by Emma Hart
I smiled, looking down. “You acted like you didn’t yesterday.”
“I figured Arielle was enough. Besides, I reckon I’m the first person you saw when you got into town and if you are runnin’, it wouldn’t do you no good to know I knew.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Of course you do. I’m a lovely person. Now, tell me what Theo did to you. Does he need an ass whoopin’? I might not be his mama, but I’ll give him one.”
“No ass whoopings necessary,” I replied. “Honestly, it’s nothing. He’s just protecting Arielle, and I understand. I’m just salty and hungry.”
“Let me guess; he judged you without knowing you and told you to stay away from her.”
“Are you sure you should be working in a diner? A purple glitzy tent, a headscarf, and a crystal ball might be more fitting.”
She chuckled. “If you find a market for that here, you tell me, and we’ll split the profits. What do you want to eat?”
“Oh, uh—”
“Let me get you the breakfast special.” She turned away before I could respond, which was fine, because it didn’t sound much like an offer anyway. More of a demand.
It wasn’t like I was a stranger to the overbearing ways of the well-meaning Southern grandma. My mom’s side were born and raised in Louisiana until my dad had enough of the roads and moved us all up north.
At least he blamed the roads.
I figured it was probably more of my mee-maw than anything else.
Charity returned with crockery and a napkin for me. “I’m sure Theo didn’t mean no harm, honey. He’s just prickly. He protects his daughter, but he does have a judgey streak in him. Not the best listener. I bet he just assumed about your situation, hmm?”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, repeating what I’d said to Theo this morning. “I had no idea it even existed. My ex released it without my knowledge and now I don’t know what to do.”
She blew out a long breath, leaning forward on the bar. “Do you know it was definitely him?”
“It’s him in the tape. We broke up not long ago. He’s been trying to get back at me ever since, and when I didn’t bite, I guess he went to extreme measures to get my attention.”
“Did it work?”
“Not the way he wanted it to. He’s not worth the time in jail I’d have to serve.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “But you ran. Doesn’t that mean he won?”
I shook my head right back. “No. I live in New York. Too many people know where I live. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without being harassed. I’m lucky my publicist was given a heads up so I could get the hell out of the city before it went live.”
“You couldn’t stop it?”
“No. We found out from a smaller media outlet I’ve worked with before. The journalist told us she’d heard it was coming, but nobody knew where from.”
There was the dinging of a bell, and Charity stood upright. “That’ll be your breakfast. Give me two seconds.”
She really was only a few seconds, because before I could take a mouthful of my coffee, she’d laid a huge plate of pancakes, sausage, bacon, scrambled egg, potatoes, and toast in front of me.
She was not kidding when she said it was the special.
It was more food on one plate than I’d eaten in days, and I was not going to wait another second to shovel this all in my mouth like a hungry T-Rex.
I dove in. I’d never eaten pancakes this fluffy, nor bacon this crispy, and by the time I’d scooped a forkful of egg into my mouth, I knew I’d never be able to scramble my own eggs by myself.
Less than ten minutes later, I set my fork down on the plate and covered my mouth when a little bubble of gas slipped up and popped. You know—those burps that aren’t really a burp but more like a bubble popping in the top of your throat?
Yeah, one of those.
Charity grinned, her eyes sparkling. “Good, huh?”
“So good,” I groaned, leaning back and resting my hand on my stomach. “If I weren’t a vlogging exile right now, I’d be blasting you to the internet.”
“Ah, but if you weren’t in your exile, you never would have found us.” She winked, whisking away my clean plate and serving me another cup of coffee at the same time.
If you weren’t in your exile, you never would have found us.
I sighed, looking around the diner. She wasn’t wrong. There was no way I ever would have ended up in Creek Keys if it weren’t for my exile, and even though I still wasn’t sure I was entirely comfortable with it, my stomach was glad to be here.
If my stomach was happy, I was happy.
I was a bit like a man in that respect.
The way to my heart was through my stomach. Or a straw, if you were serving me a cocktail.
“So how long do you reckon you’ll be stayin’ here with us?” Charity wiped down the counter.
“I paid Theo for a week. I promised I’d find somewhere else by then, so…”
“Mm,” she hummed, wiping up a wet spot. “We’ll see.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re lookin’ for a miracle. If you find a place to stay long-term around here in the next week, I’ll eat my socks.”
“You don’t think I can?”
“No,” she said honestly, stopping and meeting my eyes. “But I don’t reckon you’re gonna want to, either.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Shoot.” She waved her dirty cloth at me. “The lunch rush is gonna start in the next fifteen minutes and unless you want everyone and their mother knowin’ where you are, I suggest you get yourself back to your house.”
She was trying to get rid of me.
Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t that easy to get rid of—unless you dropped a sex tape of me, of course.
