Page 44 of Romance Is Dead

Still fuming, I stormed to my room.

My throat was cramping and my eyes burning, unmistakable signs that if I let them, tears would spill over and I’d be crying harder than Florence Pugh in the Midsommar poster.

And I wouldn’t — couldn’t — let that happen.

Teddy might not be there to witness me falling apart, but I was.

I’d have to admit that I’d been foolish enough to get my heart broken by someone I’d known all along wasn’t fit to be trusted. And I wasn’t ready to face that.

So instead, I channeled my rage into pushing the desk in front of the door.

I only planned to be in my room for a half hour max, but with a killer out there with a key to my room, I wasn’t taking any chances.

I grabbed my phone and tapped out a text, letting my dad know I’d be at his place in a few hours.

Then I yanked my suitcase out of the closet and started chucking in my belongings, made easier by the fact that everything was spilled onto the floor.

Scooping up clothes and balls of yarn, I started to laugh.

This movie was supposed to be my horror send-off, a way for me to say goodbye to my fans and get some extra money while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

Now it was canceled, I was in the crosshairs of a killer, and the whole world would know I’d been played by Hollywood’s biggest fuck boy.

He’d seemed so genuine, so genuinely good, so genuinely into me.

Had it all been a lie? The stories about his brother, his mother?

His father? Had it all been a ploy to gain my sympathies and build this fake relationship he could milk for publicity?

The worst part of it was that I had been genuine. My feelings had been real — they were real — and I’d been foolish enough to tell him.

Doing a final sweep of the room, I did a mental inventory of my things, trying to decipher if the intruder had taken anything.

So far, everything had been accounted for.

But as I zipped up my luggage, it finally clicked.

The only thing that was missing was Jacques, my stuffed raven.

This — realizing I’d lost the only relic from my career that meant anything to me — was finally enough to make me break down into tears.

I sank onto the bed, letting my body heave with it, not caring who might hear me, hoping that if I cried long enough, the poison would seep out and it wouldn’t hurt anymore.

A knock pounded at the door.

I jumped, my heart hammering. I wiped my tears and grabbed a lamp to use as a makeshift weapon before creeping to the door.

It was already unplugged and lying on the floor anyway.

Moving the desk out of the way and opening the door, I swung back the heavy brass base.

The shade flopped unceremoniously to the carpet.

But when I swung open the door, there was no one there, just a package wrapped in brown paper and waiting on the carpet.

Leaving the lamp in the hall, I took the package into my room, my insides sinking.

Sure enough, when I peeled away the paper, it was Teddy’s picture frame, still unfinished.

Instead of a photo, it displayed a note — the handwriting messy and cramped:

Quinn,

I made this for you, so it’s your choice whether to keep it or not. It was meant to hold the photo of us, but I figured that wasn’t a good idea. There’s only the one.

I’ll miss our rehearsals.

—Teddy

Staring at the frame, my throat thickened. Teddy could have thrown it in the trash, or taken it with him to keep for himself. But he didn’t. He’d wrapped it and written me a note and left it for me.

It was too much. I needed to get out of there. Stuffing the frame under my arm and grabbing my luggage, I ran out the door.

My dad was trimming a branch in a pot when I arrived at the cabin.

Not a branch that was attached to a tree.

Not even a branch that was attached to a shrub.

A branch that had been planted in a tiny pot, that my hulking father was now lovingly hunched over as he trimmed it with a pair of nail trimmers.

“Um, whatcha doing?”

He turned, looking shocked, as though he hadn’t heard anyone pull up. “Squish!” He dropped the clippers at the base of the pot and hurried over to wrap me in a hug. “I’m happy to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too.” I disentangled myself from the hug. “What’s with the twig?”

“It’s my new thing.” He beamed. “It’s a bonsai tree.”

I studied it with skepticism. Any bonsai tree I’d ever seen had looked like the miniature of a grown-up tree, complete with twisting limbs and gnarled roots peeking out from the soil. The tree in the pot looked like something yanked off a bush.

