Chapter 5: The Late Night Script Session
The crash of the waves below the cliff was the only sound for a full minute after their knees touched. Matt felt the contact like a jolt, a sharp, static thing cutting through the fog of the scene and the smooth, woody taste of the whiskey. Dee’s leg was warm through the soft fabric of her jeans. She pulled back as if scalded, tucking her feet beneath her on the leather couch.
“Page fourteen,” she said, her voice a fraction too high. She cleared it. “The problem is page fourteen. He wouldn’t say that.”
Matt forced his eyes down to the script in his hands, the red ink from their pens bleeding across the dialogue like wounds. He’d texted her on a impulse, a rebellion fueled by Simon’s smug expression over dinner. The lakeside monologue is dead on arrival. Come help me kill it? He hadn’t expected her to say yes, not at eleven on a weeknight.
But she’d arrived, laptop in a worn satchel, hair in a loose knot, smelling of night air and jasmine. No pretense. Just Dee.
“He would,” Matt argued, latching onto the familiar territory of work. “He’s desperate. He’s just found the body. He’s rambling.”
“He’s a forensic botanist, Matt, not a hysterical tourist.” Dee leaned forward, tapping the page with her pen. Her hazel eyes, free of makeup, were intense in the low light from the floor lamp. “He’d be specific. He’d say ‘the soil compaction is wrong’ or ‘this moss isn’t native to this side of the lake.’ He wouldn’t wail about ghosts. That’s the writer being lazy.”
He watched her, the passionate furrow in her brow. This was the woman who’d spent a decade in the background, fixing problems he never knew existed. Not the polished actress Simon had paraded before him. Real. Unmanufactured.
“You’ve spent a year in Germany and you know more about my character than I do,” he said, a soft challenge.
She glanced up, caught his gaze, and held it. “I’ve spent a decade paying attention.”
The words settled between them, heavy and undeniable. The ocean breathed against the rocks.
“How was dinner with my father?” she asked abruptly, leaning back into the cushions, putting deliberate space between them. Her tone was light, but her eyes were sharp.
Matt let out a short, humorless laugh. “Informative. He’s pushing Lacey Cole for Lena.”
Dee’s expression didn’t change, but a slight tightening around her mouth betrayed her. “I’ve heard. She’s very… enthusiastic.”
“She’s a pawn. He sat there watching her perform, looking at me like I was a dog being shown a new chew toy.” The bitterness surprised him with its rawness. He never spoke to anyone about Simon this way.
“And did you? Chew?” Dee asked, the question casual, but her posture was rigid.
“No.” The answer was immediate, absolute. “I played along. It was easier. But I kept thinking…” He trailed off, risking too much.
“Thinking what?”
“That her notes on my performance would be worthless.” He gestured to the script between them. “She’d tell me to be broodier. You tell me to be a better botanist.”
A slow, real smile touched Dee’s lips. “Broody pays the bills.”
“It’s getting old,” he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. He looked away, out at the black void of the ocean. “He’s trying to manage me, Dee. Like he always has. And for ten years, I let him. It was easier.”
“What’s different now?” she whispered.
He turned his head back to her. The air in the room felt thin, charged. The candle on the coffee table guttered. “You came back.”
She didn’t deny it. She just watched him, a storm of conflict in her hazel eyes—loyalty to her father, the history there, warring with the clear, present pull in the space between their bodies on the couch.
“He’ll never allow it,” she said, voicing the immutable law of their world. “You’re his golden client. I’m his daughter. In his playbook, that’s a catastrophic merge.”
“I’m not asking for his permission,” Matt said, the words leaving him before he could gauge their consequence. He hadn’t planned to say it. It just was. The truth, stripped bare.
Dee stood up suddenly, walking to the massive window. She wrapped her arms around herself, a silhouette against the infinite dark. “You’re talking about blowing up a ten-year partnership. Your career is tied to him. My… everything is tied to him.”
“You have your own career. You built it in another country, away from him.” Matt rose too, but didn’t approach her. He gave her the space of the room. “You’re not a kid he can hide in the office anymore, Dee. And I’m not just a client he can trade up for a newer model.”
She was silent for a long time. “What are you, then?” The question was almost lost to the rumble of the surf.
“Tired of playing the part,” he said simply.
She turned then. The ambient light from the kitchen caught the gold in her chestnut hair, the determined set of her jaw. “This scene is garbage. Let’s rewrite it.”
He blinked, thrown by the pivot. “What?”
“The monologue. It’s wrong. So let’s fix it. Right now.” She walked back to the couch, sank down, and picked up her red pen. “You say he’s desperate. Okay. But his desperation is professional. It’s an outrage that the crime scene has been contaminated. Make it about the violation of his expertise, not his nerves.”
The tension didn’t leave, but it transformed, funneling into a fierce, collaborative energy. They worked side-by-side for an hour, arguing over word choice, digging into the character’s backstory, their heads bent close together. The brush of her shoulder against his, the scent of her, the quick flash of her smile when he suggested a particularly good line—it was all a different, deeper kind of dialogue.
Finally, they fell quiet, the rewritten pages scattered across the coffee table like evidence of a shared crime. The candle had burned low.
Dee gathered her things slowly, deliberately. She stood at the door, the vast, sleeping city glittering far behind her.
“The new pages are good,” she said. “Send them to the writer. Don’t tell him you had help.”
“Dee.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“It wasn’t about the script,” he said, holding her gaze. “The text. I just wanted to see you.”
She absorbed this, her fingers tight on the strap of her satchel. A million possible replies flickered across her face—retreat, denial, acceptance. She chose honesty, meeting his with her own.
“I know,” she said softly.
Then she was gone, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in the still, salt-tinged air. Matt stared at the closed door for a long moment. Then he looked back at the coffee table, at the top script page covered in her tight, energetic scrawl. She’d left her red pen behind.
He picked it up. It was still warm from her hand.