Page 54 of Cosplay & Consequences

I had to smile. “Sounds like him. So, what’s this thing he hasn’t told me?”

Paige shook her head in amusement. “Danny’s sense of honor shows up in weird ways. I took the new position, because this is the last season of As The Minutes Tick By.”

“What?” My mind thought back through all the notes I made preparing for the interview. Not one of them mentioned the show being cancelled.

“Uncle Danny probably didn’t want you to take that into account if you were going to endorse him,” Faye explained.

“He didn’t want you to feel sorry for him if you thought he was losing his soap opera job here and the Tyrant role.” Paige said with a shrug. “Then again, that’s probably not the only thing on his mind.”

The words “some girl he’s falling in love with” echoed through my head again. I pulled the sweatpants up underneath my skirt, trying to focus on the conversation.

“Danny’s greatest quality and biggest fault is that he’s always putting other people's needs over his own,” Paige replied with a sigh. “That’s why he left Juilliard. To come home and take care of us after our father died.”

I had bent over to pull off my skirt over the sweatpants but stood up straight, turning to Paige. This didn’t add up at all. “Wait. I thought he left school, because he got an acting job.”

I thought back to our discussion on stage, he said that right? I had read multiple articles about him online when I was studying for our interview.

“He called it an ‘opportunity’ to keep us out of the spotlight when he took this job. Really, he came home to take care of a seventeen-year-old single mom and his niece,” Paige explained. For a brief moment, I could see a flicker of guilt on her face. “He had a full ride and dropped out, all to take care of us. Never batted an eye, never complained about it.”

My whole perspective of him shifted in a matter of seconds. Gone was the thought of him in tabloids and being an ambitious actor stuck in a soap opera. My eyes went over the entire mirror, and I saw all the pictures of Faye and Paige. They were his world, and in a few months his job and family would be gone. No wonder he had a meltdown on set. A thought then occurred to me, and I cast a side-eye towards Paige.

“Are you telling me all of this to make Danny look good?”

She chuckled, giving me a sly grin. “Is it working?”

“It must be, because she just called him Danny,” Faye said with a mischievous smile.

My face turned beet red. It worked, but I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of an answer, even though the stupid grin on my face gave it away.

“Is there anything else super noble about him that he’s not telling me? Does he put on a cape to save kittens from trees? Or is he teaching orphans to read in the evenings when he’s not performing life-saving surgeries on puppies?”

“No, but there is something we want from you,” Paige countered.

I bit my lip. “Well, I really wanted to see the finished trailer before I-”

“Oh! Not that,” Faye said, pointing to the neatly piled Tyrant books on the dressing room table. Her face flushed, and she began stammering. “I was, um, hoping in a way… if you didn’t mind. If you would… If it is okay with you-”

“Spit it out, nerd,” Paige said, giving Faye a nudge.

“Would you autograph my Tyrant books?” Faye blurted out. She took a moment, trying to regain her composure. “I’ll never get JKC to sign them, but I love your content, and since you’re related-”

I froze, chills running up my spine. “Danny told you we’re related?”

“Who’s related?” Paige asked, confused.

“No! Uncle Danny didn’t tell me that,” Faye said. “I figured it out from a literary journal I found online. It featured JKC’s personal history, and it mentioned her son’s name. You once mentioned your dad’s name on stream, and I put the whole thing together.”

The tension in my shoulders released. I knew she was a rabid fan of the series online, but now I saw Faye in a new light. Finding the connection between me and the books was an entirely different level of devotion to the book series. And much like her uncle, she had a sense of honor about it. “You didn’t tell anyone else?” I asked, amazed. “I mean, you didn’t even message me online to confirm it.”

“It wasn’t really my business, and I figured you would tell people if you wanted,” Faye said with a shrug.

I don’t know how, but the members of the Finnegan family always found a way to worm their way into my heart. When I looked at Faye, it reminded me what it was like to be the reader in my group of friends. To be the girl in the corner with a book always in my face.

“I would love to sign your books, but I think for my favorite fan, I can throw in a little something extra.”

“A free lifetime subscription?” Faye asked hopefully.

“No.” I reached into my bag, pulling out my grandmother’s anthology book. “This is a series of short stories written by my grandmother set in the world of the Red Tyrant.”