“I know you’ll be okay too,” Bee said. She snuggled against me, using my shoulder as a pillow. “Besides, I’ll be around to help any way I can.”
“Good.”
“You’d make a killing on ClosedDoors, by the way,” she said.
“Yeah, but I’d end up spending it all on this other ClosedDoors creator. I hear she’s offering private sessions, and I have no self-control when it comes to her.”
“You should unsubscribe from that kind of temptation.”
“But I’m her number one fan.”
Bee yawned a big yawn and nuzzled her face into my chest. “That’s so funny because I think she used to be yours.”
“Used to be!”
“She might be won back over if you sang her to sleep. Maybe a nice Christmas song? From theMerry INKmasalbum?”
“You drive a hard bargain.” I pouted but relented and kissed her forehead.
As Bee slowly drowsed against my chest, her hair everywhere and her legs tangled with mine, I sang “All BeClaus of You” as softly as I could, crooning the cheesy lyrics until she fell asleep. And when she woke up, I’d be right here with her, ready to face all our unknowns together.
Ready to make her every Christmas wish—and beyond—come true.
Epilogue
Teddy Ray Fletcher
Seven months later
“The difference is the sauce,” Nolan Shaw was explaining to a stoned-looking Tall Ron. “It adds complexity to the flavor, see? Now if you try Bee’s brisket, you’ll see it’s nothing but dry cow slices—”
“I brought fruit salad,” Teddy interrupted awkwardly, cradling a big bowl between his hands. When Bee had invited him to her and Nolan’s housewarming/Fourth of July party—which also was some sort of Nolan v. Bee barbeque deathmatch—he’d almost said no. Partly because he was scared of seeing Steph D’Arezzo in person again and acting like a buffoon, but mostlybecause Bee said he had to bring food and Teddy didn’t know how to cook.
“I made it,” added Angel.
“No cantaloupe!” Nolan exclaimed after examining the salad. “Welcome, welcome. You can put it on the table over there.”
Teddy noticed his son hesitate a moment before he stepped out onto the patio of Bee and Nolan’s new place, like he was checking to make sure the coast was clear. Weird.
Teddy turned back to Nolan after Angel ventured out to the table. “Congratulations, by the way. On theBoy Band Bootcampthing.” Just last week,Deadlinehad announced that Nolan was one of the judges for theBoy Band Bootcampreboot, along with a cranky record producer and deeply eccentric pop starlet from the nineties. It was the kind of gig that meant a steady paycheck—and if Nolan played his cards right and the show struck the right chord, a steady paycheck for several years. Enough years that he and Bee could probably upgrade from this cutesy Los Feliz villa to someplace nicer. Like Bel Air.
Now there was a classy neighborhood.
“Really, I owe you all the thanks,” Nolan said, leaving Tall Ron to his plate of meat and guiding Teddy out to the patio, where a bright blue pool shined like a cartoon diamond and a crowd of people milled around it, eating and drinking and listening to a mix of old INK albums and Christmas music. “If it hadn’t been forDuke the Hallsand the giant shitstorm that followed, none of this would have happened.”
Teddy Ray Fletcher had been through a lot of shitstorms in his life. His divorce, the time he accidentally joined a cult, avery literal storm of shit on a porn set once that had resulted in the early retirement of one performer (and the destruction of an innocent rug from Wayfair dot com). But never beforeDuke the Hallshad he been through a shitstorm that had ahappyending.
Except that was exactly what had happened.
After Teddy and Bee were exposed and after the predicted outcry, something strange started. People started...defendingthem. Or defending Bee at least, claiming that the outcry had more to do with slut-shaming and fat-shaming than it did with any real concern that the Hope Channel was going to serve up Carolina Reaper–level fare to viewers expecting mild green chilies.
And then something even stranger happened: people started acting excited for the movie. Excited! For their cheaply made movie! There were articles about it, social media hype about it, even something called cosplays about it—which Angel and Astrid had assured Teddy was a very good sign. People couldn’t wait to see the Hope Channel film that had made the actors fall in love with each other, and that the actors were a porn star and a pop star only added fuel to the fire. Subscriptions to Hopeflix had skyrocketed, and the Hope Channel had seen an unprecedented influx of sponsors clamoring for ad space ahead of the television premiere a month after its streaming debut.
Basically, Bianca von Honey was good for business, and while the Hope Channel wasn’t about to start selling branded enemas or anything, they loved money as much as the next media conglomerate. And they were smart enough to realizethat they’d accidentally fallen into a gold mine. They’d begun heavily promoting the movie, had paraded Bee and Nolan everywhere, and already commissioned and announced a sequel—Duke the Halls 2: A Ducal Wedding.
Nolan had nabbed theBoy Band Bootcampreboot, and Bee had been cast as the lead in a series calledNun of Your Business, a show about a former nun who becomes the personal assistant to her drag queen neighbor. Even though she’d pulled back from doing porn with other people and only sporadically posted photos on ClosedDoors these days, Bee’s experience in sex work also made her a very in-demand guest on talk shows, podcasts, and prime-time news slots, and she’d even landed a regular column with some big, smarty-pants website, the kind Teddy’s kids were always sending him links from.
And to cap it all off, the Hope Channel was now developing a new content arm tailored for the viewers clamoring forDuke the Halls. The people Teddy hadn’t thought existed when he’d started this project—people who liked cheerful holiday shitandunabashed raunch—were now both clearly visible and clearly ready to spend their money. And the Hope Channel was ready to take it, even if doing so meant adding some spice to their brand.
