2. RILEY
RILEY
Not a Serial Killer
The Sinclair’s Runaway Bride. A title I’d rather wear than be called Mrs. Sinclair.
A few hours ago, I was supposed to be walking down an aisle in front of three hundred and forty people, on the arm of my father, toward the man who picked out my wedding band and my china pattern and the song the string quartet was going to play during the first dance.
Now I'm being driven up into the Hollywood Hills by a stranger I climbed into his car at a red light.
The math of the day doesn't feel real.
Easton offered. I want to say I thought about it. I didn’t, really.
The list of places I could not go ran through my head in the same five seconds it took him to say the words. My mother. She’d dial Preston before I made it out of the driveway.
My father would lecture me about how public a scene I’d made and then dial Preston.
My friends, Madison, and Rachel, the ones I used to laugh with before Preston started finding reasons each of them was toxic or too much or not good for me.
I haven’t spoken to most of them in over a year, and reaching out from inside a wedding-day catastrophe would feel like sending up a flare over a house I haven’t visited in a decade.
I have my brother, Mason. He would believe me, but Preston knows about Mason, and Mason’s apartment will be the second place he checks, if he doesn’t already have someone parked outside it.
A hotel would have been the obvious answer for a normal person. Except every credit card I own is linked to a joint account in Preston’s name.
I have no money. I have a dress that costs twenty thousand dollars and one shoe, and that is what I have.
Six years.
Six years of letting him handle everything, because he was so good at handling things, and every time I tried to handle something myself, he found a small, clever way to show me I’d done it wrong.
I gave him the whole of me and didn’t notice I was emptying out.
I press my forehead against the cool window and watch the city drop away under us.
“We’re here.”
I lift my head. The road has narrowed to a private drive. A black iron gate comes into view, with a keypad. He punches a code without looking at it. The gate slides open.
The house at the end of the drive is glass and pale stone, with the kind of clean modern lines that magazines call understated and the rest of the world calls expensive. A long, low sweep of it tucked into the hill like it grew there.
The neighborhood, what I saw of it on the way up, was the kind of quiet that costs money with gated entrances, discreet landscaping, and houses set back from the road behind walls you can't see over.
Whatever Easton does for a living, it pays well.
Really well.
I’ve spent enough time around Preston and his friends to recognize money when I see it, and this house has plenty of it. Maybe Easton works in finance. Maybe he’s a lawyer. Maybe he runs some company I’ve never heard of.
I don’t ask.
For once, I don’t want to know.
I’m tired of finance guys and lawyers and men who talk about portfolios over dinner and compare watches when they think nobody notices. I’m tired of caring what someone does, who their family is, or how many zeroes sit in their bank account.
Right now, Easton is just Easton.
I follow him inside and then I stop.
Nobody lives here.
Not literally. There’s furniture. A long, low couch, a coffee table, an armchair angled toward a fireplace that looks like it has never been used. A kitchen island with three barstools. A dining table for eight. All of it is expensive and well-chosen.
This house is fully furnished and thoughtfully too, but the air still smells new, the way an Airbnb smells the first night, like the throw pillows are still in their original arrangement and the candles on the mantel have never been lit.
No coats by the door. No mail on the counter.
No half-read book splayed open on the arm of the couch.
No water glass anyone forgot to take to the kitchen.
The whole place has the clean, staged quietness of a property someone bought intending to live in and then forgot the second half of.
I turn a slow circle. I can’t help it.
Easton watches me do it, in that watchful way he’s been staring since I got into his car.
But when my eyes find his, I see a smile tug at his lips.
“Relax,” he says. “I’m not a serial killer. Serial killers have homely homes, and probably better furniture.”
I laugh before I mean to, and it startles me. I hadn’t been sure laughing was still on the menu today. But somehow, since meeting this man, I’ve done that a couple of times, and even thrown a few jokes around.
“That’s… actually a little reassuring?”
“Little?” His eyes narrow playfully.
I shake my head, spinning around to see the place again.
“The bar for today is underground.” I look at the orderly arrangement of the throw pillows. Then the bare wall across from it. The house may be well furnished, but a few pieces are still missing in certain spaces, giving it a work-in-progress look. “Do you actually live here?”
“Technically.”
