Breaking Free (3 page)

To top it off, the photo—or meme?—had the words "The Future of America. Well Done." printed in bold.

They were ridiculing Cassandra, and Sophie wasn’t any different from her friend, was she?

"No, no, not that one," Toby said, chuckling. "I mean the one that says 'The Difference between Math and Meth is More than One Letter.'"

"Oh!" Frank nodded and scrolled to another photo. "This one."

And there was Sophie.

Coldest shower ever.

Not only was she wasted in the photo, she had a bad complexion and makeup smeared under her eyes. There was also white powder dusted under her nose, and she was sitting on the curb outside a club with two friends. Whoever had taken the photo had gotten a good shot of her see-through panties.

Sophie couldn’t have been more mortified. Stunned into silence and shattering inside, there was nothing she could say to defend herself, either. It was her. And apparently she was a fucking joke.

"Priceless," Toby laughed. "Oh, Sophie, be glad you're not really this girl."

"Well, she does serve a purpose," Frank interjected with a grin. "She makes for great motivational posters at colleges and universities around the nation. Plus, my colleagues always get a good laugh when they come into my office."

Sophie's eyes burned, and she knew she had about two minutes to get behind closed doors before she broke down.

"E-Excuse me," she stuttered. She let out a shaky breath and slid off the stool, making sure not to reveal too much of her thighs. "I'll be right back." She obviously wouldn’t, but it was better than any other excuse.

Then again, the two men were back to laughing at photos in Frank's phone, so perhaps they didn’t even notice she'd left.

Stalking over to the elevators, she pressed the button. For some reason, she felt like everyone was watching her, judging her, but there was nobody around.

Daniel called her obnoxious, Tennyson clearly had no respect for her, the makeup artists didn’t want to be seen with her, and now this. She couldn’t take it. She was about to burst.

Once she got to her floor, she stormed into her suite and banged on the door leading to the assistants' adjoining suite.

"Daniel!" she shouted hoarsely.

Calm down
, she thought as she tried to breathe easier. But it was almost impossible.

The door opened, and Daniel cocked a brow. "What's up? Why're you all dressed up?"

She ignored his questions. "Be honest with me. Do people hate me or something? Have I done anything to piss off the world?"

Because this fucking
hurt
.

Daniel frowned. "What happened?"

"Just answer me," she gritted out.

She wasn’t gonna play stupid. Her reputation was far from stellar, but did she really deserve to be made fun of? Oh God, what if she did?

For a moment, Daniel only stared at her, and it was frustrating the ever-loving hell out of Sophie. She needed answers, damn it.

"You know what? I'll be right back." Daniel disappeared into his own room, only to return with her laptop. He sat down on the edge of her bed and placed the laptop in the middle. "I don’t know what's happened, but you do need a reality check. Type in your password."

Sophie bristled at being ordered around, but maybe she'd get an opportunity to check her social media once Daniel had made his point—if there was one. So she rounded the bed, sat down on the other side, and typed in the password.

Daniel tapped away on the keyboard. "I'm doing this because I think there's a nice person hiding beneath the several layers of bullshit. Here." He angled the laptop in her direction. "Read this before you speak to me again."

Sophie glared then shifted her gaze to the dozen or so tabs he'd opened.

"Wait—" He gripped her shoulder and leveled her with a firm look. "Let me say first that I believe there is much more to you than what you're about to read. Okay? But I still think it could be beneficial for you to see a bit of what your father's staff gets paid to hide from you." He nodded at the screen and stood up. "I know you enjoy reading stories about yourself, but this time, read the comments."

Daniel left, and Sophie scowled at the door for a second or two and then sighed and peered back at the screen.

The first tab was the front page of a common tabloid, and the article was about Sophie and her friends partying. But the article was sort of old, so she had no idea what significance it could have. Still, she scrolled down and clicked to read the comments.

"I need an app that blocks every mention of Sophie Pierce."

"Bitch," Sophie mumbled.

After that, though…it got difficult to stay unaffected.

"This would make a great drinking game. One shot every time she embarrasses herself LOL!"

