Eventually, Bennett and I leave the club in the early morning hours, and somehow make it through the dark parking lot into the cottage Dusty is lending me behind the bar.

Without turning on the lights we fall asleep in my bed and hours later I wake with his arm wrapped around my waist. Sunlight streams in through the curtain-less windows and I nestle into the crook of his arm. I could stay here forever like this, but this was a one night stand and I don’t want to assume anything. Best to get going with the day and let this be what it was: a fun time at my very first orgy.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, pulling me closer, nibbling my ear as I try to scoot out of the bed.

I forget about making coffee, instead letting myself relax in his hold. After all, when is the last time a man slept in my bed? I can’t even remember.

“Last night was surreal,” I whisper against his chest. “Like some fantasy. Who were all those people?”

“They all must have wanted to go somewhere no one would find them,” he says. “Is the closest, large city Indianapolis?”

“I think so.”

He runs his hand over my bare body, my skin waking under his touch. “How did we both end up in this place?” he asks.

“I figure we both ended up here because the universe finally wanted to give us a break.” I close my eyes, inhaling him. He smells like sex and heartbreak and regret.

I know because that’s how I smell, too.

Will it always be like this? I hope not, but I’m not sure I deserve much more. I’ve already made people pay for the wrongs they’ve done.

Maybe that will be enough of a happily ever after for me.

Still, I can’t help wondering about my mother. My heart aches for her, wanting to know what she’s doing.

If she hates me.

But even then, I don’t deserve the answer. I should’ve warned her. Told her my plan, but I couldn’t.

To say I don’t trust her isn’t fair; it’s not her who I plotted against.

I didn’t trust the man she loved. The man I hated.

The man she gave her life to.

“Last night you asked where I went, when I got stuck in my head,” Bennett says, brushing a strand of hair from my face.

I sigh, my eyes close, tears pricking the corners of them. I don’t want to reveal anything to a man I know is just passing through. I can’t let anyone know the truth because there’s a cost involved in trusting anyone. He may have been inside me last night, but he’s still a stranger.

A stranger who knows my body.

“Now I’m asking you the same thing,” he says. “Where did you just go?”

“I’m still here,” I tell him. “But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I’ll always be hiding, always be looking over my shoulder. Always scared of being found.”

I haven’t implicitly told him I’m on the run, but I know he knows. Just like I know he’s determined to be invisible.

I open my eyes and, look into Bennett’s eyes for the first time in the broad daylight.

“You don’t have on your ball cap or a mask,” I tell him brushing my lips against his mouth.

“Fuck,” he groans, kissing me hard before pulling away, covering his face with his hands.

“What is it?” I ask not understanding what it is about his face he’s trying to hide. I’m not the one looking for him.

He lowers his hands, shaking his head, his eyes piercing me. “Why do I trust you? You could ruin me.”

Now it’s my turn to shake my head. “I’ve already ruined enough.”

He reaches into the duffel bag that he grabbed from his car last night before we stumbled in here, dizzy from sex and lust.

He rummages around, I see a few leather-bound journals in the bag along with changes of clothes. He finds what he is looking for though, and tosses a magazine at me. I catch it, confused.

Flipping it over, I look at the cover.

“Holy fuck,” I say, glancing back at him, then back at the magazine cover. “You’re dead?”

He sighs. “I fucked everything up.”

I smirk. “You fucked me, alright.” Then I read the headline and my heart starts to pound, Sawyer Bennett, Hollywood Heartthrob, 1989-2017. Suicide and Sex... what put this megawatt superstar over the edge... “I don’t understand.”

“I have a few weeks’ worth of stubble, and wore a ball cap, but I’m just glad no one has recognized me.”

“I don’t understand, Benne—Sawyer. If you’re dead why are you here?” I look at the man lying naked beside me. I would never have recognized him. Movies have never been my thing, and catching up on Hollywood gossip is of zero priority to me. My life has been rooted in survival, not scandal.

“The fact that you don’t seem to know who Sawyer Bennett is, is fucking hot as hell, do you understand that?” he asks, getting out of bed, his morning wood stretched out to tease me. He heads to the kitchenette and begins making coffee.

I shake my head, wrapping the sheet around me and following him. “I wouldn’t have recognized you; but Sawyer, how are you here? What’s going on exactly?”

He flips on the pot and looks for two clean mugs. “Any sugar?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I just got here. I don’t have much. And I drink my coffee black.” I want to press him, ask more questions... what is a movie star doing here? And why is he supposedly dead?

“I suppose if you don’t drink it with cream or sugar, you’re not very sweet, are you?” he says smirking down at me.

I’ve flipped open the magazine to the pages that detail his life in Hollywood. “Ha, ha,” I say, raising a brow to him. “But you’re right, I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as a sweetie.”

My words may sound easy-going, but internally I’m trying not to freak out about what is taking place in my cottage. Sawyer Bennett, an actor who killed himself a week ago by jumping off a bridge—according to this magazine—is alive and well and making me coffee.

“So..., did you want to tell me what exactly is going on?” I ask as he hands me a mug. There’s a small kitchen table and chairs, but we opt to sit on the bed, the magazine between us, the coffee in our hands.

He thumbs the pages, reading the story as if for the first time. My eyes travel over him, his ripped body, his dimples. I remember his wad of cash, his nice Chevy, his designer jeans rumpled on the floor. Suddenly I feel dirty—like the trailer trash girl I am. I don’t want him to see me that way, but when his eyes meet mine, I’m scared they already do.

“See my parents, here,” he says, pointing to a photograph of an actor and actress I remember seeing in movies when I was younger. “They are half the reason I faked my death.”

“Shit, Sawyer. Aren’t you scared of being found?”

He runs his hand over his jaw. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m a mess. A fucking fool, probably. I just confided in a stranger and didn’t even have the courage to tell my best friend. What kind of monster does that make me?”

I blink, not knowing a hell of a lot about courage. I ran without telling my own mother where I was going.

“It makes you desperate,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. “But...” I stop, not wanting to make this about me, yet scared of him being here. Of what that might turn into.

“But what?” he says.

I shake my head, trying to steady my nerves. “I’m scared of people finding you. If someone recognizes you, they might find me.”

Sawyer’s eyes narrow. “Who’s looking for you?” Sawyer’s trying to read me, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my face blank.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him because it doesn’t. “I’m across state lines and the only way anyone would find me is if I went back to see if my mom was okay.”

“She’s in trouble?”

I shake my head. “Not anymore,” I tell him. “I took care of all her troubles the night I left.”