Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Two Months Later
“Shit fire and save matches.” Scarlett climbed out of her rental car. Her flip-flops sank into the gravel driveway and her sunglasses slid down her nose as she took in Jaime’s place.
She’d laughed her butt off when Violet had called to ask if she’d actually agreed to spend eight weeks in Musgrove writing with Jaime. In making her play to get what she wanted, Scarlett hadn’t expected him to return the favor.
Well, Jaime had always given as good as he got. She’d tried to decline his offer to stay at his house, but after Violet’s assistant had sent Scarlett every single Airbnb listing and hotel room in a twenty-mile radius of his place, Scarlett had relented. There really wasn’t anything else that would’ve worked.
Except she hadn’t known she was saying yes to ... this. To two stories that were more modernist than log cabin, with lots of mirrored glass. Off the back, there was what appeared to be a massive porch, and then the hillside tripped and fell into the valley, where pines and rocks poured out as far as the eye could see.
“It’s nothing fancy,” he’d said of a house that could’ve been the set of an A24 movie.
Nothing fancy —ha. Jaime had never had a sense of proportion. When you grew up as one of the richest kids in town, it came naturally, she supposed.
Scarlett wiped her hands on her jeans. She felt truly nasty and not at all herself. During the drive from Richmond, she’d unfortunately discovered that the rental car’s AC couldn’t handle the unseasonably warm Virginia December day. She might as well have been an ant cooked under a magnifying glass.
A glance in the side mirror revealed that she was as flushed as she felt. She ought to have stopped at a Motel 6 for an hour-long shower, some fresh clothes, and a thick coat of makeup, because she couldn’t face Jaime without lipstick. Could not.
So of course the front door to the glam cabin opened right then, and Jaime strolled out, looking better than it was fair for him to. His white Oxford appeared to have just been pressed—the preppy jackass.
“You made it,” he called.
Unfortunately. “Hard to get lost in your own hometown.”
Scarlett hadn’t seen Jaime since that day in her lobby, and her eyes were eating up the sight of him. Down, girl. You’ll get plenty of chances to stare.
She was scheduled to be here for eight weeks. Just shy of sixty days. Scarlett glanced back at his house. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t massive enough.
“Yeah, Musgrove hasn’t changed much.”
A total lie. Musgrove may have looked the same, probably because it had already been run down even when she’d lived here—Main Street was still dotted with closed storefronts—but the old Blockbuster had become a rehab halfway house, and there was a methadone clinic next to the Piggly Wiggly. That was new.
“The water tower didn’t used to be blue.”
Jaime’s brows shot up, probably because they’d spent too many afternoons up behind the water tower, with her hand wrapped around his—
“Bags. Do you need help with your bags?” he coughed out, probably because he was flooded with the same memories she was.
“Nope,” she said sweetly. “I’m a big girl.”
While Scarlett would’ve preferred a full set of armor, or at least a fresh application of deodorant, messing with Jaime did make her feel more in charge. Pretending to be a brat in order to show everyone that she was the boss was kind of Scarlett’s thing. And sometimes, the person who most needed to be reminded that she wasn’t powerless was Scarlett herself.
That was what she had to remember: she was in the driver’s seat here. Jaime needed her , or at least he needed her book.
She popped the trunk open, hefted her backpack over her shoulder, and then claimed two large suitcases.
“What about ...?” He gestured to the third.
“I’ll come back for it.” She closed the trunk with a snap as he started to reach for her last piece of luggage.
Jaime might still be every inch the southern gentleman, but Scarlett wouldn’t—she couldn’t—indulge that crap. They had a job to do.
“Lead the way.”
He didn’t budge. “My mom would kill me if she knew I let you carry your own bags.”
No, his mother would kill Scarlett if she knew exactly why Scarlett had left town.
“I’ve carried my own bags literally around the darn world. Show me to my room.”
A long pause. Then, “Fine.”
“This is some place,” she said as she trailed him toward the house. “Did you buy it from the Cullen family?” It certainly resembled the home of a certain group of sparkly vampires.
“That explains the baseball diamond.”
She wouldn’t be surprised if this place boasted one, actually.
With a pained sigh, he reached for the front door handle. “Moderate your expectations.”
“I don’t do moderate.”
