Sweet Romance12 min read
When My Fan Became My Man: The Audition, The Lies, The Reveal
ButterPicks17 views
I never meant to start a war.
"Why would you want to live off someone else?" Holden asked, looking at the faint bruise on my collarbone like it was a map he could read.
"I think you have a girlfriend," I said, turning my face away. My voice came out small and sour.
He went quiet for a beat, then took my wrist and grinned like a secret had been told to him. "Gemma."
He said my name low and rough. It sounded like a safe I couldn't open.
"You were smiling," I snapped. I pulled my dress strap up higher to hide the mark, though hiding was useless when the world liked to look.
He hooked a hand on my waist and shoved me back, closing the space between us. "Gemma," he said again, fingers ghosting my cheek.
Too close.
I smelled his clean pine cologne, and under it, a faint jasmine that set my skin electric.
"Girl-friend?" He leaned in, whispering. "Do I look like a man with a girlfriend?"
"What?" I flinched. "I'm not blind."
He laughed, low and sharp, like something broken. "You really think a man like me looks for love in a list?"
I remembered a day a month ago—May twentieth—when the world tilted. Holden had posted the four words: my girl, with a photo. A rich older woman in furs. The internet had crashed for a minute. Fans screamed. I felt the floor give under me.
"You picked that?" I had asked him when I found out. "You chose her over me?"
He looked at me like I had asked for the moon. "She gives a lot," he said simply.
"Too much," I sobbed once in the dressing room later. "Why her and not me?"
"Because she has more to give," he replied, and the words landed like knives.
When I ran away that night—literally from Emilian Oliver's office—I had been trying to do my job. The director had given me a task: make the world believe the character had been used and thrown away. A stunt. A scene. A bruise that meant nothing. I left his room carrying the fake sacrifice like a badge. I didn't know a star would be watching.
"I'm not asking to be your charity case," I hissed, struggling under his hold. "I'm asking to be seen."
He pushed his palm into my neck then, hard enough my breath went shallow. "You think I can't see you?" he pressed. "You think I wouldn't choose you?"
"Then why did you pick that woman?" I spat back. "Why SHADE me with her?"
"Because she matters," he said, very calm. "She matters and you'll never accept that."
He kissed my collarbone the way a painter touches a canvas. "Do you want money?" he asked.
My mouth left a laugh. "Two hundred and eight thousand. Today."
"Done."
"Also," I added, stupid and small and brave, "break up with your—your... old baby."
He faltered, the word strange on his lips. "Old—"
I kissed him, because I was ridiculous and human and tired of being the punchline. That night we had a world: he wanted me, I wanted something else. We fell asleep tangled in the same catastrophes.
The reality after sleep was always crueler.
"Come sit on my lap," the woman in the purple fur said in the club. She had been the face in that announcement photo. She smiled with practiced ease and told him, "Baby, come sit on sister's lap."
Holden hesitated. I lunged before he could decide and grabbed his arm. "No," I said, breathless with shame and courage at once. "Don't."
"Gemma? What are you doing here?" Holden said, as if stunned.
"She's a grandmother," I cried. "She could be your mother."
Holden's face paled. He waited a beat and then clamped his hand to mine. "I'm sorry," he muttered.
"You're sorry?" I shouted then, the room dead. "You chose her?"
"She gave more," he said simply.
I woke up the next morning with him in bed, the bruise on my collarbone warm from his mouth. He had said my name in the night. He said it in his sleep and it sounded like a confession. I hoped, stupidly, that a man who says your name in sleep had a heart for you in the light.
"Who sent the text?" I asked when I found a message: "Come to the audition in a week."
"Chen," I replied without thinking, meaning Emilian. "Emilian Oliver."
Holden's hand tightened around me. "He called?"
"Yes. He did—" I stopped. The memory of that night from a year ago came up like a bad drumbeat. I had, drunk and proud, posted on my social media: "One day I will make Holden mine." People laughed. I meant it. I was a fool.
"Did I stop you?" Holden's voice was soft. "When he found you, did I stop you?"
"You came because—" I remembered a bath scene, steaming light, him unbuttoning a shirt. He had stepped in to save a falling scene. "You were there," I said. "You watched."
