Women's Lifestyle June 25, 2026 0 Comments

Jessica Knoll’s Helpless: A Seductive Thriller That Unravels the Dangerous Game of Desire and Power—Can You Handle the Truth?

Ever tried escaping your past? Trust me, it’s less “Fast & Furious” and more like running on a treadmill that just won’t stop. In Jessica Knoll’s upcoming thriller, Helpless, you’re thrown headfirst into the sticky web of Hollywood producer Faye Heron’s life — a woman who’s successful on paper but haunted by a wildfire romance gone seriously sideways with her ex, Henry. Imagine bumping into that one person you swore you were done with, at a funeral no less, only to have a reunion spiraling into a hostage situation deep in the woods. Sounds like a bad script, right? But this isn’t just about danger and drama; it’s a raw, unsettling plunge into what helplessness really means when desire and fear collide. It’s messy, it’s psychological — and it makes you wonder: Can you ever really outrun the shadows lurking in the corners of your heart? Intrigued? LEARN MORE

9 min read

You can’t outrun your past. And you really can’t outrun the memory of a burning, inconclusive romance. In author Jessica Knoll’s forthcoming novel, Helpless, Hollywood producer Faye Heron is haunted by the memory of her smoldering, psychologically turbulent relationship with her college boyfriend, Henry. A successful (and married) Hollywood producer, Faye collides with Henry again when they attend a funeral for their beloved college professor. At first, they reignite age-old feelings, but then he kidnaps her, bringing her to a remote cabin in the woods. This story treads muddy waters where Faye wrestles with the (more than) troubling reality of her ex-boyfriend’s actions and her reemerging desire for him. Knoll asks: What does it mean to feel helpless?

Then, somehow, Henry and I are riding in a car together, only this time I am the one at the wheel. I don’t think I ever drove when Henry and I were together. I had nowhere to take him. I had no car.

I park in the small hotel lot, and we make a run in the rain, slipping on wet dogwood petals and huddling together under the first window awning, startling the manager with teased hair who sits in front of her blocky desktop. We flee to the cover of the next awning, this one long and thin, shielding the red carpeted walkway into the bar and restaurant. The garden doors are open on the other side, and beyond the hedges trimmed to match a Bridgerton set, the lake is gray and pockmarked with rain.

“You head back to L.A. tomorrow?” Henry checks. He removes his blazer and brushes it dry with the flat of his hand.

“Actually, no. Not for another week.”

Henry frowns, confused. “Another week?”

“I rented an Airbnb on the other side of the lake. Sort of like a solo writing retreat. I get more done alone.”

Henry digs his hands into his armpits and squeezes himself against the damp. “Let me swing by with your stuff. What’s your room number?”

We really are doing this then. This dangerous, combustible thing.

I am suddenly so nervous, I could cry. The rain against the lake is like a setting on a sound machine. I let it soothe me. I think, This is Henry. It will be what you want.

“Three F,” I tell him, and I’m startled by the sound of my own voice, its ultrafeminine and frightened tenor.

Henry swings his blazer over my head and settles the shoulders on my shoulders, a cape to keep me dry. He gives me a quick, reassuring smile. It’s me. It’s okay. That’s the meaning I assign it as he turns and strides under the scalloped awning with his head bowed to the rain, disappearing into the secondary guest tower, which is not a tower so much as a long, low dormitory-looking structure with sliding glass doors lining the back. I’m staying in the original building, the older but prettier one with the higher rate to match.

I raise Henry’s coat over my head and set off for my room at an unhurried pace, in case anyone is watching, in case Henry can still see me. But my heart is pounding like I’m running uphill.

Last night, when I got home and noticed the marks at the foot of the door, I briefly imagined that I might find Henry sitting on the fusty floral couch. I would tell him that he shouldn’t be here. He’s married, and so am I. I imagined him standing, approaching me, ignoring my continued pleas to leave me alone, knowing the way only Henry knows when my no means yes.

Now my hand shakes as I turn the key to the door, knowing he will be inside soon. I brush my teeth, apply an extra coat of deodorant. Henry is sensitive to smells, and he always smells good. I used to joke he had his sweat glands removed, his tongue professionally bleached, and he would smile in this soft way, as though touched someone finally understood him. I kick off my shoes and wash my feet in the tub. Thank God I got a pedicure before I came. I’m standing in an inch of soapy water when my phone rattles on the countertop. It’s my best friend who is also my agent, calling on a Saturday. I answer on speaker.

“Hello?” I say, the question evident in my voice. What’s happened?

“I have news,” she says without preamble. “It’s good but it comes with a catch.” She wants to loop in my husband, but first she wanted to check to make sure that would be okay with me.

“Go right ahead,” I say benevolently. “We’re acting like everything is fine, as usual.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?” The most I’ve told her, acting in best-friend capacity, is that something has happened and I’m thinking of leaving. My husband has a secret. Not the one you’re thinking, the normal one that normal husbands sometimes have.

“Try him now,” I say. “It’s, like, nine or ten at night there.”

