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“You said that before the Globe, too,” Rebecca said. “Then you won it anyway.”

“That was different.”

Delaney pushed the script aside. “I had something to give then,” she said. “Now I just don’t.”

Rebecca’s posture didn’t change. Her face didn’t change. But something in her eyes pulled tight, the way it always did when Delaney said no. Delaney saw it and had to look down at the cushion.

“You’re tired,” Rebecca said. “Burned out. It happens to half my roster. We can fix it.”

“How? Another flight to New York?” Delaney sighed. “I read those pages and feel nothing,” she said. “I can’t commit to working on something for weeks if I don’t care about it.”

Rebecca looked across the room at the high shelf. The gold statue sat between the design books, dust catching the last of the afternoon light. Delaney watched her manager look at it and knew she was doing the same math as always: what it cost to get that trophy, what it would cost to get another one, and whether the woman on the couch still had it in her.

“I know,” Rebecca said quietly. “But quitting isn’t you.”

She stood up from the barstool and came back to the sectional. She looked down at Delaney like she was measuring the distance between the hungry twenty-one-year-old she’d signed, all shining hair and big hazel-green eyes and willing to do anything for a shot, and the hollowed-out woman sitting here now in sweatpants.

“What about that script you were writing?” Rebecca said. “The ranch thing. You pitched the premise a while ago. Did you ever finish it?”

Delaney’s fingers found the cushion seam and picked at it. She’d written it for herself. She’d never planned to show anyone, but then how else would it ever happen?

“I finished a draft,” she said. “But it’s not for them. It’s a sapphic love story. The studios want spectacle. They want me in heels on red carpets, not wearing muddy boots and learning to ride a horse.”

“So don’t give it to a studio. Make it yourself.”

Delaney laughed. The sound scraped her throat, dry and unused. When was the last time she’d laughed? Days? Maybe longer.

“Are you insane?” She gestured at the room, at herself, at the Golden Globe. “You’re looking at someone who has no interest in getting dressed or leaving the house. You want me to start a production company? Find private funding? Hire a crew? That takes everything I don’t have right now.”

“I didn’t say you had to start one,” Rebecca said.

She set her coffee on the island. When she turned back, her expression had changed. The manager’s mask was gone, and something sharper and hungrier sat underneath it.

“I’ve been in the process of setting up one for the last six months. Sloane Pictures.”

Delaney stopped picking at the cushion seam. She looked up at her manager. Rebecca Sloane, who’d spent two decades moving talent around the board like chess pieces, who’d survived a public divorce from Martin Kessler without a single tabloid photo of her looking less than immaculate. A talent manager branching into production wasn’t unheard of. But Rebecca liked sure things. She liked studio money and guaranteed distribution and contracts that didn’t fall apart.

“You’re starting a production company?”

“I am.” Rebecca leaned back against the island, arms crossed over her blazer. “I’m tired of handing my best clients over to executives who chew them up and spit them out. I want more control. I want to make projects that actually mean something instead of just whatever the algorithm wants this quarter. I have a few things pending, but I would love to jump on this. It’s exactly the kind of film Sloane Pictures should make.”

Delaney pulled her knees a little tighter to her chest. She wanted to believe it.

“Can you actually find the funding for something that niche? Can you afford to take that kind of risk right out of the gate?”

“You’re acting like sapphic is a liability,” Rebecca said. “You know me better than that.”

Delaney let out a slow breath. She did know that. The rest of the industry remembered Rebecca’s divorce and the rumors that followed—about why the marriage had really ended. It made a strange kind of sense that Rebecca would want a sapphic love story under her new banner. The kind of film her ex-husband would never touch.

“I can handle the investors,” Rebecca said. “I can find the crew. I’ve been putting out feelers for months, just waiting for the right project to start with. And this is exactly what you need right now, Delaney. A passion project. Something that actually matters to you.”

“I can’t carry a whole production, Becca. I just want to sleep.”

“You wouldn’t have anything to do with the logistics. You would be acting and producing your own words. Think about it. Zero outside input. No Hal telling you to smile more or asking for rewrites. Complete creative control.”

No one touching her script. No studio notes committee filtering June Calloway through a spreadsheet of market demographics. No male executive explaining what makes a good love scene. She hadn’t felt that in a long time.

“We need a real ranch,” she said, and her voice came out smaller than she wanted. “Horses. I’d have to learn how to ride first. We’d have to pay a fortune in location fees.”