That was the thing nobody told you about fame. You could be surrounded by people—fans, co-stars, agents, publicists—and still feel completely alone. Because nobody saw you. They saw the character, the brand, the carefully curated public persona. They wanted Dr. Brock Blaze’s autograph and Dr. Brock Blaze’s selfie and Dr. Brock Blaze’s opinion on which lip balm he used.
Nobody asked Samuel Bennett what he thought about anything.
Except Farley.
Farley, who’d Googled me and still shown up at my cabin with groceries. Who’d watched me make a mustache out of my own hair and laughed in my face, and instead of being upset I’d laughed along with him. He’d sat across from me in the Range Rover and listened—really listened—while I told him about Sabrina’s betrayal and my identity crisis and all the ways fame had hollowed me out from the inside.
Farley saw me. The real me. And he’d still kissed me back like he meant it.
He just wasn’t ready to do anything about it.
“I should be grateful,” I told Purrsephone. “I have a charmed life. Millions of fans, a steady paycheck, the kind of career most actors would kill for. I should be happy.”
The snow was coming down faster now, and the flakes had become something more urgent, swirling past the window in thickening gusts. The wind had picked up too—I heard it moaning through the trees, a low, unsettling sound that made the cabin walls creak in protest.
I frowned at the window. “That escalated quickly.”
Purrsephone’s ears had pricked forward. She was staring at the window too, her body suddenly tense against my legs.
“It’s just the blizzard Gladys warned us about,” I told her. “Remember? Less than twenty-four hours, she said. I guess this is it.”
The wind howled louder, and the lights flickered.
My heart did a little stutter-step. “Okay. That’s less quaint.”
I set the cocoa aside and shifted to the edge of the armchair, earning a disgruntled noise from Purrsephone as she was forced to readjust. Through the window, I could barely see the outline of the trees anymore—the snow had become a white curtain, dense and impenetrable, whipping sideways in the wind.
This wasn’t the gentle December snowfall I’d been watching twenty minutes ago. This was a storm.
A flash of light split the sky, bright enough to make me flinch, and a crack of thunder followed so close behind that the entire cabin shook. Purrsephone leaped off my lap with a yowl, her claws catching my thigh through the blanket.
“Jesus—” I scrambled to my feet, heart pounding. “Thunder? In a snowstorm?”
I wasn’t a mountain person. I was an LA person who understood earthquakes, traffic, and which juice bars were worth the forty-five-minute wait. Whatever meteorological hellscape was currently descending on this cabin was out of my realm of understanding.
The lights flickered again, then died completely.
“Oh, that’s great,” I said to the darkness. “That’s really, really great.”
The fire was still burning, thank God—casting dancing shadows across the walls. I could see Purrsephone’s silhouette near the kitchen, pacing back and forth with her tail puffed up to twice its normal size.
“It’s okay,” I called to her, not sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. “It’s just a storm. Storms happen. They pass.”
Another flash of lightning, another boom of thunder. The wind screamed—there was no other word for it—and somewhere outside, I heard a cracking sound. Like a gunshot, only deeper. More resonant.
Purrsephone yowled and bolted for the bedroom.
“Okay,” I said, my voice higher than I would have liked. “Okay, okay, that’s—”
CRACK.
This time it was louder. Closer. The sound of something massive giving way, followed by a groan that seemed to come from the cabin itself.
And then: a thud that shook the entire structure.
I stumbled backward, grabbing the armchair for support. The thud had come from above—from the roof—and the ceiling was making sounds that ceilings should absolutely not make.
“What the hell—”
