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I eyed the few pieces of luggage and the laptop case stuffed in the trunk. It contained all I owned for the next month—a couple pairs of jeans, some sweatshirts, one dress, a handful of faded T-shirts, two books I’d planned over a year to read, and some toiletries thrown into a makeup case. On the way to the rental car office, Olivia explained Rockbridge had almost everything else I might need, and Amazon made regular Prime deliveries to the property with no major issue.
“It’s like slumming, but it’s not. You’re going to love it.”
And she was right.
Olivia’s parents might have described their A-frame cottage in the woods as spartan, but I was immediately drawn to the simple but rustic furnishings that made the place Instagram-worthy. A large leather couch in the living room. Firepit and hot tub on the back porch. Reclaimed wood table. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rolling hills and trails. A few tufts of millennial pink scattered here and there, along with carefully chosen mid-century prints that vaguely harkened back to a bygone era.
Everything an influencer would want when it came to staging the perfect vacation.
I parked the rental car in the gravel spot adjacent to a front walk that led to the door. It was already around five; I was spent and exhausted from the day. It was only then I realized how crazy the last twelve hours had been, which had somehow morphed from a morning spent with a man I was falling for, to ending with me running for my privacy into the Ohio wilderness.
How the fuck was this my real life?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LANDON
Separation.
That was the best part about having enough money to get through the next three centuries. Separation and exclusivity. I had the ability to extract myself from any situation, and to wall myself off if I wanted to do so.
And in the wake of this sex scandal, I did just that.
When we landed in Palm Beach, I told Mauricio we had a change of plans, and I didn’t want to go to the house after all. The town had strict rules about residential parking and a well-stocked fleet of parking meter enforcers, but I knew how incessant the media could be, and how they’d be willing to camp out on the smallest slice of public property if it meant getting a decent photograph or clip of video.
I didn’t want to give them any opportunities.
Instead, Mauricio drove me south to Miami Beach, and the high-rise my mother called home when she wasn’t galivanting around Europe or diving off yachts into Caribbean waters. The doorman recognized me and buzzed me into the private elevator that led to her tenth-floor unit with an ocean view and a price tag to match. She met me at the double door entrance in a pair of dusty pink leggings and oversized T-shirt, her face flushed from what I guessed was a recent yoga practice, something she’d taken up since a recent kidney health scare.
“You could have called first,” she said.
“What would have been the fun in that?”
With a small chuckle, Mom gave me a quick embrace, then stepped aside so I could walk into the unit. We made our way to the sunken living room framed by a large bank of windows showcasing the beach and the waves. She asked her chef to bring us a pair of green juices and offered me one when he complied. He was a relatively new addition to her staff and looked to be about twenty-five with a pair of bulging biceps amplified by a black tank top.
“Interesting choice,” I said once he returned to the kitchen. He could probably hear us, but I didn’t care.
