She smiled when she saw what I was purchasing. “Good luck, honey.”
“Oh, they’re not for me,” I lied.
Back at the bungalow, I selected one of the tests at random and read the instructions as though it were more complicated than peeing on a stick. When I finally got down to business, I was shaking so much I could hardly keep the thing in place. I capped it and placed it on the slate counter beneath the giant window, then set the timer on my phone for three minutes. In thirty seconds, there were two blue lines in the window. I knew what it meant, but I consulted the instructions, hoping I was wrong.
I chugged a bottle of water and sat on the edge of the soaking tub staring across the mottled sea at the green hills of Saint Ann in the distance, waiting for the water to work its way through my body so that I could try again. Somewhere nestled among the palms was Rick’s house, which I’d never see now.
A gull landed on the back of one of the loungers on the deck and cocked its head, judging me for my naivete. I’d wanted so badly for this movie to be my salvation that I’d willingly ignored all the blatant warning signs it was anything but. Now I was caught in the undertow, and this time there would be no one on a WaveRunner to save me.
When I could finally pee again, I took another test. Two lines appeared immediately.
I was pregnant.
Stella
I trudged up the over-water walkway toward my bungalow, impervious to the breathtaking explosion of color reaching across the sky as the sun sank into the salmon-tinted sea. The hot stone massage Felicity had insisted I submit to had done little to dull the throbbing in my head, and my oiled skin felt sticky in the heavy air.
I was exhausted. I’d been unable to go back to sleep in the wake of this morning’s meeting, strangled by panic over what would happen to me should Jackson decide to pull the plug on the film. I kept flipping between the things Cole had told me about Jackson the other day and what Jackson had said about Cole. Their stories didn’t match up, but I couldn’t piece together which of them was lying or why, and there was no one I could talk to about it.
Jackson had everyone believing that Cole had drugged me, and while that made logical sense, it made as much sense for Madison to have been the culprit—especially now that she seemed to be involved with Cole—or if Cole had been the one telling the truth, even Jackson himself. I wished I could remember a damn thing about what happened at Coco’s, but my memory of the evening was nothing but a black hole.
Mary Elizabeth yapped excitedly when I pushed open the door, and I scooped her up, allowing her to shower me with kisses. I didn’t know where Felicity had gone but was glad to have some time to myself. Obviously I couldn’t breathe a word to her of my suspicions about Jackson’s motives, but it was hard to think of anything else, which suddenly made her constant companionship tedious.
The reflection of the sunset through the floor-to-ceiling glass bathed the deliciously silent bungalow in an otherworldly light. I considered the half-drunk bottle of rum on the counter. I knew with the renewed scrutiny of the insurance company and whatever was still coursing through my veins after last night that I shouldn’t drink, but I also knew a glass of rum was the only thing that could make me feel better. I’d get sober when this was all over. I really would. But now was definitely not the time.
I poured the rum over ice and marched through the bedroom to the gorgeous bathroom, where I opened the sliding glass doors to the salty breeze and the sound of the sloshing ocean slapping the pilons beneath the bungalow then ran a bubble bath in the giant soaking tub. I did so love a hot bath. The sea was alive this evening, its surface rippled by the wind. A pelican dive-bombed a school of fish, coming up with a wriggling flash of silver in its large beak. The local rum was smooth and sweet on my tongue as I downed an extra anxiety pill, sure my current dose was insufficient for the amount of stress I was under.
I shed my clothes and slipped into the hot water. There was no denying the wound had been reopened inside of me; I was teetering. I could see the abyss, and I knew it would swallow me up if I let it. I’d sweat blood to bury the past; now it was all resurfacing, distorted from years of submersion. The harder I tried not to think about it, the more the memories pushed through. I wanted to run away and never see Cole or Jackson Power again. What had I been thinking, accepting this role? My psychic had said there would be forgiveness and healing, but for once she was wrong. My only recourse was self-medication.
When I emerged from the bath, my fingers were wrinkled and I was sufficiently anesthetized to face the rest of my evening. The sun had slipped beneath the horizon, leaving in its place a pearly sliver of moon that peeked through low clouds hovering above the luminous sea.
“Stella?” Felicity called out from the other room as I pulled a maxi dress over my