"The skinny skank is as stupid as the losers who date her."

"Meh. Useless cunt. Next."

"Stop hating on her. In case of an alien invasion, she's enough to scare them off. Rock on, Sophie!"

"Can someone do the world a favor and shoot her?"

Sophie recoiled, shocked, and closed the tab. But it only made the next one pop up, which was her Twitter, and it was set on the hashtag "#PartyPrincessPierce."

As she read the posts, all color drained from her face.

Shutting down Twitter, it was Facebook up next. A photo of her—when she was drunk—was being shared between thousands of people.

"This needs to be a meme for how students feel after finals. She looks horrible!"

"Lord, she's like a poster child for fuck-ups."

"Someone call animal control!"

"I wouldn’t touch her with my cheating ex's dick."

"If my daughter came home looking like a crack whore, I don’t know what I'd do."

"Waste of space."

"Don’t tag me in this shit. I might catch an STD."

"I don’t know what's more disgusting. Sophie Pierce, or the fact that she probably has a butler to wipe her ass."

Sophie didn’t even notice she was crying until a teardrop hit her hand.

Going back to her Twitter, she tried to forget about what she'd just seen, but it was futile.

There was a new club opening in LA this Friday, and according to her friend Cassandra, everyone who was someone was gonna be there. It was all over her Twitter. Cassandra was
so
looking forward to it.

A guy Sophie had once starred in a shitty rom-com with was going too, and the flirting between him and Cassandra was anything but subtle.

Callie's sister was hungover. Another friend was pouting her lips in a revealing selfie. Some guy Sophie had dated a while back was "gathering his bros" for a few days in Vegas. Lachlan was tweeting about bitches betraying him.

Sophie hung her head.

First of all, she and Lachlan had been a spotlight item. Nothing serious. He was the new bad boy in town and she was famous. Win-win for both.

Second of all, Sophie felt sick to her stomach.

She closed her Twitter again and saw the next gossip blog with countless comments.

"I get stupider just seeing her face."

"Gag."

"Proof that some are born to spread their legs cuz it's all they're good at."

"Fucking slut."

"I like her shoes, but please chop off the rest."

Tabloids loved to write about her and her friends, and Sophie had lived in the small bubble where everyone supposedly loved her. But that wasn’t the truth, was it? Her world was cutthroat and full of backstabbing. And online… Christ, she'd never been so ridiculed.

Some prayed for her.

Most called her nasty things.

Because I'm fucking nasty
.

Nausea won, and Sophie bolted for the bathroom.

*

She spent the entire evening lurking and reading what people thought of her. She also went over walls and feeds that belonged to her friends, and nothing had really changed, except…something had.

She wasn’t popular at all.

Not long ago, she would've brushed it off and said haters were gonna hate. Everyone was just jealous, but they fucking weren't.

"Oh God." She covered her face, unable to stop crying. Of course, this was the moment the phone in her room rang. Like she was in any kind of state to take a phone call. "
Ugh
." She sniffled and wiped her nose, reaching for the phone on her nightstand. "H-Hello?"

"It's Tennyson."

"Oh. Hi." Sophie swallowed her nausea and checked the time, seeing it was well past nine. He'd probably gone through the second-unit dailies by now. "What's up?"

"I just got off the phone with Noah, and we're gonna keep an eye on the weather. If it's the same as today, you'll reshoot your scene with Kelly tomorrow."

Sophie's heart sank and her face fell. "It wasn’t good enough," she said quietly. "I get it."

Of course it wasn’t good enough. This was her.

There was a pause before Tennyson replied.
"It was good up until the end,"
he told her, slightly gentler now.
"But I need more defeat when you stare out at nothing. Your sister's given up, and she was your last hope. This is where you realize you're on your own."

Sophie nodded numbly, even though he couldn’t see it. Defeat, she could do. It was all she felt at the moment. "Defeat. Copy that."

She ended the call and stared unseeingly, ironically how she'd be looking all vacant in her scene. Then there was a knock on her door, and it was Daniel. Sophie kept staring. Another round of tears welled up, but she felt completely empty. Empty and crushed.

