Chapter 3

[August 19, 2024, Cloudy.

Liam sent me a dress – a super dramatic, backless style. He said he wanted me to wear it for him. He's such a tease.]

Liam had his assistant send me the dress.

It was very sexy, showing a huge expanse of my back, completely impractical for everyday wear.

Though the characters I played were often the "brawny but brainless," seductive vixen types, that wasn't my personal style.

Liam called me, patiently coaxing,

"Come on, Willow, sweetie, I miss you. Please wear it and come see me, okay?"

He pestered me for ages, and I still couldn't bring myself to refuse. I agreed.

He said he'd be finished with filming late, so I should meet him at Hotel Room 1407 at midnight.

His excited instructions reminded me of when we were eighteen.

We'd just started college, and we'd only been dating for a year.

He was always hugging and kissing me, rambling about when we'd turn legal, how he was about to explode from holding back.

I could feel it – his words, his actions, his gaze, even his very soul, yearned for me.

I thrived on that yearning.

It made me feel like my existence had meaning.

It was my reason for living.

Liam was Willow's reason for living, from eighteen to thirty-two. Always.

At midnight, I wore the dress and knocked on the door of 1407.

Instead of Liam, the door was opened by Director Miller, a strange, older man.

We stared at each other for a beat. Then, his gaze turned overtly lecherous, scanning me up and down.

Liam appeared from behind me, pulling me to his side as he spoke to Director Miller. "My apologies, Director, my assistant must have gotten the room number wrong."

Back in Liam's room, he held me through the night, our embrace intimate and desperate.

Half-asleep, I heard his faint whisper:

"I'm sorry, Willow."

Soon, I understood where that apology came from.

The older man in 1407 was the director of their movie.

The night before, he'd called Scarlett to his room under the pretense of "discussing scenes," attempting to take advantage of her. But an unknown paparazzo had secretly snapped photos of her entering the room.