Page 3 of Behind the Scenes

“Then you can get a place in the mountains that reminds you of Minnesota in the summer,” Lauren suggested.

Nothing she said helped. Alexis jumped up and stormed across the room. “Why do I have to move at all? I love my home! I belong here.”

Her assistant followed her and stopped in front of her as she began to pace. “We need to do whatever we can to keep you safe. Paul thinks this is best. Just give it a chance. Your safety is the only concern, Alexis.”

Just because her manager thought moving from the place she loved to somewhere she had no interest in even flying over didn’t mean she should do that. He didn’t necessarily know best.

But Alexis knew if she didn’t do as he suggested and if something happened to her, she’d never hear the end of it from him. “He better be right.”

Lauren’s blue eyes filled with concern. “The police think that you moving might be a good idea too.”

The police? Talk about people who didn’t give a damn.

Yanking her hands away, Alexis marched over to sit behind her nearly empty desk. “What the hell do the police know? It’s been months since I started getting these damn letters from that maniac, and all they can say is it’s an obsessed fan and to increase my security. I’ve hired twice as many bodyguards and still those damn letters keep coming!”

Ever the optimist, Lauren said, “But there hasn’t been an attack, which is more important than anything else.”

“How could there be? I rarely go out anymore because of him.”

“Or her,” her assistant said, correcting Alexis. “The police aren’t sure of the sex of the person doing this.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw on the end of the desk the picture of her and Jackson in the gold frame. They’d looked so happy then. The two of them had just spent all day on the beach in Mexico on the first day of their honeymoon, and they’d asked the bartender at the hotel to take their picture.

Alexis sighed as she remembered that day. Jackson had been her knight in shining armor from the moment she met him. The director on her first picture, she fell in love with his talent before she fell in love with him as a man, but it didn’t matter. From the very moment they set eyes on each other, it felt like fate took over. It was only a matter of time before they were a couple, and less than a year later, they were married and frolicking on the beach like they didn’t have a care in the world. His career was taking off, and Alexis became Hollywood’s It Girl everyone wanted in their film.

But as with every time she saw that picture, her mind traveled to another day. The day she found out he was cheating on her with another actress who was barely twenty years old. Twenty-four at the time, Alexis had married him three years earlier and foolishly believed she’d found the man she’d spend forever with.

Closing her eyes, she remembered that reporter asking her if she knew her husband was with another woman as she began to walk the red carpet for the Golden Globes. All night she had to pretend to be happy as her world crumbled around her.

And for what?

Because her thirty-five year old husband was too much of a coward to tell her the truth before some goddamned reporter got to her. Nothing like finding out in front of the entire world that your husband’s on-location shoot for his latest movie wasn’t the only thing he’d been enjoying in New Zealand.

Disgusted by the memory, she rolled her eyes. “No, it’s a man. I’m sure of that. No woman in the history of the world has ever been such a coward. Only a man would do this kind of thing to someone.”

Three of her security detail walked past the office, and then she heard a box crash to the floor. Furious, she barked, “Does no one know how to be careful with anything in this house?”

As she marched out to see how much damage they’d done, she snapped at Lauren, “Don’t bother with that picture of Jackson and me. It’s not coming with us to the new place.”

Three muscular men stared down at a singular box tipped over on the hardwood floor in the hallway. In front of them lay broken pieces of snow globes Alexis had collected from every place she visited since she began modeling at fifteen years old. Liquid ran along the wood planks and around the shards of glass from the collectables, including the blue water from the globe she’d bought in Fiji on her very first modeling job.

“All you had to do was carry the damn boxes and you couldn’t even do that!” she screamed, struggling to hold back tears as she stared down at the shattered remnants of her cherished memories.

Lauren came up behind her and wrapped her arms around Alexis’s shoulders as she sobbed, “He’s taking everything I love away from me. Even my snow globes.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of this. You go relax,” her assistant said in her ear.

True to her word, she began ordering the men around. Pointing at all of them, she said, “Clean up this mess and pack up the remaining globes more carefully. Then make sure you’re careful, for God’s sake.”

As Alexis began to walk away, one of the bodyguards apologized for their mistake, but she just nodded, too upset to say anything in response. No matter how many times they said I’m sorry, it wouldn’t bring back those trinkets she loved.

She walked upstairs to her room and found Carla finishing up with packing up the bedroom. The maid stood by waiting to strip the bed, but Alexis waved them away and pointed toward the door.

“Leave me alone.”

They hurried out without saying a word as she collapsed onto her bed and began sobbing into her pillow. Forget the drink. All she wanted to do was fade away into unconsciousness.

The door toher New York penthouse apartment opened in front of her to reveal what resembled a cavernous, sunless space. Alexis walked in and looked around at the dark and heavy decorative moldings where the ceilings and walls met and immediately felt oppressed.

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