfortable behaving like one.”

You stared at him.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. You don’t.”

Tom gave a short, bitter laugh and looked away for half a second, jaw tight, hands restless, anger still moving through him too fast to soften into anything fair.

Then his eyes came back to yours.

Sharper now.

Crueller.

“Does he know about us?”

Everything in you stopped.

“What?”

“New York,” Tom said. “Does he know about New York? Is that what this is?”

Your mouth went dry.

“Tom—”

“Does he know you cheated on him with me?”

You looked at him as if he had struck you.

“I didn’t cheat on James.”

Tom laughed.

Not loudly.

Worse.

Disbelieving. Cold.

“Oh, come on. I really can’t do more lies this morning.”

“I didn’t.”

“You were engaged.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

That stopped him for half a second.

Only half.

You stepped closer before he could twist it into something else.

“We were on a break. We had broken up. Not officially enough for the tabloids, apparently, but enough that I was not cheating on him, and he knew that I had slept with someone then.”

Tom stared at you, breathing hard through his nose.

“Convenient.”

Your face changed.

“Fuck you.”

The words landed.

His jaw tightened.

You had never said it to him like that before.

Not with that much hurt under it.

“You can be angry,” you said, voice shaking now despite your best efforts. “You can be furious about this morning. You should be. But do not stand there and call me a liar because James decided to make himself important.”

Tom looked away.

You could see the anger in him still.

Worse, you could see that some part of him knew he had gone too far and was not ready to admit it.

“Does he know it was me?” he asked.

The question was quieter.

Not softer.

Just quieter.

You swallowed.

“What?”

Tom inhaled.

“You said he knew that you had slept with somebody else,” he began. “So does he know it was me?”

“No.”

Tom’s eyes came back to yours.

“No?”

“No. He doesn’t know it was you. And I want to keep it that way.”

Something moved across his face.

Jealousy.

Judgement.

Relief.

Disgust at himself for the relief.

All of it gone almost as quickly as it appeared.

“Of course you do.”

“Yes, Tom. I do. Because unlike apparently everyone else in my life, I am trying not to make this worse.”

He laughed under his breath.

“Bit late for that.”

You flinched.

Then straightened.

“I’m going to fix this.”

“How?”

“By telling my father the truth.”

Tom’s mouth tightened.

“Which truth?”

You stared at him.

“The one where I did not accuse you of anything. The one where James had no right. The one where my father should have spoken to me before dragging you into a room like that.”

Tom held your gaze for a second too long.

Then he looked away first.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Yes. Good. Go fix it.”

You nodded once.

Small.

Furious.

Wounded.

“I will.”

You turned toward the door.

Tom’s voice stopped you before you reached it.

“Y/N.”

You paused, but did not turn around.

A beat passed.

Then another.

“I’m sorry,” Tom said.

That made you turn.

Not fully.

Just enough to look at him over your shoulder.

“For what?”

His jaw shifted.

For a second, he looked as if he might take it back, or make it smaller, or bury it under another sharp comment because apology sat so badly in his mouth.

Then he exhaled.

“For being an arse.”

You looked at him.

Still angry.

Still hurt.

But the bluntness of it caught you slightly off guard.

“You are a bit of an arse.”

His mouth twitched.

Not quite a smile.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Often?”

“Recently, yes.”

You looked down, then back at him.

“You were cruel.”

That wiped the almost-smile away.

He nodded once.

“I know.”

“And I didn’t deserve that.”

“No.”

The quiet agreement was worse than defensiveness somehow.

You swallowed.

“I’m going to fix it. But I’m not doing it for you.”

Tom’s eyes stayed on yours.

“I know.”

“I’m doing it because it was wrong. And because James had no right to use me like that. And because I want this movie to work.”

His expression changed at that.

Only slightly.

Enough.

“Me too,” he said, softer this time.

You turned back toward the door.

This time, when you left, he did not stop you.

********

Inside, you walked down the corridor with the call sheets crushed in your fist, eyes fixed ahead, breathing shallowly through your nose because if you stopped moving, you were fairly certain you would either cry or commit a crime.

Possibly both.

Your father was still near the monitors when you found him.

Talking to Kurt.

Calm.

Controlled.

As if he had not just detonated your entire morning.

Marie was nearby with her folder tucked against her chest. Sven stood a few feet away, headset on, pretending to study the revised pages while absolutely listening.

Good.

Let them listen.

“Dad.”

Edward turned.

His expression softened automatically at the sight of you.

Then sharpened when he saw your face.

“Y/N—”

“Meeting room. Now.”

Kurt went still beside him.

Marie’s eyes flicked up.

Sven’s mouth parted slightly, then closed again.

Your father’s mouth tightened.

“Not now.”

“Yes. Now.”

The words came out louder than you intended.

Not loud enough to be a scene.

Loud enough that three nearby crew members stopped pretending to work.

Edward stepped closer, lowering his voice in warning.

“This is not the place.”

You laughed.

A horrible little sound.

“Funny. Apparently this became the place when you brought my co-star into a meeting about me without speaking to me first.”

Kurt looked away.

Marie’s expression changed.

Not dramatically.

Just enough.

Sven muttered, very quietly, “Jesus.”

Edward’s gaze cut briefly toward him.

Sven became fascinated by his call sheet.

“Lower your voice,” Edward said.

“No.”

His expression changed.

You never said no to him like that.

Not on set.

Not where people could hear.

Good.

Let them hear.

Then you looked at Kurt.

“Meeting room. You, me, Dad, Marie. Now.”

Kurt’s eyebrows rose.

“Are you directing this morning?”

“Apparently everyone else is directing my life, so why not?”

Marie let out a tiny breath.

Not quite a laugh.

Not quite horror.

Edward’s face hardened.

“Y/N.”

“I can do this in front of the cast and crew, if you like?”

For a second, no one moved.

Then Kurt exhaled through his nose.

“Fine. Meeting room in five.”

“No, now,” you said.

Kurt stared at you.

Then, oddly, his mouth twitched.

“Christ. Fine. Now.”

He turned toward the corridor.

Marie followed, still looking like she had walked into a house fire with a glass of water.

Edward remained where he was for half a second longer, watching you.

Father first.

Producer second.

The order should have comforted you.

It didn’t.

You walked past him into the temporary meeting room before he could say another word.

The room was too small for the four of you.

Folding chairs. Beige walls. Bad coffee. A table with a half-empty bottle of water on it and the same abandoned highlighter Tom had probably been touching because his hands never knew how to stay still.

That detail nearly undid you.

You stayed standing.

So did Edward.

Kurt shut the door.

Marie did not sit either.

For a moment, the silence pressed against all four walls.

Then you put the crushed call sheets on the table.

“This is bullshit.”

Edward’s mouth tightened.

“Language.”

“No. Don’t lecture me right now.”

Kurt looked at you sharply.

Not angry.

Interested now.

You turned fully to your father.

“Did James come to you?”

Edward did not answer fast enough.

That was answer enough.

Your stomach dropped anyway.

“Oh my God.”

“He was concerned.”

“He lied.”

Your father’s face hardened.

“Y/N—”

“He lied. Or he twisted it, which is the same thing dressed better. I told him I was struggling. I told him that Tom and I do not exactly get along. I told him the scenes were hard and awkward and humiliating. But I did not tell him Tom pressured me. I did not tell him Tom touched me outside the scene. I did not tell him I felt unsafe.”

Kurt looked at you then.

Properly.

Marie’s face stayed neutral, but her attention sharpened.

Edward’s expression shifted.

A fraction.

