Page 27 of Better than Famous

"It’s about the challenge," I said, moving into the kitchen. The sight of her stretching, her shirt riding up, the intimacy of her knowing my alibi… it was too much. The air in the room was getting thin again. "It’s about proving you can survive the worst conditions on earth."

She put in a bookmark and closed the book. "I think I’ll stick to sea level. The air is better down here."

She studied me, her eyes clear and alert, and the playfulness faded into something softer. "How was your day? Did you save anyone?"

"Just some kegs." I opened the fridge and grabbed a beer, mostly to have something cold to hold. "And I stopped a tourist from backing his rental car into a palm tree in the parking lot. Pretty standard."

"A hero," she teased gently. "The palm tree thanks you."

She was so comfortable here. She fit into the corners of my life as if she had been sanded down to match the edges perfectly. And that was the problem. She didn’t fit. She was a temporary guest, a supernova passing through my orbit, and every minute she stayed made the inevitable departure more catastrophic.

"I need to check the weather," I said, ready for a subject change. "The squall line. Braden was worried about the patio furniture at the pub. We may be looking at something more organized than what you faced when you ended up in the ditch."

“Oh, that sounds ominous.” She wrinkled her nose, and I tried not to imagine dropping a kiss on it. “Speaking of impending storms, I got hold of Mindy today.”

"Yeah? What’s the update?"

“Nash is getting impatient. The tabloids are starting to poke holes in his ’Arizona rehab’ story because no one has a photo of me arriving."

I rubbed my forehead. "He’s going to escalate."

"He already is. Mindy is intercepting emails from his lawyers left and right." Sutton brushed a stray blonde hair behind her ear. "The storm is actually working in our favor. It’s dominating the local news cycle, so nobody is paying attention to a missing pop star in South Florida today. But the second this weather breaks, Mindy says we have to make a move."

I moved past her to the sliding glass door, conscious of how close I had to get to the couch. I could smell her, warm and sweet. I unlocked the door and stepped out onto the porch, sliding it shut behind me with a little more force than necessary. The humidity outside was oppressive. Storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, massive bruised towers piling up over the Gulf, promising a light show later tonight. I gripped the wooden railing and took a deep breath of the heavy, salt-laden air.

My heart thumped against my ribs—a staccato rhythm that I couldn’t slow down.

I was lying to myself.

For days, I had been telling myself this was a job. That she was a patient, a victim, a project. I told myself I was protecting her because that’s what I did—I was the guy who pulled people out of ditches and patched them up.

But you don’t feel this way about a patient. You don’t hoard their text messages like treasure. You don’t lie to your brother just to keep them to yourself for another hour. You don’t feel like the floor drops out from under you just because they smiled at you. And you sure as hell don’t almost kiss them. Twice.

I glanced back through the glass door. Sutton had gotten up and was moving toward the kitchen, limping less than yesterday. She was filling the kettle with water, probably to make tea. She looked right at home. Her ankle was healing. Her spirit was healing. The panic that had defined her first few days was gone, replaced by a quiet resilience that I found incredibly, devastatingly attractive.

She didn’t need me to save her anymore. She was staying because she wanted to be here.

And I was letting her stay because I was dreading the moment she would leave.

Chapter Twelve

SUTTON

The air in my bedroom was unusually still, the barometric pressure dropping as the tropical system churned off the coast. The quiet pressed against my eardrums, amplified by the relentless, spinning rhythm of the ceiling fan above the bed.

Whir-click. Whir-click.

I kicked the sheet off my legs as I stared up at the dark blades slicing through the shadows. Sleep was a lost cause. My brain was too loud from the day’s events, imagining Nash’s angry voicemails to Mindy, her endearingly worried tone on the phone, and the looping replay of making dinner afterward. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the kitchen, Ben’s hard body behind me helping me with the garlic. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the cinematic masterpiece of when he washed my hair. The warmth of the water and the rough slide of his thumbs against my jaw. That almost-kiss. The memories made me restless, vibrating with a kind of kinetic energy that I usually only felt ten minutes before showtime.

I sat up, raking a hand through my clean, soft hair. The wig was on the dresser, a dark, lifeless lump that looked like a sleeping animal. It looked like something that was from another life. Once again, I was Sutton Vale. And Sutton needed to move.

I slipped out of the bedroom wearing Ben’s sleep shorts and a Sunset Siesta Resort T-shirt, my bare feet silent on the cool tile floor. The living room was bathed in the milky, silver light of the moon filtering through the blinds, casting long, striped shadows across the furniture. It felt different at night—less like a temporary shelter and more like a home that was holding its breath. I paced the length of the room, from the kitchen to the front door.

My eyes landed on the corner of the room, where a large, boxy shape sat shrouded under a heavy canvas drop cloth. I had ignored it for days, assuming it was a piece of unfinished furniture or perhaps a stack of construction materials Ben was storing. He was a fixer, after all—his life was full of projects. But tonight, the silhouette drew me in. It was too tall to be a table, too wide to be a cabinet.

As I padded over to it, curiosity itched at my fingertips. I gripped the corner of the rough canvas and lifted. The fabric was heavy, smelling of dust and sawdust, and it slid away with a soft hiss to reveal dark, polished wood and the unmistakable curve of a fallboard. I gasped.

It was a piano.