Request - please keep tom saying "if I get you I'll end it with them" that was so wonderful please please in CIM. Also the line where she says "stop staring at my breasts you can appreciate them later in private"
On my way home from my trip today! So excited to see what I missed these last few days! I can't wait to read tonight but first I have to get my son's school supplies in check! I missed your stories sooo much but the wifi in the hotel was fucked up and I cannot wait to go home!
Do not stress! Family time is the most important! I am of course looking forward to your comments xxx
There are some CIM chapters I re read as comfort reading, I know you are changing things but are the old chapters still up to read until they are updated?
The chapters are still there - I just removed them from the master list to avoid confusion xx
How are we feeling about what’s happening in CIM? I don’t seem get as much interaction on that rewrite 🙏 sorry for rewriting it but I promise the overall premise won’t change and it will be really worth it ❤️❤️❤️
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
The year after...
After your one night stand in New York, you also became very good at looking busy.
Not fine.
Fine was too ambitious.
Fine implied you were sleeping properly, eating things that involved more than toast, remembering to answer texts before they became emotional evidence, and not occasionally standing in your kitchen at midnight holding a spoon with absolutely no memory of why you had opened the drawer.
But busy?
Busy you could do.
Busy looked respectable.
Busy looked like work.
Busy looked like scripts on your coffee table, calls with your agent, rehearsals, fittings, opening nights, meetings in cafés where everyone drank oat milk and said things like “strategic visibility” as if that wasn’t the least sexy phrase in the English language.
Busy looked like not texting James back immediately.
That was the important part.
Because James was persistent.
Not loudly.
Never loudly.
James did not beg in ugly ways. He did not send twenty missed calls or turn up drunk or leave desperate voice notes. That would have been easier to hate.
James was tasteful.
Controlled.
Dangerously sweet.
Flowers arrived at your flat two weeks after New York.
White roses and pale pink peonies in a heavy glass vase, the kind of arrangement that looked expensive without needing to shout about it. You stood in your doorway holding them while the delivery man waited for you to sign, and for one horrifying second you almost cried because they were beautiful.
Then you saw the lilies.
You hated lilies.
You had hated them since your sister’s funeral, when every room had smelled thick and white and choking, like grief had a perfume.
James knew that.
Or he should have.
The card said:
I miss you. No pressure. Just wanted you to have something beautiful.
No pressure.
You stared at that line for a long time.
Then put the flowers in the kitchen, took the lilies out one by one, dropped them in the bin, and felt like a bad person for doing it.
That was how James got in.
Not through cruelty.
Through guilt.
Through memory.
Through the fact he had been there during the worst year of your life, and sometimes your heart still confused being witnessed at your lowest with being loved at your truest.
You were not ready to forgive him.
You told yourself that every morning.
You were not ready.
Not yet.
And then, in August 2025, you got a hamster.
It was an accident, technically.
A very expensive accident involving a pet shop, a tiny grey-and-white creature with black eyes, and your complete inability to leave anything anxious-looking alone.
Maddy answered your FaceTime from Paris and found you sitting cross-legged on your bedroom floor surrounded by bedding, tubes, a wheel, three chew toys, and instructions you had absolutely not read in the correct order.
She stared at the screen.
“Is that a hamster?”
You looked up, offended.
“Yes.”
“Why do you have a hamster?”
“Because he was looking at me.”
Maddy blinked.
“They all look at people. They have eyes.”
You held up a piece of plastic tubing.
“That is an incredibly cold thing to say about the new man in my life.”
“The what?”
“Yes.”
The hamster sat in the corner of his half-built cage, clutching a seed with both tiny hands, vibrating with fear and judgment.
Maddy leaned closer to the camera.
“What’s his name?”
You had meant to choose something clever.
Something literary.
Something Greek, maybe. Or dramatic. Or ironic in a way that made you look like a person who named animals with intention.
Instead, you looked at him and said:
“Tom.”
Maddy went very still.
“Tom?”
“Yes.”
“Why Tom?”
You looked back down at the hamster.
He shoved the seed into his mouth, then froze like he had committed a crime.
“He looks like a Tom.”
“He looks like a cotton ball having a panic attack.”
“Exactly.”
Hamster Tom became the emotional centre of your flat within forty-eight hours.
