Oh, you did see it. The moment it happened, it settled in your chest like a quiet weight.

Tamara Smart really was the best thing that ever happened to you.

Being Lance Reddick’s daughter meant sets were normal, scripts on kitchen counters, directors’ names said like family friends. You met Tamara when your dad was filming Resident Evil, and from the very beginning your worlds clicked into place. Your families gravitated toward each other naturally—shared dinners, inside jokes, long conversations that ran late into the night. It felt… easy. Safe.

And then there was Tamara.

That british accent alone should’ve been illegal. Confident, warm, sharp in a way that made you want to listen even when she wasn’t talking. You were an artist before you even had the words for it, and suddenly your sketchbooks were full of her—her profile, her hands, the way she smiled when she thought no one was watching. You wrote poems you never planned to show anyone, all about a girl you were already a little in love with.

Years later, when you finally started dating, it felt inevitable. Like the universe had just taken its time.

The Percy Jackson season 2 premiere should’ve been perfect. You were there with your dad, proud as hell, and with Tamara—your Tamara—absolutely owning the room. She played Thalia, and gods, she killed it. Strong, electric, impossible to look away. Zeus on one side, Thalia on the other—it felt surreal, like watching two parts of your life collide in the best way.

Then Dior showed up.

Who played Clarisse. Confident, magnetic, loud in that charming way that made people orbit her. You’d seen her before on set when you were visiting your dad, so you waved, smiled, exchanged a few words. Normal. Innocent.

But Tamara stiffened beside you.

You felt it before you fully noticed it—the way her arm tightened around yours, the way her jaw set just a little too hard. Her eyes tracked Dior longer than necessary, not angry exactly… but guarded. Wary.

And you understood why, even if it stung.

Tamara had been burned before. Past girlfriends who loved her money, her fame, the doors her name could open—never her. She carried that history quietly, but it lived in the spaces between things. And for some reason—maybe Dior’s confidence, maybe the way she laughed with you, maybe just bad timing—Tamara didn’t like her near you.

You caught Tamara watching the two of you, her expression unreadable. When your eyes met, she looked away too quickly.

That’s when it hit you.

This wasn’t jealousy born from distrust of you—it was fear. Fear of being replaceable. Fear of losing something she finally believed was real.

And all you wanted, standing there in the noise and lights and cameras, was to take her face in your hands and tell her:

I choose you. I always have. I always will.

Because no poem you’d ever written, no sketch you’d ever drawn, had ever meant as much as the girl standing beside you—trying so hard not to let her past steal her present.