Chapter Three
Amy wondered how to describe the view of the island in her next book while the shiny, high-powered speedboat charged across the turquoise Atlantic Ocean.
She looked out at Brazil’s legendary Costa Verde.
It was the only place on Earth where a tropical rainforest crashed directly into the ocean.
The dense, tangled emerald jungle that clung to the cliffs reminded her of Jurassic Park.
It looked so prehistoric. The only reason she was even back on Outlast Her was because she wanted to get enough inspiration to kick this writer’s block into the ocean.
So far, Amy hadn’t spotted any of the other contestants. Secrecy was the angle this season, and with twelve celebrities as contestants, it was no wonder. She felt completely giddy with anticipation.
What if one of the celebrities was Sandra Bullock?
Technically, she was straight, yes, but was she really?
Amy had watched enough of her movies to question Sandra’s sexuality.
Or what if it were Sarah Paulson? Amy fricken loved Sarah Paulson.
Her relationship with Holland Taylor was the best age-gap love story in Hollywood.
She grinned so widely that the wind whipping across her face dried out her gums. She licked them just as another speedboat appeared.
Not just one speedboat; it was actually eleven identical speedboats.
They were all fanning out in a massive sweeping V-formation across the open water.
Elise did it. She had somehow outdone the last season.
Amy gripped the damp metal railing and squinted against the glare of the sun until she could make out a woman standing on the bow of the boat closest to her.
No fricken way.
It was Sloan Vance, the supermodel, who had closed Paris Fashion Week last month.
Amy had seen her face plastered all over city buses and even on a billboard in Times Square.
She modeled for companies like Dior and Chanel, and although Amy didn’t shop at any of those stores, some of her billionaire characters did.
She couldn’t comprehend paying that much for a handbag or a tube of lipstick, much less how anyone could afford to.
“I can’t believe this,” Amy muttered excitedly, then whipped her head left just in time to spot the actress Kate Bellina.
“Oh. My. God!” she roared. Amy had watched Orion’s Peak so many times she could recite the dialogue by heart.
The world keeps asking me to let you go...
it doesn’t understand you’re the reason I’m holding on.
Just the thought of actually meeting Kate in the flesh was, well, it was orgasmic.
BANG!
The gun suddenly went off as the engine cut, and although Amy knew it was her cue to jump into the water and swim to shore, she couldn’t move.
In fact, she felt welded to the metal railing as she watched Jade Nyx, lead singer of the pop band Crimson Velvet, jump into the water.
Just last year, Jade had opened for Taylor Swift.
Her song Rebel Heart had yanked Amy’s heartstrings when she’d first heard it, and she’d cried so hard that her orange tabby, Barnaby, had actually stopped grooming himself to lick the tears right off her cheeks.
This had to be the best day of her life.
And it just kept getting better. Amy spotted Ezra Ruiz, the winner of Season Sixteen of MasterChef, leap into the water like a seal.
Her pan-seared foie gras, spicy lobster risotto, and raspberry chocolate soufflé had no doubt won her that title.
As soon as her cookbook had hit Rivendell’s shelves, Amy had snatched it up.
“GO!” the captain suddenly shouted.
Amy let go of the railing, took a step back, preparing to dive, but just as she launched herself forward, her foot caught on the raised lip of the deck hatch. Her shin hit the side of the gunwale, sending her tumbling headfirst into the water.
Shit! The first thing that went through Amy’s head was that she was going to die.
But then she wouldn’t get to meet Kate or Jade, and wasn’t that a better kind of heaven?
Amy spluttered and thrashed her way upward, breaking the surface with lungs on fire.
She went to clutch her throbbing shin, but the pain quickly vanished from her mind when she spotted a head of platinum hair swimming right in front of her.
Wyn Carson! Amy had spent the first year of her writing career secretly casting the ultimate femme fatale as the main character in all her stories.
Amy felt a wave of vertigo that had nothing to do with the swell and everything to do with the hits that kept coming.
Maya Lin, the Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast whose floor routines defied gravity.
She was nearly as famous as Simone Biles.