“You were very upset.”

“Yes. About my work. About myself. About freezing. Not about being assaulted by my co-star.”

Your father flinched at the word.

Good.

You wanted him to.

“No one used that word.”

“But you made everyone stand close enough to it, didn’t you?”

Silence.

Your hands were shaking now.

You hated that.

You folded your arms tightly, mostly to hide it.

“You had no right to do that without asking me.”

Edward lowered his voice.

“I was trying to protect you.”

“From what?”

He looked at you.

Again, father first.

Again, it did not help.

“From being pressured into work you’re not comfortable doing.”

“Then ask me.”

“Would you have told me?”

The question landed too close to something true.

You hated him for that too.

“That does not give you permission to invent the answer.”

Edward’s jaw tightened.

“I did not invent anything.”

“No. You let James do it for you.”

His face hardened again.

“James cares about you.”

“James likes control. There’s a difference.”

Kurt’s eyebrows moved slightly.

Edward noticed.

So did you.

For the first time, something like doubt crossed your father’s face.

Not enough.

But something.

You turned to Kurt.

“Put the scenes back in.”

Kurt blinked.

Edward’s gaze sharpened.

“Y/N.”

“No. Put them back. If Kurt pulled them because of scheduling, fine. If he pulled them because of this, put them back. I will not have my work rearranged because my fiancé decided to weaponise a private conversation and my father believed him before he believed me.”

The words came out clearer than you expected.

Not pretty.

Not calm.

But clear.

Kurt looked at you for a long moment.

Then at Edward.

Then back at you.

“I pulled them because I didn’t know what the hell I was dealing with this morning,” he said bluntly. “Now I know slightly more. So everyone can calm down before I start murdering people.”

You let out a breath that almost hurt.

Edward looked at him.

“Kurt—”

“No, Edward.” Kurt’s voice cut cleanly through the room. “She’s right about one thing. If we have a concern, we speak to the actor. Both actors. Directly. We don’t run a family tribunal through my call sheet.”

Edward went very still.

Kurt did not stop.

“And you know that. As producer, you know that. If this were anyone else’s daughter, you’d have told them to follow process and stop contaminating the set with private panic. But because it’s Y/N, your judgement got cloudy. Understandable, maybe. Still a problem.”

Your father’s face tightened.

You almost loved Kurt in that moment.

Almost.

Marie spoke then, calm and precise.

“For the record, I also should have spoken to Y/N directly before the meeting with Tom. I was told there was an immediate concern. I treated it as one. But she should have been included.”

You looked at her.

Some of the anger shifted.

Not gone.

But shifted.

“Thank you.”

Marie nodded once.

Kurt pointed at you.

“You. Makeup. Five minutes. Then we talk properly with Marie. No fathers. No fiancés. No ambushes.”

Then he looked toward the door, as if Tom were still visible through the wall.

“And I’ll deal with him.”

You swallowed.

“Fine.”

“Good. Now go.”

You looked at your father once more.

There were a dozen things you wanted to say.

That he had embarrassed you.

That he had embarrassed Tom.

That James had used him.

That you were so tired of men deciding what your distress meant before asking you.

But if you stayed another second, you were going to say all of it, and you did not know how much of it you would be able to take back.

So you picked up the crushed call sheets.

Then you left.

Not because you wanted to obey.

Because somewhere outside, Tom probably still thought you had done this to him.

That thought sat under your ribs like a stone.

Behind you, Edward watched the door close.

For the first time that morning, he looked less certain.

Kurt noticed.

“You need to ask yourself how much of this was her and how much was her fiancé who, I may add, sounds insane and unprofessional,” he said quietly.

Edward’s gaze stayed on the door.

“I was trying to protect my daughter.”

Kurt gave a dry, humourless laugh.

“Yes. That’s usually how people justify making a mess.”

Unbeknownst to you.

That was the important part.

You had not asked him to.

You had not even told him much.

In fact, you explicitly asked him not to talk to your father about anything that is happening on set.

Your message, sent between makeup and set when the dread of Kurt’s reshoot announcement had started climbing up the inside of your ribs, had been simple.

Kurt says we have to reshoot parts of yesterday’s intimacy scene next week. Dreading it. I’m worried I’ll screw it up again.

That was all.

No Tom.

No accusation.

No explanation.

Just fear.

Unfortunately, fear was very useful if someone knew how to hold it up to the light and make it cast a larger shadow.

The restaurant James chose was not one you would have liked.

Too quiet. Too expensive. Too many men in navy suits speaking in low voices over fish they did not particularly want. The kind of place where no one looked surprised by anything because surprise suggested a lack of control.

Your father liked it.

James knew he would.

Edward arrived five minutes late and apologised as if lateness were something that had happened to the room rather than something he had done.

“James.”

“Edward.”

They shook hands.

James waited until they had ordered before saying anything substantial.

He knew better than to rush your father.

Edward Y/L/N did not respond well to panic. He responded to evidence. Structure. Words like concern, pattern, and professional boundary.

So James gave him those.

Carefully.

At first.

“I’m sorry to ask for this privately,” James said. “I didn’t want to create alarm without speaking to you first.”

Your father’s eyes sharpened immediately.

“This is about Y/N.”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

James lowered his gaze briefly, as though weighing how much to say.

It was a good performance because it was not entirely false.

He had been weighing it since last night.

“She came home very upset.”

Edward sat back slightly.

“Upset how?”

“Drunk, for one.”

Your father’s expression hardened.

Not because you drank.

Because you drank when distressed, and he knew that.

“Go on.”

“She said she wanted to quit the film.”

That landed.

Edward went very still.

“She said that?”

“Not in a dramatic way. Not to manipulate. She was genuinely shaken.”

James let that sit.

Then, quietly:

“It centres around Tom.”

Your father’s face changed.

A fraction.

Enough.

“Sturridge?”

“Yes.”

Edward’s mouth tightened.

“What about him?”

James inhaled slowly.

“I want to be careful here.”

“Then be careful quickly.”

James looked up.

“He’s being inappropriate with her.”

The words hit the table cleanly.

Edward did not move.

For a second, he looked less like a producer and more like a father.

“Inappropriate how?”

James gave a small, pained pause.

Not too long.

Too long would look theatrical.

“Pressuring her. Pushing her through the physical scenes when she’s clearly uncomfortable. Getting angry when she freezes. Making her feel as though she’s the problem because she can’t respond the way he wants her to.”

Edward’s jaw tightened.

James watched it and knew he had chosen the right angle.

Not jealousy.

Safety.

Not Tom as rival.

Tom as risk.

“She told you this?” Edward asked.

“In her way.”

That was the perfect phrase.

Soft enough to avoid proof.

Intimate enough to imply knowledge.

Edward’s eyes stayed on him.

“What does that mean?”

James leaned forward slightly.

“It means she didn’t sit down and calmly say, James, my co-star is behaving inappropriately. She was drunk. Upset. Spiralling. She kept jumping from one thing to another. But the substance of it was very clear.”

Edward looked away.

A muscle moved in his jaw.

James continued, quieter now.

“She said he gets annoyed during the physical scenes. That she freezes. That he’s cold, impatient, judgemental. That she can’t work with him. That he makes her feel small. That he pressures her. That he makes her feel like she has to keep going even when her body is telling her no.”

The last sentence was the worst one.

James knew it.

He had built it from pieces of truth and inserted the lie so smoothly even he almost admired it.

You had said your body froze.

You had said Tom got annoyed.

You had said you felt humiliated.

You had not said Tom made you keep going.

