I slid the phone into the pocket of my coat and let out a wild-sounding groan. I hated this feeling. All the lies and not quite truths and secret identities felt like they were pressing against my chest, holding me under.
“Let it all out,” a voice said from behind me.
I spun around to see Pearl lying with her eyes shut in a silver sleeping bag that closely resembled a space suit and was positioned in the middle of the snow-covered grass outside the front of the inn. “Pearl, I didn’t see you there! Are you okay? What are you doing out there? It’s freezing.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, like she was lying in her own casket. “It’s a full moon,” she said. “I left the set a little early to tweak the last page of the script and recharge in the moonlight.”
As I stepped closer, I noticed the crystals encircling her. “That sounds kind of nice,” I admitted. “But aren’t you freezing?”
“Mother Moon warms me,” she said solemnly.
“Right, well, I hope I didn’t bother you with my phone call.” Like, really, really hope.
She shook her head. “I was attempting an astral projection, so my senses were occupied.”
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Are you sure you’re okay out here?”
“Are you sure you’re okay out here?” she mimicked.
Ouch. That actually stung a little bit. I looked at her for a long moment before deciding to believe that she didn’t hear my conversation with Jack. Wherever she was mentally, it wasn’t here. “Okay, well, good night, Pearl.”
“Be well!” she called as I walked back toward the inn.
As I stepped into the lobby, I found Gretchen sitting by the fireplace with a notebook.
I hiked a thumb over my shoulder. “Um, Pearl is...”
“Lying in the freezing snow. Yes, I know.” She checked her watch. “I’ll give her five more minutes to cook or whatever.”
I laughed. “You two make a good pair.”
Gretchen’s gaze drifted out the window to Pearl. “She’s a poet, you know,” she said, her voice softer than I’d heard it yet. “That’s how we met. I stumbled across a chapbook of hers in a local bookstore, and I was totally captivated by how ethereal—and weird—her words were. They were like being inside someone else’s dream.” A smile, as soft as her voice. “I had to meet her, and the rest is history, I suppose. She pulls my head into the clouds and I pull her feet to the ground. It works.”
“It must be incredible to translate her words into film, then.”
She lifted a shoulder, still looking at her girlfriend out in the snow. “I unapologetically love Christmas movies, but this is all a little more practical for Pearl. No health insurance in poetry, see. But screenwriting is a different story.”
“I know that pain well,” I said. It wasn’t like affordable PPOs for porn stars were growing on trees or anything.
Gretchen finally turned back to me. “Was everything okay out there a moment ago? Looked like a pretty intense phone call.”
My hand flew instinctively to the pocket holding my cell phone. “Oh. It was nothing. Just—just a friend in crisis.”
“The world is never quiet, is it? Somehow even in a place like Christmas Notch, the chaos seems to find us.”
I nodded my head, a tightness settling in my chest.
“Good night, Bee. You were rock solid today.”
She was so good. So kind. It wasn’t fair to her that something as simple as my identity could bring this whole thing to a screeching halt.
“Good night,” I said as I stepped into the stairwell, finally letting my guard down.
My heart pounded in my chest as I began to fully understand what a liability I was to the whole production. Not just to Teddy, but to Pearl and to Gretchen, who’d worked so hard to be taken seriously after years of being written off as nothing more than a child star.
And Nolan. I couldn’t understand why he would ever take a job like this—a silly Christmas movie for Hopeflix. But he was here for a reason, and my presence alone could ruin all of this. For him. For everyone.
Chapter Nine
