Page 1 of The Reunion

1

I’d forgotten just how hot it feels under a spotlight.

“All right, Liv, we’re going live in five… four… three…”

A production assistant motions for quiet, and the chorus of chatter fades in theJava with Jadestudio. For a split second, it’s just me and Jade Johnson and the hum of the electricity powering her sunny morning-show set. I shift in my seat, a plush armchair upholstered in brightest white. It’s comfortable, even if I’m not entirely so.

My relationship with the press: it’s complicated.

I pick a focal point, anything that will ground me here in this singular moment—the coffee, dark in its bone china cup—and just like that, I’m prime-time TV starlet Liv Latimer again, not just Liv who regularly tosses her hair up in a messy bun and wakes up with morning breath like the rest of the population.

“Liv!” Jade says, her voice a song even with just the one syllable. Her teeth are next-level perfection. “It is myabsolute pleasureto have you here on the show—can I admit I’m just a little starstruck right now?”

She laughs, and I laugh, and it all goes down like honey. “Thanks, Jade. Can I admit the feeling’s absolutely mutual?”

“It’s not every day I get to sit down with someone who was such a fixture of my adolescence,” she goes on. “And now I’m dating us both—it cannot possibly be two decades sinceGirl on the Vergepremiered!”

“Unbelievable, right?” I match her energy, careful not to surpassit. “I think it feels like less time has passed because we were on the air for so long.”

“Six seasons.” Jade takes a sip from her coffee and sets the mug back down on the low table between us. “What was that like, growing up with the whole world watching?”

It’s hardly the first time someone has asked—I’ve gotten every question under the sun.People will take as much as you give them, Livvie, my father used to say.Be careful to keep some things for yourself.I need something sharp and quotable, something relatable and true that doesn’t actually require me to part with some private piece of myself I’ll never get back.

“It was exactly how you’d expect,” I say, like even this doesn’t feel like giving too much away. You’d think I’d be used to it at this point, scraping slices of my soul into sound bites, but it has never gotten easier. “It was a lot of pressure but also a lot of fun.”

“Let’s talk about the pressure. Your character on the show—Honor St. Croix—was Miss Americana to the extreme, and honestly, it never looked like a stretch. Honor never crumbled under the pressure she felt, and from what I can tell, neither did you. How did you handle it all?”

Jade wasn’t there for my rather jagged twenties, or any of the behind-the-scenes days that led up to them. There’s a difference between crumbling and cracking. Honor and Iabsolutelydid both.

“It all comes back to being grateful,” I say. It’s a line I’ve practiced many times over in my head, and one Ithinkis true? “Being grateful, even for the hard things, and starting fresh each new day no matter how tough the day before felt.”

“But they did feel tough,” Jade says. A fact: not a question.

I look her straight in the eye. “People go through harder things every day,” I say, choosing my words carefully.I’vegone through harder. “But yes, the expectations on me back then were unreal.”

The schedule, the interviews, the tours. There was pressure everywhere, so many eyes on me, always.

I loved the acting itself, though—unsurprising, given that it’s practically a family legacy on the Latimer side. The chance to escape into someone else’s skin, to be someone as perfect as Honor St. Croix whilemy own personal universe was falling apart? Even at a young age, it was never lost on me what a privilege that was. It worked out well that I wasgoodat it. Good enough that no one ever had to know exactly how hard things were on me when my father—three-time Oscar-winning Hollywood heartthrob Patrick Latimer—was killed in a car crash up in the canyons during our second season.

“It certainly seemed like an intense experience for all of you when the show took off overnight. At least you clearly had chemistry with your castmates,” Jade says, eyes glittering under the lights. I know wherethisis going. “You and Ransom Joel seemed especially close.”

And there it is: I’ve been down this road a thousand times—in interviews, in daydreams, in sleepless nights where I tried to piece together where everything went wrong between us. We were best friends, closer than anyone else on set. The closest.

Slipping into Honor’s life was exactly the escape I needed when my father died. And when the cameras stopped rolling, it was Ransom—andonlyRansom—who got the real me.

“You and Ransom were inseparable in those years, and more than a few people speculated you were secretly dating.” She leans in conspiratorially, as if it’s just us having a chat over coffee without millions of viewers hanging on our every word. “I know you both adamantly denied it, but I have to know—was there ever any truth to those rumors?”

It takes every ounce of professional poise to not break character: Liv Latimer, perfectly unruffled talk show guest. Behind my ultra-calm facade, I’m wondering how this question possibly slipped past my publicist.

“They were rumors,” I say evenly, putting on a smile that’s anything but easy. “Never anything more.”

I don’t tell her how we were so close itfeltlike dating sometimes, how there were days when he mattered more to me than the show itself. I especially don’t tell her about the painful drama between us at the end of our final season, the purposeful step back from our friendship—Ransom’s idea, not mine. How it felt like a breakup.

It’s always been easier to deny the rumors than to admit I once wished they were true.

“Have you and Ransom seen each other since the show ended?” Jade’s question is so casual, so blissfully unaware of all that went down between us.

“I’ve certainly seen him on social media!” I reply, deflection-with-a-smile at its best.

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