The cameras caught you before you were ready.

One moment you were stepping out of the black car into the sharp wash of premiere lights, the next the carpet ahead was a river of flashes, microphones, voices calling your name from every direction.

“Over here!”

“Look left!”

“How does it feel to lead Violet Hours?”

Your pulse kicked once, hard.

For almost two years, you and Hayden had lived in the quiet spaces between headlines. Back entrances. Late dinners in hidden corners. Grocery runs in baseball caps and sunglasses. Hands linked only when no one was looking. The relationship had become something precious because it belonged only to the two of you.

Until tonight.

Tonight there was nowhere to hide.

You turned instinctively toward him.

Hayden Christensen stood beside you in a dark tailored suit, composed as ever, one hand resting lightly at the small of your back. Calm moved through him like weather through trees—silent, steady, impossible to rush.

“You okay?” he asked, low enough that no microphone could steal it.

You nodded once.

He glanced at you like he knew it was a lie.

The crowd surged louder when photographers realized the two of you were standing together willingly, openly, not hurrying past, not pretending to be separate arrivals. A ripple of recognition moved down the barricades.

Someone shouted his name.

Someone shouted yours.

Someone shouted, “Are you together?”

Hayden didn’t answer them. He only shifted closer, fingers brushing your wrist.

The movement turned your hand outward.

There it was.

Small, elegant, nearly hidden beneath the cuff of your sleeve: a cursive H inked in black on the inside of your wrist.

A tiny thing. Private, like everything else.

But cameras loved tiny things.

Flashes erupted faster.

You let out a startled laugh under your breath. “Well,” you murmured, “there goes subtle.”

His mouth tilted, the beginning of a smile. Rare enough to feel like winning something.

“You were never subtle,” he said.

You stared at him. “I literally dated you in secret for two years.”

“Exactly.”

A publicist waved frantically from farther down the carpet, signaling you toward the step-and-repeat. Your film’s title glowed in violet letters behind the press line: VIOLET HOURS.