Page 23 of Better than Famous

Silence stretched over the line, followed by a sound that was half-scream, half-sob. "Sutton! Oh my God. Sutton! Are you okay? We were about to call the police. Nash is telling everyone you’re in a rehab facility in Arizona. He’s about to release a statement saying you’re suffering from ’exhaustion and dehydration.’ We have to get ahead of this narrative."

"I’m not in Arizona," I said, sitting up and leaning back in the plastic Adirondack chair. "And I’m not in rehab."

"Then where are you?" Mindy’s voice pitched up an octave. "You hung up on me right in the middle of that storm! The rental company said the car’s GPS signal died ten minutes later. I’ve been calling every hospital in the Keys but haven’t gotten anywhere. Did you crash? Are you hurt?"

"I crashed," I admitted. "But I’m fine. A sprained ankle. I’m safe."

"Safe? Sutton, you have been missing for four days! Oh my God! Did someone take you?"

"No one took me," I said, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. I closed my eyes at the wonderful sensation of being able to smile. "A nice fireman pulled me out of a ditch. I’m staying in his spare room."

"A fireman’s spare room?" Mindy sounded horrified. "Jesus! Sutton, listen to me very carefully. You might be experiencing Stockholm Syndrome. You are in a vulnerable state. Is he holding you there? Does he want money?"

I laughed. It was a real, unpracticed sound that bubbled up from my chest and startled a white egret perched on a nearby root. "He doesn’t want money, Mindy. He thinks I’m a broke wedding singer named Kate Green. He fed me frozen pizza.”

"He doesn’t know who you are?"

"He knows now," I said. "His sister outed me yesterday, but that wasn’t her fault. I came clean about all of it to him yesterday. But this is the important part—he hasn’t sold the story. He actually bought me this burner phone just now so I could call you without being tracked."

"Okay," Mindy said, her voice shifting into crisis-management mode. "Okay, that’s... quaint. But we need to get you out. I can have a private car there in four hours. We can get you to a secure hotel in Miami. We’ll issue a counter-statement."

I stared at the mangroves and the egret now back to preening. The gray water was choppy, the sky a bruising mix of purple and slate. It wasn’t Malibu. It wasn’t the kind of view that appeared in Architectural Digest. It was wild, messy, and quiet. It was everything the Sutton Vale before leaving Nash would have recoiled at. "I’m not ready."

A calculated pause emanated from the phone. "Not ready? Sutton, you are DiGiorno’s in a hideaway shack. What do you mean you’re not ready?"

"I mean I haven’t had a panic attack in three days," I said softly. "I mean I slept for nine hours last night without a pill. I mean... I’m a person here, Mindy. I’m not a product. I need a few more days. Just a few."

Mindy sighed, a long, ragged exhale that crackled over the cheap phone connection. "Nash is furious, Sutton. He’s freezing everything. He’s going to make this ugly."

"Let him. I don’t care. Let him spin whatever story he wants. I’m safe and I’m feeling a weird kind of peace I haven’t experienced in years. I’ll call you again in two days."

"Sutton—"

"Two days, Mindy. I’ll be okay. Thanks for caring."

I hung up the phone and snapped it shut. The finality of the click sounded satisfying. I sat there for a moment, listening to the wind rustle the palm fronds, and realized that I wasn’t running away anymore. I was running toward something, even if I didn’t quite know what it was yet.

When I went back inside, Ben was apparently still showering. I peered at the hall leading from the far end of the living room. His door was still shut, which gave me a window of opportunity. He had given me the phone and shelter. I wanted to give him something back.

I walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry. It was sparse, reflecting Ben’s utilitarian approach to food, but I found a box of spaghetti and a bottle of olive oil and some miscellaneous spices of dubious age. On the counter, in a small wire basket, sat three heads of garlic.

"Spaghetti aglio e olio," I said to the empty room. "Pasta, garlic, oil, chili flakes. Four ingredients. How hard can it be?"

I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. That was the easy part. Then I considered the garlic. In my previous life, garlic was handled by a personal chef who could probably chop an onion blindfolded. I broke a clove off the bulb and stared at it. The skin was papery and tight. I picked up a knife—a heavy, black-handled chef’s knife that looked dangerously sharp—and tried to peel the skin away with my fingernails. It stuck. I picked at it, getting sticky garlic juice under my nails, achieving nothing but frustration.

"Okay. Brute force it is."

I was trying to saw the end off the clove, the knife slipping dangerously on the smooth skin, when Ben appeared. He had showered and changed into fresh clothes—jeans and a soft black T-shirt that clung to his damp skin. His hair was wet and darker than usual, combed back from his face. He stopped when he saw me at the stove, taking in the pot of water, the box of pasta, and the butchered garlic clove.

"What are you doing?" He walked over to join me at the counter.

"Dinner," I said, putting the knife down before I severed a digit, but unable to resist a deep inhale of his freshly clean scent. "Well, an attempt at dinner. I wanted to thank you for the phone. I found pasta. I found garlic. But I have realized that I possess absolutely zero life skills when it comes to vegetables."

I braced myself for the eye roll. I braced myself for him to take over, to push me aside and do it himself because it was faster, just like Nash would have done.

Ben didn’t roll his eyes. He looked at the mangled garlic clove, then at me. "You’re trying to peel it?"

"I’m trying to liberate it," I corrected. "It’s resisting."