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Zara gathered the bag they’d filled with rubble and hauled it outside. Nikki and André had gotten a dumpster for their renovation rubbish and Zara hurled the bag in. It landed with a thud.
She dusted off her hands and removed the face mask and safety glasses. She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and stood in the warm, late morning sunshine.
It was weird to not have her security with her. Scary. But also, freeing.
It wouldn’t last.
She was too famous and people were too predictable for her to be without an escort for any length of time.
But for that moment, she was just Zara.
Not the award-winning pop star, nor the focal point of every media publication for the past six months.
For one small breath she was neither amazing nor villainous. She just was.
Her team knew. Sonja, Gregor, Kenna, her dad, Cas. But no one else. Not really.
After what had happened in LA and everything that followed, she’d decided to pivot. And not in a small way. She needed space. And time. And to be around people who didn’t rely on her for their paycheck or clout.
One night on the phone, lamenting to Nikki about how suffocated she felt, Nikki had invited her to Chicago. To come see the baby and just chill for a bit.
No agenda, no album, no interviews.
And for the first time in months, Zara had felt the pressure in her chest ease.
She’d already shelved her unreleased album. But getting out of New York seemed like the next best step.
Gregor had worked with Cas to find her a place in East Lincoln Park. They leased it under an alias hidden under an alias, buried in an LLC that didn’t have her name attached to it.
As long as she didn’t go out into busy public spaces, she could pretend for a minute she wasn’t the most watched woman on the planet. At least for a while.
A black SUV pulled up alongside the curb at the end of the block. Zara shielded her eyes from the sun as she watched her longtime bodyguard Cas step out. Bodyguard number two, Devan, exited the passenger side and pushed her aviator shades to the top of her head.
Zara waved once. Cas nodded.
They didn’t approach. Devan, dressed in jeans and a loose casual tee that hid whatever superhero contraptions she carried on her person, started walking away from Zara. Scouting the area, checking for threats, seen and unseen.
It was the best Zara could have hoped for.
They were trying to give her the space she’d asked for, sobbed for.
But they also needed to keep her safe.
And after the stalker that was found sleeping in her bed in LA a couple weeks ago, they wouldn’t let her be alone for too long.
All the negative attention in the media had emboldened the already unhinged. Threats increased; stalking incidents went up.And she’d started to feel like she couldn’t go anywhere without someone trying to scream at her because they felt entitled to.
There were a lot of people who truly believed she deserved to be hurt for the things Logan had accused her of.
She understood on some level that it wasn’t really about her. Those types of people were loose cannons in all areas of their lives. But they’d fixated on her and that made it very dangerous.
Taking another deep breath of fresh air, Zara went back inside.
“I really don’t think Asa is going to be okay with this,” Nikki said, surveying the work they’d done.
Zara concurred.
What self-respecting human would?
