Page 19 of What the Leos Burned (BLP Signs of Love #6)

The Scene Behind The Scene

The cast was gathered inside the soundstage. Scripts were scattered across the table as the crew prepared for the last table read of the night.

Love sat near the director’s monitor and flipped through her annotated script while Malcolm adjusted camera angles. Tara stood off to the side with a clipboard, nodding along as wardrobe notes were discussed. Zay was back near the sound team.

They were deep into rehearsal when Shai—award-winning actress, Grammy nominee, and lead in the adaptation—sat forward and began reading her lines for the next dramatic moment.

“I need you to tell me,” she said, her voice cracking with carefully placed emotion. “Tell me right now that none of this was ever real. That it was just a game to you. That you don’t actually want to build a life together. That it just sounded nice.”

Love’s breath caught. That line, word for word. Her eyes tracked every syllable as Shai pressed on.

“And when you look me in the eyes and say, ‘I love you,’ you don’t really mean it.”

The entire soundstage fell into a hush. Everyone’s attention narrowed to Shai, with only a few glances toward Love. She tried to look unaffected, but her chest tightened.

Shai continued, softer now. “So that my stomach can stop hurting. And I can go back to living my life never being fully satisfied with anybody else.”

Even Malcolm had paused and watched her intently. A stillness settled over the room.

Zay, sitting several feet away, blinked hard.

He remembered those words. Not from the script, but from a familiar night when he was in Amsterdam.

He’d been tipsy, distracted, heart racing after a show.

Princess was on the other side of the phone, voice breaking, telling him she couldn’t keep loving someone who made her feel invisible.

He remembered the pain. But he remembered it differently.

Malcolm’s excitement broke the heavy silence across the room. “That’s it! That’s the scene. That’s how you deliver!”

He turned toward Zay. “What kind of sound are we thinking here for tone?”

Zay hesitated for a moment as the memory lingered. “Something stripped back. Sparse. Maybe piano, soft strings . . . It’s about internal conflict. Regret. Like . . . buried pain clawing its way out.”

Love scoffed, and suddenly, everyone turned. Her voice was sharp. “And you think you can capture that?”

Zay raised a brow. “Why wouldn’t I?”

She tilted her head. “I don’t know. Might be hard to score emotional depth if you’ve never actually felt it.”

The air cracked.

Shai blinked. Tara’s head whipped between them. Kam glanced up from his phone, brows raised.

“Excuse me?” Zay said. His voice grew dangerously deep.

“I just don’t see how you plan to build something that moves people if all you’ve been doing is running from anything real.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You think I don’t feel?”

“You tell me,” she said flatly. “Your last few songs, all just flashy and fast. All smoke. No soul.”

Zay leaned forward, voice tight. “Like your book? Disguised as empowerment but it’s really just a neat little diary full of everything you were too scared to say.”

The room tensed. There was another pause, yet the silence was so loud.

Malcolm cleared his throat. “Maybe we should take five.”

“I’m taking ten,” Deuce shot back quick, already rising.

Everyone filed out. The door clicked shut. Only Love and Zay remained seated in place.

The silence that lingered after the doors closed felt thick enough to drown in.

Love remained frozen, arms crossed tight across her chest like armor.

Her face held steady, but the heat behind her eyes betrayed her.

Pain, anger, maybe even fear simmered beneath the surface.

Zay clenched his fists and bounced his leg against the leg of the chair as if it were the only thing that kept it from falling off.

Neither of them wanted to be the first to flinch, but too much had been said, and yet, so much hadn’t.

The air between them cracked, not with a reconciled love, but with everything they had once promised and broken.

Finally, Zay couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He stood.

“Say what you gotta say. Clearly, you’ve been waiting.”

“I don’t want to argue.”

“Too late.”

She glared. “You always do this. You flip it. Make me the villain.”

“Oh, you’re the victim now?”

That pissed her off. She stood then too.

“You always had your dreams come to you easy. Fame, the fans. Even me. All you had to do was show up. Meanwhile, I worked. I hustled. I climbed my way through rejections and bad edits and trauma just to breathe again. And you? All you did was complain when shit got hard.”

His mouth dropped open, and he laughed bitterly.

“I know you out of all people did not just say my dreams came easy? You were there! Sleeping on a bus because I had nowhere else to go was not easy. Getting my ass whupped by a grown man was not easy! You were always a spoiled little ass princess. Needed constant attention and validation. The world had to revolve around you, or it was chaos.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “That is not how I meant that, and you know it! Once again, twisting my words to fit your narrative. You’re stubborn as hell.