Concern flashed in Daniel's eyes as he crossed the room and sat down next to her. "I'm sorry, darling."

Sophie shrugged and wiped her cheeks. "It's okay. I deserved to see it."

Because I'm only good for spreading my legs and using my dad's credit card.

Now the hurt reappeared. A wall of pain smashed right into her, and she fell apart, not caring Daniel saw her. She
had
turned into a monster.

"Oh, Sophie…" Daniel scooted close and held her, murmuring into her hair. "We can fix this, you know. It doesn’t have to be like this."

"How?" she sobbed. "I'm fucking useless."

"
No
." He cupped her cheeks and stared at her. "You're not. You just gotta lay off the diva business. It's not who you really are, and I think it's time you showed everyone that."

She sniffled some more and whimpered. "I don’t know what to do."

"I'll help you."

Chapter 5

The following night, Tennyson wrapped up, feeling satisfied about the day. Exhaustion had set in hours ago, but it didn’t touch him—even at four in the morning.

Claire and Chris's scenes were going tremendously well, and the raw footage Noah had sent of the reshoot in Denver was exceptional. Additionally, thanks to the reshoot, he'd dodged dinner with Sophie.

Although, right this moment, he was awfully pleased with her.

He didn’t know what kind of pep talk Sophie had given herself, but the scene had improved remarkably. Her character exuded defeat and pent-up anger; it had practically radiated off the screen.

When they returned from Denver tomorrow morning, Tennyson would make sure to tell Sophie she'd done a good job and, most importantly,
keep it up
.

He went to bed in a good mood and slept peacefully.

Until he was woken up way too early the next morning. He blinked sleepily, wondering if he'd imagined Sophie's voice and, in that case, God,
why
? But he hadn't imagined it. Even though there were trailers between his and hers, it was definitely her he could hear at—he checked his phone. Christ. It was only nine. He'd slept less than five hours.

It wasn’t uncommon, of course, but he wasn’t scheduled to work until eleven today, so he'd been looking forward to some extra sleep.

He tried to fall back to sleep, dragging the covers over his head. His morning erection strained in his boxer briefs, and he reached beneath the fabric and gave his cock a slow stroke. But Sophie was relentless with whatever she was doing, and her voice rang out again, sounding oddly…
chirpy
. People who'd just gotten off flights weren't usually so upbeat.

"No, I mean it. All of it!"

Tennyson groaned and got out of bed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Then he slid on his shades and stepped outside, ready to tell Ms. Pierce to pipe the
fuck
down.

The second his bare feet hit the pavement, he was met by a sight he was too tired to even try to understand. But it looked like Sophie was now sharing her trailer with wardrobe. A handful of clothing racks stood outside the trailer and countless shopping bags littered the ground.

"What's going on?" he asked gruffly.

Daniel and Noah were standing to the side, looking amused as hell.

"Please don’t stop her," Daniel said. "Sophie's human now. Humor her."

"Fuck you," Sophie told Daniel, though there wasn’t any anger in her tone. Then she smiled politely at one of the assistants from wardrobe, who walked out of her trailer with a giant pile of clothes. "Yes, yes, yes. Throw it all away."

Daniel cleared his throat loudly. "You mean, give it away to charity, right?"

Sophie blanched. "Oh. Yeah. Shit. Good idea, Daniel." She nodded firmly and started going through a pile of what looked like lingerie.

"Uh, not that, darling." Daniel smiled and rubbed the back of his head. "As expensive as all those were, I don’t think any homeless people care about the latest thong from La Perla."

"Not for wearing, anyway," Noah joked.

This was too much to process with so little sleep, so Tennyson merely padded over to the set where he poured himself a cup of coffee and grabbed a Danish.

He returned to Noah and Daniel, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun shining down on him. As long as he kept his gaze away from the sky, he should be safe from headaches for a little while.

"So is shopping the trick?" he asked, dipping his Danish in his coffee. "I was wondering why Sophie's reshoot went so well." He took a bite of the flaky pastry.

