The archives never smelled like glamour.
They smelled like dust and cold air-conditioning and the faint, metallic tang of old film canisters. Safe smells. Invisible smells. I had built a whole life around them.
So when my extension rang at 7:12 a.m. sharp—twice, then three times, like whoever was on the other end had never been told not to bother the basement—I already knew it was going to be a bad day.
“Archives,” I said, tucking the receiver between my shoulder and ear as I re-labeled a box. “This is June.”
“Ellis.” The voice was clipped, female, and absolutely not familiar. “You’re on Stage Six in fifteen minutes.”
I froze mid-stroke. A drop of black ink trembled at the tip of my pen and fell, a tiny comet hitting cardboard. “I think you have the wrong—”
“June Ellis, employee ID 47-392, archives assistant, contract addendum filed last quarter. You’re on my list.” A beat, like she’d pulled the phone away to check something. “And Victor Hale does not like people being late.”
My mouth went dry. “Victor… you mean—”
“Yes.” She didn’t bother to hide the impatience. “Stage Six. Wardrobe is expecting you.”
The line clicked dead.
For a full five seconds, all I could hear was the hum of the fluorescent lights and my own pulse starting to pound in my ears. Wardrobe. Stage Six. Victor Hale. None of those words belonged in my basement.
I set the pen down carefully, because my hand had started to tremble.
“Milo,” I called, even though he had his headphones on at the far table, half-buried under a mountain of digitization reports.
He didn’t hear me.
“Milo.” Louder this time.
He jumped, tearing his gaze away from the monitor. “What? Did they greenlight Archives: The Musical? Because I have notes.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “I just got a call. I’m supposed to be on Stage Six in fifteen minutes.”
His eyes went comically round behind his glasses. “That’s Rowan’s stage.”
I already knew that. Everyone in the building knew that. Stage Six was practically a myth, the soundstage they draped in blackout curtains when they didn’t want the world peeking in on franchise gold.
“It’s a mistake,” I said quickly. “Obviously. I’ll go up and tell them. Then I’ll come back and finish the Hale rotation boxes and we’ll never speak of this again.”
Milo’s chair squeaked as he stood. “You’re not going up there alone.”
“Milo—”
“June.” He frowned. “You’re pale. Paler than normal, and your normal is Victorian ghost.”
I exhaled through my nose, fighting the instinct to just… disappear between the shelves. It had worked for years. Keep my head down, move boxes, log footage, stay away from cameras.
But the call had used my name and my ID number and Victor Hale. My contract addendum.
The one I’d signed last quarter for a modest raise and some vague language about ‘flexible duties as needed by production.’ The one HR had assured me was standard.
My stomach twisted.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “It’s probably a misdial. Or some intern’s prank.”
“Executives don’t prank,” Milo muttered. “They ruin lives with paperwork.”
I grabbed my lanyard and wrapped it around my fingers like a worry bead. “If I’m not back in half an hour, assume I’ve been eaten by the Marvel machine and avenge my death on your blog.”
His expression shifted, a flash of guilt crossing his face so quickly I almost missed it. “Don’t joke about that.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Milo.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Just… text me updates, okay? And if they hand you anything to sign, send me a photo first.”
“Why would they hand me anything to sign?”
He didn’t answer. Which was answer enough.
The elevator ride up felt like moving through strata of a different planet. Basement—concrete and dust. Ground floor—glass, sunlight, the murmur of assistants with iced coffees. Second floor—executive suites humming with muted conversations and the clink of expensive shoes. Third floor—production offices, paper, fabric, the rustle of scripts.
Then the doors slid open on the soundstage level and the air changed.
It was cooler and warmer at the same time, the way refrigerated air hummed against the heat of too many lights. Voices echoed from every direction—shouted calls, laughter, the metallic clatter of rigging being adjusted. The whole corridor had that charged, buzzing energy I’d once thought I wanted more than anything.
Before I knew what wanting cost.
Signs on rolling stands pointed the way: STAGE SIX →, in bold black font. Below, someone had drawn a crown in silver Sharpie.