You had not said Tom ignored you.

You had not said no.

But Edward did not know that.

And James knew how fathers listened when someone said their daughter had been pressured.

Edward’s hand rested beside his glass.

Still.

Too still.

“Did she say he touched her outside of what was scripted?”

James hesitated.

A calculated hesitation.

“She didn’t use those words.”

Edward’s gaze came back to him.

“James.”

“I’m not trying to make this worse than it is.”

That was a lie too.

He was making it exactly as bad as he needed it to be.

“Then answer me plainly.”

James nodded once.

Humble.

Measured.

“She said the physical work with him felt wrong. She said he was too much. She said he was angry. She said she felt trapped in the scene.”

Edward’s face darkened.

“Trapped.”

“Yes.”

You had not said trapped.

You had said you wanted to crawl out of your skin.

Close enough, James told himself.

Close enough to translate.

“Those were her words?”

“Edward,” James said softly. “You know what she’s like when she’s distressed.”

That stopped him.

Because Edward did know.

He knew the speed. The fragments. The jokes that came too bright and too fast. The way you circled the truth without landing on it because landing made it real.

James saw that recognition move across your father’s face and pressed gently into it.

“She doesn’t always say the clean sentence. She says ten other things around it and hopes someone understands what she means.”

Edward’s eyes lowered to the table.

That landed.

Of course it landed.

James had not only lied about Tom.

He had used something true about you to make the lie harder to refuse.

“And what you understood,” Edward said slowly, “is that Sturridge has behaved inappropriately.”

James held his gaze.

“Yes.”

A silence followed.

Heavy.

Useful.

The waiter arrived with food at exactly the wrong moment. Plates were set down. Polite words were exchanged. Neither man touched anything.

When the waiter left, Edward said, “Why didn’t she come to me?”

James gave him a faint, sad smile.

“Because you’re her father.”

Edward’s expression tightened.

“That is not an answer.”

“It is, though.”

James lowered his voice.

“She doesn’t want to disappoint you. She doesn’t want to seem difficult. She doesn’t want anyone saying she got the role because of you and then couldn’t handle it. She kept saying it was her fault. That she was bad at her job. That Kurt would regret casting her. That Tom already did.”

Edward’s face shifted at that.

Pride first.

Pain second.

Anger last.

James knew the order mattered.

“She blamed herself,” James said. “That’s what worries me.”

It was clever because it was true.

It was monstrous because of what he attached to it.

Edward picked up his glass, then set it down without drinking.

“Marie is there for these scenes.”

“I know.”

“Kurt would not allow anything improper on his set.”

“I know.”

“Then how could this happen?”

James let the question breathe.

Then:

“Because not every line is crossed loudly or where people can see.”

Edward went still again.

James looked down, as if he disliked having to say it.

“Sometimes it’s tone. Pressure. Impatience. A hand held half a second too long in rehearsal. A man making it clear with his face that if you stop, you’re the problem. Everyone around you calling it professionalism because nobody wants the delay.”

Edward was listening now.

Not questioning.

Listening.

James kept his voice quiet.

“Y/N knows how to perform being fine. She has spent her whole life doing it. She knows how to protect a production. A director. You. Especially you.”

Edward looked down at the table.

That hit.

James saw it.

He had known it would.

“I’m not saying he assaulted her,” James said.

A strong word.

An ugly one.

He used it deliberately, then pulled back from it before Edward could punish him for saying too much.

“I’m saying he is behaving inappropriately. I’m saying she is not comfortable with him. And I’m saying everyone seems to be asking her to push through that because the film needs the scene.”

Edward’s expression hardened.

“Who is everyone?”

“Kurt. Marie. The production. I don’t know.”

“Marie is the intimacy coordinator.”

“And I’m sure she’s very good.”

“She would flag an issue.”

“If Y/N let her see one.”

Edward went quiet.

James waited.

Then he took out his phone.

“She texted me earlier.”

He opened the message from you.

Short. Careless. Sent in a moment of anxiety.

Kurt says we have to reshoot parts of yesterday’s intimacy scene next week. Dreading it. I’m worried I’ll screw it up again.

Your father read it.

His face did not change at first.

Then it did.

Something cold moved through him.

“Next week.”

“Yes.”

“She agreed?”

“She says she did.”

Edward’s eyes stayed on the phone.

“She jokes like this.”

“I know.”

“She exaggerates.”

“I know.”

James paused.

Then softly:

“She also hides.”

Edward’s jaw tightened again.

James could see the thought settle.

You joking because you were afraid.

You agreeing because you did not know how not to.

You minimising because that was what you did when the alternative was needing help.

“Do you think the scene should be reshot?” Edward asked.

James did not answer immediately.

He looked down, then back up.

“No.”

Edward’s eyes held his.

James continued, quieter.

“Not until someone knows exactly why she reacts the way she does. Not until someone has asked whether she genuinely feels safe doing it. And not with him pressing her through it because he’s frustrated and unprofessional.”

Edward did not correct the word pressing this time.

That was when James knew he had him.

“Also, he was there last night,” James added.

Edward looked up.

“Where?”

“Outside the studio. When I picked her up.”

Edward’s expression shifted.

“And?”

“He was dismissive. Arrogant. Smoking in front of her like the whole thing was beneath him. He looked at her like—”

James stopped.

Good.

Let the unfinished sentence do more than the finished one could.

Edward leaned forward.

“Like what?”

James shook his head once.

“Like he had a right to her nerves.”

Your father’s face hardened.

That was enough.

James did not mention the kiss.

He did not mention that Tom had mostly looked tired and wary and furious with himself.

He did not mention that most of what he had seen outside the studio was silence.

He only said, “I may be wrong.”

Edward stood very still inside himself.

“You may be.”

“I hope I am.”

That was good too.

Humble.

Concerned.

Difficult to punish.

Edward looked down at your text again.

Then back at James.

“You have not spoken to anyone else about this?”

“No.”

“Not your sister?”

“No.”

“Not Y/N’s friends?”

“No.”

“Good.”

James inclined his head.

“Of course.”

Edward slid the phone back across the table.

His face was calm now.

Too calm.

The kind of calm that made assistants move faster and actors suddenly remember they had contracts.

“Leave it with me.”

James nodded.

“Thank you.”

Edward did not respond to that.

He was already somewhere else in his mind.

On set.

With Kurt.

With Marie.

With Tom.

With you.

James watched him and felt the first clean easing of tension all day.

He had not stopped the scene yet.

Not exactly.

But he had changed what the scene was.

It could no longer be a difficult reshoot between two actors.

Now it was a risk.

Now it was a question.

Now it was something your father could not ignore.

There was only the small, private satisfaction of having moved the first piece on the board.

Later that day….

By the time dinner with Jess and Maddy came around, you had almost convinced yourself the day had not been a disaster.

Almost.

You had filmed.

You had not vomited.

You had spoken to Tom that day, frequently, and only been mildly rude.

Kurt had said the scene needed reshooting, yes, but Kurt also said many upsetting things. That was his artistic process. Maybe he went home and told his houseplants they lacked emotional clarity.

Tom had been strange too.

That was the problem.

Not awful strange.

Worse.

Almost nice strange.

Careful.

That word kept bothering you.

He had been careful with you in a way that did not suit him. Asking if you were okay with the reshoot. Not available. Not professional. Okay.

You had replayed that more times than was appropriate for a woman with a fiancé, a headache, and an already catastrophic relationship with self-control.

Then there had been the book.

The stupid book.

The stupid, beautiful, obvious book.