Holden's face softened and then hardened. "I told him not to take advantage," he said. "But he brought his charm and his lies."
Emilian Oliver—Emilian was a director who had built a reputation on charm and then a trail of wronged people. He was a man who could smile and make you think the sun had risen just to see you. People called him brilliant. I called him a liar.
"You came because you cared?" I asked, voice tight.
"Because I thought maybe you were using me too," Holden said flatly. "Because I didn't know if your feelings were real."
"You think I would do that for a part?" I laughed harshly. "I did it because I had to make the bruise look real for the scene."
"Who else knows?" he demanded.
"Only Emilian," I whispered. "And the part of me that still hurts."
"Then let me be the one who sees you," Holden said eventually, like an offer and a threat all mixed.
From then on, our days were a strange duet. We read the script together, he sent me messages, he stood quietly in halls. He was cool, but with me a warmth crept in that the rest of the world never saw. I called him my impossible dream; he called me his patient trouble.
The audition came. Emilian Oliver sat in the center chair like a judge on a throne. On his right was the purple-furred woman: Francesca Ball. She laughed like she knew the world was on her lap. On his left was Holden, who watched me as if he might memorize my face. The whole room smelled like ambition.
"Gemma," Emilian said. "Do the seventh scene."
I performed like someone on a cliff. I revealed the character's rage and her breaking smile. I bit and clawed and showed the bruise like a talisman. Then I kissed Holden on stage—not a script kiss, but a landmine kiss that left the room quiet.
Afterward Francesca's applause was loud enough to drown hospitals. "You are my girl," she cried, and she walked over and took off her purple fur and handed it to me like a crown.
"I need five minutes," I told her later. "Please come with me."
"Are you sure?" she asked, surprised when I locked the makeup room. My hands shook.
"I slept with him," I admitted, "but only because I was stupid for him and because I wanted the role to be true."
Francesca's face changed. I braced for the judgment and instead she said, "No. You don't owe him anything. The fur is yours now."
"Why would you—" I stopped. She smiled the kind of smile that had been carved by money and loneliness.
"Because I want you to win. Because I see you."
She was complicated and kind and rich and people called her a mistress. I started to think I had been wrong about everything.
But the world kept its knives ready. News exploded weeks later: the producers thought of replacing me. They wanted Leticia Schmitz—the girl who had popped out of nowhere, a fresh face glued to Holden in photos. I learned via a text while Holden drove me back to a hotel. I felt sick enough to throw up the little courage I had scraped together.
"Why let them change the lead?" I asked Holden that night.
"Because money talks," he said. "Because appearances sometimes make deals."
"Is Leticia really his type?" I asked.
Holden looked at me like I had asked him his favorite star. "She smells like jasmine," he said. "She is familiar."
I remembered the jasmine on his collar.
The day before the premiere—when our movie was almost done—everything collapsed into a single ugly knot. Leticia had a car accident. Her record was messy. Francesca went white. Producers called. Gustaf Craig, a friend who had been injured on set, sent a message: "She's hurt bad."
Holden wrapped himself around me like defense. "Let's make our own rules," he whispered.
We worked. We loved in fits and starts and rehearsed the same mouthful of lines until they sounded like truth. He would say, "Kiss like you mean it." I would say, "I already do."
Then the opening night.
Lights, cameras, faces like constellations. People in velvet leaning in. Journalists who had been waiting for a story like fat on bone. I stood by the red carpet, clutched to Francesca's purple fur, when the cameras turned and the flash felt like judgment.
"Gemma! Gemma! Any words for the fans?"
"You're amazing," someone else called. "Did you expect the role to go to you?"
I smiled and let Francesca's hand hang the fur heavier on my shoulders.
Then I did what no one expected.
"Holden?" I said, and he turned, a small island of poised anger in a sea of paparazzi. "Joel Dunn."
The assistant's name hung in the air.
He came forward with a practiced smile, checking his hair as if the world were still only mirrors. He had fabricated posts and tried to reshape the tide. He had, in a moment of selfishness, used someone's life as his ladder.
"This video," I said, and a small man with a laptop passed me a flash drive, "shows everything Joel did."
I pressed play on the screen set up by a friend.
