Chapter One
Isla swirled the last slosh of her buttery chardonnay around the glass and pretended she was interested in a conversation about the intermediate Pilates class at CoreForm Studio. Between the muffled thump of her sister Mallory’s playlist and the way the conversation kept hopping over itself, it was hard to tell whether everyone thought Julie’s new reformer series was worth the waitlist.
Frankly, the music was a little too early-2000s pop for Isla’s taste.
“Excuse me,” Isla said, making a break for the bar Mallory and her husband, Tony, had professionally installed into their newly purchased Upper East Side penthouse. Both were lawyers at Whitmore & Carrington. They made enough money that they could’ve had the bar top plated in gold.
The condo had a ginormous entertaining space with floor-to-ceiling windows framing Central Park directly below. The reservoir looked like a sheet of black glass in the evening light. Yellow taxis threaded silently along Fifth Avenue, and the Plaza was visible in the distance. Isla had to admit that the view was delectable. But everything else felt flamboyant. The bar, which was a slab of charcoal granite veined faintly with silver, stretched the length of the room. Behind it, matte black steel floating shelves rose in neat rows, each one backlit with warm LED strips. They held five different Japanese whiskies, Blanton’s bourbon, a crystal decanter of Grey Goose, Aperol, Campari, and an unopened bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
Isla wove through huddles of people she didn’t recognize and considered asking the bartender for a Tom Collins. She didn’t make it that far. The man with the full-onChadhairstyle, whom she’d spotted earlier, stepped into her path and intercepted her. He wore a pink Lacoste collared T-shirt tucked into khaki chinos.
“Aren’t you that chick from that queerSurvivorshow?” he asked, pointing at her while holding the stem of a wineglass with unexpectedly chubby fingers. “I remember Mallory saying something about you going onSurvivor,but then it turned out not to beSurvivor.”
“It’s calledOutlast Her,” his wife said, joining him. Isla only assumed she was the wife, given the enormous diamond ring adorning her ring finger. Her dyed blonde hair gleamed, her skin was flawless, and her outfit shouted seventies housewife. She looked like the female version ofChad. “I’ve watched every season,” she said, almost gushing. “Yours is still my favorite. All that drama with that ER doctor falling in love with the bartender. And Connie, of all people, winning the entire thing. I just couldn’t believe it. Nobody expected her to win.”
Isla hadn’t believed it either. But somehow the redhead had snuck through the cracks and become the first-everUltimate Outlast Her. The finale had been mind-blowing. Isla had watched the entire thing from the edge of her sofa in her classic walk-up apartment in Astoria, Queens.
The ridiculous part was that Connie’s win only looked shocking if you hadn’t been paying attention. She had never dominated a challenge, never gave the flashiest confessional, never strutted around camp like she owned the sand beneath her feet. Connie had spent the entire season looking harmless, helpful, and a little nervous. She had come across as the woman who re-tied shelter knots, nodded sympathetically during strategy talks, and somehow walked away from everyconversation knowing more than she’d said. Nobody clocked her as dangerous until it was too late, which, in hindsight, had been the most dangerous thing about her. While everyone else burned through alliances, torched trust, and made dramatic speeches beside the fire like they were auditioning for a perfume commercial called Betrayal, Connie stayed small, quiet, and useful.
Then Marloe’s foot slipped during the final challenge, Lucia lost focus for one fatal second, and Connie struck. She wasn’t graceful, and it certainly wasn’t pretty. But with a cold precision that made Isla sit forward on her sofa, she stacked the final piece with mud on her cheek and panic in her eyes, then held it steady until Vivian called her name. Connie dropped to her knees, sobbing like she hadn’t just played all of them beautifully.
“Her speech was fantastic,” the female version ofChadwent on. “But I do still think that if it wasn’t for Marloe’s foot slipping during the last challenge, Lucia would’ve ended up winning. Anyway, we spoke about it for ages at my book club because we are all big Jeff Probst fans. A few of us were initially a bit hesitant to watch a queer version ofSurvivor, but everyone warmed right up to it after I told them Mallory’s sister was going to be in it.” Her face dropped, and Isla knew what was coming. “I just can’t believe you got voted out right after you got paired again.” She tapped Isla sympathetically on the shoulder with a featherlight touch. “It just didn’t seem fair.”