And then, just beyond her, was Dr. Avery Cunning, who had gone viral on TikTok debunking medical myths.
Amy had no idea that holding in a sneeze could cause ear infections, or that you didn’t actually need to drink eight glasses of water a day. Your hydration depended on your body—
Wait. No. It couldn’t be, could it?
Was that Luna Manning thrashing around in the surf with her bright purple dress ballooning around her waist?
It was. It really was. From an aerial view, Amy imagined Luna looked like a blotch of purple paint bleeding onto bright blue paper.
Served her right. If Amy weren’t still holding a grudge, she might have offered to help. But then again, Amy needed help too.
She’d forgotten how to swim. Her arms flapped uselessly, and her legs weren’t much better. For every few feet she swam forward, the tide took her back. Then, all of a sudden, a hand pressed against her back. “Keep your chin up and kick from the hips, honey! Deep breaths, you’re almost at the end.”
No way. It was celebrity swim coach Brenda Vance.
The woman was legendary. She’d trained self-proclaimed couch potato Sofia Pendleton to become an Olympic gold medalist in the 200-meter freestyle at the Paris Olympics.
She had documented every part of the journey.
Amy had watched the Sundance award-winning documentary series on Netflix, Chasing the Lane, while eating a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips.
The very next morning, Amy had signed up for Zumba classes.
She hadn’t gone, but still, the documentary had been motivating.
Before Amy could even sputter a thank you, Brenda gave her a shove toward the shallows.
The next moment, Amy stumbled out of the breakers, her knees buckling as her red high-tops sank into the wet sand.
She’d promised herself this season that she would try her very best to wade out of the shallows like Halle Berry in Die Another Day, but promises made from the safety of her plush corduroy Lovesac didn’t count in open water.
So, she crawled her way up past the tide line on her hands and knees, and when she looked up again, her heart shot into her throat.
“No,” Amy muttered, swallowing down more than just saltwater. If shock were a tangible liquor, it would be a double shot of cheap, burning tequila that scorched her throat all the way down. “No, it can’t be. Please let it be someone else.”
But it wasn’t someone else.
It was Savannah Rigsby. The very same woman Amy hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for the past two months.
The woman whose blue-checked Instagram profile she’d stalked every night, watching and rewatching her vicious book critiques and hoping Savannah’s brutal takedown of well-known author Mackenzie Radler’s The Sky Is Blue would somehow make her feel better.
Savannah scrunched the water out of her hair and then flicked her locks behind her shoulder like a shampoo commercial.
Amy hadn’t seen her legs back in Barnes & Noble, but if she had to imagine what they’d look like, that would be it.
They were long and slender and the color of honey.
Savannah, standing there in a pair of blue-washed Bermuda shorts and a tank top displaying her buoyant breasts, completely overshadowed the fact that Erica Summers, the stand-up comedian who used her childhood trauma to entertain entire arenas, was standing right beside her.
How had the best day of Amy’s life turned into the worst?
It was one thing to stalk the woman’s social media and imagine a moment where she could stick it to her, and a completely different thing to actually have to face her in real life.
She didn’t have time to ponder just how cruel the universe could be, because the next second a voice called, “WELCOME TO THE TWELFTH SEASON OF OUTLAST HER!” It came from a voice that didn’t sound like Vivian’s...
Because it wasn’t Vivian.
Amy watched as a beautiful woman with smooth, caramel-colored skin, sleek black hair tied into a low bun, and lips that puckered like a rose, waved everyone toward the canvas mat stretched across the sand. Who was that and where the hell was Vivian?
Intrigued, Amy moved forward while maintaining a safe distance from both Savannah and Luna.
If either of them had noticed she was there, they didn’t show it.
Not that she was surprised. Amy’s hair probably stuck to her head like a helmet.
Without her signature curls, no one would recognize her.
Her glasses, which she wore to correct her mild astigmatism and to play up the whole librarian look, were safely stored at the villa across the bay in Angra dos Reis.
“I’m Naomi Victor,” the woman said. Her voice was whiskey-smooth, her smile gorgeously toothy, and there was something familiar about the way she spoke with her eyes.
