Chapter 8 #2
Flash.
The third—we’d both given up trying to look normal and were just grinning at the camera like idiots.
“One more,” Samuel said, and I heard the smile in his voice.
Flash.
The fourth photo caught something softer. Both of us still smiling, but quieter now. More real.
The machine whirred and spat out two strips of photos. I grabbed them both before they could fully emerge and shoved them in my coat pocket.
“Are they still out there?” Samuel asked.
I checked again. The women had moved closer to the booth but were now debating amongst themselves, apparently convinced we’d somehow escaped.
“I think if we go now and you smile really nicely, we can get out of this with minimal photo obligations.”
“Minimal?”
“You’re Dr. Brock Blaze. There’s no getting out of this with zero photos. But we can negotiate down to ten minutes instead of twenty.”
He sighed. “You’re good at this.”
“Publishing prepared me for hostage negotiation.”
“Ready?”
“No. But let’s do it, anyway.”
“Ready?” I asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
We emerged from the booth to find all five women staring at us with expressions that ranged from knowing smiles to outright glee.
“The booth’s broken,” I announced, projecting confidence I absolutely did not feel. “But Mr. Bennett would be happy to take individual photos with each of you using your phones. Right, Samuel?”
Samuel, to his credit, shifted seamlessly into professional mode. “Absolutely. Ladies, who’s first?”
The next few minutes were a masterclass in celebrity photo management.
Samuel posed with each woman, signed napkins and receipts when they produced them, answered questions about upcoming plot lines with practiced vagueness, and charmed them so thoroughly that by the end they were inviting him to their church’s Christmas potluck.
“You’re very good at that,” I said as we finally escaped back to the Range Rover.
“Seven years of practice.” He slumped into the passenger seat with obvious relief. “God, I’m exhausted.”
“They seemed nice.”
“They were nice. That’s what makes it hard.
” He pulled off his baseball cap and ran a hand through his hair.
“If they were mean or aggressive, it would be easier to just say no. But they’re sweet, and they genuinely love the show, and they just want a photo to show their grandchildren. How do you say no to that?”
“You don’t. You hide in photo booths and develop elaborate escape plans.”
He laughed, and some of the tension left his shoulders. “Can I see them?”
I pulled out the strips, and we studied them in silence.
The first photo: both of us looking startled, too close together, his hand on my arm.
The second: caught mid-laugh, awkward angles.
The third: trying to look normal and failing.
The fourth: something softer. Something that looked almost like intimacy, even though it wasn’t. Even though it couldn’t be.
“These are terrible,” Samuel said finally.
“Agreed.”
“We look like we were being held hostage.”
“Voluntarily held hostage.”
He took one of them from me and carefully tucked it into his wallet. “I’m keeping this one.”
I should have said something. Should have asked why. Should have acknowledged that keeping photo booth strips was something people did when they wanted to remember a moment, when a moment meant something.
Instead, I slipped the rest into my coat pocket and started the engine.
We drove back toward the mountains in comfortable silence, the kind that only happens between people who’ve just shared something they can’t quite name. The winter sun was sinking toward the horizon, painting everything in shades of gold and amber.
Samuel had his head tilted back against the seat, eyes closed, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him since the grocery store incident. His hands were folded in his lap, and I could see the edge of the photo strip peeking out from his wallet.
I shouldn’t be feeling this way.
It had only been a couple of weeks since I’d walked into that supply closet and watched my entire life implode in the space of a heartbeat. That wasn’t enough time. You couldn’t process three years of betrayal in a few days and emerge ready to trust someone new.
You definitely couldn’t develop feelings for your neighbor—your temporary, celebrity neighbor who would be gone in a few weeks—just because he made you laugh and looked at you like you were interesting and let you rescue him from overzealous fans.
That wasn’t how healing worked. That wasn’t how anything worked.
But God, I wanted it to work.
I wanted to believe that someone could see me—really see me, the way Samuel seemed to. And I wanted to believe that buying cat food together at a Whole Foods could mean something.
But wanting and believing were two very different things.
“What are you thinking about?” Samuel asked, eyes still closed.
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Liar.” But he didn’t push. Just settled deeper into the seat, looking more relaxed than I’d seen him since we met.
I focused on the road. On the mountains rising up around us. On anything except the photo strips in my pocket.
This was dangerous. This whole thing—the easy conversation, the way he made me laugh, the feeling that maybe I could trust someone again—was absolutely, catastrophically dangerous.
I’d known Ollie for three months before we kissed.
A year before I let myself believe it might be serious.
Three years before I trusted him completely.
So what was I doing, feeling this pull toward someone I barely knew?
Someone who would be gone in a few weeks, back to his real life in Los Angeles, back to a world I couldn’t even imagine?
This wasn’t healing. This was a rebound waiting to happen. Two broken people reaching for each other because they were conveniently located and equally damaged.
That’s what the rational part of my brain insisted, anyway.
The irrational part—the part that had pocketed those photos, the part that had felt something shift in that cramped photo booth—that part wasn’t listening.
“Thanks for today,” Samuel said quietly, breaking into my spiral. “For the ride, and for not making me feel like a freak for panicking at the fans.”
“You’re not a freak.”
“I made a mustache out of my hair.”
“Okay, you’re a little bit of a freak.”