It hadn’t been fair; this Isla could agree with. But she also didn’t want to get into it with people who were ignorant enough to be leery of a queer version ofSurvivor.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Isla said quickly. She would’ve made a beeline for the door if Mallory wasn’t going to guilt her for missing the big reveal. Instead, she drifted toward the kitchen, which was mercifully quiet. But more importantly, it was full of food.
Platter after platter of scrumptious snacks beckoned her forward. There were mini egg rolls, blistered and golden, sitting beside a porcelain bowl of sweet duck sauce. Isla dipped one without hesitation. Then she reached for a prosciutto-wrapped melon and savored the taste before she tried a goat cheese-stuffed peppadew. Then another. There was no limiting herself tonight. Her metabolism was Usain Bolt fast, and besides, she was thinking about retiring from modeling. A difficult decision, yes, but also extremely necessary. She couldn’t keep up with the constant expectations and the casual cruelty disguised as well-meaning advice. Every day she got older, and the industry got younger. One day she would be dispensable. She wanted to decide when that day was, instead of letting someone else decide for her.
She was just about to lick the sauce from her fingers and help herself to a deviled egg dusted with sesame seeds when a voice said, “Do I know you?”
Isla spun around expecting someone who did know her, but instead she came face to face with a total stranger standing in the kitchen doorway. A gorgeous stranger with dark hair falling in glossy ringlets over her shoulders. Her eyes were the color of fresh espresso, and they crinkled slightly at the corners. Her mouth was full and unfairly symmetrical.
Isla struggled to snatch her gaze away, and when she did, she noticed the woman was holding an empty coupe glass holding one luscious purple Luxardo cherry.
She stepped forward and smiled. “You’re Isla Stone.”
“I am,” Isla said, not entirely surprised she’d recognized her. This was Mallory and Tony’s housewarming. Isla was the sister. Mallory had more likely than not mentioned her before at some fancy soiree.
“My sister is a model,” Mallory would say. “She spent a year in Paris and now thinks she’s a supermodel.” Then she’d laugh,all posh-sounding and offensive. “Most of her campaigns run overseas, though, so we never actually see them. Does that still count?”
Mallory always said it like a joke. Isla always laughed as if it were one.
Though this woman did seem a little out of place in her sister’s world where everyone looked like different versions of the sameChad. She was dressed in dark flare jeans, a fitted black tank, and a black leather belt cinched at her waist with a heavy brass buckle. She looked like she was on her way to The Gilded Horseshoe. All she needed were cowboy boots.
Oh wait. She was wearing them.
“I’m a bit of a fangirl,” the woman said. Her accent wasn’t Southern. In fact, Isla had a hard time figuring out where it belonged. Not that it mattered, because right then a few dark curls fell into her eyes and she flicked them back with one impressive shake of her head. Isla wasn’t sure what happened, but she felt a jolt deep in her belly. “I’m actually a little nervous meeting you.”
“Really?” Isla asked, now completely stumped. First, nothing about the stranger exuded nerves. She was perfectly at ease. And secondly, maybe this woman had seen one of Isla’s photo shoots. There was a boutique in Paris on Rue Saint-Honoré where Isla’s face had once covered the entire storefront window. It still might. She hadn’t been to Paris in a few years to check.
“Yes,” the woman said, nodding. She smiled, her incisor catching her bottom lip, and then she stepped closer. Really close. Close enough for Isla to notice a single freckle on her upper lip. “I thought you were absolutely amazing in the first season ofOutlast Her.”
Ah, there it was. Once again, Isla’s past came right back to slap her in the face. Everybody knew about The Sending,where she’d felt so invincible. That moment when every singlevote went against her. The hollow stunned quiet afterward when Vivian bid her goodbye.
And then coming back home to Mallory saying, “I honestly thought you were going to get further than that.”
Meanwhile, Isla had survived a photo shoot in a wind tunnel and worn clothes so tight she thought she might suffocate. She’d done photo shoots underwater, holding her breath for nearly as long as Kate Winslet inTitanic, and she’d once eaten nothing but a single chicken breast and two sprigs of broccoli a day for a whole week just to fit into a sample-size latex dress that smelled like balloons. But still, the only thing people ever wanted to talk about was the minutiae of her elimination onOutlast Her.
