The Star's Runaway Assistant

Seven years ago, I dumped the most feared boy in school with one throwaway lie.

Then I disappeared off the face of the earth.

Now he's the biggest movie star in the country.

And I'm a nobody on his set. The assistant whose whole job is to stay out of the frame.

His hand clamped around my wrist. His breath burned against the side of my neck.

"Just going to grab some chocolate. I'll be right back?"

My own words. Handed back to me like a blade.

"Seven years." His jaw locked. "Where the hell did you go?"

Chapter 1

Kieran Cross, the country's newest Best Actor, stood five feet behind me.

One turn of my head and we'd be face to face.

My palms were sweating.

The assistant director was briefing him. "Kieran, next scene, you run into your ex. I need longing. Reluctance. Like walking away costs you something."

Kieran let out a soft, amused breath.

"Longing." He said it like a word in a language he'd stopped speaking. "She's an ex. What's left to long for?"

Same voice as always. Lazy. Unbothered. Edged.

Seven years ago, that exact voice used to say my name. Soft, then rough, then soft again.

Birdie.

The AD said something else. I didn't catch it.

But Kieran's next line landed clean, straight through me.

"My ex? Forgot her a long time ago. I don't do second helpings."

Huh.

Good. Because this particular leftover had no intention of reintroducing herself either.

We finish the shoot, we go our separate ways. Clean.

That was the plan.

Then a coworker's voice carried across the soundstage, way too loud.

"Birdie! You find that prop or not?"

Behind me, the air went dead quiet.

I scooped up the prop and got out fast.

Kieran didn't come after me.

Maybe he hadn't heard.

Or maybe he had, and it just didn't matter to him.

Later, dressing the set, I told her under my breath. "Call me Wren from now on. Not Birdie."

"Why? Birdie's cute."

"Wren sounds more professional."

She laughed and bought it.

This was my first job as a director's assistant. I'd clawed my way to it.

And I'd known before I ever signed on that Kieran Cross was the lead.

Son of two former A-list icons, from a family that owned half of Hollywood, and, unfairly, actually talented. Best Actor at twenty-five.

Also, inconveniently, my first love.

I'd thought about turning the job down.

Then I decided I wasn't going to hand back the best opportunity of my career over a boy I'd walked away from.

So I came in with my eyes open. One rule, sworn to myself: he cannot find out it's me.

Or I'm finished.

I'm an AD. My whole job is knowing who belongs in the frame and who stays out of it. For seven years, I'd made sure I stayed out of his.

Because seven years ago, the way we ended wasn't pretty.

I put it in a letter.

I knew who your family was the whole time. Getting close to you was just a way to dig up dirt on them. Truth is, I never liked street trash. I like men with manners. Let's not do this again. Bye.

As breezy as the words were, that's how wrecked I was when I walked.

I don't know what he felt, reading it.

But I know him. He collects his debts. Every last one.

If he catches me, he could bury my career with a single phone call.

Nearby, the crew was still gushing.

"Kieran's even better-looking in person. The genetics are unreal."

"Two former Best Actor and Actress for parents. Of course he is."

"I love the way he carries himself. Clean-cut, refined. Bet he was the guy every girl had a crush on back in school."

I almost choked.

Kieran? The clean-cut heartthrob?

Wrong. So wrong.

He wasn't the boy every girl wanted. He was the feral one everyone crossed the street to avoid.

I'll never forget the first time I saw him.

Fresh out of a fight, bruised black and blue.

Rain coming down in sheets, everyone hurrying past, and him just sitting on the curb like something already dead.

I got close. He finally looked up.

"Get lost."

Like a mad dog one second from tearing me apart.

I didn't get lost.

Hands shaking, I held my little floral umbrella over his head.

That was how Kieran and I began.

Chapter 2

Once the set was dressed, I finally got a break.

The soundstage was too loud. I slipped off into the stairwell.

I pushed the door open and got a lungful of cigarette smoke.

Kieran stood in the dark, a single red ember burning at his fingertips.

He lifted those hooded eyes to me.

Just like back then.

The stairwell was black and still.

"...Sorry. Didn't mean to bother you." I dropped my head and turned to leave.

His voice caught me. "What do you do here?"

"Assistant director."

"Fresh out of school?"

"Yes."

"Straight out of school, already Director Brandt's AD." A pause. "Impressive."

"Thank you, Mr. Cross."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

A quiet laugh, all lazy. "We're the same age. And it's Mr. Cross?"

"The other AD calls you Mr. Cross. He's forty-three."

"Say it again."

There was no reason on earth to. I said it anyway.

"...Mr. Cross."

I couldn't see much in the dark. But I caught it: the corner of his mouth curling.

A smile with nothing behind it. Cold all the way down.

Every hair on my arms stood up.

Still. There's no way he knows. There's no way.

