Chapter 2
Lizzie
The two-day drive from Los Angeles had cleared my mind of all the crap I’d been worried about before I left.
Five more miles until the Wyoming border, and I gripped my steering wheel so tightly that I worried arthritis had started in my knuckles.
Funny how, six years later, I still self-diagnosed the dumbest stuff.
It had become a bad habit from medical school.
Thank God I wasn’t on the “doctor track” anymore, or I’d probably be a raging hypochondriac.
But at least alone in my car, I could hide.
My winter beanie and dark sunglasses hid my identity when I’d needed to pull over for gas or food, so I’d made the trip unscathed and unnoticed, thankfully.
And now with contactless check-in and my best friends credit card on file, no one had been the wiser at my hotel last night.
But I hadn’t arrived at my Grandpa’s cabin yet. Every minute I spent on the road was one more opportunity for someone to see me and rat me out to the world.
The cabin was blissfully tucked away in the Tetons.
The trip up from Wisper, where my grandparents lived, took more than an hour, and I still remembered the drives from my childhood.
Mama and I would sing songs the whole way, and when I’d gone down to town with Grandpa for groceries or supplies or to “assist” him with a medical emergency, he’d tell me stories about my father when he was a kid.
I often wondered what the hell had happened to turn him from an inquisitive and fun kid into the buttoned-up jerkwad he was now.
My mama dying was the current reason, but even before she’d died, he could be cold.
Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t account for his crab-assery either.
Grandpa had said that Mr. Moran still lived up on the mountain, and he’d be close if I needed help.
I had a vague memory of the older man and his sons from my childhood.
I remembered his big belly and a booming laugh, and I remembered playing with his sons, who’d been close to my age, running free through the forests and coming back to our cabins covered in bug bites and dirt.
I’d sing songs while one of his boys followed me and picked wildflowers for me.
It was kind of comforting that the old caretaker was still around, and Grandpa assured me he trusted Mr. Moran, that my location wouldn’t be leaked.
Trusting people didn’t come easily to me, especially lately, but I trusted my Grandma and Grandpa more than anyone in the world, so I felt hopeful the next few days could be a reprieve for me, and the cabin my safe haven.
But anything could happen. The past six years had proven that, and if it got out that Eli Winter was in Wyoming for the holidays, the place would be swarmed with media.
It would ruin the small-town Christmas vibes the residents of western Wyoming looked forward to every year.
The amount of vehicles alone would be a threat to the local wildlife.
When I’d talked to my grandparents and asked for their help, secretly I’d hoped they’d take me in and I’d get to spend a holiday with at least part of my family.
I hadn’t had that in a long time, but my hopes had been dashed when they told me they’d already made plans to spend Christmas with my father and brother in Costa Rica, and I wouldn’t even be able to see them.
If they hadn’t already left, they were probably at the airport, getting ready to board their flight to Juan Santamaria International.
Who the hell chooses to spend Christmas in the tropics?
My father, that was who. The Grinch. Which, if I were honest, was the only reason I was mad at tropical destinations. My brother’s house was beautiful, and it sat right on the beach. It was an oasis, really, but I couldn’t risk international travel right now. No way.
Besides, I hadn’t been invited.
Since that Christmas Eve night, when I’d told my family that I didn’t want to be a doctor and instead wanted to pursue a career in music, my father had spent maybe twelve hours in the same room with me, and that was a generous estimation.
And my brother and his wife, Mya, who annoyingly was also a doctor, had moved to the other side of the world to be even bigger do-gooders than they had been when they’d lived in San Francisco and my brother had headed up the children’s hospital there as their young, shining-star pediatric orthopedic surgeon.
Now he’d gone and upped the ante when he decided to move to Costa Rica so he could donate his services to help Nicaraguans fleeing their home country to escape political unrest.
Yeah, great. Without trying, my brother made me look like a fool who gave up the perfect life. And of course my father agreed with him.
