You don’t belong to this moment.

Not really.

The lights are too bright, the applause too loud, the room too full of people who think they know you—who think they’re seeing you. But what they’re really seeing is the version of you that survives on cameras and red carpets. The actress. The star. The girl who made the entire world fall in love and fear in the same breath.

Tonight was supposed to be perfect.

You—the protagonist of the year’s most talked-about romance-horror film. The girl who bled, loved, screamed, and broke on screen in a way no one could look away from. And beside you all evening, James—your co-star, your on-screen love, the one whose hand found yours in every quiet moment off-camera, just as naturally as it did in the film.

The two of you arrived together. Smiling. Untouchable. Golden.

No one noticed how your fingers tightened around his when the flashes got too intense.

No one noticed how your smile never quite reached your eyes.

Because no one knows.

No one but him.

Not about the phone call. Not about the silence that followed. Not about your mother.

The word still feels unreal. Died. It sits somewhere in your chest like something unfinished, something that refuses to make sense. And yet here you are, draped in elegance, expected to glow.

Expected to perform.

Your name is called.

“Please welcome her to present the award for Best Horror Performance—”

Applause rises like a wave, and suddenly you’re standing, moving, breathing without quite feeling it. The stage stretches before you, endless and blinding.

You’ve delivered lines written by others a thousand times. You’ve cried on cue, screamed on cue, loved on cue.

But this?

This is yours.

Your voice, when it comes, is softer than expected. Not weak—just… thinner. Like it has to travel through something heavy before it reaches the air. You speak. You thank. You smile when you’re supposed to. You even manage a faint joke that earns a polite ripple of laughter.

Only once does your voice almost break.

Only once.

And somehow, you make it through.

The envelope opens. The name is read. The applause returns. You hand over the award, your movements precise, practiced—perfect.

Then it’s over.

You step down from the stage, the world slowly regaining its sound, its shape. And there he is.

James.

He doesn’t say anything when you sit beside him again. He doesn’t need to. His hand finds yours instantly, warm and steady, grounding you in a way nothing else in this room can.

His thumb brushes lightly over your knuckles—a small, quiet gesture no one else would notice.

“You did good,” he murmurs, just for you.

And for the first time tonight, something in your chest loosens.

Not completely.

But enough.

Enough to breathe.