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A sharp ache blossomed in the center of my chest. I remembered the upright piano in the corner of my living room and standing in the shadows of the hallway, watching the moonlight spill across her shoulders. Sutton had slowed the tempo down to a crawl. She had stripped away the heavy production, letting the notes bleed into a raw, aching waltz.

“I built a house of glass and locked the door,”

“Don’t know who I am or who I’m for...”

Her voice in the dark cottage had trembled with genuine heartbreak. It was a distress signal wrapped in a melody. She had played for no audience, offering a piece of her soul without the armor. Listening to the radio version now was like listening to a stranger. I hit the power button on the console, and the radio died instantly, plunging the cab back into silence. The quiet life didn’t fit anymore. The silence I had craved for years was agonizing.

As I pulled onto my gravel lane, the headlights swept across the dense wall of mangroves. My cottage sat at the end of the road. No light shone in the window. No laugh echoed from the back deck. Killing the engine, silence instantly swallowed the cab. My hand dropped from the keys, but I made no move toward the door handle. Walking into that empty house meant facing the exact life I had demanded. As I lowered my forehead to rest against the curve of the leather steering wheel, the hot metal of the engine ticked as it cooled in the empty driveway.

I’d successfully chased away all the noise, leaving me with only the suffocating isolation I had fought so hard for.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

SUTTON

The floral arrangement in the center of the mahogany dining table was an architectural marvel of white lilies, orchids, and hydrangeas. Towering three feet tall, it stood as a monument to curated perfection. Yet despite the sheer volume of blooms, the air in the room smelled like absolutely nothing. The air in my Los Angeles mansion was heavily filtered and chilled to a precise seventy degrees by a climate control system operating with the quiet, expensive efficiency of a hospital.

My thumb brushed the hollow of my throat on pure autopilot, where bare skin met my fingertips.

A sharp, familiar ache bloomed in my chest. Over a week had passed since the black SUV rolled out of Dove Key, and the ghost of the antique locket still haunted my collarbone. Leaving my grandmother’s locket on that wooden nightstand had been a reckless, impulsive strike. Driven by jagged fury, the note I left was designed to cut Ben to the bone.

Except that severing the connection to my roots hadn’t punished him. It only punished me. In my frantic need to leave a scar on his sanctuary, I had abandoned a treasured piece of my own identity. The anger that propelled me through the Key West airport and across the country had burned hot and fast, fueling the initial meetings with lawyers and publicists. But as the days dragged on in this immaculate, silent house, the fury burned itself into ash, leaving behind cold, hard clarity.

Distance hadn’t numbed the pain. It only sharpened every edge. I didn’t fit in this mansion anymore. The plush white carpets and the silent, hovering staff offered zero comfort. My mind constantly drifted back to a modest kitchen smelling of garlic and olive oil.

And the truth about Ben’s rejection finally crystallized.

He didn’t reject me. He sacrificed himself. However misguided his gesture might have been, I’d seen the effect of it on his crumpled posture as I’d driven away. Ben had paid a heavy price. I quickly discovered I could be pissed as hell at him and still miss him.

"The narrative is rapidly losing traction." Terrence McVey paced the length of the dining room, his Italian loafers completely silent on the Persian rug and his dark hair slicked neatly back. The high-priced crisis PR strategist had been practically living in my house for eight days. "We’ve held them off all week with the standard ‘exhaustion’ press release, but the silence is starting to backfire. The tabloids are digging back into the Florida angle. We need a massive pivot to regain control of the demographics."

Terrence stopped at the head of the table. He planted his manicured hands on the polished wood, leaning forward to address the room. Mindy sat to my right, her sleek, dark hair falling forward to hide her face as she gnawed relentlessly on her cuticle. Usually the picture of Los Angeles efficiency, today my assistant was pale and miserable. Margaret Becker, my lead counsel, sat to my left. She viewed human emotions as inefficient data points and was currently typing rapidly on a silver tablet. A pen was tucked behind her ear, her ash-blonde bob as perfect as her business suit.

"Nash’s legal team is escalating," Margaret reported, not bothering to glance up from her screen. "They filed two new motions this morning in family court. They’re pushing the narrative that your disappearance proves a severe psychological break. Nash has three doctors on retainer willing to testify that you are a danger to yourself and require immediate, court-ordered supervision."

"Which brings us to the comeback strategy," Terrence interrupted, his voice slick with professional urgency. "You were in a fragile state. You wandered off. You were disoriented after the crash. And then you fell into the orbit of a local man with a violent history. A predator who saw an opportunity to exploit a vulnerable woman."

My stomach turned over in a slow, sickening lurch. I kept my gaze fixed on the white lilies, refusing to engage with his pitch.

"We need to lean into the victim narrative." Margaret scrolled past a legal brief on her tablet. "It explains why you stayed on that island for a week and any potential photos of you two together. You weren’t complicit—you were coerced. It’s the only viable path to dismantle Nash’s conservatorship petition. We have to prove that your ’bad judgment’ was actually the result of manipulation by a criminal element. Once you recovered from your strain from the car accident, you left immediately to resume your normal life."

"Exactly." Terrence snapped his fingers, his eyes gleaming. "We paint Coleridge as the villain. We blast the mugshot and emphasize the assault charge. We paint a picture of a frightened pop star held captive by a thug in a swamp. The public loves a rescue story, Sutton. They will eat it up. You come out smelling like a rose, and Nash looks like the misguided producer who just wants to protect you from the bad man. And his services are clearly no longer needed now that you’re on your own again."

I tore my eyes away from the flowers and scanned the room. The absolute whiteness of the walls, the carpet, and the furniture glared back at me. It was the color of surrender. It was the color of the empty spaces where a real life should be. Contrasting this perfection with the cottage on Dove Key, the absurdity of their plan became glaringly obvious. They wanted me to destroy Ben. They wanted me to annihilate the man who had offered me an arm to lean on when I couldn’t walk, and who had bought me curly fries during a tropical storm. The person who had stood guard while I fell apart, never trying to fix me, but fiercely protecting the space I needed to heal. The man who made my body come alive in a way it never had.

They wanted to turn a good man into a monster for the six o’clock news.

"Ben Coleridge isn’t a thug." My voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a serrated knife.

Terrence sighed, producing a sound akin to a patient parent dealing with a stubborn toddler. "Sutton, we know you have feelings about this. It’s classic Stockholm Syndrome. But facts are facts. The man has a record. He has a history of violence."

"He was reacting to his family falling apart.” The memory of Ben’s confession in the dark living room rose up, solid and irrefutable. "He was young and grieving. He isn’t violent. He is a protector."

"Perception is reality," Margaret stated. She finally raised her head. The glare on her designer glasses completely hid her eyes. "In a court of law, and in the court of public opinion, Ben Coleridge is a massive liability. If you defend him, you validate Nash’s claim that you are mentally unstable. If you want your freedom, Sutton, you have to cut the dead weight."

Dead weight.

I thought about Ben standing on the porch as the SUV drove away. He had taken the hit so I wouldn’t have to. "He saved me.”