You bought him a better wheel because the first one seemed morally inadequate. You watched videos about hamster enrichment at two in the morning. You whispered apologies when you vacuumed. You panicked the first time he slept in his little house for six hours because you decided he had died, only for him to emerge furious and fluffy and completely fine.
He was nervous.
He hated loud noises.
He hoarded food.
He came out only when he felt safe.
You related to him more than you wanted to admit.
Work helped too.
More than flowers.
More than James’s messages.
More than lying in bed at night trying not to think about blue eyes, dark hair threaded with grey, a low British voice, and the absolutely infuriating fact that one nameless man in New York had managed to make your body feel like a place you had never fully visited before.
You did one TV show first.
It was fun, which surprised you.
A sharp little part in a clever ensemble thing. You got to wear beautiful coats, say cruel lines in kitchens, and leave scenes before anyone required you to have a full emotional collapse. It was contained. Manageable. Neat.
You liked neat, occasionally.
Then came theatre.
The first West End performance opened in October, and theatre always did something different to you. Film let you hide. Film had cameras, angles, edits, people adjusting light around your face until even your mistakes looked intentional.
Theatre was air.
Bodies.
Breathing.
A room full of strangers deciding, live, whether they believed you.
By the end of opening night, you were shaking with adrenaline and pretending not to be. People pressed flowers into your hands. Your father’s friends kissed your cheek and said things like “extraordinary control” as though you were a horse they might invest in. Your mother cried and told everyone nearby that she had always known. Maddy hovered at your side with your coat and your bag and that best-friend expression that meant she was monitoring your nervous system like airport security.
Then Suki Waterhouse appeared in front of you.
You knew her a little.
Not well.
Industry run-ins. Parties. A handful of mutual friends. The kind of acquaintance where you had both said “we must get coffee” three separate times without either of you intending to arrange it.
She looked beautiful, of course. Effortless in the unfair way certain women were, as though lighting simply followed them out of professional courtesy.
“You were amazing,” she said, and hugged you before you had time to do anything awkward with your hands. “It’s my favourite book, so we had to come and see the play.”
You hugged her back, startled and pleased.
“Thank you. God, thank you. I’m so glad you liked it.”
“Seriously. You were brilliant.”
Then she turned slightly.
“This is Rob.”
The man beside her smiled.
Tall. Messy hair. Sharp cheekbones. Kind eyes. Familiar in a way that made your brain immediately short-circuit and refuse to provide a file name.
You shook his hand.
“Hi. Thank you for coming.”
He smiled.
“You were great. Really.”
You stared half a second too long.
Not because you were starstruck.
Because you were trying to work out where you knew his face from, and your brain had opened seven irrelevant drawers and found nothing except a vague sense of vampires.
Maddy appeared beside you at exactly the right second.
“We should get you home soon,” she said gently.
You nodded with immediate relief.
“Yes. Yes, I should. Tom has separation anxiety.”
Silence.
Suki blinked.
Rob blinked.
Maddy closed her eyes.
Rob said, carefully, “Your boyfriend?”
You realised, too late, that context had not arrived with the sentence.
“My hamster.”
Rob’s expression changed from polite confusion to something dangerously close to delight.
“Your hamster is called Tom?”
“Yes.”
“And he has separation anxiety?”
“He’s new to the house. He gets freaked out.”
Maddy made a tiny choking sound beside you.
Suki pressed her lips together, visibly trying not to laugh.
Rob nodded gravely.
“Right. Obviously. You should go home to Tom.”
“Exactly,” you said, relieved someone understood.
Maddy took your arm.
“We’re leaving.”
In the car, ten minutes later, you frowned out the window while Maddy silently shook with laughter beside you.
“That bloke looked familiar.”
She turned her head very slowly.
“Which bloke?”
“Suki’s boyfriend. Rob.”
Maddy stared.
“Robert Pattinson?”
You blinked.
“That was Robert Pattinson?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause.
“Oh.”
Maddy’s mouth twitched.
“You didn’t know?”
“I knew I knew his face.”
“From Twilight.”
You sat upright.
“That was him?”
Maddy burst out laughing.
You sank lower into the seat.
“Oh my God. I told Robert Pattinson my hamster has separation anxiety.”
“You did.”
You stared out the window in horror.
