It was what I got for eavesdropping, I supposed, but it hadn’t been on purpose! I’d woken up to find him gone, and then I’d heard his deep rumble outside the door, and I’d been so groggy, so very groggy, and my narcoleptic brain was only capable of two thoughts, which were:more sleepandmore Kallum. So I’d stumbled over to the door, meaning to open it and demand he continue snuggling me—and that’s when I’d heard Teddy mention my name.
I just did the best I could with what I had, sir.
We were all embarrassed for her.
The world had spun; the floor had dropped. I could barely breathe.
And now I was back in my room somehow, my hands shaking, my pulse pounding in my ears. It was stupid,so deeply stupid, to be upset about something that had been obvious from the moment we’d all startedSanta, Baby, but dammit, I was upset. I was embarrassed. It was one thing for Teddy Ray Fletcher, an expert in on-camera sex, to declare me mediocre, but Kallum had known how much I’d had to overcome even totryacting in this movie. He knew I’d had to rewrite years of shame and fear—and he’d also known that my professional life had been about as provocative as an episode of Bob Ross’sThe Joy of Painting! It wasn’t as if I’d come to set with any experience in on-screen sex. Much less with a young, hunky Santa Claus!
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and tried to breathein and out like my therapist had taught me to do. For so long, whenever something had hurt, I’d told myself that I’d maybe deserved it, that if only I was better or sweeter or tried harder, I could make sure someone couldn’t ever be disappointed in me again. But that outlook had changed after Michael’s affair, because it didn’t matter how good I had or hadn’t been, it had happened anyway. And for the first time I could remember, I had let myself be truly angry. I had let the anger burn away the idea that I needed to be perfect in order not to be hurt, because even imperfect people didn’t deserve to be treated like trash cans.
And what Teddy and Kallum had said about me? It felt like a trash can thing.
A sudden knock shook the door, and I dropped my hands, staring at the red-painted wood.Rap, rap, rapwent the knuckles on the door, and then Kallum called my name in that toe-curlingly deep voice.
I realized I was still only wearing his T-shirt and my panties, and suddenly that floor-dropping feeling was back, because just ten minutes ago I’d been cuddled in his bed, in his arms. Just last night I’d been panting his name and purring on his chest. Thinking about how I’d never been safer or looser or happier than when we were together.
Thinking that maybe I’d been overzealous in my decision never to fall in love again.
“I really don’t want to say goodbye through a hotel door,” Kallum called, and I sealed my lips together, barely breathing. If I spoke, I knew my voice would come out all shaky and weird, and I knew if he heard it, he wouldn’t leave me alone until he knew why.
And my battered pride simply could not bear him knowing that he had the power to hurt me with such a casual, careless comment. He could never know that he’d conjured up my ugliest fears—that I was laughable, pitiable, embarrassing—and confirmed them to be true.
I took another step back and pressed my mouth shut, tamping down the urge to speak, to open the door, to make him explain himself. Because I wasn’t about to compound the sin of being embarrassing by also being naive. I knew exactly what this had been: a deal. A deal to help me withSanta, Baby’ssex scenes, which meant that onceSanta, Babywas done, we would be done too. So maybe Kallum didn’t owe me some sort of gallant verbal defense... but then neither did I owe him a goodbye.
We’d each gotten what we wanted out of the last three weeks, and now it was over, and clearly he would be grateful that it was done, anyway. He’d walk away from my hotel room door feeling relieved I hadn’t made a scene, that I hadn’t clung to him, that I would no longer expect him to shoulder the burden of the ridiculous Winnie Baker.
And then I would finish the last of my scenes here today and go home and forget about him forever. I would bury the version of myself that had started to imagine more with him, a future with him, because from now on, it was just Winnie Baker on her own, with no ties or responsibilities to anyone else.
And when I heard Kallum’s reluctant footsteps echo down the hallway, I let out a long, determined breath, and started to get ready for my last day on set. My eyes were dry the entire time.
Part Two
Chapter Eighteen
Winnie
Six weeks later
“Rise and shine, and give God the glory, glory!” called a loud, horrible voice. A shaft of sunlight hit my face, and I squirmed away from it like an ant under a magnifying glass, clawing at my comforter to pull it back over my head.
“The Lord said to Noah,” sang the voice, “there’s gonna be a floody, floody!”
I squeaked in protest as the comforter was ripped away and my dark little cocoon became a blear of sunshine and blond hair.
“GET THOSE CHILDREN OUT OF THE MUDDY,MUDDY!” Addison sang-yelled as she jumped on my bed. “CHILDREN OF THE LORD!”
“Go away,” I moaned, trying to roll over. I was stopped by Addison flinging herself on top of me, like I was the door fromTitanicand she was Kate Winslet.
“How do you have so much energy?” I mumbled. Sleep was like liquid concrete around my limbs and in my chest. “It’s basically six in the morning.”
“Correction, it’s almost noon, I’m already on my third double shot of espresso, and also I just got done with my weekly B-vitamin infusion, you non-bio-hacked crone. Also you need to wake up.”
“Idon’tneed to wake up,” I said and closed my eyes again. I knew I’d been sleeping more than twelve hours a day since I came back from Christmas Notch, but I didn’tcare. I was unemployed and unemployable—now that everyone knew how bad I was at filming fake sex—and all I had left in this world was naps. And sleeping in. And going to bed early.
And more naps.
“Don’t you take medicine for your narcolepsy or whatever?” Addison asked. Her face was fully pressed to the side of mine now, and it was so nice to be snuggled by another person that I didn’t even mind that it came with a side of Trying to Wake Me Up.