But inside, she could see why he’d said it. This gorgeous building was mostly empty. The front room would obviously be stunning at some point. But for the moment, there was no furniture. No rugs. No art. And definitely no broody teens with fangs.
“It isn’t all like this,” Jaime promised. “I’ve just been busy, and well, I may have run out of money once they finished the structure. Damn thing went over budget.”
Scarlett opened her mouth to tell him that she’d practiced chess on a pile of boxes in her living room the entire time she’d been in her apartment—but then she remembered that she wanted to keep things impersonal. “It has four walls and a roof that doesn’t leak, right? What are you apologizing for?” she demanded. “Besides, the view makes up for it.”
Even his front yard was gosh darn picturesque. The driveway snaked around, hiding the house from the main road. With the curtain of trees, they might as well have been deep in the forest and miles from civilization. But then again, Musgrove had always felt like its own world.
“I guess it does. The bedrooms are this way.” He led her down a hallway and pushed a door open. “This one is yours.”
At least he’d gotten some furniture for this room: a bed with what appeared to be a brand-new headboard in some kind of glowing burled wood that matched the house perfectly, and it was piled high with crisp white linens. Scarlett was going to have to scrub the sweat and dirt from her face before she dove in there.
“The bathroom next door is all yours. I have a suite at the end of the hall.”
The perks of being the owner.
“This is really nice,” Scarlett said, because it was. And because Jaime was clearly so mortified by the emptiness of the house, and his embarrassment would probably undermine their work. “Thank you for letting me stay here. I need to get cleaned up, but when did you want to get started?”
His eyes crinkled, even if he didn’t quite smile. “Oh, I figured we could wait until tomorrow. Say nine a.m.?” He’d mentioned in an email about logistics that he liked to keep pretty normal hours and was more of a morning person.
Scarlett’s inner night owl protested in advance. “Um, okay. Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” She hadn’t seen one since Charlottesville.
“Unless you want to drive to Kellysville, you’ll have to hit the Royal Farms. And you don’t want to do that.”
“So where do you get caffeine?”
She must have sounded as desperate as she felt, because Jaime did offer her a knee-meltingly gentle grin then. “I realize you probably won’t believe me after seeing the living room, but my kitchen is reasonably well stocked. I have a coffeepot. Also, I intend to feed you. We can expense all of this to Videon. There’s a budget—a pretty nice one—for the show.”
“Hmm, we’ll see about that.” The folks at Videon hadn’t met Scarlett yet, and they didn’t know that she didn’t do cheap. Having not had enough for the first eighteen years of her life, Scarlett vowed to always spend whatever she had for the rest of it.
If they were making her life story, they weren’t going to make a cheap version of it, that was for sure.
“I’ll get out of your hair, but holler if you need anything.”
After a long shower—Jaime hadn’t skimped on the plumbing—Scarlett changed into fresh clothes and sank into the chair by the window. She pulled up the group chat she shared with Kit Callahan and Martina Vega.
Kit had been protesting PAWN long before Scarlett. PAWN had ruled that Kit and other nonbinary and trans players were free to compete in the open division, but they were banned from the women’s league—which was absolute bullpucky, particularly because the open division was in no meaningful way open .
Besides Scarlett, Judit Polgár was the only woman who’d gotten an invitation to compete in the open division of the Candidates Tournament—the tournament to determine who got to challenge the reigning world champion—and that had been twenty-five years ago. Scarlett didn’t know how anyone could look at that fact and not know that the system was utterly busted.
In the wake of Scarlett’s okay performance in the open division at Candidates (she’d won three matches, drawn five, and lost six), she had refused to defend the women’s world championship she’d won eight years ago. That period of her career was over. When Scarlett had dropped out, Martina and several other high-profile players had also refused to compete in the women’s league. Things had to change. Now.
It had felt strange, going from fighting on her own—her default position—to fighting with others. But it had also been ... nice.
At least until PAWN had retaliated, the squirrely bastards.
PAWN introduced some screwy new measures to combat ranking inflation and deflation—and what do you know, with those controls, Scarlett’s Elo rating fell below 2740. As a result, she failed to get a second invite to Candidates.
Oh, but she’d been pissed. Pissed enough to write Queen’s Kiss and go scorched earth on them, and Martina and Kit had been especially supportive. They’d asked for updates on the adaptation, so she sent them a quick text: Arrived!