“What does technically mean?”
He sets his keys on the kitchen counter, the one surface in the room that has any signs of life, a phone charger, a protein bar wrapper, a mostly empty coffee mug, and pulls open the fridge. He looks inside for a second, like he’s checking if it’s still there, then closes it again.
“I bought it eight months ago, but I’m barely here. Most days I leave early and get back late, and I’m away a lot too. I haven’t exactly had time to...” He gestures broadly at the space around him. “...live in it, let alone worry about the furniture.”
He glances around like he’s seeing the room for the first time.
“Everything you see was picked out by an interior designer the realtor recommended. I basically showed up with a suitcase and started sleeping here. So, no. I haven’t made it a thing.”
“You mean a home.”
“I meant a thing.” But the corner of his mouth tilts up. “I’ve been meaning to get a rug or something.”
That draws my attention to the floors. They’re clean. Pristine even.
“Ever considered living in it?” I wave my hand around the space. “Walking around… spending time in the living room… or something at least? It's what you need to break it in, not some fancy rug.”
I look around again, and something about the emptiness that I can’t quite name makes me feel fractionally better. Not better like things are okay, but better like there’s no version of me here. It’s like being handed a clean slate to start over. The irony.
I press my palm flat against the bare wall beside me. Cool plaster.
“Well, welcome to my house, Ms. Brooks,” He winks. “Come on, let me give you a tour.”
He beckons me to follow but for a minute, I’m thrown off.
“A tour? Like it’s a museum? I’m only here for the night. A couch to rest my head would be fucking generous of you right now, and that’s all I need.”
He cocks a brow.
“It’s a five-bedroom house, Riley. You’re not sleeping on the couch, and you sure as hell don’t have to figure out your entire life tonight.
” He nods toward the hallway. “Come on. I’ll give you the tour.
I’m gone a lot during the day, so if you’re staying here, I want you to be comfortable when I’m not around. "
I’m floored by his offer.
He’s a stranger. One I made my getaway driver abruptly and rudely. I barreled into his life without warning, and he’s taken the reins to step up for me.
My eyes almost water. Almost because this man has the guts to look me in the eyes like I just stepped out of an alternate universe, and he’s not being the nicest person to me at this moment.
“I don’t know whatever you’ve got going on in that pretty head, but come on,” He waves his hand. This time, I don’t wait. My legs propel me forward.
He gives me the tour in about six minutes, not the entire house, but enough to get my bearings. Guest room at the end of the hall, queen bed, clean white bedding, a lamp with a shade still in the plastic. He pulls the plastic off the shade without comment and drops it in a trash can.
“Bathroom’s through there.” He pushes the door open. Large, slate-tiled, walk-in shower. “Towels are in the cabinet.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a lock on the bedroom door.” He says it like it’s nothing, just a standard feature he’s mentioning the same way he’d mention the Wi-Fi password. He’s already turning back toward the hallway. “Use it if you want.”
I stare at his back.
He offered me a house with a room and a lock, and he said it like it would be strange if he didn’t. Like the most obvious thing in the world was to tell a woman he’d known for forty-five minutes that she was safe here.
This man has literally given me his house.
“Easton,” I say his name like a prayer because it might as well be.
He stops in the doorway.
“Thank you. I mean that. I know that…” My voice wobbles at the hinge of the sentence. I push through it. “I know this is a lot to ask of a stranger. And you didn’t even let me ask it, you just...” I stop. A lump forms in my throat. I try again. “Thank you.”
He looks at me for a beat. Something moves through his expression—not pity, I’d recognize pity, and he’s never looked at me with that, in all of the forty-five minutes I’ve known him.
That makes me laugh.
“I can’t believe it’s only been less than an hour, and you…” I exhale, trying to will back the tears that are filling my eyes. “You’ve trusted me with your home, a-and…”
I see him step forward and extend an arm like he’s coming in for a hug, but he catches himself last minute. Silence swallows the rest of my words. A minute passes, and I just stare on, wordlessly.
“There's a t-shirt and some shorts on the bed,” he says. “They’re going to be too big.”
“That’s okay. It’s… It’s more than I need.”
He turns to walk away, but stops at the door.
“Riley…” His eyes meet mine again. “You can stay as long as you need.”