“I am so out of touch with who is who.”
Maddy patted your knee.
“Yes.”
“Do you think he thought I was weird?”
Maddy gave you a loving look.
“Yes.”
You groaned.
“Fondly weird,” she added.
“That doesn’t help.”
“It should. It’s basically your brand.”
By October, James was back.
Not all at once.
That was never his way.
He returned like weather changing.
A coffee first.
Then dinner.
Then a text that made you smile despite yourself.
Then a call that went on too long.
Then another dinner where his knee brushed yours under the table and you pretended not to notice how familiar that still felt.
James was so good during that period it was almost unfair.
He apologised without overdoing it. He listened. He said he understood why you needed space. He admitted he had pushed too hard sometimes. He said he only ever wanted you to be safe, fulfilled, protected from people who might use you.
Protected.
That word always softened you before you had time to interrogate it.
Because James had protected you once.
After your sister died, he had stood beside you when everyone else either collapsed or made your grief feel like something embarrassing. He answered calls. He cancelled things. He held your hand in hospitals and hallways and silent family rooms. He knew what you looked like when you hadn’t slept for three days. He had seen you feral with grief and stayed.
How were you supposed to simply forget that?
How were you supposed to separate love from debt when they had grown around each other for years?
So you let him back in.
Slowly.
Then not slowly.
And eventually you slept with him again.
It was strange.
Not bad.
That was the worst part.
If it had been bad, you could have made a decision out of it. But it was not bad. It was familiar. Careful. Polished. James knew the shape of your body, knew what you usually liked, knew where to put his hands and how to kiss you in a way that made history move through the room like a third person.
But it was contained.
Thirty minutes.
Soft lighting.
Controlled breathing.
A neat beginning, middle, and end.
Afterwards, James looked tender and relieved, like something had been repaired.
You went into the bathroom, turned the shower on, sat on the edge of the bath, and stared at the tiles.
Then finished yourself off quietly.
That had never felt tragic before.
Couples were complicated. Bodies were complicated. Sex did not always have to feel like being possessed by weather. You knew that.
Unfortunately, New York existed.
Unfortunately, the nameless almost-forty-year-old existed.
Unfortunately, your body remembered him with a level of detail your conscious mind found frankly rude.
You stared at yourself in the mirror afterwards, flushed and irritated.
“Great,” you whispered. “The forty-year-old ruined my sex life forever.”
You then spent several months trying to prove that untrue.
This became, because your brain was your brain, a project.
A research-based, financially irresponsible, increasingly personal project.
You bought vibrators.
Several.
One sleek and expensive and recommended by women online who sounded like they had achieved enlightenment.
One with eleven settings, most of which felt like someone had weaponised a toothbrush.
One Maddy recommended with the seriousness of a surgeon.
You read articles.
You watched diagrams.
You tried patience.
You tried focus.
You tried not to become personally offended by your own anatomy.
Nothing worked.
Not like that.
Not like him.
At one point you threw a vibrator onto the bed and said to absolutely no one.
“Bastard.”
**********
Jess, meanwhile, had her own almost-forty-year-old problem.
You heard about it first over FaceTime while she was still in New York back in August or September. She looked bright and tired, with stage makeup half-removed and that dangerous glitter in her eyes she got when she was pretending something casual had not crawled under her skin.
“I followed your advice,” she said.
You were lying upside down on your sofa, one sock on, one sock missing, Hamster Tom’s on your face, then on your head.
“What advice?”
Jess grinned.
“Almost forty.”
You sat up so fast your phone fell onto your chest.
“What?”
Maddy, who was joining from a hotel room in Milan, screamed.
Jess looked delighted.
“I hooked up with an older guy too.”
“I did not give you advice to do that.”
“You gave me a report.”
“A report is not advice.”
“It was persuasive.”
Maddy leaned closer to the camera.
“Who is he?”
Jess looked away.
Too quickly.
“No one.”
You narrowed your eyes.
“No one is never no one.”
“He’s just a guy.”
“A forty-year-old guy?”
“Almost.”
Maddy gasped.
“Is he famous?”
Jess rolled her eyes.
“No.”
The lie sat there between all three screens like a badly hidden body.
You and Maddy both stared.
Jess snapped, “Don’t.”
“Actor?” Maddy asked.
