First Comes Loathe (Blue Collar Bensons #1) - Lilly Atlas Page 0,3

was going to be a star.

CHAPTER ONE

TEN YEARS LATER

“SCARLETT, HEY SCARLETT. You gotta get up!” A voice whisper-yelled into the darkness as a hand shook her shoulder, making her brain rattle around painfully in her skull.

Michaela blinked, then groaned. “Fuck, stop!” Even after all these years of going by her stage name, her mind reacted with confusion to being called Scarlett first thing in the morning. The stage name had been her talent agent’s idea after a series of crushing rejections early on. A name change and colored contacts, professional hair bleaching, shedding twenty pounds, and speech training to rid herself of the southern accent. He claimed the stage name gave her an allure of mystery.

Or some bullshit like that.

Sprawled on her stomach, Michaela lifted her head. “Becca?” she croaked. God, her throat felt dry as the freakin’ Sahara. “Why are you here? Why am I on my couch?”

“Because you needed to be up about twenty minutes ago,” her personal assistant whispered.

“The fuck?” she asked. “Why?”

“God, Scarlett, you’re really out of it this morning. Today is the first day where you’re filming the battle scene through sunrise. Remember? You’ve got a four thirty call time for the next five days. You’re due on set in an hour, and based on the look of things, you’re gonna need at least that long in hair and makeup.”

“Oh, shit,” Michaela said on a long groan. Now that she’d officially been awake for a few moments, unpleasant sensations bombarded her from all angles. Her head throbbed like a bongo drummer was whacking on it, her tongue felt like a dried-out slug, and someone might have actually rubbed her eyeballs with sandpaper before she’d passed out.

Not like she could remember.

What the hell had she gotten up to last night? Probably nothing more than her usual. This sure wasn’t the first time Becca had to get her ass out of bed after a night of partying. Hell, she paid her good money to be useful.

“Jesus,” she mumbled. She pushed up from the armrest until she was seated. Fuck, her neck hurt. She shoved the rat’s nest of hair off her face. “That better be coffee I smell, or you’re out of a job.”

“Yes. Triple shot.” Becca, her assistant of four years, shoved a monster-sized to-go cup in her face. “Want me to turn the light on?”

“Fuck, no.” Just the thought of it had her head screaming in protest. “Give me five minutes to throw on my robe and brush my teeth. I’ll meet you outside.”

“Okay. Do you want me to grab you something to eat?”

The thought of food had her stomach turning. “What time is it?”

“Three-thirty.”

Torture. “Ugh. No, coffee is all I want.”

Even through the darkness, she saw Becca’s mouth turn down. “Are you sure? I don’t think you had anything for dinner last night.” She still whispered, probably in blessed reverence to Michaela’s wicked hangover.

“I had drinks.” And Lord knew what else.

“Surprise, surprise,” Becca mumbled.

If she’d had more energy, Michaela would have called her out on the snark. Naked as the day she was born, Michela shivered. “Damn, it’s cold. Where the fuck’s my robe?” Nudity, her own and others, didn’t bother her. Hadn’t for a long time. Not since that shitty slasher movie she’d done at twenty. It’d been the first she’d starred in to make it to the big screen as well as her first lead. And it’d been shit. Absolute garbage. She’d had a fifteen-minute-long scene where she’d run from the psycho killer in a towel that fell toward the end. After being naked through countless takes, she’d lost any shyness she’d once possessed.

Now she felt nothing, whether clothed or in the nude.

“I think I see it on that chair,” Becca said as she maneuvered through the trailer. “Here.” She tossed Michaela the silk robe. “I’ll wait for you outside, Scarlett.”

“Thanks, hon.” After donning the robe, Michaela stood and stretched her arms over her head. Her shoulder cracked and her back ached. God, she felt older than her twenty-eight years. Especially this early in the morning.

A few sips of coffee cleared the cobwebs enough to have her stumbling through the dark trailer into the bathroom. She did her business and brushed her teeth by the light of her makeup mirror. No way in hell was she going to flip on the overhead light and rocket her hangover headache into a full-on migraine.

She didn’t bother checking her appearance, either. That could wait until hair and makeup performed their magic and made it look