How is it? Martina immediately responded.
Pretty luxe for a cabin in the woods. Even if it was sparsely furnished. I’ll survive.
Somewhere in the house, there was a thump. Jaime was walking around—which was fair. It was his place. In an email, he’d insisted that she wouldn’t even know he was there ... but it turned out she totally knew.
Now that they’d reconnected, Scarlett was fairly certain she’d feel him vibrating on the dark side of the moon.
I can’t believe you’re going out of town for two whole months, Kit added. You need to get ready for Stavanger.
Scarlett was trying to qualify for Candidates again, and that path ran through the open division of the Norway Chess tournament. She had to play very well in Stavanger. Like, winning-the-whole-thing well. If she couldn’t manage it, she was going to have to make some tricky decisions about whether she would be happy throwing bombs from the outside of the chess world for the rest of her life.
Endorsements, teaching, and now the show: Scarlett could eat on those things. But she knew if she didn’t manage to get into the open-division chess world championship someday, she would always wonder if she could’ve become the first woman to take it. Trying and not getting it was one thing, but if she never got into the room where the championship was decided, it would haunt her forever. And if she failed, it might send the message that PAWN was right and that women could only compete in a lesser, protected league.
I’m prepping. Scarlett was. Sort of. And we’ll go into beast mode when I get back.
Kit and Martina were Scarlett’s favorite training partners, and she was happy to pay them for their support and expertise. Where else was she going to find two other grand masters who could put up with her and who loathed PAWN as much as she did?
Changing the subject, I for one am glad that you finally found a producer you like, Martina wrote.
Jaime wasn’t only a producer, but Scarlett had to bite the correction back. Violet was thrilled.
You should be thrilled! Everyone wants to see their life on screen.
Maybe? I might be getting overexposed. Everyone probably wants a break from me.
They can’t get enough of you, and you know it. And the news will have everyone buzzing about how you’ll do in Stavanger.
Great. I’ll be walking around with a target on my chest. Scarlett had sincerely considered getting a dress made with an actual bull’s-eye on it, but that would probably violate some obscure rule about not distracting your opponent.
Once upon a time, Scarlett wouldn’t have cared. She would’ve relished getting censored and then holding a press conference to bitch about it. Now, she was wearier.
Not wanting to admit that—it was more personal than she tended to get with Kit and Martina—she just wrote, But it’ll be worth it when I run the table.
Jaime had assured her they would be done in two months, and then she’d be able to start preparing for the tournament for real. The stakes were scary high, but these were the moments Scarlett lived for. There was nothing like playing when something was actually on the line.
It was a good thing Scarlett had never tried gambling. She would’ve gotten hooked in a heartbeat.
More soon! she texted, though she didn’t know why she wrote that. Kit and Martina didn’t need updates on every second of her life. No one cared about Scarlett that much.
Without the shield of the group chat, she didn’t have any reason to stay in her room. Scarlett took a few seconds to talk herself up, and then she slipped out into the hallway. She wove through the open living room and then down a hallway, both of which were empty—of people, of furniture, of decorations of any kind. The house truly was a shell, as if it were waiting for someone to discover it and fill it up.
At last, she found Jaime. The kitchen occupied the back of the house, so it had a truly stunning view over the porch and down into the valley.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
She was suddenly aware of her wet hair. Scarlett must look like a drowned cat—but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to impress the man. “Yup. Just thirsty.”
“Glasses are in here.” He got one from a cabinet. “Ice is in the freezer.” He filled the cup up to the brim with ice cubes—which was exactly how she liked it. How she’d always liked it. “And use this tap for filtered water.”
She almost fell on the glass and gulped half of it down. “Thanks. You on well water out here?” It didn’t taste like it.
“The city. They extended the pipe.” He winced and added quickly, “Not just for me. There are more houses out this way.”
He addressed her as if she were a local. When people asked for her hometown, Scarlett said Musgrove, but the words always stung a bit, like poking at a bruise because the ache was satisfying in the sickest way.
In Musgrove, you were a local because your grandparents had grown up here. Because your ancestors figured in local legends and were planted in the cemetery by the police station. Because you remembered before they’d built the new firehouse and back when Spottswood Road used to be called the Mill Road.