Jess paused.
You sat forward.
“Oh my God, he’s an actor.”
“Everyone in New York is an actor.”
“Not true.”
“Emotionally, yes.”
She refused to tell you his name.
Completely refused. Which, fair. They had probably agreed on that.
Over four consecutive weeks of video calls, all you got was that he was older, an actor, good in bed, British-ish in energy — though Jess absolutely did not phrase it that way — and, eventually “not serious.”
You and Maddy exchanged a look.
Jess saw it immediately.
“Don’t.”
“We didn’t say anything,” you said.
“Your faces did.”
The problem was, by then, Jess had already said too much about him for someone pretending not to care.
Not obvious things. Not romantic things. Nothing as humiliatingly clear as I like him.
But she kept mentioning him.
Little details.
That he always left early but made it sound like a joke.
That he smoked too much.
That he was weirdly funny in a very dry, aggravating way.
That he noticed stupid things. Her script. Her shoes. A line she had changed in rehearsal.
That he looked exhausted most of the time but somehow still made it attractive, which Maddy said was unfair.
That he had this particular way of looking at her like he was amused before she had even said the punchline.
That he made her feel clever.
That he made her feel young.
That he made her feel not young at all.
None of that sounded casual.
Not to you.
Not to Maddy.
Possibly not even to Jess, though she was trying very hard to pretend otherwise.
At some point Maddy had narrowed her eyes over FaceTime and said, “Babe.”
Jess immediately snapped, “No.”
“I didn’t finish.”
“You were going to say something awful.”
“I was going to say be careful.”
“That is awful.”
Then, by the time she came back to London properly, you and James were close again, so naturally your life became the easier target.
The three of you met at Maddy’s flat with takeaway, wine, and Hamster Tom in a travel cage because you had decided he needed stimulation and everyone else had decided you were insane.
Jess stuck one finger too close to the bars.
Hamster Tom bit her.
She yelped.
You said, “He has boundaries.”
Jess glared at the cage.
“He has issues.”
Maddy said, “His name is Tom. Of course he has issues.”
Jess froze and said “what a stupid name for a hamster.”
You looked at her – confused – but let it slide.
Maddy also did not notice the joke she had accidentally made because she did not know the full cosmic irony yet.
Then Jess turned to you, changing the topic.
“So. You’re seeing my brother again.”
You looked down at your noodles.
“A bit.”
Jess stared.
“A bit?”
“More than a bit.”
“Christ.”
“Don’t.”
“I said Christ. That’s technically religious.”
Maddy leaned back.
“Is it good?”
You nodded.
Too quickly.
“Yes. He’s being really good.”
Jess’s face did not move.
“He’s always good after he’s been awful.”
You looked away.
Because yes.
Because no.
Because James was never simple enough for one sentence, even when the sentence was true.
To escape, you asked about her actor. The one she had been seeing but had not mentioned for weeks.
Jess’s face hardened at once.
“He’s a dick.”
Maddy sat up.
“Oh?”
“He’s ignoring me.”
You softened immediately.
“Did you talk about what it was?”
Jess looked furious.
Not at you.
At herself.
“He said he wasn’t doing anything serious but that doesn’t mean he needs to ghost me or pretend to be busy.”
Maddy closed her eyes.
You made a small pained noise.
“Jess.”
“I know.”
“Babe,” Maddy said.
“Don’t babe me.”
You leaned forward.
“If he said casual—”
“I know what he said.”
“Then you have to believe him and, maybe he is ghosting you because he realised that you want more without saying it?”
Jess’s eyes flashed.
“Easy to say.”
It wasn’t.
That was the thing.
It wasn’t easy at all.
Because sometimes a man said casual and then looked at you like you were a question he wanted to keep asking. Sometimes he said one night and then touched you like you were not forgettable. Sometimes what a person did felt louder than what they said.
Until suddenly what they said was the only thing that counted.
Maddy suggested Jess text him properly.
You agreed.
Jess hated both of you for being right and did it anyway.
You never found out what she wrote.
You never found out who he was.
All you knew was that afterwards she was livid, wounded, and trying to turn heartbreak into anger because anger was less humiliating.
Later, on your kitchen floor, after Jess had gone home, Maddy sat with her back against your cabinets while Hamster Tom ran violently on his wheel.