I'm not the girl I was seven years ago. Back then I was a scrawny, sallow little thing. Now I'm the kind of woman people call pretty.

My own relatives barely recognized me. And this was a pitch-black stairwell.

"I'll leave you to it, Mr. Cross."

"Wait." He stopped me again.

"What's your name?"

It came out of nowhere.

"Wren." A breath. "Wren Doyle."

"Ever go by another name?"

"No."

Kieran went quiet.

A thin sweat broke over my skin.

I used to be Gail. I changed it.

He lied to me once. I could lie to him once. Call it even.

The summer before tenth grade, I found Kieran on a street corner.

He said he had nowhere to go. No family.

I believed him.

I thought he was like me. Some kid nobody wanted.

When I was small, my mother couldn't stand the sight of me. After she and my father split, they each built new families. Each of them had a son. And once the boys arrived, there was no room left for the leftover girl from a marriage they'd rather forget.

Nobody wanted me. I got parked in my aunt's basement.

I learned to be good early. Good girls, at least, still got fed.

Kieran and I were nothing alike.

He smoked, he fought, he'd do just about anything.

I was quiet and small and good for nothing but my books.

Eleventh grade, we landed in the same class.

Me in the front row. Him in the very back.

Nobody knew what his family did. Some kids swore he had no parents, no home at all.

At school, we were strangers.

But nobody knew that every night, Kieran tapped on the basement window.

I'd clear a little square of floor and let him crash.

And before my aunt's family woke, he'd slip out early, like he'd never been there at all.

He skipped class constantly. Came back hurt just as often.

Every time, I cleaned him up.

"Gail." He'd wince. "Can you go easy?"

"Call me Birdie."

"...Fine. Birdie."

Birdie was the name my grandmother gave me, before she died.

I liked it a lot more than Gail.

Chapter 3

Kieran crashed on my floor so often, some part of me had decided he had it even worse than I did.

When I forgot my textbook and the teacher put me on the spot, he walked up from the back row and dropped his own book on my desk. When a girl from another class cornered me, he stepped in front of me and told her I was under his protection.

I mistook it for two broken kids recognizing each other.

It took me years to understand there was nothing to recognize.

Kieran was the son of an empire. Houses, sports cars, more than he could count. One of his shoes cost more than a whole season of my clothes.

He was just borrowing me. A way to get under his family's skin.

I figured it out the day Genevieve Sinclair walked in.

A cup of boba pressed into my hand yanked me back to the present.

"Genevieve's visiting the set again. Bought boba for the whole crew." My coworker leaned in. "Look at them. The heiress and the movie star. They're perfect together."

I looked.

Genevieve was up on her toes, sweet-talking him.

Kieran had his head tilted, listening. Patient.

And like everyone else, my eyes wouldn't leave them.

Then something made Kieran turn.

He looked right at me.

I dropped my head.

When I looked up again, he wasn't looking at me at all. Like I'd imagined the whole thing.

Genevieve was still going.

"Kier." Her voice climbed, all sugar. "Come to Paris with me after we wrap. You promised you'd take me to the shows."

Same voice, same lilt as seven years ago.

The memory pulled me under anyway.

All through high school, Kieran and I stayed strictly friends. Classmates, nothing more.

Until graduation.

That summer, a class reunion ran past midnight. On the way home, a couple of drunk guys started following me.

Kieran came out of nowhere and put his fists through all of them.

Maybe it was the weight of exams finally lifting. Maybe it was turning eighteen.

Whatever it was, I looked at Kieran one day and suddenly couldn't look away.

I worked up the nerve and told him.

After that, I was the one who reached for his hand. The first hug. The first kiss.

Kieran didn't warm to any of it. He didn't push me away either.

He stayed exactly what he'd always been. A hard bone you couldn't chew. A mouth that couldn't produce one soft word.

But in some ways, he made a decent boyfriend.

He came whenever I called. He was generous with me.

He never once took me to meet his friends.

One time, I went down to the pool hall to surprise him.

His face shut like a door. "Don't come here again." Irritated. Flat.

I didn't think much of it. Just figured that was him.

Then Genevieve appeared.

Expensive little dress, flawless makeup, walking into my world like a shaft of light.

She said his name like she owned it.

"Kier, what are you doing in a place like this?"

"Kier, where's that Ferrari you just bought? Take me for a spin."

The word Ferrari nearly threw my back out.

Genevieve turned to me, eyes wide and innocent. "Kier, who's this?"

"Hi. I'm his girlfriend."

"Ha? Is that a joke?" She looked me over like a price tag she'd already decided was too low. "Why would Kier ever go for you? I'm his future girlfriend. Our families have an arrangement."

"Bullshit."

Kieran's face went black. He pushed her out the door.

"Don't listen to her. I never agreed to any arrangement."

It came out thin. Weak.