“Hmm,” was all I could muster.

“You gotta start somewhere.” My dad plucked the nail trimmers from the dirt. “Let’s go inside. I was just about to start dinner.”

Happy to drown my sorrows in whatever he had planned, I followed, immediately hit by the smell of freshly baked bread and the now-familiar scuffle of claws on carpet.

“Really, Daffy?”

The skunk refused to be deterred. She stomped at me again, scraping herself backward as she dared me to take her on.

“Peppers in the fridge?”

“Melon today.”

We filed into the kitchen, where I fished out the container of melon and gave a cube to Daffy as an offer of peace. She immediately grabbed it, her teeth chomping noisily.

“What do you have going?” I gave Daffy another piece of melon. “It smells amazing.”

“Focaccia.” He pulled open the oven a crack and peeked inside. “For sandwiches. And I’m going to try fresh-cut French fries in my new air fryer.” He gestured proudly to a boxy appliance on the counter.

I shook my head. “I can’t keep track of all your new hobbies.”

“Retirement is treating me kindly.” He eyed me carefully. “I’m sorry to hear about the movie, by the way. How are you holding up?”

“Not great.”

“Hmm.” My dad fished around in the drawer for a potato peeler as he waited for me to elaborate. When I didn’t, to his credit, he proceeded with caution. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I sighed, giving Daffy the rest of the melon as I considered it.

I didn’t even know where to start. With the half-assed, failed murder investigation I’d convinced myself I could do?

The mounting feeling that by quitting horror movies I was fucking up my life more instead of improving it?

The fact that my best friend wasn’t speaking to me?

Or the sex scandal with a man I was no longer speaking to that was now sweeping the media?

Out of all of them, the scandal somehow seemed safest.

“I’m sure you saw the article.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes trained on the russet potato he’d started peeling. “The photos were pretty innocent, though. You looked happy. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that he leaked them to the press!”

My dad frowned, the peeler sending potato scraps flying into a waiting bowl. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

“What’d he have to say for himself?”

“He said he didn’t do it.”

My dad’s hand paused mid-peel. “Then, forgive me, Squish, but how do you know he did?”

“It was on his phone, who else would have done it?”

“How the hell should I know! Couldn’t it have gone up in the fog or something?”

“Do you mean the cloud?”

“Yes, that!”

“No, he said his phone doesn’t upload photos anywhere else.” I frowned, irritated my dad was giving Teddy the benefit of the doubt instead of trusting me. “Therefore, he was the only one who had access.”

“Hmm.” The potatoes all peeled, he moved on to carefully slicing them into fries. “Couldn’t someone have taken his phone? And sent the photos themselves?”

My mouth snapped shut. I was embarrassed to admit I hadn’t thought of that. Was that really possible? No, I decided.

“People have passwords on their phones, Dad. People can’t just grab your phone and access your stuff.” I scraped a nail against the counter, picking at a speck of dried focaccia dough. “It’s pretty obvious he sold it for the money or attention, likely both.”

“If you say so.” He filled a bowl with ice water to soak the fries. “Listen, I trust your judgment.” He hesitated, drying his hands on a tea towel.

I raised an eyebrow. “But what?”

“In this business, it’s impossible to guarantee that no one will ever use you for your connections, or want something from you, or only want to get close to you because of some version of you they’ve cooked up in their head.

But. . .” He fiddled with the towel, straightening it where it hung off the oven handle.

“If you never give anyone a chance, you’ll be awfully lonely. ”

“That’s not true. I have Mara, I know I can trust her.” But even as I said it, I knew it might no longer be true.

“Sure. And how many others?”

I tipped up my chin. “Maybe I don’t need others.” I knew I was being stubborn, but there was a part of me that believed it, too.

“Ok. You know you better than me.” He walked around the counter and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I just want you to be happy.”

I nodded. I wanted me to be happy, too. Why couldn’t I figure out how to be?