Chapter 5
LEXI
Iknew sneaking out was reckless.
I’d known it when I tugged a baseball cap low and whispered to Hannah’s sleeping form that I’d “just be gone an hour.”
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do something stupid in Charleston. And yet here I was, heart pounding like I was seventeen again sneaking past curfew.
I’d told myself I just wanted air. Normalcy. Maybe a drink somewhere nobody knew my name.
But really, I wanted to feel something. Anything.
The house had been too quiet. Too clean. My skin itched with the weight of my own self-control. I’d spent the day being handled and lit and told when to breathe. Now, I wanted to misbehave.
I’d found Pelicangate online, some local bar I’d seen mentioned in an article about hidden Charleston gems. Supposedly, it was where regular people went. The kind of place where I could disappear for a while.
So, I had.
The bartender had been kind, chatty in that Southern way that made you feel seen but not studied. I’d ordered a drink, something simple, and started to relax.
And then it had all gone sideways.
A man in uniform—Navy, I think—had bought me a second drink.
I’d told myself it was fine. I’d handled worse. He was handsome in that easy, American-hero way, all white teeth and swagger. I’d thought maybe, just maybe, this was how a normal night started.
Until it wasn’t.
Until another man appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my glass, and stopped me from drinking it. Until he had hit the Navy guy so hard I heard the air leave his lungs. Until chaos had swallowed everything.
Now, I was standing outside that same bar, the sound of shouting spilling through the open door behind me.
For a beat, I expected him—the stranger—to still be there. To explain. To give me something to hold onto besides the tremor in my hands. But he’d already turned, disappearing into the humid dark like he belonged to it.
No name. No goodbye. Just gone.
The first flash went off to my left. Then another. Then ten more.
“Lexi! Over here!”
“Who was that guy?”
“Lexi, smile!”
The air thickened with heat and breath and the metallic smell of the river.
People spilled from the bar and off the sidewalk, phones raised like a garden of glass.
Behind them, a few faces weren’t smiling.
Curious, hungry, calculating. It was a look I’d learned early—some people want your selfie, some want a piece of you.
I lifted my chin, smoothing my expression into the mask I’d worn since I was nineteen. The press smile. The one that said: I’m human, but not yours.
“Hey,” I called lightly, stepping into the wedge of space a bouncer made with his body. “It’s late, y’all. I’m not doing photos tonight. Please be safe getting home, okay?”
The word y’all bought me goodwill. It always did in the South. A drunk girl near the front squealed. A guy in a college T-shirt apologized to me and then asked for a hug, anyway. I dodged gently. The bouncer—broad as a door—angled his arm to funnel me along the brick.
“Side street,” he muttered in a low voice meant only for me. “We’ll get you clear.”
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it.
He hustled me toward the curb. A car braked too hard—a rideshare driver, maybe hoping for a celebrity payday—but I shook my head and kept walking. The worst thing you can do in a crowd like that is stop. Stopping invites chaos. Stopping says, take more.
“Lexi, who was the guy?”
“Was that your boyfriend?”
“Did he hit a Navy officer—was that a Navy guy?”
Their questions chased me down the street, tripping over each other. I kept my smile soft, my eyes soft, my no softer.
At the corner, I slid around a parked truck, ducked into the shadow of a narrow lane, and finally let myself breathe.
I hated that I was shaking. I hated that my brain kept flashing images like a broken projector: the uniformed man’s easy grin; the casual, practiced tilt of his hand over my glass; the speed of the stranger’s fist; the thud of a body hitting the floor.
A low whistle cut through the night. The bartender—beard, kind eyes—jogged up the lane after me, not too close. Hands up like he was approaching a wild animal.
“You good?” he asked, voice gentle.
“I will be.”
He looked pained. “I’m sorry. I try to keep an eye … and then it’s busy … and—”
“Not on you,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have come alone.”
His gaze dropped to my clenched fist.
“Want me to call you a car?”
“Yes, please.”
He hailed one with the ease of someone who’s done it too many times. When the Prius nosed into the lane, he opened the back door and gave me a look that felt like a warning without the lecture.
“Thanks,” I said, sliding in.
The driver peered at me in the mirror—sixty-ish, cap low, eyes kind. “Where to, ma’am?”
I gave him the address on James Island. He nodded and pulled into the flow.
Charleston at night was a painting done with wet brushes—the glimmer of the river, the smear of headlights, palmettos black against a bruised sky.
