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"So." I leaned forward slightly. "Where am I dropping you off? There’s a bus terminal in Marathon, or a women’s shelter down in Key West if you need a safe place to stay while you make phone calls."

The color drained from her face. She glanced down at her hands, her fingers twisting the edge of her paper napkin. The poised, elegant woman vanished entirely.

"I can’t go to a shelter," she said quietly. "And I don’t know where the bus goes."

"It goes north. To Miami. To wherever you came from."

"I can’t go back there."

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. "Then pick a new destination. I’ll buy the ticket."

Her head snapped up, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce pride. "No. Absolutely not. You rescued me. You gave me a place to sleep. I am not taking your money."

"You don’t have any money," I pointed out bluntly. "Your purse is at the bottom of the marsh. Pride is a luxury for people who can afford a hotel room, Kate. I’ll pay for the ticket. You can mail me a check when you get your life sorted."

"I said no." She pushed her chair back and stood up, favoring her wrapped ankle as she braced her hands on the table. She was breathing fast, a cornered animal evaluating the exits. "I won’t owe a stranger. I won’t let someone else pay my way and tell me where to go. I’m done with that."

I tilted my head. She was a global icon, a woman whose face was on magazine covers in every grocery store in the country. Yet here she was, completely broke, wearing my oversized gym shorts and a crappy brown wig, all while fiercely holding her ground over a fifty-dollar bus ticket. She was refusing the easy way out because it cost her autonomy. I respected that. I respected it a hell of a lot more than I wanted to admit.

"Then what is your plan?" I asked.

The fight drained out of her shoulders. She sank back into the chair, dropping her face into her hands. "I don’t have one. I don’t have a plan, I don’t have a phone, and I don’t have access to any money." She dragged her hands down her face, looking at me with a raw, desperate honesty. "I need time. Just a few days. To figure out a plan that doesn’t involve me ending up right back where I started. Please, Ben. Let me stay. I’ll clean. I’ll cook. I’ll eat the terrible white bread. Please give me a few days to figure out my next move."

My home was a quiet, orderly place. A smart man would have driven her to the bus station anyway. A smart man would have handed her a hundred-dollar bill and walked away. But looking at her sitting at my table, I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t going to throw Sutton Vale back into the storm.

"The weekend," I said.

Sutton blinked and sat up straighter. "What?"

"You can stay until the weekend," I told her, keeping my expression entirely neutral to hide the sudden, heavy relief in my own chest. "But you stay inside. You keep the blinds closed. And you eat the frozen pizza."

A shaky breath escaped her lips, followed by a smile so brilliant it made the small kitchen feel too warm. "The weekend. Thank you. Thank you, Ben."

"Don’t thank me yet," I said, standing up and grabbing my empty plate. "It’s a long time until the weekend, and I have terrible taste in music. You might regret staying by tonight."

"I’ll take my chances." She gave me a small smile, and I tried not to admit how pretty she was.

I turned on the faucet and let the hot water run over my hands as I washed the plates. The tension in the room had shifted. The ticking clock of her departure had been paused. We were officially roommates for the next few days, and as I glanced at her over my shoulder, I realized with a sinking feeling that my quiet, orderly life was officially over.

And the worst part was, I wasn’t sure I wanted it back.

Chapter Seven

SUTTON

"You cannot honestly tell me that you think Rumours is overrated. That is a musical blasphemy that should get you banned from owning speakers." I sat on the couch with my legs tucked under me, wearing yet another pair of Ben’s shorts that I had cinched at the waist with a safety pin, along with a T-shirt from a 5K fun run he had apparently participated in five years ago. It was the following afternoon. The sky outside the windows was a relentless, bruised purple, and the rain had resumed its steady rhythm against the corrugated roof of the cottage.

It should have been a depressing scene—a woman in stolen clothes, wearing a frizzy synthetic wig, hiding from her life in a stranger’s guest house while a storm hammered the island in a very un-paradise way. But instead, it felt like the most peace I had known in a decade.

Ben sat in the armchair across from me. A hardcover manual on marine history of the Florida Keys lay open on his lap, though he hadn’t turned a single page in twenty minutes. He looked entirely comfortable, his long legs stretched out, his feet bare, his heather-gray T-shirt stretching across his admittedly very broad chest. It was strange how quickly the human mind adapted to a new normal. Two nights ago, he was a terrifying, anonymous giant in a yellow coat wrenching my car door open. Now, he was just the guy who made sure I ate breakfast, forced me to drink tap water, and harbored terrible, indefensible opinions about Fleetwood Mac.

"I didn’t say it was bad," Ben argued, closing the book with a soft thud and resting it on his knee. "I said it’s overly dramatic. It’s an album entirely fueled by cocaine, spite, and infidelity. It’s messy. I prefer the Eagles. They had harmony. They had structure."

"The Eagles were safe," I countered, leaning forward to grab a handful of popcorn from the ceramic bowl we had placed on the coffee table between us. "Fleetwood Mac had tension. They were all about tension! That’s what makes art, Ben. You need the friction. You have Lindsey Buckingham playing blistering guitar solos directly at Stevie Nicks while they actively hate each other. You need the mess. If everyone gets along and follows all the rules, you just get elevator music."

Ben watched me, a small, crooked smile playing at the corner of his mouth. It was a rare expression for him, a crack in his usually impenetrable mask of stoic responsibility. But when it appeared, it did something incredibly dangerous to the air in the room. It made the cottage smaller, warmer, and dangerously more intimate.

"You speak from experience?" His tone was light, but his green eyes were observant as they tracked my every movement. "Is the wedding singer circuit really just a series of bad managers and worse paychecks? Are you throwing tambourines at the people who burned you out?"