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"Mostly cheap chardonnay and brides crying in the bathroom because the fondant on the cake is the wrong shade of ivory." The fabrication slid out with the easy rhythm we’d practiced for the last twenty-four hours. We had spent the morning carefully sanding down the edges of the Kate Green persona—I was a freelance vocalist, strictly weddings and corporate events, currently in between contracts and looking for a fresh start in the Keys. It was a sturdy, unglamorous lie. It was perfect. "I walked away from a long-term residency contract that had become a cage. I didn’t want to be a commodity anymore. I wanted to be a person who could walk into a venue without someone deciding if I looked healthy enough to be seen."

I popped a kernel of popcorn into my mouth, chewing slowly as I looked at him. This version of myself—the scrappy, opinionated nobody—was starting to feel less like a disguise and more like a phantom limb I had forgotten I possessed. I liked her. I liked that I could sit on a couch and argue with Ben about seventies rock bands without worrying about my publicist’s talking points or my label’s demographic research.

Most of all, I was struck by his restraint. I had shrieked at him in the ditch and begged him not to take my picture. Then I’d acted like a woman on the run from a SWAT team as I cowered from the photographer. A normal person would have asked questions. A normal person would have googled "Kate Green" or at least commented on the fact that a wedding singer was awfully terrified of a camera lens.

But Ben just… accepted it. He’d never asked why I was so afraid to be seen. He’d never pushed for the gaps in my story. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure he was buying the wedding singer cover story—he was a sharp guy—but his discretion was the greatest gift he’d given me. It made me feel like I wasn’t a commodity to be managed, but a person to be respected.

For a second, the urge to tell him the truth rose in my throat, pressing against the back of my teeth. I wanted to see if he would still look at me that way if he knew the scale of it. I wanted to tell him that I wrote my last platinum-selling album sitting on cold bathroom tiles in Paris because my ex-husband had locked me out of the studio for being too emotional. I wanted to tell him that the friction I defended so passionately as a source of artistic tension was actually years of gaslighting I’d experienced. And that for the last three days, his quiet, orderly life had felt like an honest-to-God sanctuary.

I didn’t confess.

I swallowed the words along with the popcorn. I was safe here, wrapped in the cozy, warm bubble of his—or at least, his feigned—ignorance. Breaking it would be like popping a life raft in the middle of a shark-infested ocean.

But the life raft had a slow leak. I had through the weekend. Barely three days left. The immediate relief from our conversation over pizza was already curdling into logistical panic. I had to contact Mindy. My assistant was undoubtedly pacing a hole in some floor somewhere, convinced I was dead at the bottom of the ocean or something.

Ben wasn’t making it easy to stall, either. True to his nature as a first responder, he wanted to fix the problem. He had offered me his cell phone three times since yesterday. He had offered his laptop so I could email my contacts or check my balances. He had even tried to press cash into my hand again this morning.

I deflected every offer, blaming my hesitation on pride and a bad memory for phone numbers, but the real reason was much darker. I couldn’t use his devices. Nash’s security team monitored Mindy’s incoming calls. They would trace Ben’s number and pull the registration data before the call even disconnected. Logging into my accounts on his Wi-Fi would hand Nash a geolocation pin to this exact cottage. I would be dragging Ben into a war he didn’t sign up for, painting a target on the back of the only person who had treated me like a human being since I left Nash.

I needed an untraceable prepaid phone. But burner phones required cash, and my current net worth consisted of sweatpants and a borrowed T-shirt. I pressed a hand to my collarbone, my fingers brushing the gold of my grandmother’s locket. I couldn’t pawn it. It was the only real thing I had left. I was trapped in a paradox—I needed money to hide securely, but I had to come out of hiding to get money. And every time I turned down Ben’s offers of help, his jaw ticked with frustrated, protective energy. It would all come to a head soon.

"Well," Ben drawled, standing up and stretching. His shirt rode up just enough to expose a strip of tanned, ridged muscle at his waist, and I forced my eyes to dart back to his face. "I stand by the Eagles. But I’ll concede that The Chain has an undeniably good bass line."

"Generous of you," I murmured and exhaled a sigh at the reprieve. And tried not to think of that flash of skin or the muscle underneath.

"I’m going to make more coffee," he announced and turned toward the kitchen. "You want some? I promise not to let you anywhere near the machine. The last time you tried to help, the toaster nearly required a fire extinguisher."

"Hilarious. Good thing you’re a fireman. Yes, please. I’ll take some black, like my soul."

He laughed, a rich, rumbling sound that I swear vibrated in my chest. As he walked away, a heavy, domestic warmth settled in my gut. It was a fantasy. I knew it down to my bones. It was a snow globe world that would inevitably melt, and I ran my hand over The Karen to remind myself.

But the scratchy synthetic fibers had been grating against my scalp for days now. The wig was a fake piece of armor in a room where I no longer needed it. I wanted to live inside this snow globe for a while yet, yes, but I wanted to do it as myself. A baby step toward the truth.

I hooked my fingers under the elastic edge at my nape and pulled. The wig slid free. Cool air rushed over my skin and I reached up and removed the pins. My real hair—the heavy, platinum blonde mass I’d spent days keeping hidden—tumbled down around my shoulders.

I tossed the brown mop onto the cushion next to me and reveled in the sensation of running my fingers through my roots, fluffing away the flattened shape. I leaned my head back against the cushions, listening to the comforting sound of Ben running water in the sink, and let my guard down completely.

A knock sounded at the front door, immediately followed by the door opening to reveal a woman with long auburn hair and delicate features. She stood on the threshold violently shaking out a soaking wet umbrella.

"Ben!" she announced, her voice bright, energetic, and cutting through the quiet acoustic peace of the cottage like a trumpet blast. "Mom made lasagna, and she made enough to feed an infantry division. So she made me bring you the leftovers because she is convinced you’re starving out here in your brooding bachelor cottage."

I froze solid as she bustled inside in a whirlwind of color in a bright yellow raincoat and vibrant teal rain boots, carrying a massive glass Pyrex dish covered in aluminum foil. She kicked the door shut behind her with her heel and turned toward the living room, a teasing smile already fixed on her face.

"I also brought the garlic knots, because I’m a magnificent sister,” the woman, obviously Harper or Brenna, announced. “Even though I heard you totally bailed on dinner this Sunday. And I swear to God, Ben, if I find you eating those chalky protein bars again, I’ll force you to read Macbeth⁠—"

She stopped.

She saw me.

The silence that followed was instant and absolute. It wasn’t just a pause in the conversation. It was a total atmospheric freeze. The woman stared at me. She was beautiful, her reddish hair different than Ben’s, but her eyes were also green. Eyes that were currently widening to comical proportions.

I couldn’t move. I was sitting on her brother’s couch, wearing her brother’s clothes, looking like an extra in a hip-hop video.

The recognition hit her in one massive wave. Her eyes darted from my face to my hair—my real hair goddamn it—then back to my face. She took in the shape of my chin, the slope of my nose, the specific arch of my eyebrows that had been plastered on billboards from Tokyo to Times Square, and across the covers of every major magazine in the country.

Her mouth opened. The heavy Pyrex dish in her hands tilted dangerously to the left. "Holy shit."

Chapter Eight