“She liked him,” Maddy said.
You nodded.
“Yeah.”
“But he did say casual.”
You sighed.
“Yeah.”
“So she should’ve taken it seriously.”
“She should’ve.”
Maddy looked at you.
You looked back.
Then she said, softer, “But feelings aren’t rational.”
Hamster Tom flew off his wheel, landed in bedding, paused, then climbed straight back on.
You watched him.
“No,” you said. “Apparently not.”
********
Then, by Christmas, James had moved in.
Again, not dramatically.
James never kicked doors open.
He re-entered like a man rearranging furniture.
A toothbrush first.
Then two shirts.
Then shoes by the door.
Then his laptop on your table.
Then his coffee in your cupboard.
Then his body in your bed every night, familiar and warm and inevitable.
He made himself useful.
He cooked.
He answered emails you ignored.
He reminded you about meetings.
He fed Hamster Tom once and then made a cleaning schedule for the cage, which made you want to kill him and also did make your life easier.
Your parents were thrilled.
His parents were worse.
Everyone behaved as if the break had been a little storm you had all politely waited out.
Then he proposed.
Christmas Eve.
Candles.
Low light.
A ring his mother had obviously helped choose, beautiful in the exact correct way.
James looked nervous.
That moved you.
It really did.
James rarely looked nervous. He looked composed, polished, faintly superior, occasionally wounded. But not nervous. Not like this.
“I know this year has been difficult,” he said.
You laughed softly.
“That’s one word.”
“But I don’t want to keep losing time.”
Your throat tightened.
“James.”
“I know who I want. I’ve always known.”
And perhaps it was love.
Perhaps it was history.
Perhaps it was grief.
Perhaps it was simply that everyone around you wanted this to be the right answer, and you were tired of being the difficult variable in everyone else’s equation.
You said yes.
Your mother cried.
His mother cried more.
Your father looked satisfied.
James looked relieved.
Jess smiled too late.
Maddy hugged you too tightly.
Then, during New Year’s Eve was when James asked about the break.
You were both drunk.
Not wrecked.
Just enough that old things came out wearing new confidence.
James did not ask like a man who wanted a fight.
That was the worst part.
He asked gently.
Carefully.
Almost sadly.
You were in the kitchen after midnight, music still pulsing somewhere beyond the walls, champagne turning the room soft at the edges. Your engagement ring kept catching the light every time you moved your hand.
James noticed that too.
James noticed everything when it suited him.
He leaned against the counter, sleeves rolled to his forearms, voice low enough to sound intimate rather than interrogative.
“Can I ask you something?”
You already hated the shape of it.
“Depends.”
He smiled faintly.
Not amused.
Wounded.
“Were you with anyone?”
You went still.
Your stomach dropped before your face could catch up.
“During the break?”
James looked at you for a moment, as if the clarification itself had hurt him.
“Yes.”
You should have lied.
Maybe.
But James had always been good at making lies feel childish. He had a way of looking at you like he was not demanding honesty, only offering you the chance to be decent.
So you said it.
“Yes.”
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
James was too controlled for that.
It was worse because it was small. A tightening around the mouth. A brief drop of his eyes to your ring. A slow inhale, as if he was steadying himself for your sake.
“Right.”
You crossed your arms.
“James.”
“No, it’s fine.”
It was not fine.
Nothing about his voice was fine.
He looked down, nodded once, then glanced back up with careful restraint.
“Who was he?”
“It was one night.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
His tone stayed soft.
That made it sharper.
You swallowed.
“I don’t know his name.”
For a second, the room felt airless.
James blinked.
Then he laughed once.
Quietly.
Not loud enough to be cruel in a way anyone else would recognise.
Only enough for you to feel it.
“You don’t know his name.”
Your throat tightened.
“No.”
He looked away, jaw flexing, then nodded again. Performing hurt. Performing reasonableness. Making sure you saw how hard he was trying not to punish you for the thing he was absolutely punishing you for.
“Okay.”
“Don’t do that.”
His eyes came back to yours.
“Do what?”
“That voice.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No, you’re not.”
His expression softened, and somehow that made you feel smaller.
“I am. I’m trying very hard to understand how the woman I love, the woman I want to marry, could sleep with a man whose name she didn’t even know.”
