Page 23 of Famous for a Living

“Oh good. White,” Zaiah mutters, trailing me. “One ought to always get a car that is incredibly easy to get lost in the snowdrifts. Very . . . matchy.”

“Careful. Aside from the kindergarten-level language, you’re beginning to talk like a content creator.” My smile broadens as I stare resolutely at the man taking my money.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the shadow of a smile slip over Zaiah’s face.

I pause.

Turn.

There’s still fire in my lungs. Frustration at the judgment he dare pass over my life, shattered and crap as it stands right now, left to exhale and burn.

“Not that it matters, but I didn’t plan this car,” I snap. “My VA picked it out. It’s her error, not mine.”

“Thank you,” the valet says, sidestepping as he eyes the two of us.

Zaiah looks startled by my response. Like he had just made a little joke and I had blown it out of proportion.

Great. Now I look tetchy and high maintenance. Like the villain.

Just perfect.

Snowflakes hit my cheeks and neck, and the wind slaps with a startling chill.

“Right. That’s totally understandable,” Zaiah says, clearly trying to mollify me, but it just makes things worse. “So I’ll just . . .”—he pauses awkwardly, looking pointedly at the suitcases in his hands—“take these to my truck. They should fit more . . .”—he pauses again, seeming to be trying to tiptoe around with his words in such a way I won’t blow—“comfortably.”

With jaw clenched (or at least I think it’s clenched—everything’s going numb), I glance to the back of the convertible. I’d insist on taking the suitcases myself, but the car doesn’t even look big enough to hold my purse.

“That would be terrific,” I say. I sniff; my rapidly freezing nose threatening to drip. “Thank you.”

As Zaiah drops my suitcases in the back of his truck, I turn the heat up as high as I can and try not to wince with each thud.

I feel my anxiety rising as I watch the parking lot dumping out the last remaining cars, and the freshly empty parking spaces filling with falling snow faster than seems possible. Even the car attendant who gave me my keys has given up videoing me from afar and is bundling up in her coat, dashing toward her car.

As Zaiah gets inside his truck, a man in uniform turns the lock on the airport doors.

The whole place has, quite literally, shut down.

Brake lights switch off and Zaiah’s truck rumbles forward.

With wipers flying back and forth across the small windshield, I push lightly on the gas pedal and the tires begin to turn. My chest eases ever so slightly to feel and hear the crunch of chains gripping the snow-packed road.

“This is fine,” I tell myself, exhaling a plume of frosty air that tickles my eyelashes. “This is just fine.”

I follow Zaiah’s blinking turn light out of the airport parking lot.

Ten minutes later, we hit Main Street.

The town is small.

A dozen brick buildings perch on either side of the street. Lampposts dot the sidewalks every few feet, holding snow-splotched American flags.

An overload of antique stores featuring gaudy brass lamps and old pictures in wooden frames. Two run-down upholstery shops either out of business or surviving solely by the scarcity of anything else in town. One yarn shop. Three buildings with windows covered up by boards.

But there is one little shop at the very end, with floor-to-ceiling windows rounding both sides of the street. Parisian lights are strung over empty bistro tables laden with snow. The gilded words The Honeypot sway slightly from a hanging sign beneath a striped black-and-white awning.

I make a mental note to visit what may well be the only thing in this town remotely connected to the twenty-first century.

This isn’t so bad.