“Okay,” she says, uncertainly, and for a moment I think the line has dropped, but then she comes back on and says, “Everyone still with me?”

“Here,” says my husband. He must have popped out of whatever exclusive supper club he’s been invited to for the evening. I can hear someone in the background ask to borrow a lighter, the wet spray of the cars rushing by on a rainy London night.

“Here,” I echo.

My agent, who I alternately refer to as my agent and best friend, depending on which role she occupies in the moment, says the name of the actress who is asking for someone to slip her a not-quite-ready copy of my script. The name of this actress is cause to scream, and so I do.

“Hold up, hold up,” my husband says. “I thought she was doing that Apple show and then right into the Marvel movie and unavailable until 2029?”

“She has to drop the show,” my agent is delighted to report. “They pushed the start date, and now it’s a scheduling conflict with Marvel. She’s essentially free this whole next year and looking for a film, something with a short production window.”

“Faye,” my husband says, a kind of awe in his voice, “you were right. Holy fuck, you were right.” I can tell that he’s smiling, which means he’s had a few drinks. In the 11 years we’ve been together, he’s smiled infrequently, even though we’ve produced three television shows and two indie films, all of which have been well received critically but did not quite manage to dent the culture in a way that matters to the studios. Still, they will always hear a pitch from us. Not all of them will make an offer on that pitch, but enough that occasionally a project of ours gets competitive. We’ve been photographed for the cover of The Hollywood Reporter and given a tour of our production offices to Architectural Digest. We are usually invited to the Vanity Fair after-party. Objectively, we are doing well, but one thing my husband and I agree on is that the term “objectively well” can kick rocks. We want our white whale, something unapologetically commercial and occasionally brilliant. One thing we cannot agree on is what that looks like. My husband is after me to pitch something dark and female-driven and, most important, franchise friendly; I sat down and wrote this script instead. He read it, asked why I wanted to waste two years of my life on another quiet indie thing. The caliber of the actress who has requested a copy of the script makes mincemeat of that question. She will get us money. She will make us noise.

“We love a man who can admit when he’s wrong,” my agent jokes, and I am glad we are not on a FaceTime so I am free to roll my eyes. I know what she’s doing—selling my husband back to me. She thinks it will be professionally disastrous for the two of us to split. My husband’s older brother runs the venture-capitalist arm of the agency that represents us; I could triple my writing and directing quote and I still wouldn’t be considered an earner, not when my brother-in-law is bringing in Mint Mobile partnership money. If my husband and I do separate, if things do get ugly, if it ever does come down to a choice between the two of us, it’s me who will be shown the door. My best friend and agent has not explicitly said so to me, nor does she have to.

“Tell her it will be ready to read next Monday,” I say. “But that means no one can bother me for the next week. No check-ins. No updates about set drama. Nothing. If I need something, I’ll reach out, but otherwise treat me like I don’t exist.”

“Will not disturb,” my agent solemnly vows.

“Do your thing,” my husband says, and I can hear in his voice that he’s grinning ear to car. “I love you, baby.”

I am saved from saying it back by the knock on my door.

Henry is standing in the hallway, the handle of a small shopping bag hooked around his pinkie. His hair is spiked with rain and his eyes are a bit wild. “Did you scream?”

“It was good news.”

“I was worried, Faye,” Henry says in soft admonishment. He puts his hand on the door above my head and pushes it open all the way. There is a moment as he steps past, him looking down at me, me looking up at him, that is eddied with turbulence. I want him to toss the bag with my cheap old clothes and pin me against the wall with his pelvis. No. Scratch that. This is Henry. We can do better; we have done much. I want him to keep the bag. I want him to pull out one of the slutty sundresses I used to wear without a bra, tell me to go into the bedroom and put it on, don’t even think about coming back out unless I’m crawling on my hands and knees. I want him to be sitting on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table and his arms crossed behind his head, watching me with all his furious control. Stop, I want him to say. Get down on your elbows. I want him to take his time standing, coming over to me. I want him to circle me a few times, tilting his head this way and that while I hang my head in remorse. The sundress is psychotically short. Bent over, the wet slash in my underwear is on display until Henry decides it isn’t. Look at me, Faye, he’ll say in that aristocratic voice, and I’ll have to twist my head over my shoulder because he will be standing behind me, and he will want me to see that he is looking at me too but not in my eyes. Reach around. Take it off. When I do, I want him to kneel behind me, adjust my nice underwear so that it’s sitting just right in the crooks of my knees. Jesus, Faye, I want him to sigh, sounding brokenhearted and heartless in the same breath. I could pick your pretty pussy out of a lineup.

“Want to make us drinks?” I say, feeling woozy. I am swollen like a tick. “I need to make one quick call.” I lead him through the sitting room and point him toward the small kitchenette, where a bottle of bourbon sits on the counter. I am not a bourbon drinker, but it seemed a safer bet than the selection of wine at the liquor store that shares space with the tanning salon that still charges a dollar a minute. Henry picks up the bottle, stares at the label a long moment.

“How do you take it?”

“Little bit of water.”

“Look at you,” he says quietly.