Chapter 1: The Interview That Changes Everything
The afternoon sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the press junket suite, turning the polished mahogany table into a mirror of golden light. Callina Liang sat perfectly still in her chair, her smile frozen in place, her thighs—those famous, powerful thighs that had launched a thousand magazine covers—pressed together beneath the table. She'd lost count of the interviews hours ago. Seven? Eight? They all blurred together into one endless loop of the same questions, delivered with the same fake enthusiasm by the same interchangeable entertainment reporters.
"So, Callina, your thighs have become iconic—"
There it was. Question number nine, or maybe ten, delivered by a man in a blazer that cost more than her first car. The eighth time someone had mentioned her thighs today. She kept her smile welded on, the one her publicist had drilled into her, the one that said I'm grateful, I'm approachable, I'm not fantasizing about roundhouse-kicking you through that window.
"Thank you," she said, her voice syrup-sweet. "I trained very hard."
"And what does Chun-Li eat for breakfast?"
For the love of— Callina's eye twitched. She'd answered this exact question three times already. Once with patience. Once with humor. Once with a thinly veiled death wish. Now, she just wanted it to end. She launched into the same answer, her mind drifting to the mini-fridge in the corner, where a bottle of champagne sat chilling. She could almost feel the cold glass in her hand, the crisp bubbles on her tongue.
The interviewer laughed at something she said—she wasn't even sure what—and then it was over. Another handshake. Another "pleasure meeting you." Another face she'd forget by dinner.
Her publicist, a harried woman named Denise with a clipboard permanently attached to her hand, swooped in the moment the door closed. "One more," she said, not unkindly.
Callina let out a breath that carried the weight of a thousand press junkets. "Denise, I love you, but if one more person asks me about my thighs—"
"It's the last one," Denise said, already shuffling papers. "Independent blogger. Small following, but really engaged audience. He's apparently very good at making people feel comfortable."
"That's what they all say."
"This one actually means it." Denise glanced at her watch. "He's also running late, so you've got ten minutes to breathe. Want me to grab you a water?"
Callina nodded and slumped back in her chair the moment Denise disappeared. The suite was gorgeous—all velvet and mahogany and soft lighting that made everyone look ten years younger—but it felt like a cage. She could see the city sprawled out beyond the windows, the tiny cars crawling along the streets below, and she wondered what it would be like to just walk out there and be nobody. Just for a day. Just for an hour.
She was still staring at the skyline when the door opened.
The man who walked in was not what she expected. Independent blogger had conjured images of someone pale and nervous, maybe wearing a fedora, clutching a recording device like a lifeline. This guy was built. Tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of muscular frame that suggested he actually lifted things, not just selfies. His curly brown hair was a little wild, and his thick mustache and kempt beard gave him a rugged, approachable look that was almost jarring against the polished backdrop of the hotel suite.
He was carrying a battered notebook—the kind with spiral binding and coffee stains—and he was grinning at her like they were old friends who'd stumbled into each other at a party.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, his voice warm and easy, with a Midwestern drawl that didn't match the Manhattan skyline behind him. "There was a guy outside selling hot dogs, and I made a terrible life decision."
Callina blinked. "What?"
"The hot dog. I regret it. But also, I don't." He walked toward her, extending his hand. "I'm Ritchie Stevens. You must be Callina Liang, the woman who's going to break the Internet when that movie comes out."
She took his hand automatically, surprised by the warmth of his grip. "That's... one way to put it."
"That's the way the Internet will put it, trust me." He dropped into the chair across from her, setting down his notebook and pulling out a pen from behind his ear. "I've seen the test footage. The fight choreography alone is going to cause problems in households across America."
Callina found herself laughing before she could stop herself. "I'm sorry, I just—you're not what I expected."
"I get that a lot." He leaned back, studying her with an expression that wasn't predatory or performative. Just... curious. "Okay, before we start, I need you to know something. I'm not going to ask about your thighs."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
"Really. I've read your other interviews today. And yesterday. And last week." He flipped open his notebook, scanning his own handwriting. "Five different outlets asked about your workout routine. Three asked about what Chun-Li eats for breakfast. One literally asked if you could crush a watermelon with your thighs." He looked up at her. "Which, by the way, is a deeply weird question to ask a human being."
Callina's façade cracked, a genuine smile breaking through. "That was the seventh one who asked that."
"See, that's the thing." Ritchie set down his pen, giving her his full attention. "You've talked a lot about the training. The diet. The physical transformation. But nobody's asked you about the emotional part of playing an icon. And that's what I want to talk about."
She felt something shift in her chest. Something that had been locked away for weeks, buried under repetition and rehearsal and the endless machine of publicity. "The emotional part?"
"Yeah." His voice was gentle, genuine. "Chun-Li isn't just a fighter. She's a symbol. For a lot of people, she was the first time they saw themselves represented on screen. She was strong, and beautiful, and she didn't apologize for either. So what's it like to carry that? To know that you're stepping into shoes that millions of people grew up idolizing?"
