Read Chapter 34: The Real Announcement

The green room smelled of stale coffee and nervous sweat. Elise stood at the window, watching the crowd gather below—journalists jostling for position, camera crews testing angles, a wall of microphones waiting like a tribunal. Her reflection in the glass was pale, but her hands were steady.

Theo came up beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him without touching. That was their new habit now—always a hand's breadth apart, as if the professional distance they'd agreed to on set had followed them out into the real world.

"The car's here," he said. "Five minutes."

She nodded, not turning. "I keep thinking about what Julian said. That there's no such thing as a clean confession in this business. Someone always finds a crack."

"Then we don't leave any cracks."

She finally looked at him. His jaw was set, his eyes hard with resolve, and for a moment she saw the actor he'd been trained to be—the one who could walk into any room and own it. But beneath that, she saw something else. A flicker of fear, maybe. Or hope. It was hard to tell anymore.

"You didn't have to do this," she said. "Stand up there with me. Take the hits with me."

"Yes, I did."

"That's not an answer. That's a line from a script."

He smiled, thin and real. "All right. The real answer is that I'm tired of pretending with you. On camera, off camera, in front of the world. I meant what I said on that live stream, Elise. I fell in love with you. And if I'm going to be stupid enough to do that in front of millions of people, I might as well do it properly."

Her throat tightened. She wanted to say something—anything—but the words tangled somewhere between her ribs and her voice. Instead, she reached out and touched his hand, just once, brief enough to feel like a secret.

"Let's go," she said.

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The press conference was held in a small theater on the Meridian lot, the kind of space usually reserved for test screenings and awards-season showcases. The room was packed, every seat filled, journalists standing in the aisles. The buzz was electric, hungry.

Julian stood at the podium, microphone in hand, his face arranged in its most practiced neutrality. He'd been against this from the start—too risky, too unpredictable, too much left to chance. But Theo had overruled him, and Elise had backed Theo, and now Julian was left to play traffic cop for a story he couldn't control.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Julian said, "thank you for coming. We have a brief statement, followed by a Q&A session. I'd ask that you hold your questions until we've finished."

Theo and Elise walked out together, no hand-holding, no staged intimacy. They stood side by side at the podium, facing the wall of lenses. Elise felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, the strange marriage of terror and thrill that came with being watched by a hundred strangers.

Theo leaned into the microphone. "Six months ago, Elise and I signed a contract. We agreed to pretend to be in love, to sell that story to the press, to use each other's fame to climb out of the holes we'd dug ourselves into." He paused, letting the silence stretch. "That was a mistake. Not because it was dishonest—although it was—but because we underestimated what can happen when you spend every day pretending to feel something real."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Cameras clicked in rapid fire.

"Somewhere along the way," Theo continued, "the performance stopped being a performance. I fell in love with Elise. Not the version of her I invented for the cameras. The real one. The one who argues with me about blocking and eats her lunch too fast and hums off-key when she thinks no one can hear."

Elise's eyes stung. She hadn't expected him to say it like that—so plainly, so unguarded. In the green room, it had felt theoretical. Here, under the lights, with a hundred skeptical faces staring up at them, it felt terrifyingly real.

She stepped forward. "Theo is being generous. The contract was my idea. I was desperate—my career was circling the drain, and I would have done almost anything to save it." She swallowed hard. "I made a lot of mistakes in the past year. Some of them were public. Some of them were private. And I hurt people, including myself, in ways I'm still trying to understand."

She looked directly into the brightest camera. "There's a photograph out there. I know you've all seen it. And I want to be clear about what it shows: me, at a party in Ibiza, doing something I'm deeply ashamed of. I've spent months trying to outrun that image, to bury it, to pretend it wasn't me. But it was. And I'm not going to pretend anymore."

The room fell deathly quiet.

"I'm telling you this because I'm done hiding," she said. "I'm done letting my past be used against me by people who want to control my narrative. I made a mistake. I take responsibility for it. And I'm asking—not for forgiveness, but for the chance to earn it."

A journalist in the front row raised her hand, not waiting for Julian's nod. "Miss Moreau, are you saying the relationship is real? Given the contract, how can the public trust anything you say?"