As I crossed the Idaho/Wyoming border, I imagined my father and Jason lounging next to Jason’s and Mya’s infinity pool overlooking the ocean, under the shade of a palm tree, sipping Guaro sours and laughing at the mess I’d found myself in.
A famous country star walks in on her boyfriend fucking her financial advisor, who, bonus, also embezzled millions of dollars while she was sucking his dick?
Oh, it was a tale as old as time.
Correction: Ex-boyfriend. Ex-financial manager. I fired everyone and kicked that fame and money-hungry schmuck to the curb.
And now, two months later, I was still hiding out like a coward.
How had I not known? Yeah, so my relationship with Bryant was a no-brainer. It had been dying a despicable death since the moment it had begun, but my financial advisor? I thought I was smarter than that. How the hell did Caley get past my bullshit detector?
I’d known Bryant wasn’t “the one,” but I ignored that fact because it was easier to live my life if everyone thought it was a perfect life.
The bad press stayed away, and the good press didn’t go looking for naked boobie pics or sexting transcripts.
Not that there were any to be found. We hadn’t had sex in over a year, and when we had, it wasn’t what anyone would consider… satisfying.
But that jackass stole my money and spread lies and rumors about me which had cost me the trust of my label and the movie deal I’d been working on for almost two years.
The money wasn’t important. It never had been.
I’d live in a cardboard box in Westlake and eat Fruity Qs for every meal if it meant I could still make music for a living, but I’d believed in that movie.
I wanted to tell that story. Maybe it was only a made-for-TV movie about the life and career of Holly Collette, but she had been the queen of country music, and the way she was treated by the industry after she very bravely came forward about the sexual harassment she’d endured during her long career was despicable.
Her story needed to be told. So many people would listen if they knew what she’d really gone through, and how she’d come out the other side stronger than ever.
She and I had spent months talking about the project before she passed, but now, thanks to fucking Bryant Glasser and his big, lying mouth, everyone had seen his primetime tell-all, when he told the world I had emotionally abused him and that was why he’d had the affair.
And now everyone and their judgy grandma had an opinion about me: “Eli Winter should stick to what she knows. She can’t act.
She can barely sing. She should bow out now before she ruins Holly’s good name. ”
Didn’t I deserve to be heard on the subject before people condemned me and decided I was some diva jerk? But no one wanted to listen.
Bryant had made a fool of me to the whole goddamn world, and now, how could I show my face?
If she were still alive, I doubted Holly would even take my call at this point.
She was probably looking down from Heaven, crushed that the studio had cancelled our project and disappointed in me just like everyone else.
And all those little girls who’d loved my music and sang my songs?
Their parents had probably blocked me from their lives.
That was not okay. It was the whole reason I wanted to sing in the first place!
To bring light and happiness to young people, so they knew they weren’t alone when all the world seemed like such a harsh and horrible place.
It was what I’d needed after Mama died, and people like Holly Collette had given that to me, had lifted me up when all I knew was down, when my father wouldn’t talk to me or some days even look at me because he said I reminded him too much of Mama.
As much as I wanted to point my finger at Bryant (and possibly jab it into his eyeball), the current state of my career was my fault too. All because I hadn’t wanted to face the truth. Because I hadn’t wanted to admit that Eli Winter’s life wasn’t perfect.
TMX reporters had been hounding me since the tell-all.
I hadn’t left my house in weeks. When I made my escape two days ago, they tried to follow me out of LA, but my only two friends left in the world helped.
Luckily, Amy and I were the same height, and we had similar body types, so she wore a wig to hide her black hair and pretended to be me, then she made a big show in my bedroom window, like she was on the phone arguing with someone.
And then Joey, the best personal security guard on the damn planet, faked a heart attack in my driveway so I could escape out the back gate.
I never went anywhere without Joey, so the reporters wouldn’t believe that I’d leave him if he’d really been sick.
He hated letting me go alone. It took me a couple days to convince him, but he was tracking my phone and would keep his eye on the news for any signs things might’ve gone sideways, and I needed to do this on my own.