Callina opened her mouth. Closed it. For the first time all day, she actually had to think about her answer. "It's terrifying," she admitted. "And also... I don't know if there's a word for it. Honor doesn't quite cover it. It's more like—" She paused, searching for the right way to explain. "You know when you're a kid, and you have that one hero? The one who makes you feel like you could do anything?"
Ritchie nodded, his pen moving across the page. "For me, it was Gabrielle from Xena. Which my dad was not happy about, because he wanted me to like Xena herself. But there was something about Gabrielle—how she started as this helpless farm girl and became this badass warrior—that just spoke to me."
Callina laughed, genuinely surprised. "Wait, really? Gabrielle?"
"Don't judge me. She had a staff. A staff. That's cool." He grinned, and there was something boyish about it, something that made her want to keep talking. "What about you? Who was your hero?"
She paused. This wasn't the scripted question, the one she'd answer on autopilot. This was a real person, asking a real question, and she found herself wanting to answer honestly. "I didn't really have one," she said slowly. "I mean, I loved movies, I loved martial arts, but I never saw anyone who looked like me doing what I wanted to do. It was always... aspirational. I wanted to be the person that little girls could look at and see themselves."
"And now you are."
The words hit her harder than she expected. She blinked, suddenly aware of the cameras in the corner, the red light blinking on the main one. "Yeah," she said, her voice softer than she intended. "I guess I am."
Ritchie didn't press. He just waited, letting the silence breathe, the way a real interviewer would. The way someone who actually cared about the conversation would.
"Can I tell you something embarrassing?" she found herself saying.
"Please." His grin widened. "I love embarrassing stories. It's practically my brand."
"At the end of the first day of training, I was so sore that I couldn't get out of bed. Like, I literally rolled onto the floor and crawled to the bathroom. My trainer had to come over and lift me onto a chair because my legs just wouldn't cooperate."
Ritchie burst out laughing, and it was real, unguarded laughter, not the polite chuckle she'd grown used to. "That's amazing. Did you ever get back at them?"
"I got very good at kicking things," Callina said, a mischievous glint in her eye. "I may have accidentally kicked a training dummy across the room once."
"Accidentally."
"Okay, not accidentally. But it was very satisfying."
They fell into an easy rhythm after that. He asked about her childhood in Vancouver, and she told him about growing up in a house where her mom's cooking always had the heat on high and her dad had a secret thing for karaoke. He countered with a story about his own Nebraska upbringing, about the time he and his cousins built a ramp for their bikes and he'd ended up in a ditch with a broken arm and a newfound respect for physics.
"You know, for a guy with a platform, you're surprisingly not terrible to talk to," Callina said, leaning forward, genuinely engaged for the first time all day.
"I trained intensely," he quipped, his eyes crinkling. "My mom used to make me practice conversation with her friends at church. You learn a lot about listening when you're being grilled by a woman who wants to know why you don't have a girlfriend."
She wanted to ask what he'd told them, whether the girlfriend existed, why she was wondering about it at all. But before she could, Denise materialized from somewhere, making a wrapping it up gesture from the doorway.
Ritchie's eyes flicked to Denise, then back to Callina. "That's my cue." He closed his notebook, the gesture strangely intimate. "But I have to say, this was the highlight of my week."
"Mine too." She wasn't lying. She rose from her chair, suddenly realizing how tired she was, how much energy it had taken to keep that smile in place all day. But with him, it hadn't felt like a performance. It had felt like... hanging out.
He stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and extended his hand again. She took it. Neither let go right away.
"You're going to be incredible in this movie," he said, his voice steady and sure. "The critics are going to say a lot of things, but they're all going to agree on that."
And then, to her own surprise, Callina stepped forward and hugged him.
It wasn't a Hollywood hug, the kind where body parts barely skimmed and no one actually touched. It was a real hug. She felt his arms wrap around her, firm and safe, and she caught the faint scent of his cologne—something woodsy and clean—before she pulled back, flustered.
"Sorry," she said, her cheeks heating. "I don't usually do that."
"No, I get it." His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were warm. "I'm excited to see you in this movie. Like, genuinely. And I'm not just saying that because you're blindingly pretty."
The laugh that escaped her was slightly strangled. "You're not so bad yourself, Stevens."
He winked—actually winked—and walked out, leaving her standing in the middle of the suite with a warmth spreading through her chest that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun.
Denise appeared beside her. "Okay, that was surprisingly pleasant. He didn't even ask about the thighs."
Callina stared at the door where he'd vanished. Her heart was still beating at a slightly elevated pace. "No," she murmured. "He didn't."
She spent the rest of the day in her hotel room, trying not to think about him. It didn't work. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his grin, heard his laugh, felt the solid warmth of his arms around her.
By nine at night, she was Googling him. By 10, she'd watched three of his interviews. By eleven, she was composing and deleting a message to his Instagram DMs.
By twelve, she gave up, rolled over, and buried her face in her pillow, utterly frustrated with herself.
She had premieres to attend. Interviews to give. A career to manage. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by a nerdy Midwestern blogger with a great smile and a stupidly warm laugh.
She needed a drink.