I followed the arrows, hugging the opposite wall whenever a PA or a cluster of crew in headsets barreled past. Nobody looked at me twice. Lanyard, jeans, plain gray T-shirt, hair scraped back—background furniture.
My heartbeat only got louder.
Stage Six loomed at the end of the hallway, a huge metal door propped open by a sandbag. A security guard sat on a stool by the entrance, checking badges.
His gaze flicked over my ID, hesitated, then clicked with something like realization. “Ellis?”
“Yes?” My voice cracked.
He tapped his tablet, lips tugging in what might have been sympathy. “They’re waiting for you in rehearsal. Take the left corridor inside, through the black drape. Don’t use your phone on the floor.”
“I—” I swallowed. “There’s been a mistake, I work in—”
“Archives, I know.” He softened, just a fraction. “Go on. Don’t keep them waiting.”
Inside, the light hit me first.
Grids of it, hanging from the ceiling, pouring down in white-gold sheets on half-built sets. A city street, but not: brick facades sliced open, interiors missing walls, one side just a skeleton of beams. Crew members moved like ants, adjusting c-stands, rolling cables, checking monitors.
I didn’t belong here.
“June Ellis?” a voice barked.
I turned.
She was tall, crisp, and sharp as a pressed lapel. Dark blazer over black, tablet in hand, hair in a sleek knot. Her eyes, when they found me, ran top to toe in under a second.
“Um. Yes.” I pushed my shoulders back. “There’s been—”
“No mistake,” she cut in. “Cass Monroe. I handle talent integration and schedule adherence for this production.”
“Talent integration,” I repeated, numb. “I’m not talent.”
Her mouth curved, a smile with all the warmth of a closed window. “Today, you are.”
The words slid under my skin like ice.
“I’m supposed to be in the archives,” I tried again. “My supervisor—”
“Your supervisor has been notified.” Cass gestured for me to follow, already walking. “You were reassigned under your addendum. Did you read it?”
I thought of the pages of tiny text, the HR rep’s bored smile. “I… skimmed.”
“Then consider this your literacy lesson,” she said dryly.
My sneakers squeaked on the polished concrete as I trailed her past a craft services table and a row of screens. My throat felt tight, my palms damp. Every fiber of my body screamed TURN AROUND.
Instead, I kept moving.
Cass swept aside a heavy black drape and ushered me into a smaller, darker space. It was cooler in here, the air still. A set dressed to look like a bedroom: low bed, soft gray sheets, tall windows with fake city lights blinking outside.
And in the middle of it, sitting on the edge of the bed in a black T-shirt and jeans that probably cost more than my rent, was Rowan Vale.
He was looking down at a script, forearms braced on his thighs, fingers furiously tapping a rhythm against the paper. In person, he was both exactly and not at all like his screen self—broader shoulders, sharper jaw, less polished. Tired in a way the cameras never showed.
My lungs forgot what they were for.
Cass cleared her throat. “Rowan, this is June Ellis. Your… rehearsal support.”
His head snapped up.
Our eyes met.
Heat shot through me, like I’d just walked past an open oven. Not because he was beautiful—he was, in that sculpted, golden, unreal way—but because his gaze was so direct it felt like standing under a spotlight.
“Rehearsal support,” he repeated, his voice lower than I expected. Rough around the edges. “That’s what we’re calling it now?”
Cass’s smile tightened. “Per Victor’s directive. June’s been briefed.”
I opened my mouth. “I haven’t—”
“Fully briefed,” she overrode smoothly. Her fingers flicked fast over her tablet. “You signed the NDA last quarter with your addendum. Verbal reminder: everything that happens in this room is confidential. No recordings, no notes, no unauthorized communication. You are here as an emotional double only, not as a performer of record. Understood?”
Emotional double.
The words jammed in my throat.
Rowan’s gaze sharpened. He took me in again, slower this time: loose gray shirt, black jeans, the tiny coffee stain on my cuff from this morning. I felt my skin heat under the scrutiny.
“Hey,” he said finally, that one syllable somehow both casual and too intent. “You okay?”
I forced my shoulders to relax. “I’m… confused.”
He huffed a soft sound that almost, almost might have been a laugh. “Welcome to the club.”
