Page 18 of Between the Lines

I’d do whatever I had to do to keep us there.

Chapter Five

SHAW

Ellie:So, your boy Alec is lowkey kind of scary.

That was the first thing I saw when I dragged my wrist in front of my eyes—the buzz of a notification had jolted me from unintended sleep.

I raised an eyebrow.

Had something happened?

I would’ve guessed she hadn’t actuallyseenAlec anywhere—he was on set for the rest of the day like I was. Which waswhyI’d been halfway—all the way—passed out on my couch. A long-ass day of intense shooting and reshooting, trying to make the intense scenes hit the right note.

Which…was probably what she was referring to.

Her scene with “Jude” that morning had been intense, and it was only the beginning of what was to come. A lot of today’s filming had surrounded tough conversations with the Moss family, around custody, and honestly,controlof Shannon.

Both sides saw the opportunity to use her as leverage over the other.

There was unfortunate beef between the families.

Her mother—mine and Jude’s sister—and her father—whose sister was a bit of an aggressive character that already clashedwith Jude—had managed to find love with each other, on some Romeo and Juliet shit. But now that both were gone, the families wanted to pull rank and not allow the other side to see her.

Which, for obvious reasons, nobody was agreeing to without a fight.

My people believed that being her mother’s side meant some kind of superior claim, but so far the courts hadn’t agreed, demanding a joint custody agreement for a child none of us had even known existed.

Neither side was simply backing down.

That’s why Jude was going at Luna so hard, trying to intimidate her into giving us little favors—like not allowing the other side of her family to pick her up from school.

Petty shit, that clearly wasn’t working.

My character didn’t share their opinion on keeping Shannon away from her father’s family, so they called themselves pissed, even going as far as implying some sort of betrayal.

Intense.

But…

Dude is a damn teddy bearI texted back, because it was true. Not in the sense of him being weak or anything like that; he just had one of those easygoing personalities that often came through in his work, to the point that peoplelovedto call him fake, saying he was just living a certain role.

Thisrole was a serious departure from the nice-guy thing, which was exactly what he wanted—something to give him some disambiguation, and hopefully some respect on his name.

The fact that he already had people talking was good.

That’s what I thought too!was the response Ellie sent back.

She was newer to all this industry than I was, which meant she wasn’t as familiar with everybody. Our new little corner of Black “Hollywood”…I wouldn’t necessarily say we wereclose-knit, but we definitely looked out for each other, and made a concentrated effort to keep potential weirdness at a minimum.

Ellie was still getting integrated into it.

Before I could respond to her text, another one came through from a different contact.

Stella:You feeling up to some company?

I closed my eyes, knowing my answer was “no” but not wanting to offend.

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