Page 71 of The Sun & Her Burn

My old friend sighed. “You wrote the part of Emerson Bainbridge for him, didn’t you?”

I stared at my left wrist, still surprised sometimes when I found it bare, without the heavy weight of the watch Adam and Savannah had once given me.

“I didn’t write it for him,” I said honestly. “But I think I wrote it in part because of him.”

“Certo,” Andrea said, looking pained and weary. “Of course, you did. Just as you wrote it forher.Niente di nuovo sotto il sole.”

There is nothing new under the sun, the expression meant. As in, of course my life still revolved around the same couple it had ten years ago.

I shrugged helplessly because I had, but also because I did not have the words to explain how I had written it because of someone else, too.

Linnea.

In Emerson’s imagination, Hallie Whitehall was fully realized as the consummate temptress, womanly, haughty with the kind of arrogance that comes from great beauty and great breeding, elegant and well-heeled. She was something to possess, another treasure to add to his collection of expensive trinkets.

But the reality of the living, breathing Hallie was nothing so cultivated.

She was a whirling dervish of vitality, rough around the edges because she had grown up in lower-class London but beautifuland talented enough to pull herself out of the slums and onto the stage where she was set to become a sensation.

It was this version of Hallie that Thatcher Radcliff, Emerson’s best mate and the private detective he hired to find her, fell in love with.

The dreamer in love with his dream was a very different supposition than two real people in love with each other.

I might have written the screenplay because of my past with Savannah and Adam, and the way it had shaped me, but I wrote it for Linnea and Adam to bring the story to life.

“Does it matter why I wrote it?” I asked a little gruffly. “I wrote again for the first time in years. I thought you would be thrilled.”

“Of course, I am,” Andrea scoffed. “No one is more thrilled than I am to be able to collaborate with you like this again. I only worry for your heart. When one like you has such a giving soul, it is often taken advantage of.”

I huffed out a resigned laugh and ran a hand through my hair. “We are who we are, flaws and all.”

Andrea gave me a lopsided smirk. “Just so. Certainly, this is a theme inThe Dream & The Dreamer. It can be a masterpiece, Sebastian. We will make it so. Just tell me what you need, and we will do it.”

“Adam,” I said immediately because there was no point in denying that while Emerson and Thatcher were both intrinsically tied to different parts of my psyche, I had envisioned my ex-lover as the posh British star of the show.

Andrea rolled his eyes and flapped his hand through the air. “Si, si, I know.”

“I want to play Thatcher,” I admitted because he was whom I related to the most. The hardworking white-collar man who fell in love with a woman knowing she was not meant to be his. “And I want Linnea Kai to audition for the role of Hallie.”

Andrea’s wiry grey and black eyebrows shot into his hairline. “The young, untried actress who is best known for being Miranda Hildebrand’s daughter and Adam Meyers’s current paramour?”

“The same,” I agreed a little stiffly. “Though she is much more than the sum of those parts.”

“If this is because you want to get into her pants, Sebastian, I am sure there are easier ways,” Andrea said mildly.

Even though I wanted to state unequivocally that this part was hers, that I hadwrittenit for her and that only Linnea could pull off that intoxicating mix of sophisticate and ingenue, I decided to let it rest.

Linnea would prove me right herself.

“Just give her an audition,” I suggested. “If you are not happy with her, Andrea, we will cast someone else.”

“Someone with star power,” he suggested. “Studios would love to attach a big name to a project like this.”

“Blood Oathstarred a no-name Italian,” I reminded him. “It won us both Oscars.”

“Concesso,” he granted. “She will audition. Anything else?”

“I have to at least speak with Savannah and Tate before we take it somewhere else,” I added, though the idea of doing so was tantamount to torture.