Page 57 of Love Unscripted
He glanced at his notes. “God often prepares the solution before the problem appears. Esther was positioned before the crisis arose. You see this pattern throughout Scripture. Can you think of another example?”
“Joseph,” she said immediately. “He was sold into slavery in Egypt so that he was in a position later to help his family.”
“Good. Any others?”
She smiled faintly. “Aaron Cortelli casting Esther around the same time I decided to walk away from secular television and step into Christian film.”
A small smile tugged at his mouth at the unexpected answer.
Their plates were cleared away, and for a moment neither spoke. The restaurant around them hummed softly with conversation and clinking glasses, but their corner had settled into something quieter.
He rested back in his chair. “What made you leave when you did?”
“You mean mid-season?”
He nodded.
Camille traced her finger lightly along the rim of her water glass before answering.
“I felt convicted for a little while before I actually left,” she admitted. “The content kept bothering me. At first I ignored it because I told myself it was just acting. That it wasn’t personal. But eventually I couldn’t reconcile it anymore.”
She gave a soft breath of humorless laughter.
“And honestly, by the time I finally left, there were several things pushing me toward the exit.”
He listened quietly.
She hesitated only briefly before continuing on her own.
“You’ve probably already heard the rumors about Simon Halden.”
Aaron’s expression remained calm. “I’ve heard things.”
“They’re true,” she said plainly. “We were involved. I ended it.”
There was embarrassment in her eyes, but also relief—as though saying it aloud cost her something and freed her at the same time.
“The relationship became… unhealthy,” she said carefully. “And once things ended, I realized how much of myself I’d lost trying to manage him, the show, all of it.”
Aaron didn’t interrupt.
“The conviction about the show was real,” she continued. “But if I’m honest, even if the scripts had suddenly become wholesome overnight, I still would’ve left. I wanted completely out of that world. Out of everything connected to him.”
A shadow crossed her face then, subtle but unmistakable.
She looked down at the table for a moment before speaking again, more quietly this time.
“The problem is that leaving didn’t actually end anything.”
His brow furrowed slightly. “What do you mean?”
She swallowed. “He won’t let go.”
The words came out steadier than the emotion behind them.
“You know about the lawsuit,” she said. “But that’s only part of it. He calls me constantly. Messages me from random numbers. If I block one, another appears. Sometimes the messages disappear afterward, which somehow makes it worse because it makes me feel crazy.”
Aaron’s expression hardened.