He had seen it in your bag. He had clearly thought about it. Then he had sat there in makeup pretending Slaughterhouse-Five had simply fallen open in his lap by divine intervention.

And you had laughed.

That was the worst part.

You had laughed with him.

Not at him.

With him.

A small thing.

A dangerous thing.

By the time you wrapped, it was already dark enough outside to make the day feel longer than it had been. You changed quickly, scrubbed off enough makeup to look human rather than professionally lit, and texted James that you were going to dinner with the girls.

He replied almost immediately.

Good. Eat something proper. Text me when you’re on your way home.

You stared at the message for a second.

Then put your phone away without answering.

You arrived at the restaurant ten minutes late because you had changed outfits three times, lost your keys once, and spent four minutes standing in your hallway trying to remember whether you had fed Tom.

The hamster.

Not the man.

God.

Jess was already there when you arrived, which was unusual enough to be alarming.

She stood the second she saw you.

“Oh my God.”

You barely had time to put your bag down before she hugged you.

Jess hugged like she meant it. Hard. Warm. Immediate. You closed your eyes for half a second and let yourself be held.

Then she pulled back and looked at your face.

“You look exhausted.”

“Thank you. I was going for expensive corpse.”

Maddy, already seated with a glass of wine, lifted her hand.

“You nailed it.”

You slid into the chair beside her.

“I hate both of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Maddy said. “You’re too needy.”

Jess sat opposite you, still watching you too closely.

She had only just come back. Paris, then some campaign thing, then a weekend in the country with people you vaguely knew and did not like enough to remember properly. She looked tanned, glossy, and full of questions.

You could feel them before she asked.

That was the problem with Jess.

She loved you.

She also loved information.

And right now the information was Tom.

“So,” Jess said.

You picked up the menu immediately.

“No.”

Jess blinked.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You said so.”

“So is not a crime.”

“With you, it’s intent.”

Maddy snorted into her glass.

Jess ignored her.

“How is set?”

“Fine.”

“That was disgusting. Try again.”

“Tiring.”

“And?”

“Cold.”

“It’s summer.”

“Studios are freezing. It’s a known human rights issue.”

Jess leaned forward.

“And Tom?”

There it was.

Your fingers tightened on the menu.

Maddy saw it.

Jess did too, but Jess, unfortunately, was Jess.

“What?” she asked. “I’m allowed to ask.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. I know him.”

The table went a little quiet.

Maddy lowered her glass.

You kept looking at the menu even though the words had stopped making sense.

Starters. Burrata. Squid. Something with beetroot.

Tom.

Always Tom.

“How is he being?” Jess asked.

You exhaled.

“Jess.”

“I’m not asking in a weird way.”

“You are a little.”

“I just mean, is he being normal?”

You looked up then.

“Define normal.”

Jess made a face.

“You know what I mean.”

You did.

That was the problem.

Jess was not only asking because she was nosy. She was asking because she had slept with him. Because he had not called. Because he had become a story she pretended was funny and did not care about. Because now he was your co-star, and every piece of information about him came with a hook in it.

“He’s professional,” you said.

Maddy’s eyebrows went up.

You shot her a look.

Jess leaned in.

“Professional good or professional awful?”

“Professional professional.”

“Y/N.”

“What?”

“You are doing the thing where you use the same word twice and hope it becomes a wall.”

Maddy nodded.

“She does do that.”

“I’m right here.”

“We know,” Maddy said. “You’re being evasive very loudly.”

You put the menu down.

Too hard.

The cutlery jumped.

For a second, both of them went still.

You immediately felt awful.

“Sorry.”

Jess’s face softened.

“Hey.”

You rubbed your forehead.

The hangover had faded, but the exhaustion underneath it had not. It was sitting in your bones now. Set, James, Kurt, Tom, the reshoot, Layla at the coffee cart looking at you like she knew something you didn’t.

Everyone wanted Tom from you.

Tom as gossip.

Tom as warning.

Tom as problem.

Tom as man.

Tom as scene partner.

Tom as mistake.

You could not do it.

Not tonight.

You looked at Jess.

“I’m sorry. I love you. But please don’t make me talk about him.”

Jess sat back.

Hurt flickered across her face before she hid it.

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“I know.”

“I just wanted to know if he was being an asshole.”

A laugh came out of you.

Small. Tired. Not happy.

“We don’t exactly get along most days so, yes, he has been filed into the asshole category.”

Maddy’s gaze sharpened.

Jess went very quiet.

“Most days?” Maddy asked.

Shit.

You reached for your water.

“He was okay today, which was suspicious.”

Maddy leaned back in her chair.

“Define okay.”

“No.”

“That was not a complicated request.”

“It is when you ask it like a therapist.”

Jess glanced between you both.

“Wait. Okay how?”

You stared into your glass as if the answer might be floating somewhere among the ice.

“Just okay.”

Maddy made a soft sound.

You looked at her.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You made a noise.”

“A noise is not a statement.”

“With you, it absolutely is.”

Jess leaned forward again, interest returning despite herself.

“Was he nice?”

“No.”

Too quick.

Maddy’s eyebrows rose.

You hated her eyebrows.

“He was not nice,” you said, correcting yourself. “He was just less awful. There’s a difference.”

“A significant difference?” Maddy asked.

“A small one. Possibly not peer-reviewed.”

Jess smiled despite herself.

You rubbed your forehead.

“Kurt told us we have to reshoot part of the intimacy scene next week, which is horrifying, obviously. And afterward Tom asked if I was okay with it. Not if I was available. Not if I could do it. If I was okay.”

The table went quiet.

Maddy’s expression changed first.

Not surprised exactly.

Worried.

Jess looked down at her napkin.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” she said.

You shrugged.

“It was decent. Annoyingly.”

Maddy watched you.

“And suspicious.”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“Because he’s usually so committed to being impossible.”

“And today?”

You hesitated.

That was the mistake.

Maddy saw it immediately.

“Today?” she pressed.

You exhaled.

“Today he was still impossible. Just… more human about it.”

Jess’s face shifted at that.

You regretted the words the second they left your mouth.

Maddy did not miss that either.

Of course she didn’t.

She missed nothing.

You drank your water with the grim concentration of a woman defusing a bomb.

Finally, Jess said softly, “Did he say something to you? About me?”

You closed your eyes.

Not this again.

You opened your eyes.

“I need you to stop asking, Jess, please.”

Maddy’s expression did not change.

Jess looked unconvinced.

You leaned back in your chair and let your head rest against the wall behind you for a second.

“The work is difficult,” you said at last. “He is difficult. I am difficult. Kurt is insane. The script is intense. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m alright, which is making me feel significantly less alright. And I don’t want every dinner I have with people I love to become a debrief about Tom.”

Jess’s face changed.

There it was.

The name hurt her more than she wanted it to.

You regretted saying it immediately.

“Sorry,” you said.

Jess shook her head.

“No. It’s fine.”

It was not fine.

Maddy looked between you both and, for once, did not make a joke.

Then she reached for the wine list.

“Okay,” she said briskly. “New rule. No Tom talk for at least one hour.”

You looked at her with genuine gratitude.

“Thank you.”

Jess forced a smile.

“Fine. No Tom talk.”

“And no James talk,” Maddy added.

You frowned.

“Why would there be James talk?”

Maddy gave you a look.

“Because you’re wearing the face of someone whose fiancé has been managing her emotions like a hostile corporate merger.”

Jess’s eyebrows lifted.

You stared at Maddy.

“I hate how specific you are.”

“I know.”

Jess picked up her menu again, softer now.