Cass sighed. “We’re losing time. The director wants you both ready for blocking at nine. Rowan, pages thirty-two to thirty-six. The confession scene.”
My stomach plunged.
“I’ll leave you to… connect,” she said, like the word tasted sour. “Yell if you need anything. Preferably not at me.”
Then she was gone, the drape whispering closed behind her.
Silence fell, padded by the set dressing. The city lights beyond the fake windows blinked on a slow loop. Somewhere beyond the wall, a crew member shouted about a missing sandbag.
And Rowan Vale was still looking at me.
“You really from archives?” he asked.
“Last time I checked.” I twisted my lanyard, then realized how nervous that looked and dropped it. “I, um, think they mixed up a schedule.”
He studied me for a moment, head tilted, like I was the error message on his phone he couldn’t quite decode.
“Victor doesn’t do mix-ups,” he said quietly.
The offhand certainty in his tone made my skin prickle.
He patted the bed beside him. “Come sit. I promise I don’t bite unless it’s in the script.”
My feet stayed rooted. “I’m not an actor.”
“Good,” he said. “Neither is whoever was mouthing the lines at me yesterday.”
Something in his expression—tension drawn tight, the faint quiver of his leg as his foot bounced—made me move despite myself. I perched on the very edge of the mattress, leaving as much space between us as possible.
The sheets were cool under my palms. He was warm at my side, too present.
He held up the script. “They want this one to feel… raw.” His lip curled like it was a bad taste. “Intimate, honest, whatever buzzword note of the week. Lila’s fine, she’ll hit her marks, but…”
He trailed off, eyes dropping to the pages, fingers tightening.
“But,” I prompted, against my better judgment.
He exhaled slowly. “But my head’s not cooperating. I know what they want, I can hit the beats, but it feels like… lying about something that already feels like a lie.”
His knee brushed mine, the contact jarring, electric. I jerked back an inch before I could stop myself.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. His mouth curved, not quite a smile, more like a question.
“You’re nervous,” he said.
“You’re very… famous,” I replied, because my filter had apparently gone offline.
A real laugh broke out of him then, short and startled, like he hadn’t expected to make that sound. It loosened something in his shoulders.
“Trust me,” he said. “I’m much less interesting up close.”
He wasn’t. He was more interesting. The tired shadows under his eyes, the faint scar at his hairline the makeup team always erased, the way his fingers tapped that anxious rhythm I recognized from more places than I wanted to admit.
“Why me?” I asked, finally voicing the thing screaming at the back of my mind. “There are professional stand-ins. Coaches. People who know what they’re doing.”
His smile faded. “Apparently you did something on camera a few months ago that Victor liked.”
My pulse stuttered. “I haven’t been on camera.”
“Security feed,” he said. “Test footage. Whatever it was, he said you reacted ‘authentically.’ And that I could use more of that.”
My breath hitched. “He’s been… filming us?”
Rowan’s jaw died a slow, subtle death. “He’s been filming me since I was sixteen. If you were in the way, you were a bonus.”
The casual brutality of it made my chest ache.
“Look,” he went on, voice softening. “I get that this isn’t what you signed up for.”
“You have no idea what I signed up for,” I said, too fast, too sharp. My throat burned.
He studied me again, more carefully. “You really hate this.”
Old air pressed against my ribs—nightmares of a different casting office, a different man saying, Just relax, it’s only an audition. A different version of me smiling, swallowing, doing what she thought she had to for a shot.
“I don’t… perform,” I said, each word deliberate. “Not anymore.”
He nodded slowly, something like understanding passing over his face. “Then don’t perform. Just… be here. Buy me five minutes where I’m not acting opposite a lens. Talk to me like I’m not Rowan Vale.”
“Who would you rather be?” I asked.
His answering smile was thin. “Someone who can say no to Victor and still work in this town.”
Without warning, my chest squeezed. “That person doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I noticed.”
He shifted, angling toward me, knee brushing mine again, deliberate this time. “Let’s try something.”
My instincts screamed. “Try… what?”
