Epilogue
Shae
One month later
I practice my smile in Los Angeles’s reflection at noon—thirty-four floors up, glass for days, the city glittering like a bowl of diamonds I plan to swallow whole.
The studio we rented has a view of the park.
It also has blackout curtains, which is useful because the lighting guy keeps trying to blast me with purity.
“Less angel,” I tell him. “More mercy with a side of threat.”
Blake huffs a laugh behind his camera. “Note to lighting: menace at seventy percent.”
“Sixty,” I correct, tilting my chin as the warmth hits my face. “Don’t overserve.”
He frames me tighter. His hair’s a mess in the curated way that makes makeup women blush and hand him things. Blake has that marrow-deep amusement that reads like empathy from across a room. On me, it looks like complicity. I like that.
“Mic check,” he calls.
“Second Chances with Shae Halston,” I purr, letting the title roll like I invented salvation. “Season one: How we forgive the unforgivable.”
“Perfect,” he says. “Give me your intro.”
I turn to camera two, soften my eyes—the way the coach taught me when America needed a widow and I was auditioning to be one.
“I used to be a statistic,” I say into the lens, confiding. “A number. A headline. A villain. Then I wasn’t.” I smile like I didn’t do everything they accuse me of. “This isn’t about what happened to me. It’s about what happens next.”
From the control room, the audio tech gives a thumbs-up.
The producer we hired for three weeks—adorable, earnest, already too attached—presses a hand to her chest like I just healed the sick.
Bless. She’ll quit by the end of the month, insist on working for me for free, then cry when I tell her no.
It’s not personal. It’s gravity. People orbit.
“Again,” Blake says. “More breath. Let them feel you breathe.”
I inhale. Hold. Exhale into the mic like a guided-meditation con artist.
“Perfect,” he says. “Take five.”
The studio assistant—Bryn? Brie?—hands me a green juice. I take a courtesy sip. Grass and hope. “Do you have coffee?”
“We’re on a detox,” she says, thrilled, like she joined a cult and got the matching hoodie.
“I’m on a launch,” I say. “Bring me caffeine.”
She scurries.
Blake comes closer, the camera hanging from his neck, lens still pointed at me because he can’t help it. He documents me the way men document storms—with awe and a little fear.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “You’re having fun.”
“Fun is the sound of money.”
I glance past him at the city. Downtown LA webs outward like a patchwork of steel and lost dreams. Somewhere in all that, Harper vanished into a hole the internet calls self-care and I call witness protection without the paperwork.
Her feed went silent. She never posted our last interview.
James posted once: a ring on a windowsill and a prayer-hands emoji. The comments think she’s pregnant.
I know better.
“Think she’s listening?” Blake asks, because of course he’s thinking of her too.
“Doubt it,” I say.
He watches me a beat too long, then flicks his gaze to my mouth like he’s reminding himself not to kiss it on the clock. Which is adorable. As if I don’t control all the clocks.
“I don’t know. Some people don’t come back for revenge. They just wait.”
I nod, thinking how right he is.
Bryn/Brie returns with coffee then. “Nitro?” she chirps.
“Saint,” I say, taking it. “If I take the Lord’s name in vain later, He’ll know it’s about you.”
She flushes scarlet and vanishes. Blake shakes his head, amused.
My phone rattles with a text from Iris.
Retreat venue is great! Welcome packets are set up at reception and transportation from the airport confirmed.
Perfect, I type back. Thanks for everything, you’re priceless, sister. I add that last word, a dark smile curling my mouth.
“Who’s got you smiling like a cat that ate an entire cage of canaries?” Blake asks.
“Iris,” I say. “Costa Rica. Making sure everything runs smoothly when we arrive.”
He grins. “You terrify people.”
“I give them a category to sort themselves into. Terrified is a category.”
“You get our flight details?” he asks. “Evelyn wants to lock the schedule.”
“Booked,” I say. “Direct out of LAX. Private transfer to Nosara. Resort sends a car.”
“And the practitioners?”
I sip, savor, lie. “Confirmed.”
He lifts a brow. “All of them?”
“Mm.” I keep it noncommittal. “I’m streamlining.”
“Streamlining,” he repeats, tasting it like an unfamiliar spice.
“We don’t need six facilitators when one will do,” I say. “And I’m a one-woman orchestra.”
He lowers onto the stool opposite me, legs wide, elbows on thighs, camera cradled like a sleeping animal. “You’re seriously doing this.”
“I’m seriously doing this,” I say, running a hand through my loose waves. “The retreat model is an ATM with better views.”
“And you’re… what again?” He looks delighted. “A reiki master?”
“Certified,” I say. “By the Church of Me.”