“So what can we talk about?”

Maddy did not hesitate.

“Me.”

You laughed despite yourself.

Jess laughed too, a beat later.

The tension eased.

Not gone.

But eased.

You let it.

For one hour, you talked about Maddy’s disastrous fitting with a model who refused to wear green, Jess’s trip, a mutual acquaintance’s breakup, whether the waiter was flirting with Maddy or just frightened of her, and the fact that your hamster Tom had apparently learned how to climb onto the low shelf beside his cage and was now behaving like a tiny Victorian ghost whenever you entered the room.

You did not talk about Tom.

Not the man.

Not the scene.

Not the reshoot.

Not the fact that somewhere, without your knowledge, James had already made sure your father was thinking about all three.

It almost worked.

Then Jess had two glasses of wine, and her bravery came back badly disguised as indifference.

“I know we said an hour,” she said.

Maddy put down her fork.

“Jessica.”

“What? It’s been more than an hour.”

“By seven minutes.”

“Still counts.”

You looked between them.

“I am suddenly fascinated by dessert.”

Jess ignored that.

“I just need to ask one thing.”

Maddy’s face flattened.

“No, you don’t.”

Jess looked at her.

“I do, actually.”

“You really don’t.”

“Maddy.”

“Jess.”

You picked up your glass of water.

“This is fun. I feel like a child of divorce.”

Jess looked back at you.

Her voice softened.

“Did he mention me? Because you didn’t answer before.”

There it was.

Small.

Awful.

Honest enough that you could not make a joke.

Your heart sank.

Maddy closed her eyes for half a second.

You set your water down.

“Jess.”

“Just once?”

You did not know what to say.

Tom had mentioned Jess.

Not gently.

Not cruelly either.

He had used her name as part of a mess. A fact. A point in an argument about hypocrisy and age and your friendship and James and New York.

But that was not what Jess was asking.

Jess was asking if Tom thought about her.

If he regretted not calling.

If she had mattered enough to appear in his life after she left the room.

And the honest answer was probably no.

Maddy reached across the table and touched Jess’s wrist.

“Please don’t do this to yourself.”

Jess looked at her.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m just asking.”

“You’re asking Y/N to hand you proof that a man who did not choose you was secretly affected by you. That is doing it to yourself.”

Jess’s face tightened.

“That’s harsh.”

“Yes. And I love you enough to be harsh before you turn this into a personality disorder.”

You almost choked on your water.

Jess shot you a wounded look.

“Sorry,” you said quickly. “Not funny. Very serious. Continue.”

Maddy did not soften.

“He doesn’t want you, Jess. Not properly. Maybe he wanted you for sex. Maybe he liked you. Maybe he thought you were beautiful. I’m sure he did. He’s not blind. But if he wanted you in the way you keep trying to make him want you, you would not be asking Y/N for scraps of evidence over pasta.”

Jess looked down.

For a second, she looked much younger than she was.

You hated Tom then.

Not fairly.

Not rationally.

But you hated him for being the kind of man women could bruise themselves against and still apologise to the table for bleeding.

“I know that,” Jess said.

Maddy’s voice gentled slightly.

“Do you?”

Jess swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Then get over him. Please. Hate him if you need to. Mock him. Sleep with someone prettier. Join a cult. I don’t care. But stop feeding it.”

You stared at her.

“Join a cult?”

“A tasteful one,” Maddy said.

Jess laughed despite herself.

It came out watery.

“You’re awful.”

“I’m effective.”

Jess wiped under one eye quickly, annoyed at herself for needing to.

“I don’t even know why I care.”

“Because he’s unavailable and inconsistent and very good-looking,” Maddy said. “The holy trinity of terrible decisions.”

You looked down at your plate.

Maddy noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Maddy noticed everything.

Her gaze flicked to you, just for a second, and something in it changed.

Private.

Concerned.

You pretended not to see.

Jess took a breath.

“Fine. I’ll stop asking about him.”

“Good,” Maddy said.

Jess pointed a fork at her.

“You’re still mean.”

“Yes. But my cheekbones make it aspirational.”

You laughed then.

Jess did too.

Again, the tension moved away, but this time it left something behind.

A mark on the table.

A shape you could not unsee.

Maddy was still watching you when Jess got up to go to the bathroom ten minutes later.

You felt it immediately.

“Don’t.”

Maddy leaned back in her chair.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

“So do you. Yours is doing something deeply inconvenient.”

You looked toward the bathroom.

“Maddy.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Don’t.”

She lowered her voice.

“I’m not Jess. I’m not asking because I want gossip.”

“Then don’t ask.”

“You said he was strange today.”

You looked back sharply.

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t use the word. You described it with your entire body.”

You hated her.

You loved her.

It was unbearable how often those feelings arrived together.

“He was just less horrible.”

“Less horrible how?”

“Maddy.”

“How?”

You exhaled.

“Well, again, he asked if I was okay with the reshoot. Properly. Not in front of Kurt. Not as a formality. He asked.”

Maddy’s face gave nothing away.

“And?”

“And then we had an argument about Vonnegut in makeup.”

Her eyebrows rose.

“Vonnegut?”

“It was not romantic.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Your face did.”

“My face does weird things sometimes.”

You tried not to smile.

Failed.

Maddy watched the smile, and that was worse.

“Y/N.”

“No.”

“You’re engaged.”

The words were quiet.

They hit anyway.

You looked down.

“I know.”

“To James.”

“I know who I’m engaged to, thanks.”

“Do you?”

Your eyes snapped back up.

Maddy did not flinch.

That was the infuriating thing about her. She could say the cruel thing and make it sound like care because sometimes it was.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means sometimes you talk about James like he is a calendar event you keep forgetting you agreed to attend.”

You opened your mouth.

Nothing came out.

Maddy’s expression softened.

“I’m not judging you.”

“That sounded exactly like judging.”

“Fine. I’m judging a little. But lovingly.”

You looked away.

The restaurant was warm and loud and golden around you. People talking. Glasses clinking. Someone laughing too hard at the bar. Jess’s bag sat on the chair opposite, pretty and expensive and careless.

You could feel the day pressing against you again.

Tom’s eyes in the mirror.

James’s text.

Kurt saying reshoot.

Tom asking if you were okay.

Your father somewhere in the world, still unaware of everything that mattered.

Or so you thought.

“I don’t have feelings for Tom,” you said. “I still think he’s an asshole.”

Maddy was quiet for a second.

Too quiet.

Then she said, “I know you hate him. I also know that hate and desire have been known to hold hands in dark alleys.”

Your stomach dropped.

“No.”

You hated yourself instantly.

“I mean—”

“I know what you mean.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I really think I do.”

You leaned forward.

“It’s complicated because of New York. That’s all. It’s awkward. And the scenes are intimate. And we annoy each other. And he was awful, and now he’s slightly less awful, and my brain is stupid. That is not the same thing as feelings.”

Maddy studied you.

“No,” she said. “But it is how people with feelings describe feelings when they are trying very hard not to use the word feelings.”

You stared at her.

“You are being deeply unhelpful.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

You sat back.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Then Maddy reached across and squeezed your hand.

“I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. I’m saying this is messy. And I’m saying messy becomes dangerous when you keep pretending it’s tidy.”

Your throat tightened.

“Jess slept with him.”

“Yes.”

“And I am engaged to James.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s forty.”

“Also yes.”

“He thinks I’m a nightmare.”

“He might.”

That annoyed you.

You looked up.

Maddy’s mouth twitched.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Say it.”

