Page 85 of The Fate Of Us

I train my eyes on everything but Eleanor, terrified that she’ll read the lie written all overmy face.

“Really?” she asks, in a tone that does nothing but prick up my ears and drag my eyesover to her. It was a tone that told me she didn’t believe what’d just left my mouth, without having to fact-check it.

All I can do is nod, then scan the set once more, like it would help deepen the lie—

“You know, we’ve actually met before.” My head twists to face her. “Only once, yearsago.”

I tried to find the forgotten memory, searching every corner of my mind for the womanlooking down at me, but there was nothing. No sign of her.

With a quick breath, I asked, “We have?”

Her nod made her bob bounce, before she tucked an onyx strand behind her ear. “Youauditioned for a show I was a writer on. One of those cheesy kids’ dramas. Can’t remember the name.” Her hands flailed, ever so gracefully. “But you auditioned… walked into the room like you’d done this thing a million times before.” her eyes bore off into the distance, as though the memory was being projected onto the walls of the lot.

“You were so sure of yourself, for a nine-year-old. Like you’d had too much lifeexperience to fit into such a small body. You knew what to say, who to talk to, who to smile at. You knew the process too well.”

And then her voice turned solemn… sad.

“I don’t think you thought anyone was looking when your head dropped, only for asecond, but when you lifted it back up… I saw it. I saw that you would rather be anywhere else than in this room, talking and pretending for these people who didn’t deserve such a strong presence.”

Her eyes found their way back to me, the walls her confession built breaking down andthe sounds of the crew filtering between us.

“I thought you’d be like the other child stars. Have a normal career. Which was why I was so surprised when I kept seeing your name pop up in trailers and magazines and anywhere else they could showcase you. Not because you aren’t good, or don’t deserve the recognition, because you are truly talented at this job.”

“But I could see that little girl wanted to be doing something else. I can still see it now.”

What felt like fear washed over me, my face dropping, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “So when I heard them mention your name in one of the first meetings when we eventually got around to talking about casting options, I knew who I wanted as my Anastasia.”

Another shrug. “I figured I could finally solve the mystery, that we could talk about whatthat other thing was that you would’ve rather been doing all those years ago, and whether you still felt the same way now.”

That was the thing about writers, we could read people. We spent our spare minutesfiguring out a million different ways to describe the same actions, trying to find a new way to describe how someone could fall in love… and when you dedicate the quiet moments to typing up a fictional person, exploring what makes them tick, what their secrets are, how they keep them hidden, it’s almost like a gateway, a cheat code for how to figure out these things for the real people in your life.

When Eleanor looked at me, she wasn’t simply giving me her attention… she wasunpeeling the masks I kept on, shredding them apart piece by piece until there was nothing to hide the truth. Until it was as clear as the morning tides, no place to hide even the tiniest of seashells.

“So, prey tell. What was it?”

I fold my arms over my waist, a breath coming out of my nose as a smile emerges.“Writing.”

Eleanor’s reaction was one I wanted to watch over and over again, because she didn’treally react. Like, somehow, she’d known the word that was about to leave my mouth. As if one of those masks had had the answer written across it.

Her eyes didn’t get wide, her gasp was non-existent. All she did was let a weak, knowingsmile creep on her face. “Oh, I do love a plot twist.”

I couldn’t help but drop my head as a smile, the biggest one I’d formed in days, bloomedacross my lips, my jaw enjoying the ache it brought. And then I let a laugh slip as I asked, “Is this your way of saying I can quit this movie without backlash from you?”

This time, she gasped. “Oh heavens no! You are like the reincarnation of Anastasia. Justhow I pictured her!” her eyes went soft again. “Plus, your chemistry with Nate is undeniable.”

It was as if my brain switched off when I muttered, “Well, yeah. That’s what playing childhood lovers with someone you were actually in love with as a kid will do to you—”

I threw a hand over my mouth, but it didn’t matter. I’d already said more than I shouldhave. The words had left me.

But that didn’t stop Eleanor from reacting how I thought she would before. Wide eyes.Loud gasp. Gaped mouth. The whole sha-bang.

“Oh, now this is a story I need to hear.”

Just as Eleanor takes me under her wing, I spot the man I kissed this morning.

I held his eyes like he held me this morning.

The longer I get lost in those green pools, swirling with strands of gold, I remember the books—the beautifully bound books in my favourite colour. Somehow I’d always known, that if my books were ever to be set free in the literary world, that would be the colour they’d wear, and knowing that Nate had had the same idea when he set and bound them for me…

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