If only Amy could put her finger on it. “I’m stepping in as your host this season.
As many of you know, Vivian and Sienna welcomed their beautiful baby girl into the world last month, and Vivian is taking some well-deserved parental leave. ”
This was news to Amy. The happiest news. She clapped harder than everyone else.
“I have some big shoes to fill, and I hope to do them justice,” Naomi said.
“And what better way to do that than with our first-ever Celebrity Edition? We’ve handpicked a mixed bag for this season’s cast. We have award-winning actresses, internet sensations, famous authors, elite sports stars, and arena-filling comedians. ”
Suddenly, a PA dressed head to toe in black came running across the shore carrying an iPad.
The look on her face was one of pure white-hot panic, which had to mean something had gone seriously wrong behind the scenes.
But what? Naomi frowned quizzically at the screen, then lifted her head to address the crowd.
“We’ll be taking a five-minute production break.
Please stay where you are. We will get back into our introductions in no time. ”
As soon as Naomi’s back was turned, noise broke out. Whatever was going on was production’s problem. No one cared. Not when there were twelve famous people standing together on a remote beach in the middle of nowhere.
There were oohs and aahs, followed by several excited comments: “I’m such a huge fan of your work.” “I can’t believe I’m meeting you.” “This is truly an honor.”
Amy was spinning in a circle to meet everyone and was just about to grab Kate’s wrist and start reciting Kate’s famous line from Orion’s Peak when Savannah broke through the crowd.
For a split second, Amy thought she was going to walk right past her.
But she didn’t. Clearly, this woman had no sense of personal space, because she walked forward and when she was inches away, she folded her arms across her chest. “I didn’t realize B-list authors were considered celebrities.
Or did they let you back because you played the game before? ”
Amy didn’t think she could be more offended than she had been back in Barnes & Noble.
But it appeared Savannah had the ability to dig the knife in deeper.
Amy opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Because Savannah was right. Amy wasn’t exactly what one would call a typical celebrity.
She had fewer than five thousand followers on Instagram.
If she wanted that blue check, she’d have to pay for it.
But she’d been deemed a fan favorite after Season Ten, and that had automatically put her in the lottery for this edition.
“Umm—” she started, her tongue feeling furry. She knew what she wanted to say but she just couldn’t get the words out. “I—”
Thankfully, Kate interrupted. “I’ve read all your books,” she said. “My wife loves them too. In fact, we keep telling Luna that she might finally have some serious competition for our favorite sapphic romance writer.”
Brenda frowned. So too did Erica and Jade and Maya, as if Kate had said something she shouldn’t. But Amy didn’t care that Kate might’ve offended someone, because Kate had just said that she’d read all of Amy’s books, and what could be better than that?
“Do you know each other?” Sloan asked, tilting her head in the same way she did on that August edition of the Vogue cover last year. Amy got chills. She was seeing a real-life supermodel in action. “Because it sounded...”
“Shit,” Kate muttered, biting down on her bottom lip as if she’d spilled a secret.
And it seemed she had. It took Amy an extra second to catch it. Kate had mentioned Luna, which meant... Ding. Ding. Ding. Kate and Luna knew each other. Which, in Outlast Her, could only mean one thing: a pre-existing alliance.
Luna shook her head and exhaled loud enough to be heard from the other side of the beach.
“I guess the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.
Kate and I are neighbors. Our back decks literally face the same water, and she pet-sits my cat Rufus every time Claire and I are in New York.
” Then she turned to Wyn Carson, and before Amy could wonder why, Luna sighed.
“Wyn lives on the lake too. She’s my cousin’s wife and one of my closest friends.
Although I do wonder if we’ll be friends after this.
Sorry, Wynnie. If I’m busted, so are you. ”
Wyn gave a helpless little shrug, looking like she’d just been thrown under the bus.
Savannah opened her mouth to say something, probably something rude and sarcastic, but before she could, Naomi clapped her hands twice. Vivian had always used one signature clap, so this was a refreshing change.
“Alright, contestants, are you all ready to be divided into your pairs for this season?”