“The scene,” he said. “But we’ll cheat. I’ll say my lines. You say whatever the hell you’d say if someone said that to you in real life. Don’t worry about the words on the page. Just… answer.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
He held my gaze, steady, unreadable. It felt like warmth pretending to be distance. “You already are.”
The peak line slipped between us like a dare.
He glanced at the script, then back at me. “Okay. Picture this isn’t a set. It’s…” His gaze flicked around, landed on the fake window. “Some shitty apartment with a view of a parking lot. We’ve been… whatever we’ve been. And I’ve been lying to you. About something important. And now I’m trying to come clean before I lose you.”
“I don’t like this hypothetical,” I muttered.
“Stay with me.” His voice dropped. “I tell you: ‘I’ve been playing a part with everyone else my whole life. But with you, I don’t know how. I don’t know who I am if I’m not pretending. And that scares the hell out of me.’”
The scripted words landed in the quiet space between us and did something terrible there.
Because they weren’t just lines. Not the way he said them. Something in him fractured on the last phrase, just enough for me to see the crack.
My throat tightened. I stared at his hand on the bedspread, at the faint tremor in his fingers.
It would have been easy to give him what the script probably wanted. Something soft. Forgiving. Romantic.
Instead I heard myself say, “Then why are you dragging me onto your stage?”
His head jerked. “What?”
“If you don’t know who you are without pretending,” I pushed on, feeling the words build their own momentum, “why do I have to be your practice audience? You’re scared, fine. So am I. But I didn’t volunteer to be the person you test your honesty on.”
Silence flooded the space.
He stared at me, shock flickering then softening into something else. Something raw.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Okay. Keep going.”
My pulse battered my ribs. “You want to tell me you’ve been lying? Tell me why. Tell me who made you think you’d disappear if you stopped.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. For a heartbeat, his composure wavered, like a curtain gusting in a sudden wind.
“Cut,” a disembodied voice crackled from above.
I jumped, snapping out of the bubble. A small camera tucked in the corner blinked red.
Rowan’s entire body went rigid.
The black drape rustled. Cass slipped back in, tablet hugged to her chest. “Victor’s watching remotely. That’s exactly the texture he wants, Rowan. Keep leaning into that frustration.”
I stared at her. “There’s a camera in here.”
“You signed the NDA,” she said simply.
My skin crawled. “This was supposed to be private.”
“Nothing on this lot is private.” Something flickered in her eyes, then shuttered. “We’re bumping real blocking to ten, by the way. Rowan, Victor wants thirty more minutes of this first.”
“Of what?” he asked tightly.
She nodded toward me. “Her. Whatever she’s doing to you.”
Heat flared in my face. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Yes,” Cass said. “Exactly.”
She turned on her heel and left before I could form a response.
The drape fell back into place. The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable this time. It was charged, bright, humming against my nerves.
Rowan dragged a hand through his hair, exhaling hard. “You okay?” he asked again, quieter.
“No,” I said truthfully. “Are you?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Not even close.”
Our eyes met. Something unspoken passed between us—shared irritation, shared helplessness, something fragile and dangerous sitting right beside it.
“This isn’t going to be temporary, is it?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Victor doesn’t do temporary, either.”
My chest tightened.
“I should go back after this,” I said, the words tasting like a last defense. “To the archives. To… my boxes.”
“You can try,” he said.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a weary fact.
He shifted closer then, just half an inch, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from his arm.
“Give me the thirty minutes,” he said softly. “Then you can decide if you’re going back to your boxes or if you’re going to help me burn his script down from the inside.”
My heart stuttered.
Thirty minutes. A lifetime.
I wet my lips, tasting the dryness of the air, the electric tang of too much light.
“Fine,” I said, even though nothing about this was fine. “But I’m not promising to be nice.”
His mouth curved, slow and dangerous. “Good,” he murmured. “I think nice is exactly what’s been killing me.”
He lifted the script again, eyes skimming the words, then looking back at me like he couldn’t quite decide which mattered more.
“Let’s see,” he said, voice low, “what happens if we stop pretending.”
The city lights outside the fake window flickered, brightening as if on cue, and for the first time since the call that morning, I realized something terrifying:
They weren’t just going to drag me onto his stage.
They were going to make it very, very hard to leave.