“I just don’t think men reread books because they think someone is a nightmare.”

You went hot.

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

“He did not read it because of me.”

“Sure.”

“He didn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Maddy.”

“What? I’m agreeing.”

“No, you’re doing that voice.”

“What voice?”

“The voice you use when you think I’m lying but you’re letting me finish embarrassing myself.”

She smiled.

“It’s a good voice. Very efficient.”

You groaned and covered your face with both hands.

Maddy laughed softly, then squeezed your wrist.

“Listen to me. Just be careful. That’s all. Not because Tom is evil. Not because you are. But because there are too many people attached to this, and one of them is Jess, and one of them is James, and one of them is your father, which makes everything fifty times worse.”

You lowered your hands.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

She watched you.

Then nodded, though she did not look convinced.

Jess returned then, bright-eyed and reassembled.

“Why do you both look guilty?”

You and Maddy answered at the same time.

“We don’t.”

Jess stopped beside the table.

“Subtle.”

Maddy picked up her wine.

“We were talking about you joining a cult.”

Jess sat down.

“Still?”

“I have concerns about your commitment level.”

“I’m not joining a cult.”

“That’s exactly what someone without ambition would say.”

You laughed.

Jess laughed.

Maddy smiled.

And for a while, you let the conversation move on.

You ordered dessert.

Jess stole half of yours.

Maddy threatened to invoice both of you for emotional labour.

You sent James a text at 10:43 saying you were still at dinner, because it was easier than having him ask.

He replied with a heart.

You stared at it for too long.

Then turned your phone face down.

Maddy saw.

Jess did not.

Outside, London kept moving around you, bright and careless and indifferent.

And somewhere else, your father was already deciding what needed to be done and called Kurt.

12:57.

The hallway was dark. The house was quiet. Ellie’s trainers were not by the door, which meant she was at Ruth’s, which he knew, of course and which meant there was no practical reason for Tom to lower the volume of his keys, no reason to ease the door shut with the heel of his hand, no reason to stand still for a moment after he entered like he had come home to a sleeping child.

Habit did that to you.

So did guilt.

He dropped his keys into the bowl by the door and missed.

They hit the table instead, sharp and ugly in the silence.

“Brilliant,” he muttered.

He took off his coat. Then put it back on the hook properly because Ellie had once told him that watching him throw coats over chairs made her feel like she lived with an annoying teenage boy.

Then he went into the kitchen, turned on the tap, and drank water straight from the glass he had not fully washed that morning.

His mouth still tasted of Layla.

Not unpleasantly.

That was the problem.

Nothing about the evening had been unpleasant enough to justify how foul he felt afterward.

Layla had been pretty. Available. Warm in the practiced, undemanding way she had learned he liked. She had laughed at the right moments, touched him without asking for anything, and not looked wounded when he dressed too quickly after. She had not asked to come home with him.

She knew better than that.

His place was off limits.

He had explained it months ago with the clean practicality of a man who believed honesty became kindness if you delivered it early enough.

“Ellie comes and goes,” he had said. “I don’t bring people back.”

People.

Such a useful word.

So empty.

Layla had accepted that. At least, she had looked as though she had accepted that. She was good at looking like things.

Tom stood in the kitchen with the glass in his hand and stared out at the black window above the sink.

He should have been tired.

He was tired.

His body had the used, heavy feel of a body that had been touched, fed, smoked through, and then dragged home against its will. His brain, unfortunately, had other plans. His brain had decided it was absolutely vital to replay the scene from set.

Not the part where you had kissed him.

That would have been easier.

That would have been manageable. Desire, he understood. Regret, he understood. Lust arriving at the wrong time, wearing the wrong face, causing logistical and moral inconvenience — fine. He had survived that before.

No.

His brain kept replaying the moment after.

Your face.

Your body going wrong under his hands.

Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Not actorly.

That had been the worst of it.

You had not made a meal of fear. You had just gone very still, the life pulled down inside you like curtains closing in a house.

He put the glass down.

Too hard.

Water sloshed onto the counter.

“Fuck,” he said quietly.

He wiped it up with his sleeve because apparently adulthood had ended sometime around midnight.

He had been harsh with you.

Of course he had.

He knew that.

He was not so stupid that he could pretend otherwise. He had been angry the second he understood who you were. Angry before you had earned any of it. Angry about New York. Angry about your age. Angry about James. Angry about Jess. Angry about your father. Angry, most of all, that you had walked back into his life in a professional context where his options were either behave impeccably or reveal himself to be exactly as messy as he felt.

So he had behaved badly.

Professionally enough, maybe. Technically. On paper.

But emotionally?

No.

He had cornered you in conversation. He had made assumptions. He had thrown your age at you like an accusation. He had treated you like a problem he could solve by making himself colder.

And then yesterday, when the scene had required trust, you had looked at him like there was no floor beneath you.

The thought moved through him once.

Then again.

Then louder.

Does she feel unsafe with me during those takes?

Tom hated the question so much he actually stepped away from the counter, as if distance would help.

No.

Surely no.

He was many things. Difficult. Defensive. Too sharp when embarrassed. Obsessive about work. Capable of being selfish, impatient, and on truly special days, a complete prick.

But unsafe?

Women had been annoyed with him. Disappointed in him. Attached to him when he had not wanted them to be. Furious with him. He had earned all of that. But unsafe?

He rubbed both hands over his face.

“No. Come on.”

The kitchen did not answer.

The house was dark around him, smug with its own silence.

He tried to imagine the scene from your side.

Bad idea.

His brain immediately overcommitted.

You arriving late. You already anxious. Him watching you too closely. Him making everything into evidence. Him knowing too much and not enough. The kiss. The camera. Marie nearby but not close enough. Kurt’s eyes on the monitor. Your father somewhere behind the entire production like weather.

Then Tom himself.

Forty. Experienced. Irritated. A man you had slept with once without knowing his name. A man who had then looked at you as though you had committed fraud by being younger than he had assumed.

His stomach tightened.

He had not meant to make you afraid.

That was useless.

Men said that all the time. He knew they did. He had heard enough women talk, really talk, when they forgot he was listening or decided he was allowed to hear it. Intention mattered less than effect. He knew that. He hated knowing that and still wanting to defend himself.

He went upstairs.

Took off his shirt.

Sat on the edge of the bed.

Did not lie down.

His thoughts kept splitting.

You had been terrible in that scene.

You were not terrible.

The scene had been terrible.

No, the scene itself was good.

The first beat had worked.

Your solo work was good.

Your solo work was more than good.

So why did you fall apart with him?

Did he make you self-conscious?

Did you hate him?

Did you want him?

Was wanting him the problem?

Did he want you?

Obviously.

No.

Yes.

Shut up.

He stood again.

His skin felt too tight.

He showered. Too hot. Then too cold. Then too long. He washed Layla off him and did not feel cleaner. By the time he got out, his hair was damp, his eyes looked worse, and he was beginning to understand that sleep was not going to happen by negotiation.

He pulled on tracksuit bottoms, went downstairs, and turned the television on.

He did not choose deliberately.

That was what he told himself.

He was scrolling. That was all. Moving through titles with the unfocused aggression of a man trying not to think. Crime documentary. Cooking show. Scandinavian thriller. Something about cults. A comedy Ellie had told him was not for him, which of course meant it was probably exactly for him and he would have to pretend otherwise.

Then he saw it.

The show Ellie had mentioned on the weekend.

The one with the loop and the psych ward.

“Your co-star is in that,” Ellie had said, too casually.

He hovered over the title.