I put thirty dollars on the counter in front of me and left, shooting a look at her over my shoulder. She wasn’t paying me any attention at all as she stuffed my tip in the tip jar behind the counter, and I narrowed my eyes at the back of her head.
I was going to find out what she meant.
As long as there were no people around.
CHAPTER FIVE – ELLE
I’d finally finished cleaning the house.
It’d taken me all of last night and almost all of today since I’d woken up, but now, as the clock on my crappy phone ticked over to six o’clock, I was done.
Finally.
It also meant I had to open my laptop and deal with the one thing I’d been avoiding: checking my emails.
Without my phone, not only would my business team be going crazy, but so would my sister. Since our parents had died in a crash when I was sixteen, she and I were all each of us had left. She was older than me by five years, which meant she was also super protective of me and would be going insane right now.
I really should have taken five minutes to text her my plan before I left.
I picked my laptop up off the coffee table and settled in on the sofa with it. It took a minute to boot up since it’d died overnight, and I had to type the passkey for the Wi-Fi in three times before I got the mishmash of capital letters and numbers correct.
Finally connected, I opened my browser and hit the shortcut for my private, personal email. I had a public one that I’d check only when I’d gauged my eyes out with a rusty spork, a business one that I’d have to check after I checked in with my sister, and the private one I was now signed into.
There were three hundred emails.
By the looks of it, they were all from my sister.
Wincing, I clicked the first email. With another wince, I went to the next, and the next, and the next. The more I clicked, the more violent they became. It went from “Please call me, I’m worried about you” to “If I ever see you again I’m going to kill you with my bare hands.”
Both total reasonable emails, to be honest.
I scanned the next few before going to the most recent ones and opening
those. Her last email was the one I wanted.
From: Emily McGuire ([email protected])
To: Elle Evans ([email protected])
Subject: Okay, asshole, I get it
ELLE!!! I went to your apartment and found your phone. FFS! Where the hell are you? What’s going on? I guess you don’t have my number, so please call me as soon as you see this. If you don’t call me by the end of the day tomorrow the police are going to open a missing persons case. CALL ME YOU JERK 718-366-4851
I picked up my crappy phone and dialed her number. It rang once before she answered with a frantic, “Hello?”
Curling into a ball, I said, “Hey, Em.”
“Elle?” She screamed. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said to the sound of a door slamming on her end.
“What the fuck is going on? Where the fuck are you? That tape dropped and nobody has been able to find you. I have been looking all over the city for you. I’ve been beside myself! Why did you leave your phone at home? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I’m going to kill you!”
“I—”
“I’m not finished!” she shouted only the way a big sister could. “How dare you up and leave without telling me you were leaving? Ben was about to commit me to hospital! I haven’t slept in three days! Amelia hasn’t been able to go to school because she’s been so worried about you!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too! Sorry I’m going to have to wring your neck to murder your dumb ass when you get home!”
“Can I talk now? Are you done yelling at me?”
“No, but I would like some answers, so I’ll delay the yelling until later.”
“I appreciate that,” I muttered. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you before I left. I panicked, Em. I had half an hour’s notice of the tape going public and there was nothing my lawyer could do to get it stopped. I had to run and I left my phone behind.”
There was a sniff. “You should have told me.”
“I know, but I didn’t think. I grabbed a shitty phone once I was out of the state, but I didn’t have your number. I should have checked my email and let you know I was safe as soon as I got here.”
“Here? Where is here? Where the hell are you?”
“Florida Keys.”
“What the—how in the fuck did you end up there?”
“I just drove,” I replied lamely. “Until I was as far away from New York as I could be. I have no idea what’s going on.”
She blew out a long breath that crackled down the line. “Well, shit, then. It’s a media storm,” she said solemnly. “I had to wade through a media camp to get to your building. The new doorman—who is very nice, by the way—let me into your place when I showed him my I.D. and flirted with him a little bit.”
“You’re married.”
“And you were missing. Shut up.”
Fair enough.
“You’re trending on social media, you’re all over all the gossip blogs and websites, and your lawyer is trying to get into contact with you.”
“How do you know that?” I navigated to my business email.
“Bethany called me. I’m your next of kin so when she couldn’t get hold of you, she called me to see if I knew where you were. She’s already handled everywhere who had the actual video up, and as far as she knows, it’s no longer on the internet.”
“If she believes that, I need a new lawyer.”
“That’s what I said to her. Either way, it’s on the dark web, and most of these idiots can barely handle Twitter, never mind anything else.” She sighed. “Elle, what happened?”
I was getting tired of telling this story. Still, I repeated for the third time that day what had happened.
“I didn’t mean that. I know you didn’t do it. I know you would never video yourself having sex. You didn’t have sex until you met him, so there was no way you were going to get that freaky in the bedroom, never mind a broom closet.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You should call your lawyer and see what’s happening. Do you definitely know if it’s Mitch who leaked it?”