"This is bigger." Daniel kept his eyes on Sophie. "I'm helping her with some stuff, although the shopping is all on her. She disappeared after the shoot yesterday and was gone for hours. Her dad called me and wondered if her credit card had caught on fire. Then this shit was waiting for her when we landed."

Tennyson let out a quiet snort, eyeing Sophie over the rim of his cup. "Must be nice to be Daddy's little princess."

Daniel chuckled darkly. "You've met Peter Pierce, haven't you? He doesn’t keep princesses around. His wife and Sophie are possessions—nothing else. And let it be known that the wife is always replaceable."

Tennyson frowned as he mulled that over. He'd already figured out there was more to Sophie than a dumb party girl, but he hadn't considered she was having problems that went beyond which color her next Porsche should be.

"She doesn’t look like she's complaining, though." He raised a brow at Sophie as she threw garment bags around her and dug through her shopping bags. "If she were miserable, surely she would've gotten away from him by now."

Even though she hadn't made any headlines with her performances in her prior movies, they didn’t just throw out some pocket change. Sophie must've made plenty of money on her own.

Daniel shrugged. "She would have to start over from the beginning with literally no place to go. After she blew all her money on party favors, Peter got the control over her he wanted, and her mom doesn’t wanna see her."

"Jesus." Tennyson was too surprised to say much else.

"She's got a plan, though." Daniel smirked. "I have a feeling we'll be seeing a new Sophie Pierce around here now."

"What makes you think that?" Noah asked.

Daniel grinned and shrugged but didn’t answer verbally.

Tennyson didn’t know why that annoyed him.

*

After lunch and a meeting with his DP, Tennyson returned to the set, and most of the crew was being excused because of the scene's nature. Sex scenes were never comfortable, and dozens of people standing nearby didn’t make it easier.

With a select few remaining, Tennyson called for action with only one camera capturing Claire and Chris in their kitchen.

A bottle was shattered on the floor, the fake glass swimming in alcohol as Chris slid down a wall, Claire straddling him. Their kiss was brutal and angry, much like the way they clawed at each other.

"This changes nothing," Chris gritted out.

Tennyson made a rolling motion to Katie, the camera assistant, vaguely aware of someone standing next to him. Though, he didn’t move his gaze from the screen.

"You still haven't asked me…" Claire breathed heavily and threw her head back, grinding against Chris. "You haven't asked where I got the money from."

Chris chuckled darkly and grazed his teeth along her collarbone. "Maybe your answer would've mattered…if you weren't a lying whore."

Claire cried out, and they picked up the pace.

"Cut," Tennyson declared. "One more time, second mark." The cameraman moved around to reach his other angle, and Tennyson told the script supervisor this shot was ready for print.

"Hey," someone whispered behind him.

Tennyson threw an impatient glance over his shoulder and saw it was Sophie.

"Sorry." She smiled apologetically and held up her hands. "I wanted to ask if it's okay I stay. I asked Claire and Chris at lunch—they're okay with it."

Tennyson didn’t know why Sophie wanted to stay, but he didn’t have time for this right now. He nodded his answer and then refocused on the scene. It took him a few seconds because Sophie had changed her look again. Or rather, she looked like she had during their dinner. Makeup more subtle and light, her clothes modest and comfortable-looking. Shaking his head, he cleared his mind and got back to work.

*

The following few days were much the same. Tennyson worked almost exclusively with Chris and Claire, but Sophie was never far away. She'd started bringing a notebook to the set, too.

She could sit in a chair for hours, completely lost in the production and jotting down notes, and Tennyson had caught himself staring too many times. Sometimes in an attempt to figure her out, sometimes at her bare legs…

Fuck
.

He was curious about this new side to her, and he had every intention of asking her when they had dinner together tonight. At least he thought it was tonight. His PA—damn, what was his name?—had mentioned something about Sophie tonight.

"Tennyson!"

Looking up from his call sheet, Tennyson found Noah by the snack table on the set. He grabbed a soda and strolled over to Tennyson.