The thumbnail was ridiculous. Neon corridor. Girl in hospital socks. Blood on a mirror. Some marketing executive had clearly used the words mind-bending and sexy in the same meeting and not been struck by lightning.

Tom pressed play.

“One episode,” he said aloud, because lying to yourself apparently worked better with witnesses.

The show was dreadful.

Within seven minutes, he knew the central plot made no sense. Within eleven, he had identified three continuity errors and one supporting performance so wooden it could have been used to build a pier. By eighteen minutes, someone had explained the time loop in dialogue so clumsy Tom actually paused the show and stared at the ceiling.

“Who wrote this?”

Still, he kept watching.

At twenty-three minutes, you appeared.

Not glamorous.

You were sitting on the floor of a psychiatric ward corridor in an oversized jumper, bare knees drawn to your chest, one sock half off, hair damp at the temples. Fluorescent light flattened your face. There was no music under the scene. No mercy.

A nurse crouched in front of you.

You stared past her, lips moving silently.

Then you laughed.

It was not a pretty laugh. It was too sudden, too bright, a sound with something broken underneath it.

The nurse said something soft.

You looked at her then, and the whole shape of your face changed.

Not fear exactly.

Recognition.

Like you had just remembered the world was dangerous and were embarrassed to have forgotten.

“Is this Wednesday?” you asked in the show, voice small and hoarse. “Or the other Wednesday?”

The nurse did not understand.

You did.

That was the thing.

You played the scene as though the logic made perfect sense inside your own head. You were not performing madness for an audience. You were living inside a rule system nobody else could see. Your fingers scratched at your own wrist, not enough to draw blood, enough to suggest a habit. Your breathing moved too quickly, then stopped entirely when the lights flickered.

Another patient down the corridor screamed.

You flinched before the scream came.

Tom sat forward.

On screen, the nurse reached for you.

You slapped her hand away, then immediately looked devastated by what you had done.

“Don’t touch me on the first one,” you whispered. “I’m better by the third. I know I am. I’m better by the third.”

The nurse said your character’s name.

You smiled.

Then cried without any transition at all.

Not beautifully.

Not with one cinematic tear.

Your face folded, almost childlike, but your body remained unnervingly still, as though crying was just another symptom you had learned to endure without giving it the satisfaction of movement.

Tom forgot, for a few seconds, that the show was bad.

He forgot the writing was absurd. Forgot the plot holes. Forgot himself.

He watched you.

When the episode ended, Netflix tried to autoplay the next one.

Tom stopped it.

The room went quiet.

He stared at his own reflection in the dark television screen.

“So you can do that,” he said softly.

It sounded almost accusing.

That was the problem, then.

Not ability.

Never ability.

You could sit on the floor of a dreadful show and make the scene feel like it had been smuggled in from something better. You could take nonsense and make it specific. You could make fear ugly, human, precise.

So why, with him, had you vanished?

Tom turned the television off and sat in the darkness for a while longer.

Eventually, because exhaustion had finally found him and because self-hatred could only carry a man so far past two in the morning, he went upstairs and got into bed.

He did not sleep immediately.

But at some point his brain stopped asking the question.

Not because it had answered it.

Because it was afraid to.

*************

The next morning, you woke up with your mouth tasting like wine, shame, and expensive restaurant bread.

For a few seconds, you did not move.

Movement felt like a negotiation you were not yet emotionally prepared to enter.

The room was too bright. The curtains were technically closed, but a thin, vicious line of daylight had managed to force itself through the gap and land directly across your face, because apparently even architecture wanted you punished.

Your head hurt.

Not dramatically. Not in a cinematic, hand-to-forehead way.

It hurt in layers.

Behind the eyes. At the base of the skull. Somewhere in your jaw, probably from clenching your teeth all night. Your tongue felt too large for your mouth. Your skin felt overheated and under-attached, like it belonged to someone else and had been pinned onto you badly.

You opened one eye.

Your phone was on the bedside table.

You had six unread messages.

Three from Maddy.

One from Jess.

One from your agent.

One from James, despite the fact that he had been sleeping beside you when he sent it.

That made you frown.

You opened his first.

Drink water before coffee. There’s paracetamol on the kitchen counter. I had an early meeting. You were very drunk last night. Don’t panic. I love you.

You stared at the message.

The words should have been sweet.

They probably were sweet.

But something about very drunk made your stomach sink. It sounded factual in the way James liked facts to sound when they were really verdicts.

You remembered pieces.

The restaurant.

The candle.

Napkin snow.

James telling you to eat bread.

You saying something about Tom.

Your stomach sank further.

Oh God.

You sat up too quickly and immediately regretted everything.

“Fuck,” you whispered.

Then, because your mouth was dry and your brain apparently had no interest in survival, you got dressed, forgot your earrings, came back for your earrings, forgot your script, came back for your script, opened the fridge for absolutely no reason, drank water from the tap like an animal, and left the flat with your sunglasses on indoors.

Outside, London looked offensive.

Too sharp. Too grey. Too loud.

By the time you reached the studio, you had developed the very specific confidence of a hungover person pretending not to be hungover, which meant you were moving carefully, speaking politely to everyone, and internally begging every light source to show mercy.

Luckily, most of your scenes that day were not with Tom.

That was the only reason you did not fake your own death in the makeup chair.

Natalia took one look at you and smiled with too much knowledge.

“Late night?”

You lowered yourself into the chair like an elderly duchess.

“I have never had a late night in my life.”

“Mm.”

“I am all about clean living.”

“Of course.”

She clipped your hair back.

You winced.

“Ow.”

“I barely touched you.”

“My hair is hungover.”

Natalia laughed.

You closed your eyes and tried not to die.

It was not just the alcohol. That would have been easier. You could have managed a normal hangover. You had managed worse in drama school, at wrap parties, at your brother’s birthday, at one particularly cursed charity gala where you had drunk tequila with a woman from Vogue and spent the next morning apologising to a ficus.

This was different.

This was emotional alcohol residue.

Everything you had said last night kept arriving in the wrong order.

Tom is an asshole.

I want to quit.

Don’t tell Dad.

Had you said that?

You had, hadn’t you?

You had told James not to tell your father.

Your stomach turned.

No. He wouldn’t.

Probably.

Maybe.

He had said you were drunk. He had not promised. That was very James. Slippery without ever technically lying.

You rubbed your forehead and tried to remember whether he had looked guilty.

Then the runner brought coffee orders in.

You nearly cried with relief.

“I’ll get mine,” you said, standing too quickly.

Natalia caught your elbow.

“Slowly, clean-living girl.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re green.”

“That’s my undertone.”

The coffee shop had become your first real destination of the day. Your one hope. Your small paper-cupped salvation.

And then Layla was there.

You recognised her quickly. A pretty girl behind the counter, hair pulled back, eyeliner neat, expression blank in that service-industry way that could either mean welcome or I have seen everything and hate all of you.

Then she looked at you properly.

Something shifted.

Not visibly enough for anyone else to notice.

But you noticed.

You always noticed.

Her gaze landed on your face, moved once over your sunglasses, then down to your phone when you placed it on the counter to fish out your card.

Your lock screen lit up.

A hamster stared back, round-eyed and stupidly beloved.

Layla’s mouth tightened by a fraction.

You were too hungover to understand the significance of that.

You only panicked because the hamster made you look insane.

You flipped the phone over.

“Sorry.”

Layla blinked.

“For what?”

“Nothing. The hamster. He’s not usually involved in my morning routine.”

Layla watched you.

Her expression stayed polite.

Perfectly polite.

