Chapter 2

A bone-chilling numbness spread from my chest straight down to my fingertips.

My hands shook so hard I had to pack up my stall early.

Pushing my rickety wooden cart back toward my rented apartment building, a figure stepped out from the shadows, blocking the sidewalk.

It was Julian’s personal assistant, Ryan.

He wore his usual polished, professional smile, but his eyes carried nothing but thinly veiled contempt.

He thrust a thick manila envelope toward me.

"Miss Summer, Mr. Vance wanted you to have this."

I didn’t reach for it.

He nudged it closer, his tone casual, almost bored.

"Consider it payment. And a severance package."

"Mr. Vance recently signed on for a gritty indie film about a working-class nobody who claws his way to stardom."

"He stayed around here to immerse himself in the environment and do some method-acting research."

Ryan looked me up and down, a mocking smirk tugging at his lips.

"You made a decent character study for a struggling street artisan."

"Now that production is starting, the character research is over."

I stared at him, my vision blurring with rage. Raising my hand, I smacked the envelope violently out of his grip.

"Get out of my face!"

I bolted up the stairs like a woman possessed. My keys rattled against the lock; it took me three agonizing tries to turn the cylinder.

The door swung open.

The apartment was dead silent. Empty.

His designer leather duffle bag was gone.

The highlighted scripts he usually tossed carelessly on the coffee table were gone.

His toothbrush, his towel, the few linen shirts hanging in my closet... every trace of his existence had been scrubbed clean.

It was as if he had never set foot in my cramped little home.

As if the three months of skin-to-skin intimacy we shared were nothing but a fever dream I had imagined all on my own.

Trembling, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number I knew by heart.

"The number you have dialed is currently unavailable..."

Again. And again.

Nothing but that automated, robotic female voice.

Finally, the phone buzzed in my palm. A single text popped up.

The sender was the unlisted number burned into my memory.

[Summer, let's keep this clean. Don't cause a scene; it won't do you any good.]

First name, formal tone. Polite, distant, and cold.

The last bit of strength drained from my legs, and I collapsed onto the freezing linoleum floor.

Across the room, the TV had been left on.

An entertainment news anchor was speaking breathlessly.

"...Today, renowned director Marcus Cole hosted a press junket for his upcoming epic, *Faded Dreams*. Co-stars Julian Vance and Nicole Parker appeared hand-in-hand, officially announcing their high-profile reunion..."

The camera zoomed in on Julian's face.

He was looking down at Nicole, his gaze filled with a fierce, unwavering devotion I had never once seen him show me.

A tenderness so profound it felt like someone could drown in it.

I had foolishly believed that tenderness belonged to me.

Turns out, I was never even in the running.

Julian's radiant smile on the screen stabbed directly into my eyes.

I shut off the TV, plunging the room into suffocating darkness.

I thought I had hit rock bottom.

I had no idea the worst was yet to come.

By the next morning, my face was trending on Twitter and Ins.

The hashtag was blowing up: #JulianVanceDelusionalStalker.

Clicking into it revealed an avalanche of vitriol.

"This is the leech trying to latch onto Julian!"

"She's literally a flea market craft girl. Does she really think she can social-climb her way to an A-lister? Disgusting!"

"Julian was literally just doing method acting for a role! She took it seriously, took the payout, and now she’s trying to blackmail him!"

The photo circulating was one Ryan had snapped outside my building—taken from an unflattering, low angle, making me look hysterical and venomous.

My livelihood was reduced to "cheap street trash."

In their eyes, my very existence was a crime.