CHAPTER THIRTY –
CHRIS POINT OF VIEW
My heart hardens but I tried all my best to hide it.
I’m selfish! She is for her future and the best for her.
My brows hiked upwards as I regarded her with open curiosity, noticing the familiar nervous habit of her teeth worrying at her plush lower lip.
“The conservatory programs?” I repeated, digesting this tidbit with no small measure of pride. “Babe, that’s incredible! You know how insanely competitive that admittance process is – you should be walking on air right now!”
Hailey’s face blossomed into a radiant smile at my enthusiastic response, only for the expression to falter slightly a heartbeat later.
“The only… the only snag is… well, shit – it’s in LA, Chris.” She winced, averting her gaze as if bracing herself for an outburst or disappointment to cloud my features. “If I take it, we’d have to do the long-distance thing for at least a year while you finish up your senior courses. And you know how demanding and intensive that program is, not leaving much time for…”
She trailed off, her fingers toying with a loose thread on the sleeve of my hoodie, refusing to meet my steady gaze.
I sucked in a stabilizing breath, leaning down to nuzzle her cheek with my nose until she finally looked up at me, adoration and trepidation swirling in those emerald pools.
“Then we’ll make it work, Hail. Whatever it takes, we’ll make the sacrifice if it means giving your dreams the wings they deserve to truly soar,” I stated with utmost conviction, cupping her face in my palm and stroking her cheekbone reverently with the pad of my thumb.
“You’re going to be a star, baby – my shining star burning brighter than any of those vapid fakes out there,” I added with a crooked grin, feeling a tension bleed from her shoulders as she laughed wetly and pulled me into a searing kiss.
We lost ourselves in the ardent tangle of lips and roaming hands for an infinite stretch, drawing away only when the need for air became overwhelming.
Hailey’s eyes were glittering with unshed tears of relief and burgeoning hope, wisps of auburn hair delightfully mussed in my grasp.
“What did I ever do to deserve you, Chris Parsons?” She whispered, fingers tracing the line of my jaw with feather-light tenderness. “Loving you is the greatest role I’ll ever have the privilege of playing in this life.”
I huffed out a breathless laugh, pressing my brow to hers as an indescribable feeling of euphoria, of rightness unfurled within my chest.
“No acting required, gorgeous,” I murmured against her lips, sealing my declaration with one more blazing, soulful kiss. “Everything about us? One hundred percent real.”
…
“The greatest role I’ll ever have the privilege of playing in this life?” I muttered.
The anguished cries tearing from the depths of my heart were what finally jolted me back to the harsh reality that Hailey had ceased being my Hailey long ago.
Some small, childishly optimistic ember had stubbornly refused to be extinguished.
Steadfastly insisting that the bond we’d so painstakingly cultivated was unbreakable, that she would eventually find her way back from the soulless glitz and vapidity that Hollywood perpetually dangled like a hypnotic lure.
But no… there she was in high definition, draped shamelessly over the arm of the embodiment of every insidious, toxic trait she’d once vowed to fight against becoming.
This Miles character had taken everything from me – my dignity, my faith in true love prevailing against all odds, and now… now the actual woman whose radiant spirit I’d built my world around.
“Seriously!?”
Blinded by a toxic blend of heartache and fury, I lashed out at the closest target – Hailey’s damning image flickering on the laptop screen.
“Ahhh.”
With an incoherent roar, I swiped a forearm across the cramped desktop, scattering papers, notebooks and other detritus in a whirlwind of bitter shrapnel.
The trembling was uncontrollable now, great gulping sobs wracking my body as I slumped into an undignified heap on the thin shag carpeting, heedless of the debris crunching and stinging exposed skin.
This wasn’t about me anymore – not the Chris Parsons I’d once been, or the shell he’d been reduced to following Hailey’s betrayal and defection.
“I thought I was over her?” I muttered.
No, now it transcended the personal, became something portentous and profound, a refiner’s fire searing away the last tattered vestiges of my naive, rose-tinted filters regarding the world.
It was about Megan and the unspeakable anguish and violation she’d endured at the gnarled hands of that same metastatic catalyst in the name of celebrity and ego.
My pain was but an insignificant mote compared to the roiling maelstrom she’d somehow maneuvered and triumphed over to reclaim her essence.
And in that moment of searing, transcendent clarity, I vowed to be the vessel that contained and immortalized her momentous odyssey for the ages.
No matter how much collateral damage I endured or personal scars were reopened in the process.
The words, Megan’s words, needed to be unfurled for the world to witness and absorb.
Miles Newcomb and his ilk would not be permitted to erect hollow monuments and propaganda celebrating their distorted, abusive ideology on the backs of real human lives and spirits.
Not on my watch.
Not when the antidote to his virulent poison was flowing through my very veins, surging in every gasping breath until the wrenching sobs and shivers finally subsided into a strange, reverential calm.
I would endure the worst of this crucible until nothing, but the meteoric truth remained, no matter how harrowing the journey became.
Because in my bones… in my soul… I knew this wasn’t just the divine calling of a writer seeking his magnum opus.
It was the catharsis I, and perhaps the world needed, to illuminate a path towards healing and accountability in the wake of Hollywood’s systemic plagues.
….
This had become so much more than just an assignment, a paycheck, an entry on my writer’s resume.
Now, it was a deeply intertwined personal crusade to channel the myriad emotions roiling within me – the outrage, the protectiveness, the sympathy, the indignation – into preserving and amplifying the voices of not just Megan.
I promise to do my best so that the world leaves her alone.
My fingers found the laptop keyboard once more, caressing the keys in a feverish, almost loving caress.
I would be the conduit, the transcriber of these interwoven sagas of perseverance over unspeakable adversity.
With each tapped word, I would weave their harrowing truths into an intricate tapestry too viscerally vivid and beautifully human to ever be ignored or overshadowed by the gaudy theatrics of their tormentors.
And maybe, just maybe, some part of me hoped to also rediscover my own lost purpose somewhere along the journey.
With a determined sniffle and a few stray keystrokes.
I set to work in silent vigil, the muffled hum of the laptop filling the cavernous silence as my purpose, so long eluding me, finally began taking shape.