Reel (Hollywood Renaissance 1)

“You let me handle Galaxy and anyone else who tries to give us shit. Here’s what you’re missing,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I’m the boss. Galaxy may have funded this movie, but it’s mine, and I hold all the cards, and they’ll do whatever the fuck I want.”

He glances at Dr. Okafor. “You were telling us about the dialysis.”

“It may not come to that,” she says. “We may be able to manage this with good eating habits, exercise, and pharmaceuticals until we find a kidney.”

I glance at Dr. Ansford onscreen, who winks, knowing I balk at any kind of drugs, but at this point, don’t have much choice.

“You said exercise.” I lean back into the pillows. “I can still work and be active?”

“We encourage patients to remain active. It only helps, but I’ll be frank.” Dr. Okafor sits on the bed, meeting my eyes. “You have lupus for life, Neevah. Even giving you a new kidney won’t change that. And stress will always be a possible trigger for a flare. You may need to reassess how you do what you do. Not that you can’t be a performer, but this disease will exploit every weakness and go after your organs the first chance it gets. Sometimes that is unavoidable, but there are lifestyle adjustments you can make to give your body the best shot.”

I nod, processing everything and looking for any silver lining I can find.

“We’ll work on getting you stabilized so you can resume some of your normal routines while we search for a viable kidney,” Dr. Okafor says. “But let me be clear. When I say you can go back to work, that’s when you go. Not a minute before.”

“Agreed,” Canon says. “I may be the director, but Neevah’s health is my priority, too.”

“You know, he is bossy,” she tells me, offering her first wide smile since she came bearing this awful news, “but I like him.”

I take in the contrasting hollows beneath his cheekbones. The fiery eyes that dare me to challenge him on this. The full lips pulled into a tight, level line. He is formidable, and right now, the doctor may like him, but I do not.

But I think I love him.

And how two such opposite moments—realizing I have a life-threatening illness and realizing I’m in love—can exist in the same hour, in the same room, is beyond me, but stranger things have happened. Or maybe it was always supposed to be this way. Maybe my love and this threat have been on a collision course since the beginning. Since the day a woman in a wheelchair on a rotting pier in the last rays of a dying sun stared the camera down, asking if we would live, or just wait to die. That day I only saw the words she was gifting me as inspiration to make the most out of life. Something to scribble on a sticky note and pin to my wall. Now, as Canon watches Dr. Okafor intently, noting everything that must be done over the next few months, things I’m too numb to even absorb right now, I realize there was a greater gift she was leaving me.

Her son.

But is it a gift I should refuse?

This isn’t what Canon expected. Hell, it’s not what I expected, but I have no choice. He does have a choice, or at least he should. After what he went through and witnessed with his mother, he should have a choice about going down this road again. What if he doesn’t feel he can step away from me now, even if this is too much? I couldn’t handle it if he stayed with me out of some misplaced sense of nobility or loyalty. That would be an insult to what we’ve been. An insult, in the future I can’t even see right now, to what we could be.

57

Canon

“We can’t afford to sit around and wait like this,” Lawson snaps, his brows furrowed. “How did this happen?”

“We aren’t sitting around and waiting,” Evan says, sipping the drink the hotel restaurant’s server placed at his elbow. “I mean, yes, production is shut down today because we’ve done as much as we can until Neevah comes back.”

“And I’m paying for this hotel and the rooms and the cast and the crew,” Lawson says, red crawling up his neck and over his cheeks, “while Neevah’s laid up somewhere? When will she be back?”

“If by laid up,” I interject, leaning forward and locking eyes with the idiot, “you mean in a hospital being monitored by her medical team because of kidney failure, then, yeah. That’s where she is. And to answer your question, she’ll be back on set as soon as her doctor clears her to be and not one damn minute sooner.”

“You did this.” He points his finger at me. “You cast a novice, an unknown.”