Sometimes I just had to remember I was supposed to be in character, but I guess that wasn’t so bad when my character was falling harder than a Jenga tower, because I was too.
Winnie was the kind of girl I would risk it all for. But I’d never been the kind of guy that girls felt that way about.
I was the funny one. The sweet one. I was the onebeforeThe One. Especially if you considered my string of bridesmaids. And that had been fine—as much as I’d wanted to find true love every time I tumbled into bed with someone I barely knew, I also didn’t begrudge them for using me as their soul-mate lucky charm. A stepping-stone to their true love.
But I couldn’t handle the heartbreak of being a stepping-stone for Winnie. And even through the last week of romping through Christmas Notch—and fooling around in every spare moment—the fear that I was going to be her lucky charm took root in the far corner of my brain no matter how hard I pushed it away.
So as Winnie strode toward me, I forced myself to remember this was my job, and all the sex stuff Winnie and I had done over the last week was in the name of research.
Nothing more.
Oh shit.My line.
I ran over to the passenger door and held it open. “Your chariot, milady.”
Then Winnie froze.
Her shy smile dropped.
Her shoulders tensed, and the Winnie I’d come to know since our time on set slunk back into her shell.
And the sight of it made me want to tear a damn hole in the sky just for her.
“Michael,” she said.
No.Surely she didn’t mean who I think she meant.
Gretchen stood from her chair, clearing her throat. “Let’s take five.”
“Fivedays,” Luca mumbled from where he sat beside her. “This could take a hot minute.”
I turned around to see for myself, and there he was. Winnie’s slimy piece-of-shit ex-husband, his pale cheeks pink with the chilly breeze and his thousand-dollar scarf draped uselessly around his shoulders instead of wrapped around his neck.
My whole body coiled into one big muscle, and I felt like I could arm wrestle a polar bear. Really evolved of me, I know. But what the fuck was this guy doing here anyway? Not that it was any of my business, of course.
But I wanted it to be. I wanted all of Winnie’s business to be my business.
I hated Michael Bacher for lots of reasons, but in this moment it was because he was a reminder that this wasn’t real. Christmas Notch was like living in a snow globe, and it was too easy to forget that there was a whole-ass world outside of this place when all I wanted to do was wrap Winnie in my arms and live in our perfect snowdrift moment forever.
“Babe,” Michael said. “Can we talk?”
“I’m kind of busy,” I answered in a super high-pitched voice.
The whole crew laughed. A few even snorted.
Winnie looked at me, but there was no smile or secret nod telling me that we were on the same page.
I was an asshole.
She turned back to Michael, her gaze studying the ground, just like she had the first day at the Hope Channel offices when she was so tense with shame and embarrassment. “Um, sure.”
I watched with a metallic taste in my mouth as she walked toward him, only turning back to hold a finger to Gretchen, who nodded in response.
Nothing about this felt good or right.
Jack strode up beside me. “At ease, lover boy.”
Something in my chest twisted, and I couldn’t help but feel like she was dragging my heart on a string behind her, tethered to her wrist like a deflated balloon.