“I can’t imagine it would be anyone else. How would anyone have gotten hold of it? He either shared it or sold it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t even know it existed. Of course I’m sure.”
“Okay. Why don’t you report it to the police? Ben can take it in. He’s working tonight.”
“What good will that do?”
“It’s revenge porn, El. It’s illegal. They’ll take him in for questioning.”
“I don’t know. I’m not there to give them an interview. Won’t me running away work against me?”
She blew out a long breath. “I don’t think so. You made a perfectly rational decision, even if I am mad at you.”
“I need to think about it. I feel like I need proof.”
“I might be able to help you there.”
“You’re only just proficient in email and Instagram. Can I trust you here?”
“Ha, ha. Shut your ass. I have an old friend from Dallas who might be able to help you.”
I frowned and stood up. “Dallas? From college?”
“Right. When I was getting my PhD, I had to work. I was paired with a team that included this rookie police officer called Noelle to do psych work for one of her cases. We hit it off, and she’s a private investigator down in Texas now. We still talk on occasion. Do you want me to call her and see if she knows anyone who can help you?”
“Sure. It’s not like I know where to start to pin it on him. If she could get proof, maybe then Ben can take it in for me.”
“Of course. Whatever you need, El. Do you need me and Amelia to come down to you?”
“No, don’t be silly. I’m on a tiny island where nobody will find me.” If you don’t count my landlord and neighbor’s daughter. “I’m okay, really. I’ll look over the emails from Bethany and see what she’s said before I call her in the morning. It’s too late now.”
“All right. I’ll contact Noelle and see what she says. She might be able to work remotely and figure it out. Her computer guy can hack into anything.”
“Okay, well, remember that I can’t take illegal evidence to the police.”
“No, but when you know for sure it was Mitch, you can feel confident that the cops will figure that out, too.”
“I’m not confident in that at all.” I walked over to the doors that overlooked the beach and watched as the waves crawled up the sand. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, call Bethany. She’ll tell you what you can and can’t do right now. But whatever you do, do not go on social media or any news sites, do you hear me?”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me.
“Elle?”
“Yes, Em. I won’t. I promise. Believe me, I can think of many things I don’t want to do.”
“Okay. I’ll text you later with what Noelle says. Let me know how it goes with Bethany tomorrow.”
“Promise. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Love you, El.”
“Love you back.” I hung up after that and shoved my phone in the pocket of my dress. After grabbing a glass of wine, I bypassed my laptop entirely and pulled open the door onto the back deck before I stepped out into the now much cooler evening air. It was still hot, but it wasn’t the staggering humid heat that’d hung around all day long.
I should have gone to Canada or something.
There was a rattan sofa smothered with cushions on the back deck, so I lowered myself onto it and tucked my feet up under my butt. A gentle breeze wafted off the ocean, swilling salt air around my face and through my hair. It was silent out here, totally peaceful, and the beach was empty apart from three ladies who looked to be the other side of seventy halfway down the beach.
They laid out what looked like a picnic blanket and cool bag, and one of them set up three chairs in a circle. The sound of cackling laug
hter reached me at the house, and I smiled into my wine.
I’d been kind of planning to dip my feet in the water, but now, I would wait until they’d had their picnic.
I averted my gaze from them and looked out at another part of the nearly empty beach, wishing I hadn’t told Emily not to come.
***
It was dark outside, I was three glasses of wine and two quesadillas in, and I was going to dip my toes in the water, damn it.
There was no sign of the ladies from earlier—not that I could see far in the dark, and the crescent moon wasn’t exactly a great night light.
I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight to guide me down the back deck and onto the beach. The sand was still surprisingly warm as it raked between my toes, and I used the light to avoid any lumps of driftwood or sharp and large stones. The gentle breeze that had blown at me earlier was still there, but only a little cooler, and I welcomed it.
It was so hot here; it was nice to be able to breathe.
Let’s be honest. Late evening in Florida was probably what I was used to for summer in New York. Mostly because of the humidity.
I reached the shoreline and stood, watching as the tiny waves crept up and over my toes. A shiver ran down my spine, and the feeling that I was being watching stopped me going any further into the water.
I cast my gaze around the beach, using my phone’s flashlight to help me see. And, holy shit! I shrieked as it caught the bodies of three elderly women who were totally naked.
“Damn it, Maude, I said this was a bad idea!” hissed one of the women.
“Well, I don’t know who she is,” another woman, presumably Maude, responded.
“Don’t shout!” said the third woman. “Theo can’t know we’re here.”
I paused at that, keeping my flashlight trained on the ground. “I’m sorry, would you mind putting some clothes on?”
“I don’t want to,” said the voice I thought was Maude.
“Well, she’s probably disturbed Theo anyway, so we might as well. If my great-nephew catches me in the buff again, I’m in trouble.”