Chapter One
Candi
The GPS on my phone died somewhere around the Montana border, which should have been my first sign that this entire plan was spectacularly, catastrophically stupid.
But here I was anyway, pulling my beat-up Honda Civic into Hope Peak, Montana at seven in the morning. My eyes felt scraped raw, and somewhere around Idaho I'd consumed my body weight in gas station coffee.
This is fine. Everything is fine. This is going to save your career.
The moment I rounded the curve into town, my breath caught.
Hope Peak was perfect. Almost too perfect, like someone had taken every holiday movie I'd ever watched and crammed them into one impossibly charming mountain town. The main street was lined with old-fashioned lamp posts wrapped in evergreen garland and red velvet bows. Every building—from the coffee shop to the general store to what looked like a bar and grill—was decked out in twinkling white lights. And right in the center of the town square stood the most enormous Christmas tree I'd ever seen, easily forty feet tall, covered in thousands of lights still glowing in the early morning dimness.
Snow blanketed everything. Real snow. Not the sad, slushy brown stuff that occasionally appeared in Phoenix and melted by noon.
I pulled over and stared.
For the first time since Drew had dumped me—live, on camera, during Day 2 of our "12 Days of Vlogmas" special, in front of 4.3 million people who'd turned it into a meme within hours—I felt something other than humiliation.
I felt hope.
Ironic, considering the town's name.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder. I grabbed it, the motion as automatic as breathing.
The notification was from my Instagram analytics. My follower count had dropped again overnight.
486,547 followers.
Down from 612,000 at Thanksgiving.
I set my phone face-down in the cupholder and took a shaky breath. The numbers could wait. Right now, I needed to check into the cottage I'd impulsively booked three days ago and figure out how to turn Hope Peak into my salvation.
The "Single Girl's Guide to the Holidays" rebrand was going to work. Because the alternative was moving back in with my parents and getting a real job, and I'd rather eat my own selfie stick.
The cottage was a short distance from the square, down a tree-lined street where every house looked like it belonged on a greeting card. I grabbed my suitcase first, trudging through snow that crunched satisfyingly under my boots, my breath coming out in white puffs.
The lockbox code worked on the first try, which felt like a small miracle given how the rest of my life was going.
I pushed open the door and stopped dead.
"Oh my god."
If Christmas threw up in a cabin, this is what it would look like.
There was a Christmas tree in the living room. A smaller one on the kitchen counter. Garland on every surface. Mis-matched stockings hung on a mantel crowded with fake candles and glitter-encrusted pinecones. There were decorative snowmen, Santa figurines, nutcrackers, and what appeared to be an entire nativity scene on the bookshelf. Red and green plaid throw pillows. Reindeer kitchen towels. A "Merry Christmas" doormat. A life-sized cardboard cutout of an elf in the corner that nearly gave me a heart attack.
It was hideous.
It was flawless.
It was Instagram gold.
I hauled my suitcase inside and went back for my equipment bag. Two trips later, I had everything piled in the small living room: my professional camera with three lenses, my good tripod, my ring light, laptop, spare batteries, and a tangle of charging cables.
Looking at it all spread across the floor made me feel slightly better. This was real. I was a professional. I knew what I was doing.
Even if right now I felt like I was drowning and grasping for a life raft I wasn't sure existed.
