Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The air-conditioning in the studio carried a chill, but my fingers wrapped around the props list were slick with sweat.
Adrian Blackwood, the newly crowned Best Actor, was standing just five steps behind me.
If I turned my head even slightly, he might catch me in the corner of his eye.
The assistant director was talking him through the scene. “Mr. Blackwood, the next scene is the reunion with your ex. The key is to show longing and reluctance. You need something in your eyes.”
Adrian gave a low, amused laugh, the last note drifting lazily just like he used to when he used to skip class in high school and lean over the railing.
“Longing?” He lifted a brow, sounding completely unconvinced. “If she’s already an ex, what’s there to long for?”
That voice was exactly the same as seven years ago.
That summer, when he was eighteen, he had used that same slightly cocky tone to call me carelessly by the name no one else used anymore.
“Niannian.”
The assistant director was still trying to persuade him, but I couldn’t hear a word of it anymore.
All I caught was Adrian’s next line, and it hit like an ice pick straight through my chest. “My ex? I forgot her ages ago. Me, I never go back for leftovers.”
Good.
I let out a silent breath of relief.
As the “leftover” he had supposedly forgotten, I had no intention of recognizing him either.
Once the scene was over and we each went our separate ways, that would be the best ending of all.
“Niannian! Did you find the batch of props you needed?” A coworker’s booming voice suddenly exploded beside my ear.
The murmurs behind me cut off so abruptly it felt like someone had snapped a wire.
My heart gave a hard, sudden jolt. I grabbed the prop box I’d just found and almost fled the set.
Adrian Blackwood didn’t come after me.
Maybe he hadn’t heard clearly. Maybe he had, and simply didn’t care.
When we were setting up the backdrop, I pulled one of the crew aside and lowered my voice. “Don’t call me that anymore. Just use Chloe.”
“Why? ‘Niannian’ is soft and cute. It sounds nice.”
“We’re at work. My real name sounds more professional.” I made up a reason on the spot, and the other person bought it with a laugh.
This was the first big production I’d taken on after being promoted to assistant director. No one on this set knew that the male lead in the film was my first love from seven years ago.
Before I joined the crew, I already knew he was the lead.
He’d been born into the entertainment world, with family connections that reached half the industry, and somehow his acting had still been so sharp it was almost unfair. At twenty-five, he’d already won Best Actor and was dazzling enough to make every headline look cheap.
Chapter 2
And me? I had once been the girl at the center of that rough, unfinished teenage love story when he was eighteen.
I had hesitated about whether to give up the job, but in the end I couldn’t bear to walk away from something I’d worked so hard to get.
I kept telling myself over and over that I absolutely could not let him recognize me.
Otherwise, with the way he held a grudge, my career might end before it even really began.
What I did when I broke up with him seven years ago was shameful beyond words.
In the letter I left him, I wrote, “I knew all along you came from some rich family. Getting close to you was only ever about digging up dirt on your house. I don’t like guys like you. I like gentle, well-mannered boys. From now on, don’t see me again.”
The words might have sounded cool and fearless. The way I left was anything but.
The crew was still talking about Adrian, their voices packed with admiration.
“He looks even better in person than he does on camera. It’s ridiculous.”
“His parents are both legendary stars. Of course he inherited good genes.”
“I’m telling you, he had to be the campus heartthrob back in school. Look at that clean, refined vibe. Who wouldn’t like him?”
I nearly choked on the water in my mouth.
Adrian Blackwood? Campus heartthrob?
That was the biggest misunderstanding of all.
He hadn’t been a heartthrob. He’d been the sort of troublemaker every teacher and student kept as far away from as possible.
I would never forget the first time I saw him.
It was pouring rain on the street. He had just finished a fight, and his face and body were covered in bruises. He sat by the curb like a stray animal someone had abandoned, soaked through and radiating a hostile warning that said stay away.
I hesitated when I stepped closer.
Then he looked up. His gaze was vicious. “Get lost.”
He said it like he might lunge at me the next second and tear me apart.
But I didn’t get lost.
My hands were shaking as I lifted the floral umbrella and held it carefully over his head.
That was the beginning of my story with Adrian Blackwood.
I shook my head and forced the memory back down.
Once the set was finished, I slipped away during the break and hid in a quiet stairwell to catch my breath.
The moment I pushed the door open, the thick smell of tobacco hit me full in the face.
Adrian stood in the dark, the ember at the end of his cigarette blinking on and off.
He lifted his eyes to me.
And that look was exactly the same as it had been seven years ago.
The stairwell was pitch-black and silent, broken only by the faint crackle of fireworks burning somewhere outside.
Chapter 3
“… Sorry to bother you.” I lowered my head and turned to leave.
“Stop.”
Adrian Blackwood’s voice came out of the darkness, low and rich. “Are you with the crew?”
“Yes. I’m the assistant director’s assistant.”
“Just graduated?”
“Yes.”
“Fresh out of school and already working on Martin Carter’s team. That’s impressive.” His tone gave nothing away.
“Thank you, Mr. Blackwood.” I kept my distance polite and careful.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
He let out a quiet laugh, but there was no warmth in it. “We’re the same age. Why are you calling me ‘Mr. Blackwood’?”
“The assistant director does too. He’s forty-three.” I forced myself to answer.
“Then say it again.”
I hesitated, then obediently repeated, “Mr. Blackwood.”
I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, but I felt the corner of his mouth lift. The smile carried a chill of its own, distant and sharp.
My nerves tightened at once, but somewhere under that fear was a sliver of hope.
Seven years had changed me a lot.
Back then I had been a pale, thin, timid girl who couldn’t even lift her head around other people. Now, even if I wasn’t exactly stunning, I was at least neat and decent-looking. Relatives at home often needed a long moment before they could recognize me.
And with the light this bad, there was no way he could tell who I was.
“Mr. Blackwood, you should rest. I need to get back to work now.”
“Wait.”
He stopped me again.
“What’s your name?”
The question exploded in my ears like thunder.
“I’m Chloe Bennett.”
I steadied myself before I answered, then gave him the name I used now.
“You never changed it before?” he pressed.
“No.”
My fingers tightened on the hem of my clothes. Even the lie came out a little shaky.
Before I changed my name, I had been Niannian. It was the name Grandma gave me, and it was the name Adrian had always called me.
After Grandma died, that name became my fixation, and later, my scar.
Adrian went quiet. The smell of tobacco in the stairwell seemed to thicken.
Cold sweat had already broken out between my shoulders.
He had lied to me once. Letting me lie to him now made us even, at least in my mind.
That summer before sophomore year, I found Adrian on a street corner.
He told me he had nowhere to go, no one left in the world, that he was living like a stray nobody wanted.
I believed him.
Because I was just like him: another abandoned child.
My parents had always preferred sons. After they divorced, both of them started new families and had boys of their own, and I became the extra one, the child they tucked away in my aunt Martha’s basement.
From a young age, I learned to be obedient and sensible, because that was the only way I could earn enough to eat and keep from being cast aside again.
Adrian and I could not have been more different.
He smoked, fought, skipped class, and caused trouble. Teachers saw him as a problem student. I was quiet and introverted, head bent over my books, the kind of girl everyone thought was well-behaved.
In our sophomore year, we ended up in the same class.