But Scarlett didn’t remember. Her mom had moved to Musgrove from Kellysville to get away from a man, a common event, and they’d only stayed two years. Sure, Scarlett had graduated from Musgrove’s high school, but saying she was from here had also been easier than explaining she’d lived in twelve apartments in eight cities before she’d left home because her mom went through jobs and dudes the way other parents went through Kleenex. It was way easier than admitting that they’d been evicted twice and that she still had nightmares about being homeless sometimes.
Scarlett didn’t have a claim on Musgrove, not in the way Jaime’s family did.
Folks here might even cling to the Crofts harder because his dad’s arrest was part of the town’s legend now. For all that Dr. Croft had hurt people here—killed people here—the people of Georgina County protected their own. And Scarlett was nothing to them.
She sipped her water. “I know that we’re not starting until tomorrow, but do we need some ground rules for working?”
“Such as?”
“No talking about the past.” To start. She was also going to suggest they eat their meals separately, try to avoid each other outside their writing time.
He started to smile, but he looked out the window until he was able to school his expression into something boring. She hated boring.
“Scarlett, we’re supposed to be writing your life story. How can we do that without talking about the past?”
“I mean our past.”
Up until now, neither of them had acknowledged that they’d had a past. It was as if they’d only sat in a few classes together and nothing else.
Jaime looked back at her and worked his jaw. “I don’t know.”
He was rejecting her very reasonable suggestion?
“What good could come from it?” Scarlett sounded more desperate than she intended to, but she meant the question in the most literal way. Talking about the past wouldn’t end well.
“We might both get some clarity.”
“Clarity is overrated.” It was much better for things to stay confusing and vaguely muddy and overrated, like a Christopher Nolan movie.
“Don’t you think it might come up? I mean, you mention the water tower and we both get ideas.”
Okay, he had her there. She’d set herself up for that charge. “I’m sorry about that. I was ... stirring stuff. But I’ll stop doing that.”
“Writing stirs stuff, Scarlett. It just does. There’s no two ways about it. You wanted to help write this thing. You insisted on it. In fact, you told a lie—”
“Which you knew was a lie. You could’ve called me out.” Scarlett hadn’t been trying to deceive him, not in the classic sense. It was a gambit, which was a different category of thing.
He must not be pissed about it, though, because he huffed out a laugh. “So it was okay because it was a tactic?”
“Jaime, I play chess. Everything is a tactic.”
“Scarlett, I make movies. I understand.”
Oh, but he didn’t. “I’m just saying—”
“And I’m disagreeing. We won’t be able to avoid the past.”
When she’d arranged things so that she could write the show, she’d thought she’d won. Now she was worried that he’d lured her into hanging her bishop. “I know that you don’t believe me, but I don’t like drama.”
“You love it.”
“I like it when I can be above it. When it’s the sea and I’m sailing over it, sure.” But with Jaime, she’d never been able to exist separate from the angst. Everything with him was too personal, too deeply felt. “I want this show to be good.”
“I do too.”
It was imperative that Scarlett convince him about this. She clenched her hands into fists until her nails burrowed into her palms. “I just want us to be able to work together ...” And not chew each other up again . “The last time got messy.”
“There was a time when I didn’t like mess either. But now, I know that there’s no avoiding it. Life is messy.”
Somewhere in the house, a door opened and a voice called, “Jaime!”
“In here, Ev!”
Of course, it must be Evelyn Jean—Jaime’s baby sister. In Scarlett’s memory, she was a precocious preschooler, all blond curls and blue eyes, and always, always wearing a tulle ballerina skirt over her clothing.
But the young woman who strolled into his kitchen with a bag of groceries balanced on her hip was definitely not that.
Gone was the blond. Evelyn had dyed her locks jet black and had them cut into a sharp bob. A sleeve of tattooed roses climbed up one of her arms, and her earlobes boasted multiple piercings of the black-and-chrome variety.
Holy snakes, Jaime’s sister was a baby goth.
“Evelyn?” Scarlett accepted the hug Evelyn offered her, feeling suddenly very old and very square.
Generally, Scarlett was the one walking into a room wearing “edgy” fashions. But then again, in the chess world, Scarlett often lowered the average age of the rooms she walked into by a good ten years.
“You look incredible,” Scarlett said, meaning it. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the tutu, though.”
