The Wrong Boy
The lobby of the Chateau Marmont’s second-floor studio smelled of ozone, stale coffee, and the particular desperation that only a high-stakes casting call could generate. Sofia Montclair kept her back to the wall, her kit bag wedged between her feet, counting the exits the way she’d learned to count the seconds between lightning and thunder.
Two doors. One elevator. A service stairwell at the far end of the hall.
She’d been in Los Angeles for seven years now, long enough to know that exits mattered more than entrances. Long enough to know that the woman across from her—some agent’s assistant with a clipboard and a Bluetooth earpiece—was already mentally categorizing her as “makeup, not talent.” Fine. Sofia had stopped caring about categories the day she’d held a positive pregnancy test in a bathroom stall at the Soho Grand.
“Mommy, my shoe’s untied.”
Noah tugged at her sleeve, his small face tilted up with the earnest concentration that only a six-year-old could muster. He had her mouth, her stubborn chin, and his father’s eyes—that impossible shade of gray that seemed to hold weather systems. She’d spent six years not thinking about those eyes. Today, she’d spend four hours not thinking about them.
“Then tie it, baby. You know how.”
“But you do it better.”
“That’s because I’ve had more practice. Thirty-two years of it.” She crouched anyway, her fingers working the laces into a double knot. “There. Now you’re safe from the sidewalk monsters.”
Noah giggled, a sound so pure it made the fluorescent lights seem warmer. “There’s no such thing as monsters, Mommy.”
Sofia’s hands stilled for half a second. “No. No, there aren’t.”
She straightened just as the casting door swung open and a man in a headset scanned the room like a searchlight. “Montclair? Noah Montclair?”
“Here.” Sofia raised her hand, gripping Noah’s shoulder. “We’re here.”
The man—mid-thirties, harried, coffee stain on his collar—checked his clipboard. “Great. You’re early. They’re running behind on the Winslow read, so we’re slotting in the commercial kids first. Follow me.”
The Winslow read.
The name hit her like a palm to the sternum.
*Killian.*
She’d known he was attached to this project. The entire industry knew. *Aurora,* the big-budget sci-fi epic that was supposed to launch a franchise, had been all over Variety for months. Killian Winslow, fresh off his second Golden Globe nomination, had signed on as the lead. She’d told herself the casting call was for supporting roles, day players, extras. The kind of work where stars never overlapped with background talent.
She’d been careful. She’d checked the call sheet. Killian wasn’t scheduled to read until three.
It was one-fifteen.
“Mommy, are you okay?”
Noah’s hand found hers, small and warm and trusting. She squeezed it.
“Perfect, baby. Let’s go show them what you’ve got.”
The casting room was a converted suite with booming acoustics and a blue backdrop that had seen better decades. A woman in wire-rimmed glasses sat behind a folding table, a stack of headshots spread before her like a hand of cards. She looked up as they entered, her smile the kind of professional amiability that sold timeshares.
“You must be Noah. I’m Rachel. I hear you’re a pro at reading commercials.”
Noah nodded, his small shoulders squaring. “I did one for toothpaste last month. I had to smile for four hours.”
“Four hours,” Rachel repeated, her eyebrows climbing. “That’s dedication.”
“My mom brought gummy bears.”
Sofia felt the ghost of a smile touch her lips. “Bribery is a valid parenting strategy.”
The next twenty minutes unfolded with the familiar rhythm of cattle-call casting. Noah read his lines—something about a breakfast cereal that turned milk into rainbows—with the guileless energy that had made the casting director’s assistant call her back twice. He hit his marks. He remembered to look at the lens, not the floor. He only fidgeted once, when Rachel asked him to do it again “with more surprise.”
“Like you just found a puppy,” Sofia coached from the corner.
“A puppy made of rainbows?” Noah’s eyes went wide, and he pitched his voice higher. “Whoa! My milk is *rainbow*!”
Rachel laughed. Actually laughed. That was good.
“Perfect, Noah. We’ll be in touch. Sofia, can you fill out the paperwork at the front desk?”
Sofia nodded, already moving toward the door, her hand finding Noah’s shoulder. “Thank you for your time.”
They made it three steps into the hallway before the world tilted.
Killian Winslow stood at the end of the corridor, talking to a man in a tailored suit. He was taller than she remembered—or maybe she’d spent six years shrinking him in her mind, sanding down the sharp edges of memory until he was manageable. He wasn’t manageable. He was six foot two of coiled grace, his dark hair cut shorter than it had been in New York, his jaw sharper, his presence a gravitational field that bent the light around him.
He hadn’t seen her.
He was laughing at something the suit said, his head thrown back, the column of his throat exposed. She remembered kissing that throat. She remembered the sound he made when she did.
*Don’t think about that.*
She pulled Noah closer, angling her body to block his view. The service stairwell was ten feet away. If she moved slowly, casually, she could—
“Sofia?”
His voice hadn’t changed. That was the worst part. She’d reheard it in a thousand dreams, distorted and softened by time, but the reality of it was a blade. Low, warm, edged with surprise.
She stopped. Her spine locked. The air in her lungs turned to concrete.
*Don’t turn around. Keep walking. He’s not your problem. He hasn’t been your problem since you left that hotel room without a forwarding address.*
But her body betrayed her, rotating at the hips, her face arranging itself into a mask of polite recognition that she’d perfected over seven years of Hollywood bullshit.
“Killian.” The name came out steady. Good. “I didn’t know you were reading today.”