You flinched.
He saw it.
Of course he saw it.
James never missed a wound once he had made one.
“We were on a break.”
“I know.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, then gave a small, pained smile.
“And I suppose I expected… I don’t know. Something else.”
“Something cleaner?”
His eyes sharpened.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You meant it.”
“No. I meant that I thought you respected yourself more than that.”
There it was.
Not shouted.
Not snarled.
Just placed carefully between you like a knife on a table.
You stared at him.
“Wow.”
James closed his eyes briefly, as if you had wounded him by reacting to the wound.
“That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“Because it sounded exactly how you meant it.”
He stepped closer, not enough to touch you. Just enough to take up more of the room.
“I’m not judging you.”
“You are.”
“I’m worried about you.”
You almost laughed.
Worried.
There it was again.
His favourite disguise for control.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn this into concern.”
His face shifted.
Only slightly.
But you saw the irritation underneath the tenderness.
“I am concerned. You disappear to New York, you barely speak to me, then you sleep with a stranger. I think I’m allowed to be concerned.”
“Allowed?”
“Yes. Allowed. I love you.”
He said it like that settled the matter.
Like love gave him jurisdiction.
You looked away.
That was your mistake.
James caught the movement instantly.
His voice changed.
Quieter now.
More precise.
“How old was he?”
Your stomach tightened.
“James.”
“How old?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Then say it.”
You said nothing.
His expression altered.
A flicker of satisfaction beneath the hurt.
He had found something.
“Older?”
You hated him then.
Just for a second.
Not because he was wrong.
Because he knew exactly where to press.
“Thirty nine.”
James went very still.
Then he exhaled.
Slowly.
Softly.
As if the information had confirmed something terrible he had already suspected.
“That’s almost forty.”
“Yes.”
“A man almost twice your age.”
“Not twice.”
“Close enough.”
“No, not close enough.”
He gave you a sad look.
“Listen to yourself. You’re defending your one night stand.”
“I’m correcting maths.”
James laughed again, colder this time.
“Right. Of course.”
You folded your arms tighter around yourself.
“Don’t make me feel disgusting because you’re hurt.”
That hit him.
For one moment, guilt moved across his face.
Real guilt, maybe.
But James was too disciplined to leave it exposed.
He covered it with pain.
“I don’t think you’re disgusting.”
“You think he is.”
“Yes.”
The answer came too fast.
He let the silence sit after it.
Then he softened his voice.
“Yes, I do. I think a man that age taking a drunk, vulnerable young woman back to a hotel room is disgusting.”
Your head snapped up.
“I wasn’t drunk.”
“Were you sober?”
You hesitated.
James tilted his head.
“Exactly.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make it sound like something happened to me.”
His eyes held yours.
“Didn’t it?”
The room went cold.
You stared at him.
“No.”
James said nothing.
That was worse.
He did not argue.
He let the doubt hang there, poisonous and delicate, as if he was too noble to say what he wanted you to start thinking.
Your voice shook.
“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to take something I chose and make it ugly because you hate it.”
His expression hardened for half a second.
Then the softness came back.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From a man I saw once?”
“From yourself.”
That one landed so cleanly you almost did not feel it at first.
Then you did.
You stepped back.
James noticed the retreat and immediately regretted the force of it. You could see him recalibrating. The softening. The careful lowering of his shoulders. The way his voice gentled again.
“I’m sorry.”
You stared at him.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
He moved closer, slowly this time.
“I’m sorry. That was cruel.”
You said nothing.
He reached for your hand.
You let him take it because you were tired and drunk and the kitchen seemed too bright and too small and your ring was sitting on your finger like evidence.
James ran his thumb over your knuckles.
Gentle now.
Always gentle after.
“I just hate imagining you like that,” he said quietly. “With someone who didn’t know you. Didn’t love you. Didn’t care.”
You swallowed.
Because that was clever.
That was the hook.
Not the sex.
Not the age.
The afterwards.
The stranger had not known you.
James did.
The stranger had not stayed.
James had.
The stranger had not sent flowers.
James had.
Even if the flowers had lilies in them.
“You don’t know anything about that man,” you whispered.
James looked at you.
“Neither do you, apparently.”
That one stayed in your body for days.
Not because it was fair.
Because he had made it sound like it was.
