Chapter 0045
There was only one thing to do: consult the bestie.
I walked back to my night stand and grabbed my phone. “You up?” I sent Maria.
“Yeah, what’s up?” She sent back surprisingly quickly.
I started to type out the whole situation, then erased all of it. This was too much for a text conversation. Can I call?” I finally replied.
“Oh boy. Yeah, of course,” was her response.
I punched the call button. She answered almost as soon as it rang. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s nothing bad. I just…couldn’t sleep. My mind has been kind of racing.”
..” I said.
“With what?”
I hesitated. “I need you to swear on everything that’s holy that you will take these secrets I’m about to divulge to your grave. You can’t tell anyone, especially at work
“Ooh, that juicy, huh? But seriously. Who am I going to tell?” she said in response to that request. “You’re the only work gossip for me, baby.”
“Aw, babe!” I laughed. “But…I dunno, just in case you get a wild hair and feel like gossiping with, say Elena in the pantry,” I said.
She snorted. “Hard pass,” she said.
So I explained everything: Logan’s being married, the dates I had planned and the gifts I had helped pick out, the time we had dropped Logan off at the studio, and even the night I bailed him out of prison.
“Oh my god,” she said once I had finished. “So what’s keeping you up? Trying to figure out who his wife is?”
“Well…sort of. I just had this wild thought tonight that it might be…” I felt even more ridiculous, now that I was saying it out loud. “Natalie.”
There was a pause, then she said in an incredulous voice: “Natalie?”
“Yeah. There’s been just a few coincidences.” I said, then told her everything I had learned that night.
“Okay, I can see why you think that. But come on, if Natalie was married to the Logan Hatfield, she wouldn’t keep it a secret. She would have told the world the minute she consummated that marriage,” Maria said.
I hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, you’re right. Natalie was rubbing Chance in my face, and he only has maybe a quarter of the looks that Logan has.”
Maria snorted. “You’re being generous there.”
Maria and I chatted for a little while more about our weekend plans, then we got off the phone. She had made a lot of sense. Natalie was not known for keeping her mouth shut. She had gotten in trouble more than once for breaking NDAS and letting spoilers slip about the movies she’s been in. A marriage especially to someone like Logan – would be impossible for her to keep secret.
–
1/2
Chapter 0045
+25 BONUS
Still…I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there was something fishy going on here. I decided I would walt up for Natalie after all.
I gathered my laptop and phone and went downstairs. I would just ask Nat a few questions, I decided. Just enough to put my mind at ease and put those irrational thoughts to rest once and for all.
1
get myself a
I set my laptop on the couch as soon as I got to the living room. I walked into the kitchen to g glass
of water, and that’s when I heard it: a woman’s scream coming from right outside the door.
I dropped the glass. It shattered into a million pieces as soon as it hit the floor. 1
“Natalie!”
