Pretend Fiancé Claims Her in the Studio

The private rehearsal studio smelled of polished wood, faint resin from the floorboards, and the sharp citrus of the cleaning spray someone had used that morning. Vanessa stood in the center of the marked circle, script pages trembling slightly in her hands even though she had memorized every line two nights ago. At twenty-eight she still looked younger than the roles she chased, all long dark hair and wide dark eyes that directors kept calling “too innocent.” That was exactly why she had come up with the desperate plan.

Roman stood opposite her, forty-two, broad-shouldered in a charcoal button-down rolled to the elbows, the gold band on his left hand catching the overhead lights every time he gestured. Her mother’s husband. Her stepfather of six years. The man who had driven her to auditions when her own father vanished, who had sat through every disastrous callback, who now wore a plain silver engagement ring on his right hand because she had begged him to play the part of her stable, older fiancé for this one high-stakes reading. The director wanted maturity, commitment, a woman who wouldn’t flake. Pretending she already belonged to someone powerful and settled had seemed like the cleanest lie.

It no longer felt clean.

They had been alone in the soundproofed room for forty minutes. The thick walls and sealed door made every breath louder. Roman’s voice carried the low, measured cadence he used when he was holding himself carefully in check. “Again,” he said. “From the top of the confession scene. You’re supposed to look at me like I’m the only man who has ever seen you.”