Chapter 5
AVA
I slide my finger across the screen and lift the phone to my ear.
“Hello, Celeste.”
“Where the hell are you? Do you have any idea—”
Her voice detonates through the line, loud enough to make the guy across the aisle in 11B flinch.
As my manager, she’s clearly concerned.
Well… concerned that she can practically feel her ten percent slipping through her gel-manicured fingers.
I smother the phone in my lap and exhale hard.
The louder she is, the more it feels like every eye on the plane is aimed at me.
I tug my ball cap lower, shove my shades up the bridge of my nose, and loosen the seatbelt digging into my ribs.
All the while, Celeste is still going.
A full minute in, and all that fire and fury makes me wish I hadn’t answered.
I pick at my chipped thumbnail. A recent offering to the gods of anxiety and a rushed, half-assed pack job.
Her rant finally burns itself out like a brushfire starved of oxygen.
When it fades to a faint hello… hello…, I lift the phone back to my ear.
“I’m here. I’m just… taking a break.”
“You need to deal with your fiancé.”
I snort, low and humorless. “Ex-fiancé.”
A beat of silence. The kind that crackles through the phone while she recalibrates her strategy.
“Breaking up with Pierce Maddox is not your best move, Ava.”
Really? Because I’m pretty sure when the man you’re publicly attached to has attached his dick in another woman’s throat, that’s not exactly checkmate.
Plus, I just don’t think I can stomach it.
But it’s a waste of time telling this to the Spin Mistress. So, I say nothing.
“At least tell me where you’ll be,” she pleads. “So I at least know you’re safe.”
Gabe warned me not to tell anyone where I was going.
But he couldn’t mean Celeste. She’s my manager.
And a friend.
Kind of.
Sometimes.
When I’m not bleeding in public.
I blow out a long breath.
“New York.”
She shifts gears like a NASCAR driver on Red Bull.
“Perfect. We can get ahead of this. Press tour, morning shows, red carpets. I’ll pull some strings, get you front and center and—”
“No.”
“No?” she scoffs, offended.
Like she just offered me a first-class flight to Italy with all the trimmings.
Pasta in a cheese wheel.
A hot Italian to serve it.
Maybe hand-feed it, too.
Shirtless.
I lower my voice, but only because the guy in 11B is listening way too hard.
“I’m not doing a PR parade, Celeste. I’m not explaining why Pierce Maddox is a lying sack of designer-wrapped garbage, or handing instacrapper Brielle Blakely one more ounce of stolen spotlight. I need to unplug. Get away. Lick my wounds without a camera crew shoved up my ass.”
By now, Ten Toes is staring.
And the guy across the aisle is pretending not to look, but the angle of his phone makes me suspicious.
Ugh. Get a grip, Viviana.
Not every man is a creeper.
Just Pierce the Prick.
Well, him and the psycho who keeps leaving me flowers.
Her sigh is long and theatrical.
I can practically hear the click of her Louboutins echoing across the polished marble of her Hollywood Hills home office as she multitasks between sips of bone broth and a face mask.
Though calling it a home office is like calling Beyoncé decent at karaoke.
Home implies comfort. This place is an empire.
Twenty thousand square feet of marble, glass, and quiet judgment.
A red-light spa, two infinity pools, a screening room no one actually uses, and a wine cellar curated by a man named étienne who only wears black.
Two maids. A butler.
A private chef who microplates salmon like it’s abstract art.
And a house manager who runs the whole circus like she’s prepping it for war.
It makes my head hurt just imagining her water bill. That and how much of the Pacific Ocean is sacrificed to keep her orchids hydrated and her fountains emotionally fulfilled.
“Let me at least put you up in a hotel.”
“Fine.” I flick a piece of lint off my leggings. “Just send the name you’re booking it under to my PA.”
I always use Viviana.
No one calls me that except Abuela—usually when she’s praying for my soul or scolding me in Spanish.
But the last names? Total roulette.
Last time it was Rogers.
Before that? Banner.
Then there was Maximoff, which felt vaguely threatening.
And the time she did Wilson—with a note in the reservation: “As in Wade. Deadpool. Not Falcon.”