He was already moving toward her, that long-legged stride that ate up distance. The suit fell back, clearly dismissed. Killian’s eyes—those impossible gray eyes that Noah had inherited like a curse—raked over her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.
“I’m not. We’re doing table reads in the bungalow. I was just—” He stopped, his gaze dropping. “Who’s this?”
Noah had pressed himself against her leg, his earlier confidence dissolving into the shyness that always struck when strangers loomed. He stared up at Killian with the frank curiosity of a child who hadn’t yet learned to be impressed by famous people.
“This is Noah,” Sofia said. Her voice was too bright. Too quick. “My son.”
Something flickered in Killian’s eyes. A calculation. A question.
“He’s a good-looking kid,” he said, and there was an odd note in his voice, something careful and testing. “How old?”
“Six.”
The word hung between them like a grenade.
Sofia watched the math happen behind Killian’s eyes. She could practically see him counting backward, triangulating dates, mapping the trajectory of a night he probably thought he’d forgotten. Six years ago. The Tribeca film festival. A bottle of Macallan 18 shared in his hotel room because her flight to London wasn’t until morning. The way his hands had trembled when he’d undressed her, the way he’d whispered that she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
She’d left before dawn. She’d told herself it was better that way. Better than watching him become one more actor who promised to call and never did. Better than building a future on the shifting sand of Hollywood romance.
She hadn’t known about Noah until she was already twelve weeks along. By then, Killian was filming in New Zealand. By then, she’d already decided.
“Noah,” Killian repeated, as if tasting the name. He crouched down, bringing himself to eye level with the boy. “That’s a strong name. You here for the cereal commercial?”
Noah nodded, his thumb creeping toward his mouth before Sofia gently pulled it away. “It turns milk into rainbows.”
“Rainbows.” Killian’s smile was soft, almost wistful. “I could use some rainbows. I’ve been reading the same contract for three hours.”
The actor who seemed larger than life on screens big enough to swallow cities had folded himself into a human shape, small and kneeling on a linoleum floor, talking to a six-year-old about breakfast cereal. It was too real. Too close. The floor of the hotel room, the way he’d cradled her face in his hands and told her he wished they had more time. The way she’d almost believed him.
“We should go,” Sofia said. “We have paperwork.”
Killian straightened, his gaze locking onto hers with the focused intensity that had won him a Critics’ Choice award. “Sofia. Wait.”
“Killian, I really—”
“Where’s his father?”
The question was direct. Brutal. It cut through the pleasantries like a scalpel.
Sofia felt Noah’s hand tighten around hers. She looked down at his dark head, at the cowlick that never lay flat, at the ears that were still too big for his face. She thought about the birth certificate that listed “father unknown.” The savings account she’d drained for the private investigator who’d confirmed that Killian Winslow had a new girlfriend, a new premier, a new life that didn’t include her.
“He’s not in the picture,” she said. It wasn’t a lie.
Killian’s jaw worked. A muscle jumped in his temple. “When did you move to LA?”
“Seven years ago.”
“Seven—” He stopped, recalibrated. “You’ve been here seven years and you never called?”
“We didn’t exactly exchange contact information.” She kept her voice light, dismissive. “It was one night, Killian. People have one night.”
“People have one night and then they leave before sunrise without a note?”
The accusation in his voice made her chest tighten. She remembered the guilt that had eaten at her for months afterward, the way she’d almost texted him a dozen times, the drafts she’d deleted because she couldn’t find the words to explain.
*I’m pregnant. I’m keeping it. I’m keeping him. I don’t expect anything from you, but you deserve to know.*
She’d never sent any of them.
“Mommy, my tummy hurts,” Noah said, his voice small.
Sofia seized the excuse like a lifeline. “We have to go, Killian. It was good to see you.”
She turned, pulling Noah toward the service stairwell. Her heart was a trapped bird in her ribcage, beating against bone. She could feel Killian’s gaze on her back, a pressure between her shoulder blades.
“Sofia, wait—”
She didn’t wait. She pushed open the heavy fire door and stepped into the stairwell, the concrete walls amplifying the sound of her footsteps, Noah’s smaller ones patter-scuffing beside her. She took the stairs two at a time, her kit bag bouncing against her hip, her mind a static storm.
*He knows. He doesn’t know. He suspects. He doesn’t.*
The lobby on the ground floor was mercifully empty. She signed the paperwork with shaking hands, her signature a jagged scrawl, and hustled Noah out the side entrance into the California sun.
The heat hit her like a wall. She leaned against the building’s stucco exterior, her eyes closed, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
“Mommy, are you crying?”
Noah’s voice was worried now, his small hand patting her arm.
She opened her eyes. The world was blurry. She blinked until it sharpened.
“No, baby. Just dust.”
“Liar,” he said, with the devastating honesty of a child. “Your eyes are wet.”
She laughed, a broken sound that scraped her throat. “Okay. Maybe a little dust. Come on, let’s get ice cream.”
The walk to the parking lot took them past the front entrance, where a town car idled at the curb and a cluster of fans had gathered behind velvet ropes. Sofia kept her head down, her hand on Noah’s shoulder, guiding him past the commotion.
She was almost to the parking garage when she felt it again. The weight of a gaze.
She turned, just for a moment.
Killian stood in the hotel entrance, his phone pressed to his ear, his eyes fixed on her and Noah with an expression she couldn’t read. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t confusion. It was something colder, more focused—the look of a man who had just discovered that the world was not what he thought it was.
She turned away, pulling Noah into the shadow of the garage.
Killian watches them leave, muttering to his assistant, “That’s her. But who was the boy?”