Page 53 of Single Mom's Bodyguards
She shifts in her sleep. Not much. Just the smallest twitch of her fingers, the softest furrow in her brow like even unconscious, she’s still fighting off shadows.
I want to kiss the crease from her forehead and take away her worries. I want to be the one who rubs her feet at the end of the day and makes her tea so she can sleep easier, knowing I’m there for her. And if she wants to, I want to make big, beautiful babies with her.
Even if she doesn’t pick me.
This woman has stood in front of cameras when she wanted to disappear. Sat across from producers who called her difficult to her face. Given press interviews while her chest was still tight from crying in a locked bathroom stall twenty minutes earlier. She’s been used, controlled, diminished.
And tonight? She took herself back. Right there on the rooftop, with her ex’s body on the floor and her breath still shaking in her lungs, she chose something different. Choseus. Choseherself. Said yes to the fire instead of the fear.
And when she said she didn’t want to press charges? That wasn’t weakness. That was strategy.
She doesn’t want to be a headline. Doesn’t want to be reduced to a sound bite. She wants to keep working, keep raising her kids, keep moving forward without having to rehash the worst parts of her life in front of strangers.
So if she says she doesn’t want court? Then we burn his pride to the ground. We gut him socially. We take his power piece by piece, quietly, so by the time he realizes how bad it’s gotten, it’s already too late.
There will be more to come. I’m not naive enough to think this will stop him forever. “I know we’re not done,” I say quietly.
Sean nods. “Not by a long shot.”
“But we’re ahead.”
“For now.”
I glance back at Bailey. Her hand curls around the edge of the seat belt like she’s holding on. “She deserves a win.”
“Sheisthe win,” Wesley murmurs, not even looking up from his phone.
He’s not wrong.
She is. She’s the whole damn game. And whatever move David thinks he has left? He better make it fast.
Next time, I’m not stopping at a note.
17
BAILEY
I’m supposedto be focused.
The script is open on my tablet, the Friedburg sides marked up with highlighter and scribbled with notes in my loopy, stressed-out handwriting. There’s a scene I’ve nearly memorized already—three pages of devastating dialogue with a man who slowly realizes his wife is dying—and I’m supposed to be working on the transitions. The way she shifts from strength to surrender in two beats. The breath between her first line and her last.
But the words keep blurring. Not because they’re hard. Because they’rehuge.
Because every syllable feels like it’s got a price tag attached. And this role? This callback? It’sthemoment. The one that turns “working actress” into “leading lady.” It’s the kind of role people get remembered for. The kind of role that earns you meetings with directors who used to forget you existed.
And I want it.
Badly.
But I can’t get into the scene today. Not with the guys hovering two floors down like invisible body heat. Not with the constant buzz of press monitoring in the group thread. Not with the memory of the tweet of David slumped in that elevator with a note pinned to his chest still burned into my brain.
Not with everythingstill so fragile.
I take a deep breath. Try again. First line. Stillness. Wait for the shift. “It’s not the pain that scares me.”
I pause. I know what that feels like. David hurt me enough times that pain isn’t something I fear anymore.
But still, nothing. No spark.