Mortified.
Yes, those are superheroes. Sometimes supervillains. Because I once made the mistake of saying I was a fan.
A mistake I’ve been paying for ever since.
And it’s not like I’ll actually use the hotel.
But there’s no point in arm wrestling with Celeste. Not when I have bigger battles to fight.
“I’m not doing the circuit,” I add quickly.
“Ava—”
“Don’t push.”
A pause.
That quiet beat before she pivots and goes in for the kill.
“One charity event.”
“No.”
“This one matters. It gives context. Explains your absence without screaming damage control.”
The little boy in front of me is now bouncing on his seat, watching me through the eyeholes of a plastic football helmet.
He’s stabbing a foam sword into his dad’s ear and driving his mom to her second glass of wine.
And it’s still morning.
We haven’t even taken off.
God, I’m exhausted for her.
Maybe Pierce was right. Whenever I brought up kids, Pierce called them career killers.
Some people are meant for a red carpet, he said.
Others for a car full of crushed Cheerios and thousands in therapy bills.
I smile at the little feral gremlin—his father’s words, not mine—and lay into Celeste, careful to watch my language in front of the adorable terror.
“I don’t give a flying frittata what the media thinks, Celeste.”
“It’s for wounded vets.”
My jaw tightens. I close my eyes.
She knows exactly where my weak spot is.
And then proceeds to shank it.
I breathe out slowly, through my nose.
“Fine. A quick appearance. I’m in, I’m out. No press. No red carpet. No sob story coverage of my public heartbreak. And absolutely no interviews.”
“Perfect,” she purrs, already texting.
I should hang up. But of course—she’s not done.
“One more thing.”
“No.”
“It would help if you weren’t alone. Someone on your arm, just for optics.”
I grit my teeth so hard my molars ache.
“Absolutely not.”
“It doesn’t have to be romantic—just a presence. A whisper that you’ve moved on.”
“I haven’t moved on.”
My voice is low. Final.
“There is no date. There is no optics. Period.”
The last thing I need is arm candy.
Like some Band-Aid in a suit and a thousand-dollar smile is going to fix this.
No amount of slicked-back charm or tailored jackets or tabloid-approved jawlines is going to heal the fact that while I was picking out floral arrangements and scouting venues, Pierce Maddox was busy screwing his way through Hollywood’s next wannabe starlet.
“I’ve got a rock-hard A-lister. And yes, I mean that both ways,” Celeste purrs.
A sure bet.
Exactly the kind of man Celeste probably test-drove herself, then polished up like a certified pre-owned distraction.
My voice dips lower. “I don’t care if he’s got Clark Kent’s jawline and Magic Mike’s thrust. I’m out.”
“But—”
“The last thing I need is a six-pack accessory dangling off my arm like a limited-edition Birkin.”
The flight attendant shoots me the universal nod: doors closing—wrap it up.
Finally. “I gotta go, Celeste.”
“Call me when you land.”
“Sure thing.”
And by sure thing, I mean not a chance in hell.
Arm candy won’t stop the bleeding.
Won’t hide the mess.
Not when the wounds are too deep for a Band-Aid.
Too raw for a staged smile.
Celeste doesn’t get it. Or worse, she does, and doesn’t care about anything other than the free publicity.
But nothing in this industry is free.
The currency is always pain.
And the payment? My heart.
Which is exactly why, even though I’m technically touching down in New York for business now, I won’t be caught dead at a hotel.
The paparazzi would rip me to shreds.
I let myself get distracted in the kid now using his seat as a bounce house.
When the little boy suddenly groans that he feels sick, both parents shoot up like it’s DEFCON 1.
His mom’s already pinging the flight attendant for a puke bag.
His dad’s patting his back with the panic of a man who’s survived the hell of projectile vomit and knows it’s coming.
I quietly say a prayer that if it happens, it hits the guy next to me who just picked his nose and thinks no one saw him wipe it on the seat.
I lean forward, still smiling at the poor little kid, and pass my puke bag over the seat.
“Here,” I say sweetly. “Better safe than… everywhere.”