"Take a break, boss. We're back from lunch soon."

"Are you telling me what to do, punk?" Tennyson's mouth quirked up.

"Would you look at that—I guess I am." Noah grinned. "Seriously, though. You've been working nonstop since five this morning. Go get something to eat."

Eh, he might as well. "Since you asked so nicely. See you soon." Tennyson set down his notes and began walking toward the food tent, but he paused. "Hey, Noah?"

Noah looked back at him. "Yeah?"

"How many directors have you worked with?"

Noah pursed his lips and squinted in thought. "Thirteen or fourteen, I think. Why?"

"All right." Tennyson nodded. "And on a scale from one to thirteen or fourteen, how much of a pain in the ass am I?" Noah's eyebrows shot up, so Tennyson decided to come clean about what the studio publicist had told him. "I've been told I'm not approachable enough. That I'm arrogant and hermit-like."

Noah folded his arms over his chest, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "Hermit-like," he repeated. "That’s a good one." He shook his head and chuckled. "I guess it's true to some degree. A lot of your work takes place up here." He tapped his temple. "The people around you just watch it unfold. We follow your lead." He shrugged slightly at that. "And of course you're arrogant. Aren't all directors arrogant?"

Tennyson grimaced. "There's a difference between confidence and arrogance."

"Never claimed there wasn’t, but I've never worked with a director who wasn’t arrogant." He tilted his head. "As for the scale…I'd say you're a twelve."

"
Twelve
?" Tennyson couldn’t believe it. Was he that bad?
Christ
.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing," Noah defended. "You're impatient as fuck and you don’t give much feedback, but aside from that… Tennyson, you're the only director I've wanted to work with more than once. You're demanding and yeah, antisocial, but you create amazing films."

Tennyson frowned and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. "All right." He couldn’t alter his directing style, but he supposed he could try paying more attention to the people around him when he was off the clock. When he worked, he lived and breathed the production, but he could make an effort to—at the very least—remember names and be polite. And give more feedback.

"Was there anything else?" Noah smirked.

One thing, and Tennyson felt sheepish about it. "What's my PA's name?"

Noah cracked up and turned to leave. "Tyler," he called over his shoulder.

Tyler. Okay. Tyler.

*

After his shower that night, Tennyson found himself hesitating in front of his open closet. Picking out clothes wasn’t a difficulty in general, but he didn’t even know where they were going. Was there a dress code? Would he need his shades?

He swiped up his phone and dialed the number under
"Production: Unrecovered, PA."

His PA picked up after the first ring.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Wright?"

What the… Had Tennyson not told him to call him by name?

"It's Tennyson. Mr. Wright is my father," he replied. "I was wondering where I'm going with Sophie tonight."

"Oh, let me see."
There was some shuffling of papers in the background.
"You're going to that art café. I added the details to your phone. You and Ms. Pierce will get your canvas at nine, and they only serve refreshments during the event, so I suggest you eat before."

"Wait, wait—" Tennyson pinched the bridge of his nose, confused. "What event, and what about a canvas?"

There was a long pause before Tyler responded.
"Didn’t you read the email I forwarded?"

Perhaps Tennyson had forgotten.

"I'll call you back," he muttered. Then added, "Thanks, Tyler."

He sat down on the edge of his bed with a heavy sigh and checked his email. Each line he read caused his brows to lift higher and higher. This wasn’t some simple date he and Sophie could fake their way through. The publicists in charge of their showmance had signed them up for a goddamn charity event for animals without shelter and illegal hunting.

In sixty cities across the world, two celebrities in each location would come together and create an art piece that would be auctioned off at some benefit in London this September. Each celebrity couple—romantically involved, friends, or related—would be given a canvas, art supplies, and two hours to make something that would go along with the theme, which was "Wild."

Tennyson clicked on a few links that the studio had put in the email, and it brought him to news articles about the event. Apparently, it had generated a lot of attention in major cities like New York, LA, Rome, Paris, and Sydney, and they were halfway through. Tonight was Vancouver, and the celebrities who had been on the list originally had backed out.