“Ha, don’t remind me. Mom wishes I’d go back to those.” Evelyn shot her brother a wry look. Jaime’s mother had basically been a mascot for Talbots, and so it wasn’t hard to imagine how she must feel about her daughter’s style one-eighty. “Jaime said you were coming, and I almost didn’t believe him. It’s been too long.”
“It’s been ... a while.” And it had been very much on purpose.
“I loved your book. You are such a badass.”
An amusing thought, since the last time Scarlett had seen Evelyn, the girl couldn’t read.
Ev couldn’t remember Scarlett, not really. For starters, Scarlett had refused to be Jaime’s girlfriend. Girlfriend —ha, that was one title she wasn’t interested in. Scarlett was a team of one, thank you very much.
Gasping hookups against the back wall of the gym were fine and dandy, but Scarlett didn’t need a date for homecoming because she wouldn’t be caught dead at homecoming. This had been a point of some debate between Scarlett and Jaime, but she’d flat-out said no when he’d begged her to make things between them official.
But despite Scarlett’s best efforts to float by, as free and uninvolved as a bird in the landscape it flies over, she’d touched the entire Croft family—and she needed to remember that. Scarlett sometimes tried to pretend that what she’d done before she’d skipped town had been solely about her and Jaime. That wasn’t true. It had involved a lot of other people. A lot of other innocent people.
Scarlett had specifically not written about the Crofts in Queen’s Kiss , and she’d only mentioned Musgrove in passing. She couldn’t offer them much, but she could try not to make things worse. And getting tangled up with Scarlett’s own messy reputation tended to do that to folks.
Wanting to change the subject, Scarlett asked Evelyn, “What are you up to?”
“Finishing art school in Richmond.”
“She paints murals,” Jaime explained.
“My thesis project is about revising abandoned buildings with art, and well, there are a lot of them around here.” Which was a nice way of saying that Musgrove looked bombed out. It was a place that just kept getting sadder and sadder, but somehow more stubbornly proud about its sadness.
“That sounds incredible,” Scarlett said.
“If you have time, I’ll take you to see some of my work.”
Because Evelyn was old enough to drive now—ha. Scarlett was a crone.
Evelyn’s gaze shifted back and forth between Scarlett and her brother, assessing, and Scarlett was suddenly worried how he’d explained this scenario. They might not have officially been together, but not putting a label on things in high school had had the opposite effect than they’d intended: it had only increased interest in them.
He’s just using you, a cheerleader had once said to Scarlett in the bathroom.
No, I’m using him, she’d replied—which had shut the girl up and might also have been true.
But Jaime had still dragged Scarlett to his house for dinner as a member of his study group or, when he’d really wanted to be a pill, as his “friend.”
Friend, she’d mocked when he’d had her pinned underneath him later.
Yeah, right.
When it came to his family and not high school gossips, Jaime’s father had adored Scarlett, his mother had loathed her, and his baby sister had followed her around like a puppy. In different ways, Scarlett had betrayed them all.
It was hard to remember how Scarlett had talked herself into giving Jaime the rights to Queen’s Kiss . It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d signed up to return to the scene of the crime, where she’d come face to face with some of her victims.
Her stomach pricking with all kinds of unwanted emotions, she tried to remember that Jaime was still a spoiled golden boy. Disdain for the type had her curling her lip in two seconds. It was better than Pepto for unwanted guilt.
“I’d love to see your work,” she said to Evelyn. Then she added, tartly, “Do you always pick up Jaime’s groceries?”
Evelyn laughed. “Nah. I took some requests during my latest Costco run. I always stop there on my way home.”
Scarlett shot Jaime a look thick with disdain and drawled, “Some things never change.”
The implication wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Jaime’s fault he looked like a prince of privilege, and he’d proved himself a thousand times over after his dad’s fall from grace.
But the brown paper bag Ev had brought stirred something else in Scarlett. She didn’t have Jaime’s family and their pedigree. She didn’t have a loving sister or a stable mother. She didn’t have the support of a community or the kind of long history that bought her grace anywhere. No one brought her groceries.
Scarlett only had herself and her smart mouth, and so she had to wield both like weapons. If she didn’t, she might fall into the trap of imagining that she was defenseless.
She gave Evelyn a pat on the shoulder. “It was good to see you again. But I’m going to grab a nap.”
Then Scarlett made a tactical retreat to her bedroom, where things made sense.