The video ran: Joel at a computer, his hands on the keys, his face cold. He posted a false tweet on Holden's account. He edited images. He pinged Leticia's manager. He whispered to a marketing account. The camera caught his proud smile after each upload.
"You made me a story," I said. "You made Leticia into an angle. You made Francesca's kindness into a tabloid bargain. You turned a life into noise for clicks."
Joel's color drained. He tried to laugh. "You don't know—"
"Tell her truthfully," I snapped, pointing at the crowd. "Tell Francesca the whole truth."
"No!" he barked, then softened into pleading. "I was trying to help Holden's brand. It was marketing."
"This is your help?" Francesca's voice was loud and cold as frost. She took the microphone like a queen taking a crown. "You sold people's lives as PR."
The crowd shifted, murmurs rising like a tide.
"Look at Joel's face now," I said. "He thought manipulation was a shortcut. He forgot there are real people at the end of his posts."
Joel's eyes flicked to the cameras. A few fans recorded. Pages started live-streaming. The press smelled blood and pounced.
"You're fired," Francesca said. The words fell like a sentence. "And so is the agency that tolerated this."
People in the crowd tutted. A journalist pushed forward. "Joel Dunn, are you guilty of fabricating posts and orchestrating false announcements?"
"I—" He stammered. His smugness left and a raw fear took its place. "No, I didn't—"
"You did," Holden said. He reached forward and took Joel's phone out of his hand. He scrolled, showed the drafts, the scheduled posts. "You thought you'd manufacture scandal to make him trend. You forgot real names have real dignity."
Joel's face transformed: pride, then confusion, then panic, then collapse into pleading. "Please, I— I'm sorry!" he cried, voice breaking. "It was supposed to help. Please—"
The crowd's reaction split: half stunned, half furious. I saw a woman point and utter curses. A teen aimed his phone and cheered. A few were recording, others whispered, "Shame."
Joel sank onto the nearest step, head in hands. Security came in and escorted him, but the footage had already spread. Within an hour, the agency announced an internal investigation. Sponsors withdrew. His career, built on tricks, hiccuped into a public fall.
The punishment was not a single hit. It was the slow, pivoting reveal of every line he'd crossed. The online accounts that had danced to his tune now called him reckless. The producers who had hired him for "push" statements cut ties.
Joel begged, crawled, tried to explain. "I only wanted to push the story," he tried. "I only wanted visibility—"
"That visibility is your choice," Francesca said, utterly calm. "You sold people."
Someone in the back shouted, "Humiliation!"
"No," Francesca said flatly. "Accountability."
I left the stage with Holden's hand in mine. Joel's voice was still heard at our backs, a raw, bitter plea. Cameras followed his stumble out.
Later, the producers had to answer to investors. The agency issued an apology. Social feeds were full of screenshots, and no sympathy was left for a man who had packaged hearts for a headline.
That was Joel's public punishment—slow, visible, watched by the thousands who had cheered at his rise. He had tried to make art out of manipulation; the world made him into a lesson.
But Joel was not the only one who needed unmasking.
A week later, at a charity gala for film, I chose to tell a different truth.
"Emilian," I said, in front of donors, directors, and a PR crowd so hungry for spectacle they left their coats at the door.
He blinked. "Gemma? What is this about?"
"I want to thank the men who've helped me," I said. "Some of them helped with kindness. Some—helped themselves."
There was a hush.
"Emilian had me create a bruise last year," I said. "For a scene. I made it look real. I let the story and the wound live on. I meant the scene; I didn't mean to let it become a weapon."
The room shifted. People loved scandal more than truth, but truth has a way of being clearer when you speak it plainly.
"You're saying you lied?" a journalist piped.
"I lied to myself when I let his charm fool me," I answered. "I pretended his 'art' was worth the quiet he took from me."
Emilian's face drained. He tried to smooth it over with a polite smile. "Art is messy—"
"No." I stepped closer, my voice steady. "You used career promises like bait. You kept women waiting. You made them believe that a role would be a life, and then rewrote the script alone."
People around us started to whisper. The donors looked awkward. I saw the financier in the back clutch his drink tighter. The cameras leaned in.
"Is he a bad man?" someone asked.