“Coffee?”

“Yes. Please. Large. Violent.”

“Violent?”

“Whatever has the most caffeine I can get.”

“Double shot?”

“Triple if you’re generous.”

Layla turned to make it.

Her hands were steady.

Too steady.

You stood there, hot-faced, aware of your own breathing, your sunglasses, your script bag sliding off your shoulder, the fact that your phone was face down like it had done something wrong.

Layla had started stalking your Instagram from the bathtub in the Hilton.

She had told herself she was not stalking.

She was checking.

There was a difference, probably.

Checking was when you looked once.

Stalking was when you ended up thirteen months deep, damp hair piled on top of your head, bathwater cooling around your knees, thumb moving with a horrible independent determination while you learned things you had no right to know.

Twenty-four.

Engaged.

Daughter of Edward Y/L/N, which explained the face, the clothes, the particular kind of carelessness that came from having always been photographed and still somehow not knowing what to do with your hands.

West End. A few television roles. Two red carpets where you looked bored and expensive. A birthday post from a girl named Maddy. A picture of you holding a hamster against your cheek with the caption Tom, love of my life, destroyer of curtains.

Tom.

Out of all names.

A stupid hamster named Tom.

Layla had lain in that bath and hated you a little for that alone.

Not rationally.

Rational had left when she found the messages.

That had been the first real mistake.

Not Tom’s.

Hers.

She had known not to look.

She was not stupid. She was careful. Careful girls survived longer around men like Tom, men who liked warmth but not need, sex but not questions, cleverness but not complication. Layla had understood that early. She had understood it better than Jess, certainly. Jess had wanted too obviously. Jess had texted too much, laughed too brightly, looked disappointed too openly when Tom left. Jess had made the wanting visible.

Layla had not.

Layla knew the value of silence.

She knew how long to wait before replying. She knew not to ask where he had been. She knew not to ask if there were other women because the answer was obvious and the question would only make her look young.

There were other women.

Of course there were.

Anya, for one.

Anya was saved with a surname in his phone, which irritated Layla because it suggested history or professionalism or both. Layla had looked her up last night too. Model. Sharp. Expensive. Boring in the way very beautiful women could be boring because the world had done half their personality work for them. The messages were dry enough. Friendly. Possibly sex. Probably sex. Nothing that made Layla’s skin crawl.

You were different.

You appeared in his friend group chat.

Not directly at first. Not as a name that mattered.

A complaint.

A joke.

A sharp little comment from Tom about nightmare actresses and being too old for this shit. Then Rob saying something that made Sam send three laughing emojis. Then your name again. Then James. Then engaged.

Engaged.

That part had lodged under Layla’s ribs.

Because when had Tom slept with you?

Before?

After?

New York, maybe. He had mentioned New York once and then stopped himself. Not to Layla. Never to Layla directly. To someone else, in a voice message he had left for someone while half-dressed and careless, because men like Tom assumed women like Layla were not listening if they were brushing their hair.

She was always listening.

Had you been engaged then?

Had he known?

Had you lied?

Had he?

Layla knew it was insane to care about a man she had agreed not to claim. She knew that. She was not without self-awareness. Self-awareness was not the same thing as self-control.

And she did have self-control.

That was the part people missed.

She knew his cigarettes. The brand. The lighter he preferred and the one he used when he was trying to smoke less.

She knew the gym he went to because he had once mentioned the street, and she had put it together from there. She had never gone in. That would be mad. She had only walked past once. Twice. Three times, maybe, but never at a time he would be there.

She knew what wine he liked and had tried to like it too, even though it was too heavy and made her tongue feel coated.

She knew the books he read. Not all of them. Some were impossible. She had bought one because she had seen it on him, then spent three evenings dragging herself through seventy pages she barely understood because she liked the idea that he might one day say a sentence about it and she would be ready.

She knew where he lived.

He had never told her.

Not properly.

But once, months ago, after he had kissed her goodbye and walked away, she had followed him quietly. She had told herself she was going in the same direction.

That had been a lie.

She had followed at a distance so careful even she had been impressed by herself.

She had learned the street.

Later she had learned which house, which was easy enough to find because his car was parked in the driveway.

Later, she had learned the school his daughter went to.

Not because it mattered.

It did not matter.

His daughter was irrelevant.

Layla told herself that firmly whenever that particular knowledge made something cold and wrong move through her stomach.

It was irrelevant.

She would never do anything with it.

Knowing was not doing.

Checking was not stalking.

Waiting was not needing.

And yet now you stood in front of her, hungover and chaotic, wearing sunglasses indoors and apologising to her because your hamster had appeared on your phone.

You did not even know she existed.

Not really.

That made Layla feel something close to rage.

She put the lid on your coffee and turned back.

“Triple shot.”

You looked genuinely grateful.

That irritated her.

“Thank you. You may have saved a life.”

“Yours?”

“Potentially several. Mine first, then anyone who speaks too loudly near me before midday.”

For half a second, Layla almost smiled.

Then she remembered Tom’s mouth on her wrist.

The mark on his neck.

The group chat.

Hamster girl.

She slid the coffee across the counter.

“Careful. It’s hot.”

“Thank you.”

You reached for the cup, missed the sleeve slightly, recovered badly, and knocked a wooden stirrer onto the floor.

You stared down at it.

Layla stared at you.

You crouched to pick it up, sunglasses slipping down your nose.

“I’m usually more competent than this.”

“Are you?”

You looked up.

There was nothing openly rude in her tone.

That made it worse.

You smiled uncertainly.

“Some days.”

Then you stood, took the coffee, and escaped before you could make anything stranger.

Layla watched you go.

Your bag slipped again. You caught it with your elbow. Your phone nearly slid from under your script. You somehow saved that too. A runner greeted you and you answered too brightly, then visibly winced at your own volume.

Layla’s jaw tightened.

Why her?

It was not just jealousy.

Jealousy was too simple a word for something this precise.

Layla knew what men looked like when they were bored. She knew what Tom looked like bored. Affectionate, charming, absent. His attention could be warm and useless, like a lamp left on in an empty room.

When he talked about you, he was not bored.

Irritated, yes.

Furious, sometimes.

Judgmental. Defensive. Ridiculous.

But not bored.

Never bored.

That was what frightened her.

Tom did not complain about women he did not want.

He forgot them.

But he had complained about you to her on many occasions and that, in itself, made her understand that this was serious.

***********

Filming that day, mercifully, went fine.

Not brilliantly.

Not the kind of day anyone would remember in interviews later as the moment everything clicked.

But fine.

You got through three scenes without Tom, two with a supporting actor who smelled faintly of mint and fear, and one long, emotionally ugly monologue in a therapist’s office that Kurt watched without blinking for the entire take.

When he finally called cut, he sat back in his chair.

“Good.”

You stared at him.

“Good good, or good as in please leave me alone now?”

Kurt looked at you over his glasses.

“Do you need me to make praise more decorative?”

“It would help my self-esteem.”

“Your self-esteem is not in the call sheet.”

You nodded.

“Right. Good good, then.”

Kurt’s mouth twitched.

Almost.

That was basically a standing ovation from him.

For a while, the day settled.

Coffee helped.

Water helped.

Makeup helped.

Avoiding Tom helped most of all.

You saw him twice across the lot and managed not to walk into anything either time, which felt like personal growth. He looked tired. Not hungover, annoyingly. Just tired in that attractive, cinematic way men got to be tired, where the shadows under their eyes made them look more interesting instead of like they had been poisoned by Pinot Noir.

You hated him for that.