Chapter 4

Later, Kieran's parents came looking for me. That was how I learned he was the son of an empire.

Not the ordinary kind. His family controlled half of Hollywood.

Kieran and his parents didn't get along.

He'd transferred himself out of an elite prep school and into a public high school on purpose. Stayed away from home on purpose.

His parents were gone year-round, barely spared their son a thought, had no idea what he got up to.

At the end of that conversation, his father said to me:

"You may not realize this, Wren. Kieran is a rebel. Being with you is his way of getting back at us. It isn't real. He's pulled this kind of thing before." A pause, smooth as glass. "If you don't believe me, watch him. Watch the way he is with Gigi."

"The one he actually loves is Gigi. They grew up side by side. He simply hasn't recognized his own feelings yet."

Then, gentle and final, like a door easing shut:

"Wren. You and we are not the same kind of people."

Something in my hands nearly slipped. A high, thin ring started up in my ears.

I didn't argue. Somewhere along the way, I'd learned I didn't get to.

And soon, everything his father said started to look true.

He claimed he was sick of her, but Kieran had a bottomless patience for Genevieve.

He let her little tempers slide. Gave in to her little whims.

The worst time:

One second Genevieve was laughing at how poor I was. The next, Kieran walked up, and her whole face folded into the victim.

"Kier, Gail shoved me at those creeps on purpose! I was so scared!"

Kieran went tense, urgent. "Birdie. I told you. Stay away from her."

Behind his back, Genevieve pulled a smug little face at me.

That was the moment I understood.

Kieran wasn't made of stone. He just didn't bloom for me.

By the end of August, I took his parents up on their offer.

With their money behind me, I would go study abroad.

For someone like me, it might be the only shot at an education like that I'd ever get.

The day I left, I told Kieran I wanted to go buy some chocolate.

Kieran reached for his wallet on reflex. "Get the most expensive kind. One for me too."

I didn't take the money. "Not yours. I'll... I'll be right back."

"Okay. I'll wait."

And I never came back.

Following his parents' instructions, I left one vicious letter behind and cut off every last thread of hope he had.

Our three-month first love died quietly with the turn of autumn.

I changed my name. Cut off every classmate from that life.

Back then I'd been the invisible kind, the easy target.

I threw myself into the education I'd fought for. I learned to train my body, to dress myself, to take up space in a room.

New name, new face, and his parents making sure my trail went cold. He had no way to find me.

As far as he was concerned, I might as well have died.

But I heard plenty about him.

After I left, he repeated his senior year and tested into the top film school in the country.

Debuted in college. A clean, golden road straight up.

On camera he was refined, clean-cut, that soft smile pulling at every fan's heart.

Not a trace of the boy I'd known.

People change, I told myself. I'd changed too.

The end of a long shooting day. I ached everywhere.

My coworker, though, looked electrified.

"God, this one's unreal!"

"What?"

"New candid of Kieran. It's trending."

I leaned over to look.

One stolen shot, blowing up online.

[This scene's him running into his ex. LOOK at his eyes. It's unreal.]

[Kieran just made the whole role come alive.]

In the photo, Kieran gazed at something just off-camera.

Every line of him refined. Controlled.

But his eyes. His eyes were burning with a black flame, wild and unhinged.

Chapter 5

What scared me most sat right at the edge of the frame. What his eyes were locked on.

A blurred figure, back to the camera.

It was me.

The next day, shooting resumed.

Something happened with the lead actress. She had to go to the hospital.

It was a crucial scene between the two leads, and no one could afford the delay.

The director was frantic. In the end he decided to shoot Kieran's coverage first, with a stand-in.

Kieran wanted to pick the stand-in himself.

I was standing at the very back of the crowd.

Of course, his eyes landed on me.

"Her."

I blanked.

Director Brandt had no objection. He was already telling me to hurry up and change into the lead's costume.

All I had to do was give them the back of my head.

But to keep it from reading wrong on camera, the makeup artist did my face anyway.

When I stepped in front of Kieran, something flickered across his face.

I didn't dare meet his eyes.

"Nervous?" Kieran asked.

"I've never acted before."

"You don't have to act. Just listen." A pause. "Relax. Tense up and your body goes stiff. It won't read right on camera."

"Okay."

"Take a breath. Settle yourself."

"Thank you, Mr. Cross."

"Right. Camera's on me. You just listen while I run the lines. And there's one more thing."

He stopped there.

"What is it?" I looked up at him.

"The one more thing is." A pause, slow and deliberate. "Where's my chocolate?"

He said it one word at a time. And behind those eyes, the old wildness flared up, every bit as feral as it used to be. All of it aimed at me, like I was the one exception he'd ever made.

He reached out his hand. Slow.

"Birdie." A beat. "Seven years." His hand still out, waiting between us. "You've had time to buy my chocolate by now