Elise opened her mouth, but Theo cut in first. "You can't. Not fully. And that's fair. We've given you reasons to doubt us. But I'll say this: I've spent my entire career being the guy who doesn't create drama, who stays out of trouble, who plays it safe. And I've never been more terrified in my life than I am right now, standing up here, telling the truth and hoping it's enough."

Another journalist shouted from the back. "Mr. Ashford, are you saying you'd risk your career for this relationship?"

Theo's expression didn't waver. "I'm saying I'd risk it for her. And I have."

The questions came faster now, a barrage of them, each one sharpened to a point. Were they living together? Had the contract included physical intimacy? What did Elise's family think? Was the film—the one they were currently shooting—was it just another publicity stunt?

Elise fielded the ones she could. Theo handled the rest. They traded answers like partners in a three-legged race, stumbling sometimes, but never falling. And slowly—almost imperceptibly—the tone of the room began to shift.

The accusations became questions. The questions became quieter. And then, near the end, a woman from one of the smaller outlets stood up, her voice trembling slightly.

"I covered your trial coverage, Miss Moreau. The whole thing. And I remember what they did to you—how they picked apart every detail of your life until there was nothing left." She paused. "I just want to say... I believe you. And I'm glad you're not—I'm glad you're not letting them win anymore."

Elise's composure cracked. Just a hairline fracture, barely visible, but she felt it. She nodded, not trusting her voice.

Julian stepped forward, sensing the moment had reached its natural end. "Thank you, everyone. We'll have no further questions at this time."

The press conference disbanded in a scramble of voices and equipment. Elise and Theo retreated through the back corridor, the door swinging shut behind them, sealing out the noise.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Elise let out a breath she felt like she'd been holding for months. "That was... terrible and wonderful and horrible all at once."

Theo laughed—a real laugh, unguarded and bright. "I thought I was going to throw up for the first three minutes."

"You hid it well."

"I've had practice. Years of pretending to be calm while everything falls apart." He looked at her, and his eyes softened. "But this time felt different. This time I was pretending less."

She stepped closer, closing the hand's breadth between them. "Theo—"

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then went still.

"What is it?" he asked.

She read the message twice, not quite believing it. Then she turned the screen toward him.

MARCUS: *I saw the press conference. Impressive. Consider this a warning, not a threat. You have 48 hours to make a statement retracting everything you said about the Ibiza photograph—to say it was fabricated, that you were coerced into the confession. Do this, and I'll destroy the rest of the evidence. Refuse, and your father will be the next person to see it.*

Theo's face went stony. "He's bluffing."

"He's not," Elise said quietly. "He has more. He told me—he showed me—there are things from that summer that would devastate my family. My father is already barely speaking to me. If Marcus sends him that..."

"Then we deal with it."

"How? We just told the world the truth. We can't take it back now."

Theo was silent for a long moment. Then he took her phone, typed a short message, and handed it back.

She looked at it. Three words:

*Come and try.*

"You can't—Theo, you don't know what he's capable of—"

"No. But I know what you're capable of." He took her hand, and this time he didn't let go. "I've watched you stand in front of the world and burn your own narrative to the ground because it was the right thing to do. That took more courage than anything Marcus has ever done in his miserable life. And that's the woman I want to stand next to. Whatever comes next, we face it together."

She stared at him, at this man she'd signed a contract with six months ago, who'd become something entirely different—something she hadn't known she needed until he was standing in front of her, refusing to move.

"If we're doing this," she said slowly, "really doing this... there are things I haven't told you. About Ibiza. Everything that happened. Not just the photograph."

"Tell me when you're ready."

"What if I'm never ready?"

"Then I'll wait longer." He smiled, soft and sure. "We have time, Elise. We have the rest of the film to shoot, and a premiere to attend, and a lifetime of press conferences to survive. I'm not going anywhere."

She laughed—a broken sound, half relief, half disbelief. "You're insane."

"That's not news."

They stood there in the empty corridor, hands clasped, the sound of the world murmuring beyond the door—a public that had just been told the truth, and was deciding what to do with it. Elise didn't know if they would be forgiven. She didn't know if her career would survive. She didn't know if Marcus would follow through on his threat, or what her father would say when he saw the evidence, or whether any of it would matter in the end.

But standing there, holding Theo's hand, she knew one thing.

For the first time since her world had collapsed, she wasn't pretending.

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