He laughs. “Say the other one.”
“Hypnotherapist.” I give it sacrament weight. “I take their hand, count backward from ten, and by seven they’ll be confessing to crimes they didn’t commit and thanking me for the privilege.”
“Your ethics are showing.”
“They’re designer,” I say. “I wear them for photos.”
He studies me the way he does when he’s mapping continuity. “And Harper?”
“What about her?”
“If she resurfaces mid-retreat,” he says, “with a story that hurts.”
“Then she can buy a day pass and try breathwork,” I say.
He leans back, pleased and a little appalled. “God, I love you.”
“I know,” I say, and drink.
We run three segments. The intro lands on the third take. The sponsor break lands on the first—Second Chances with Shae Halston is brought to you by… insert brand that wants my redemption to rub off on their protein bars. Everyone wants in on absolution. It’s tax deductible.
At lunch we eat salads that taste like cardboard. Blake spreads the Costa Rica itinerary across a high table: drone shots, mock schedules, talking points.
“Seven nights,” he says, tapping the grid. “Forty attendees. Two tiers: Healer’s Circle and Survivor Pass.”
“Healers pay more,” I say. “They get a selfie and a bonus session where I pretend to touch their aura.”
“Schedule?”
“Morning ocean plunge. Breathwork. Hypnosis. Afternoon workshops on forgiveness, resilience, and selling your pain at a markup. Evening cacao ceremony. Sunrise yoga for the ones who like punishment.”
He laughs. “And tell me about the practitioners again?”
“Cancelled,” I say brightly, spearing a cherry tomato that bursts like a tiny crime scene. “Their fees are wasteful. It’s not fraud if the experience feels real.”
“And it will?”
“Ask my followers,” I say. “Meaning is a group project.”
He drums his fingers once. “Evelyn’s fine with this?”
“Evelyn is fine with compelling,” I say. “Compelling is me on a deck in linen, touching a woman’s forehead while she sobs about her cousin. Compelling is not a forty-five-year-old man with a ponytail explaining nervous systems.”
Blake doesn’t argue. He knows which battles he wins. He picks the ones with good lighting.
I check my phone. The retreat account has crossed a quarter-million in deposits and sponsor payments. The pretty-water-bottle brand wants to send engraved ones. The powdered-mushroom brand wants to send a shaman. I tell them to send money.
My DMs are a church service. You saved me. You are my mirror. Will you touch my hands and tell me I’m not a monster? I favorite them like I’m stocking a pantry. A well-fed woman can feed many.
“Door,” someone calls from the hall. “We’re back in five.”
I stand—and then a voice I don’t want to hear says, “Don’t start without me.”
Lila.
She blows in like a winter draft that wears lipstick—legs, expensive coat, sunglasses that suggest she believes in witness protection for beginners. She pulls them off and smiles like we’re old friends. We’re not, but she’s decided we are, which is the same thing.
“Hi, star,” she sing-songs. “You look edible.”
Blake’s jaw flexes. “How’d you get past the door?”
“Smiled,” she says. “Told them I was delivering a subpoena.”
“Funny,” I say. “Security enjoys jokes.”
“They love me.” She walks right up and air-kisses my hair like she’s blessing it. Up close, she smells like wealth and a candle store. “I came to congratulate you.”
“On what?”
“On being inevitable,” she says, eyes shiny. “You’re doing the thing we talked about.”
“We didn’t talk about this,” I say.
“We did,” she says softly. “You said the world doesn’t forgive women like us. We have to rebrand. Remember?”
I don’t. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. My life is a parade of women like her insisting we shared a cigarette, a secret, a moment outside a bathroom. They want to be origin stories. It’s cute. It’s leverage if you let it.
Blake clears his throat. “We’re mid-block. This is a closed set.”
Lila ignores him. Her eyes stay on me, smile tilting intimate.
“Also,” she adds, lowering her voice, “Harper Lane’s obituary is up. Drowned in the bathtub at her AirBnB in Ojai after a long recording day. They’re calling it a freak accident—something about herbal tea. Guess she was allergic to cheap chamomile.”
I look at her like she’s a spreadsheet. “Shame.”
I let the beat stretch long enough to give her nothing. Blake goes still—men do that when they smell a landmine.
Lila’s smile widens, satisfied. “I’m not here to be a problem,” she says. “I’m here to be a solution.”
“To what problem?”
She counts on manicured fingers. “You need a woman beside you at the retreat so it looks like community, not coronation. You need someone who can hold a mic and cry on cue but won’t outshine you.
Someone who can improvise when a participant confesses to the wrong thing.
And someone who won’t call a lawyer when she sees how the sausage is made. ”
“And that’s you,” Blake says, flat.