alone during a hurricane. That house the studio set him up in must have five or six bedrooms,” she says, eyes bugging. “You should stay there this weekend.”
I have to stop myself from staggering backward. How did we get here?
“Mom—” I almost never call her Mom, especially not on-set, but sometimes it just slips out. Her scowl is immediate. “Moira,” I correct, “That’s—not—I-I-m not going to be alone during the storm, and even if I were—”
She arches a superior brow and eyes me like the cat who ate a fuckton of canaries. “Oh, are you sure about that? By the sound of it, your good friends are about to head out of town.”
“What?” I look back to the spot where we left Ramon, but he’s not there anymore. I scan the space for either him or Sally, but neither is in sight. Nerves bunch my stomach, but I willfully talk myself down.
I don’t know what Moira is talking about, but Ramon and Sally would never just up and abandon me without a word. They know what that would do to me. Neither one of them would walk out on me like that.
“I’ve given you enough time to get this done,” Moira says, drawing every atom of my attention back to her. “I see I’ll need to get involved—as usual.”
“What?! Moira—No. No.” I almost never come out and tell her no, straight up, but this is ridiculous. “Whatever you’re planning? It can’t hap—”
“Relax,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “I know to talk to people so they give me exactly what I want and think it was their idea.”
No. Just no. I can attest firsthand that when my mother gets me to give her what she wants, I never think it’s my idea. I only do it when resistance seems futile.
Right now, for my career, my integrity, my sanity, resistance seems vital. “Moira, please, don’t do this,” I beg. “This is embarrassing and wrong. This isn’t who I am—”
“Iris Miranda Adams!” she yells.
I freeze, horrified.
Oh.
God.
The soundstage falls absurdly still. I can feel—actually feel—people listening. I want to collapse in on myself like an aluminum can in a vacuum chamber. My skin blisters with humiliation.
Moira’s eyes, a menacing green, flare like a predator’s. But she hears the silence too, takes in our sudden audience, and lifts her chin with tight-lipped pride. When she speaks, her volume is controlled, thank God.
“Don’t you dare say I’ve embarrassed you, girl. I am the reason you are standing here. I’m the reason you have this role. This paycheck. This life.” She jabs a finger toward the ground as if to indicate that everything I know of earth itself is because of her.
Nausea assails me and the walls threaten to close in because she’s right. I wouldn’t be here without her. None of this would have come to pass without Moira at the helm of my life. She has driven me here.
Like a jockey drives a racehorse.
Her eyes narrow to slits. “Do you think after all this—after everything I’ve done to get you where you are—do you think I don’t know what’s good for you now?”
I say nothing, banking on history. Moira’s rhetorical questions should go unanswered. But I bet wrong.
“Answer me.” Her hiss may as well be a scream.
Just get her to stop. Tell her she knows what’s best, my survival instinct begs.
This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong, my conscience insists.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. It’s just a whisper, and it’s weak, but it took the whole of my meager supply of courage not to give in.
“What?!” She scowls at me with disgust in her eyes.
“Two minutes, everybody!” Jonathan’s assistant calls, signaling the end of our break.
I’m shaking, wishing those two minutes were up. Two minutes is an eternity when you’re burning alive.
“What. Did. You. Say?” Moira grinds out.
I take a quaking breath. Saying it a second time doesn’t seem possible. “I don’t—”
“You don’t know,” Moira growls, twisting my words. “You don’t know what’s best. Good thing you have me.” She squares her shoulders, making her five-foot-five stature seem enormous to me. “I’ll see to everything. Like I always do.”
She turns on her heels, leaving me eviscerated. There’s no time to fall apart. No time to cry on someone’s shoulder.
But an image of Beau Landry’s broad shoulders flashes through my mind. Thinking of him makes my eyes sting, but I don’t have time to go back to make-up. I chase thoughts of him and the feelings they bring back into the shadows.