Chapter 5

The taxi driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror as the airport disappeared behind us.

“Miss? Where am I taking you?”

I stared out the window.

Less than ten minutes ago, I had been standing in Garrison’s arms while he kissed me like he had spent four years starving for it. Now I had no plane, no destination, and no idea what came next.

“I...” I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know where you’re going?”

He glanced at my tear-stained face and the single suitcase beside me. “Runaway bride or bad breakup?”

“Something like that.”

His expression softened. “There’s a decent hotel about twenty minutes from here. Quiet. Mostly business travelers.”

“That works.” I leaned my head against the cool glass.

“Thank you.”

***

The hotel room was small and anonymous, exactly what I needed.

"Congratulations, Ken," I whispered into the space, my voice cracking. "You finally got what you asked for."

I dropped my suitcase beside the bed, opened my laptop, and stared at the name glowing on the screen.

Kelsey Vance.

I traced the name with one fingertip. Kelsey Vance had existed long before Mrs. Sterling, in contracts and royalty statements and pages no one in Garrison’s world had ever read. “Your turn,” I whispered.

The next morning, I took a rental car, bought a new phone and a new number.

“No data transfer?” the cashier asked. “Contacts, photos, messages?”

My hand tightened around the old phone inside my purse.

Four years of numbers. Messages. Photographs. And Garrison.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the untouched phone on the counter. “Brand new.”

Back in the rental car, I manually typed in the few essential numbers: publisher, editor, and proofreader.

The contact list looked absurdly empty. No husband. No Wyatt. No assistants, board members, drivers, estate manager, or numbers attached to a life I had spent years pretending was mine.

For the first time since the divorce papers arrived, the loss felt physical. Freedom, I discovered, could look a lot like loneliness on a blank phone screen.

Then I picked up my old phone. For several seconds, I stared at it.

I should have thrown it away. It was the sensible, symbolic thing to do—the sort of gesture a woman in one of my novels would make before driving toward a brave new life.

Bushes were growing along the edge of the parking lot. One throw, and I could sever the last easy connection to everything I had left behind.

My fingers tightened around it. I couldn't. Not yet.

Disgusted with myself, I switched it off and shoved it into the glove compartment. Then I slammed the compartment shut. Good enough.

I drove for hours without choosing a destination. North when traffic looked lighter. West when a road sign offered mountains. Anywhere that did not require me to decide who Kelsey Vance was supposed to become on her first day alone, the radio filled the car with forgettable pop songs until a harsh emergency tone cut through the music.

“We interrupt our regular programming for breaking news. Authorities are responding to a catastrophic aviation disaster involving an international passenger flight off the coast of France.”

My foot eased off the accelerator.

The reporter continued.

“The plane took off from the United States this morning and was scheduled to land in France late this evening local time. More than three hundred passengers were believed to be onboard.”

The cold spread through my body.

No.

I turned up the volume.

“Rescue crews are currently searching the wreckage, though authorities warn that the number of casualties may be extremely high.”

My hands locked around the steering wheel. The flight number followed. Everything inside me stopped.

“That was my flight.”

My boarding pass had been scanned. Garrison had watched me walk through security. As far as he knew, I had boarded that plane.

“Oh, my God.” I swerved onto the shoulder and slammed the car into park.

Garrison. He would see the news. He would recognize the flight. He would think I was dead.

My body moved before my mind caught up.

I tore open the glove compartment and grabbed my old phone—the phone I had reached for every day for years, the one that held Garrison’s number, Wyatt’s number, every direct line into the life I had just abandoned.

I pressed the button. Nothing.

“Come on.”

I pressed it again. Black screen - the battery was dead.

“Damn it!” I stared at it for one useless second before remembering.

The new phone. I snatched it from my purse and opened the contacts. Three names. None of them were Garrison.

I had done what I wanted. I had erased every easy path back to him.

“Think, Ken.” My fingers trembled over the keypad.

I couldn't remember Garrison’s cell number. I had almost never dialed it manually. One tap on his name had always been enough.

Then another number surfaced. The private landline at his city penthouse. Garrison had made me memorize it years ago.

For emergencies.

He had made me repeat the number back to him until I could recite it without thinking. At the time, I had teased him for being paranoid. Now the digits came to me before my own new phone number did.

I punched in the digits. My thumb hit the call.

One ring. Two. "Come on, Gary.”

Three. “Please.”

Four. Voicemail.

I nearly sobbed when his recorded greeting came through. At least I could leave something. At least he wouldn't spend hours believing I had died.

The tone sounded.

“Garrison...” My voice broke on his name.

A blinding wall of headlights filled the windshield.

My head snapped up. A massive delivery truck had crossed the center line. It was coming straight toward me.

For one second, I couldn't move. Then I screamed.

Metal crashed into metal. The airbag exploded against my chest. The phone flew from my hand as the world spun violently around me.

And everything went black.

Pain registered long before I fully regained consciousness, radiating through my body in crushing waves.

Searing heat tore through my left arm, while a rigid brace trapped my neck in a suffocating vice. Above the chaotic, metallic ringing in my ears, distorted voices shouted urgent commands.

"Her blood pressure is plummeting—get another line in, now!" a voice barked.

A gloved hand tapped my shoulder firmly. "Ma'am? Can you hear me? You need to stay awake."

I tried to peel my eyes open, but the harsh fluorescent lights forced my heavy lids shut again.

"Can you tell me your name?" the voice demanded.

The question hovered in the darkness. My mind presented me with an empty void. Then, bubbling up from some untouched well of instinct, nothing surfaced at all.

"Get her purse!" a muffled voice barked over the frantic clatter of the gurney as they pushed through the double doors. "We need a name for the intake chart!"

A pair of gloved hands fumbled through the leather bag, pulling out a slim cardholder.

“Kelsey Vance,” someone called. “ID and rental agreement match.”

A wave of nausea rose in my stomach, choking off my reply. The erratic beeping of a heart monitor spiked as the room seemingly tilted on its axis.

"We're losing her—she's fading fast," someone yelled.

A man leaned in, his tone sharp and desperate. "Kelsey, do you remember what happened? Headlights? A crash? Is there anyone we should call for you? A husband, maybe? Family?"

Husband.

The word husband hurt in a place the crash had not touched. I searched the darkness for a face, a voice, anything. Nothing came.

"I don't know," I choked out, right before the darkness swallowed me whole.