"You decide," I said, and I pressed play on the video Francesca arranged—the one showing Emilian's phone with texts that read like bargains. Emilian's messages to actresses promising parts if they gave him... favors. Financial notes from a producer.
Emilian looked at the screen, then at the crowd. The colors drained from his face.
"I told them it's a lie," Emilian stammered. "Those texts—"
"They're real," Francesca said. She was quiet, terrible in her certainty. "And we've kept quiet too long."
The crowd lurched, and then the slow collapse began. Investors asked for explanations. Sponsors sent terse messages to their PR desks. Emilian's agent took one step back, then another. He touched his jaw as if to align his face with an image he could still afford.
"This is disgusting," a young actress said aloud. "We trusted him."
"I did what any one of you would do," Emilian tried to say, the old charm flagging. "I am dedicated to my craft."
"Your craft is taking advantage," Francesca said simply.
Emilian's reaction cycled: disbelief, then anger, then denial. "This is political," he insisted. "They're trying to ruin me."
"Public reaction says otherwise," a producer said, cold as a blade. Investors started whispering about withdrawing funds, about the director's "reputational risk."
"That's not fair," Emilian whispered at me at one point, desperation stealing his control. "I raised careers. I gave them slivers of light."
"At the price of others' dignity," I said.
The crowd cheered in places, jeered in others. Cameras flashed. Emilian's pleas got smaller. Security came to walk him away, not rough but clear: his projects were on hold, his invites rescinded. The gala that had hummed like a hive now hummed without him.
He tried to bargain, to reminisce, to laugh it off. He tried to say, "I was only making opportunities."
But his audience had shifted. Investors saw risk. Producers smelled legal trouble. His apologies sounded smaller than the sums once thrown at him. People who had once taken his calls now avoided his gaze.
When a man as smooth as Emilian falls, it's not in one loud crack. It's a slow unravelling, watched and documented. He went from a man who signed checks to a man whose checks got returned.
That is the punishments we arranged: visible, public, and irreversible enough to sting. They were not perfect revenges. But they were the industry’s answer to people who used influence for appetite.
"Are you happy?" Holden asked me after the gala, when the night had quieted and the city pulsed like a heart outside the hotel window.
"I am more ready," I said.
He kissed me like a pledge. "Then let's keep making the right messes."
We kept working on the film. Francesca remained strange and generous and bizarrely youthful when she laughed. Gustaf recovered slowly and shot prop phrasings of wisdom over iced tea. Leticia's star blinked and dimmed—her team withdrew her buzz when proof of Joel's manipulation surfaced. She, it turned out, was more naive than thief.
At home, in the softer hours, Holden read my lines like they were his only scripture. "Say this like it hurts," he'd whisper, and I'd do it and feel truth move.
There were moments that hit like arrows:
- The first time Holden smiled at me without an audience: "You're stubborn," he said, and the world melted like sugar.
- The night he took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders when the wind bit: "Take this," he murmured. "You're cold." I felt seen.
- The small, dumb moment when, in a crowded room, someone asked him if he always treated women this way. He only looked at me and said, "Only this woman." People around us gaped.
The film wrapped. Premiere was thunderous. People cheered. Holden's hand found mine in the dark.
"Did you ever think you'd go from my fan to my person?" he asked, thumb tracing the back of my hand.
"I thought I'd be the one cheering," I answered. "Now I have to cheer for both of us."
On May twentieth, the date that has a history in our private calendar, Holden did something the internet adored: he reshared a years-old post of mine about him. He wrote a single line, three tags, and the world exploded.
"You did this intentionally," I accused, tense with joy and disbelief.
He looked at me with a grin that folded the room. "You did," he said softly. "You said it once. I made it true."
I laughed, then I hugged him until he said, "Okay, okay. We should get ready for more interviews."
"Holden," I whispered, and he looked up.
"Yes?"
"Let's not let the world make our story into a spectacle again."
He kissed me gently. "We won't," he promised. "We'll write it like we write the scenes. True, messy, ours."
And in the end, that was what mattered. We walked red carpets, we did interviews, we told parts of the truth and kept parts of the mystery. But when the cameras were gone and the people left, it was just him and me, the bruise finally healed into a scar that told the truth: I had risked everything and gained a love that was real.
The End
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