Page 152 of He's The Reason Why

He gestured at the row of trailers. “Hair and makeup is waiting for you.”

She saluted him with the cup and made her way to the trailers, saying hello to everyone she passed.

After she left, Marshall parted from the extras clusteredaround him and made a beeline for Blake. “Have you checked social media this morning?”

“No. I hate social media. I’m never looking at anything on the internet ever again.” He studied Marshall’s face with suspicion. “Why? What happened now?”

“A new video dropped an hour ago.” Marshall pulled it up on his phone and handed it to Blake. “You might want to watch this one.”

Piper’s face filled the screen. “She probably just recorded her coffee chat early.”

“Just watch.” Marshall sauntered off toward the food truck.

Blake listened as Piper poured her heart out. The way she’d formed this intimate connection with people she would never meet face to face filled him with a sense of awe and wonder. How did she do it? How did she reach through the screen and touch hearts so completely?

When she mentioned his name, he realized with a start that he was one of those people. She had his heart, and no matter how hard she tried to return it, he didn’t want it back.

Those little voices in your head that tell you you’re not good enough…

He paused the video. The look on her face broke something in him. Her eyes were locked on the screen as if she were desperate to be heard. Her struggle with inner demons was real, and she wasn’t afraid to share it with the world.

That look of honest pain would be etched in his memory forever.

She had over a thousand comments already, and she’d only posted it an hour ago, according to the time stamp.

He’d spent two days rewriting the scene they were about to shoot, and now he knew the words weren’t anywhere near good enough. She’d been honest and open, and he had to be too.

The idea of doing that tied his stomach into nervous knots. Itwas so much easier to say a carefully crafted line than to speak from the heart.

Blake carried the phone back to Marshall with grim determination. He didn’t care how hard it was going to be. All he cared about now was making sure Piper knew how wrong her inner demons were.

“I’m going to ad-lib,” he told Marshall in a low voice. “Just go with whatever happens.”

“Alrighty then.” Marshall shook his head but tucked his phone away. “I’ll muster the troops.”

Blake went to find his director of photography.

“Wally, I need a favor.”

The man looked like he hadn’t changed clothes since yesterday. “Sure.”

“When I get to my mark, start recording, okay? No matter what happens, keep rolling and don’t say the word action.”

“Okay,” Wally said with a shrug. “It’s your show. Going for a raw edge?”

He shook his head. “A real one.”

“No prob.” Wally gave a thumbs-up.

Blake went to find his mark. He saw Wally put on his headphones and move into position. Two camera operators quietly moved into place, and the light went on to indicate they were hot.

The bar had once been a fake saloon set up for tourists on their way to lose money in Vegas. Everything in it was over-the-top cheesy, from the spurs and saddles on the walls to sawdust on the floor.

The countertop had been renovated, but it was the original with brass accents and a stained-glass mirror behind the bar to make the space look bigger than it was.

He was dressed in the slick gray suit his character favored. This wasn’t a place his character would fit in. He was more athome in the high roller room of a casino, or on a yacht sweet-talking a lonely widow, but he was drawn here by a certain small-town girl who lived next door to the house he’d run away from as a child.

His plan was to get Piper into position and then say what he needed to say. He was using the original kiss scene as the vehicle, the one she’d originally talked him into changing.

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