But things settled.
Because things with James always settled.
Crack.
Repair.
Crack.
Repair.
And every repair looked enough like love if you were tired enough.
By Easter 2026, wedding planning had become a living thing.
It sat in corners. It arrived in emails. It grew teeth.
Your mother wanted tasteful.
His mother wanted traditional.
Your father wanted visibility.
James wanted strategic.
You wanted to lie down in a dark room with Hamster Tom and never discuss floral arrangements again.
At your parents’ house over Easter, the pressure reached a new level. There were wedding magazines on the table, guest lists half-discussed, your mother saying “not too theatrical” about dresses, which made you want to wear antlers to the ceremony out of pure spite.
James complained about theatre again.
Not openly.
He had learned.
Now it came dressed as concern.
“You’ve done so much stage work,” he said over breakfast. “It might be good to think about the next move.”
You looked at him.
“The next move.”
“Film. Something with reach.”
“Theatre has reach. The audience is literally in the room.”
Your father lowered his phone.
“He’s not wrong.”
You stared.
“Oh, good. A coalition.”
James sighed.
“Don’t be difficult.”
You smiled sweetly.
“I wasn’t, but now I’m inspired.”
That was when your father pushed the script across the table.
You looked at it.
Then at him.
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard what it is.”
“That’s how efficient my no is.”
James said, “At least listen.”
You turned to him.
“Did you know about this?”
He paused.
Too long.
You laughed.
“Wonderful.”
Your father leaned back.
“Florence pulled out.”
You blinked.
“Florence?”
“Pugh.”
That annoyed you because it made you curious. Because she was good. Very good. And she wanted to do it but apparently had a contractual obligation to Dune.
Your father knew it too.
“Schedule shifted. She can’t do it. I’ve had two other well-known actresses read. Neither of them can act deranged.”
You stared.
“What a sentence.”
“You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, you did.
He tapped the script.
“I’m stuck. I need someone who can unravel without turning it into a pantomime. Someone who can do frightening. Someone people underestimate before realising they should have been afraid.”
You did not touch the script.
“It will smell of nepotism from space.”
Your father shrugged.
“People smell what they want.”
“That is exactly what nepotism says when it puts on a blazer.”
James rubbed his forehead.
“Just read it.”
“You two conspire often now.”
James smiled faintly.
“Only for your own good.”
You looked at him.
His smile faded.
Your father said, quieter, “Read it. If you hate it, say no.”
“And if I say no, you’ll accept that?”
He said nothing.
You laughed once.
“Excellent.”
Still, you took it.
Not because of James.
Not because of your father.
Not because of visibility or strategy or the Met Gala James had been going on about or any of the shiny, suffocating machinery that seemed to gather around your life whenever powerful men decided they knew what was best for you.
You took it upstairs to your old room, shut the door, sat cross-legged on the bed, and opened it with every intention of hating it.
By page seven, you were annoyed.
By page twenty, you were sitting up.
By page forty, you had forgotten your phone existed.
By page eighty, the house had disappeared.
The script was good.
Not polished-good.
Not industry-good.
Good in the way that made your hands go cold.
Ugly. Tender where it shouldn’t be. Cruel in the right places. The woman at the centre of it was not deranged like men usually wrote deranged women — all smeared lipstick and broken mirrors and theatrical instability.
She was intelligent.
Hyper-alert.
Too alive in her own skin.
Destructive because she noticed everything and survived nothing cleanly.
You understood her immediately.
That scared you.
By the final page, you were crying.
Not prettily.
Just sitting there with the script open on your lap, furious because now you wanted it.
You wiped your face with your sleeve and whispered:
“Bastards.”
You accepted the next morning.
Not for James.
Not for your father.
Not because Florence Pugh had pulled out or because two other actresses had failed to act sufficiently deranged.
You accepted because the writing was too good.
Because the work had always been the thing that made everything else go quiet.
Because you cared about the words more than the fame.
You did not look up who was cast opposite you.
You never did properly.
Names slid off your brain unless they were connected to the work. You cared about rhythm. Character. Scene structure. Whether the dialogue breathed. Whether the woman on the page had blood in her veins.
You did not yet know the man opposite you had blue eyes, dark hair threaded with grey, and a voice your body remembered before your mind had ever learned his name.