We took the bridge, the city’s glow receding behind us, the marsh opening like a secret.
I rolled the window down two inches. The night pressed in, lush and green, the air tasting like salt and cut grass.
“You okay back there?” the driver asked. His accent was soft, not prying.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Weird night,” he said philosophically. “Town’s full of those. You famous or something?”
A laugh slipped out of me, tired and honest. “Something.”
He smiled into the mirror and let the quiet come back.
I stared at my reflection in the dark glass—baseball cap, plain sweater, no makeup. If I hadn’t been me, I would have been any other girl hitching a ride home after a night out. That was the cruelest part. Normal was always just one costume away and never actually available.
We turned off the main road, weaving through live oaks to the rental. The driver pulled to the curb and killed the lights, as if he knew I wanted subtlety.
“Thank you,” I said, handing him cash before he could object. “For the quiet.”
“Take care, Miss,” he said.
I stood on the street a moment, letting the night fold around me. The house hunched in blues and grays, porch wide, columns bright even in the dark.
I crept up the front steps, careful on the boards that squeaked. The lock turned, soft as a breath. Inside, the house smelled like a furnished rental trying its best to be a home.
“Lexi?”
I yelped and spun around, hand to my chest.
Carrie stood at the end of the walk, a tote slung over one shoulder, her curly hair twisted up with a pencil. She lifted both palms.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Shit,” I exhaled, leaning against the doorjamb. “What are you doing here?”
“Dropping off the new heels Franklin’s assistant demanded for tomorrow’s stills,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I glanced instinctively toward the windows. The house was dark except for the little nightlight Hannah insisted on leaving in the hall. “She’s asleep,” I said. “If she wakes up and sees me out here …”
“She’ll what?” Carrie’s smile faded when she took in my face. “What happened?”
I stood there, just breathing, feeling the doorframe cool against my back. “Someone spiked my drink,” I said finally. “A stranger stopped me before I could take a sip.”
Carrie’s expression sharpened instantly, her mouth going tight.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “Let’s not do this on the front porch.”
We slipped around the side of the house to the back deck, the marsh laid out like a vast, dark secret. Spanish moss fluttered in the faintest breeze. Carrie set the tote down and perched on the step. I sat beside her, suddenly exhausted.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
I did. The bar. The uniform. The stranger who wasn’t a stranger to my nerves. The way his hand had landed like a verdict. I tried to keep my voice even, to smooth it into a story I’d tell on a talk show someday, funny and contained and already healed. It kept catching on the sharp parts.
When I finished, Carrie stared at the water for a long time. “You didn’t drink any?”
I shook my head. “He stopped me.”
“Thank God,” she said, with a ferocity that made my throat sting. “Do you want to go to the hospital, anyway? They can check—”
“I’m okay,” I said, meaning it physically, if not anything else. “Just … shaken.”
“We have to tell Hannah.”
“In the morning.” My voice was small. “Please.”
She watched me for a beat. “All right. Morning.”
We sat in silence, the kind that feels like a hand on your back. Finally, Carrie fished her phone from her pocket.
“You’ve seen it already?” she asked.
“I turned mine off in the car.”
“Smart.” She unlocked her screen. It glowed against her face, lighting her high cheekbones, the tiny crease between her brows that showed up only when she worried. “The gossip accounts have clips from inside the bar. It’s dark and chaotic, but … you can see enough.”
She angled the phone. Grainy video. Music.
Shouts. A flash of my sweater and hat. A uniformed arm.
And then the punch—fast, surgical. The crowd lurching.
The caption a bonfire of speculation: A-LIST ACTRESS CAUGHT IN BAR brAWL WITH NAVY OFFICER?
! Scroll. Who is Mystery Man? Scroll. Was star’s drink tampered with?
The comments were a carnival: half conspiracy theorists, half armchair lawyers, a handful of genuine concern drowned by noise.
I swallowed. “It looks worse than it was.” A lie. It looked exactly as bad as it had felt.
Carrie swiped again. A still shot—a shaky freeze frame of the stranger’s hand over my glass. You could just make out the angle, the control. The way his body was already between me and the uniform.
“Not worse,” she said gently. “Just … realer.”
I pressed my fingertips to my eyes. Stars burst behind my lids. “Hannah is going to murder me.”
“She’s going to be pissed,” Carrie agreed. “So is Franklin if this pulls a crowd to set. He’ll pretend it’s art-related outrage about the sanctity of story, but really it’ll be about time and money.”