You only see your own side. You pour everything into your music because that’s the only place you can feel anything.

But you don’t even read the things that matter.

I know for a fact you haven’t read my book. ”

Zay opened his mouth to respond but closed it again as he took in what she had said. He knew she was right. He had been selfish. It was all because he was afraid.

Why can’t she see that ?

Then, Love broke the silence.

“You cheated on me,” she hissed. “You ruined us. You hurt me so bad, you don’t even understand what I went through during that time.”

His mouth opened then shut again. Then, he replied, “You didn’t give me a chance to understand. You ghosted me.”

“Ghosted?” She scoffed. “I left the entire damn state because I couldn’t even breathe in Detroit without running into some version of you!”

He stepped forward. “You act like you didn’t have a baby too.”

She froze. Her heart raced, and the air grew thick again.

“That was low,” she whispered.

“It’s the truth,” he snapped. “You paint me as the monster, but you clearly had no problem moving on.”

“You don’t know shit about what you’re talking about.”

“You never let me try to,” he shot back. “You disappeared.”

“I had to! For myself, to be strong enough for me and my daughter. You made your choice the second you laid up in Amsterdam with somebody else.”

His jaw locked. “Prin?—”

“I told you never to call me that again!” she screamed.

The silence afterward was absolute. Her hands trembled. Zay’s nostrils flared.

Then, she turned and stormed out. Her heels echoed like gunfire across the room. He listened as the sounds faded down the hall. He heard a door slam when she reached the bathroom.

Love stared into her eyes in the mirror. Her eyes were wet. Her face was flushed. Her reflection didn’t look like the powerhouse author or confident woman who had walked in that morning. She looked like the girl she used to be. Eighteen and heartbroken. Hiding tears behind a notebook.

She took five deep breaths to ground herself, a lesson she’d learnt from therapy over the years. When her breathing steadied, she wiped her tears, reapplied her gloss, and remerged.

When she returned, everyone was waiting at the table, quieter now.

Love gave a confident smile toward Tara, who raised a brow. Malcolm glanced at her, then at Zay. Everyone else twiddled their thumbs or scrolled on their phone with their heads down, trying to make the moment less awkward.

When Love took her seat, Zay broke the silence.

“I like how strong the lead character is,” he said calmly. “I see her growth. I can make it sound beautiful.”

No one spoke at first. Then, Love’s voice quietly and calmly replied.

“Thank you.”

The rest of the meeting played out like a rehearsal of strangers with script notes and technical specs. All eye contact remained avoided.

Everyone knew. Something deeper had unraveled beneath the words spat between the two earlier, and they wondered what conversation had been had when they exited the room.

As the team wrapped it up for the night, Zay lingered for a while.

He watched Love carefully gather her belongings and stand up from the table.

Everyone else grabbed their things and uttered goodbyes amongst each other, laughing and cracking jokes on the way out.

Love walked out the door, trailing behind Tara, and Zay caught her before she could reach the elevator.

“Prin . . . I’m sorry. I meant, Love?”

She turned slowly and faced him with her expression blank. Tara looked at Love, then back to Zay.

“I’ll wait for you downstairs,” Tara said, giving Love a reassuring smile before turning and continuing down the hallway.

Once the elevator door opened and Tara jumped in, he spoke. “You really gonna walk away again without saying anything?”

“I already said everything that I needed to say,” she replied with her head down.

He took a step forward and lifted her chin up with his hand to face him.

She looked him in the eye.

“I was never good at explaining how I feel.” He started again, his hand still on her chin. “I’m sorry for that. You’re right. I never knew how much it affected you or what you went through. Just give me a moment to make it right. I know it’s been so long, but at least let me try to understand.”

She closed her eyes, then gently grabbed his hand and lowered it from her chin.

“I’m going home to my family, Zay.”

With that, she turned and walked to the elevator door. She pressed the button and stood with her back turned to him as she waited.

Zay didn’t move. He just stood there and watched her quietly. Each moment, his heart broke all over again.

When the door opened, she walked inside, turned and faced him, and pressed the down button from inside. They both stared into each other’s eyes, and as the door closed, he saw her wipe a tear from her cheek.

Tara had been waiting for her, but when Love stepped out of the elevator, she shot past her and out of the building doors. When she got to her car, she stepped inside, pressed the button to turn the car on, and gripped the wheel in silence.

It wasn’t rage she felt, or even anger. It was heartbreak. She remembered how heartbreak never really ended; it just buried itself deeper.

And now, it surfaced again.