The Ex-Best Thing (The Belacourts #1)

Bree

The key to disappearing successfully is leaving no trace…

which is exactly why I don’t tell a soul I’m running away.

What am I running from? Stupid mistakes, mostly.

As someone who’s grown up in the spotlight, thanks to my dad’s wealth and my mom’s ambition, slipping away undetected takes extra planning and finesse.

Because no one can know where I am. No one.

My parents won’t understand. My sisters are wrapped up in their own lives.

My brother and his wife—who’ve been harboring me the last few weeks—just had a baby, and they don’t need all the paparazzi on their doorstep once the crap hits the fan.

Alonzo doesn’t work for me anymore. Most of my friends wouldn’t be able to stay off their social live videos long enough to keep me hidden, even if I bought them a new pair of Jimmy Choos every morning.

And, despite working for me for four years, I don’t actually know if Lucy or Paula would keep my whereabouts a secret or turn me over to the highest bidder for a couple thousand bucks and a few hours on the front page.

Sometimes it’s hard not knowing who you can really trust.

Which is why I sneak out of my brother’s house in the middle of the night and leave my precious dog behind. In my defense, Noah is the one who told me to go sit on a beach somewhere. He probably meant the one outside his back door and not on the opposite side of the country. But I took his advice.

By the time they notice I’m gone, I’ll be on a plane somewhere over Kansas.

At three in the morning, the Tampa airport isn’t busy enough that I’m afraid of being discovered, but I’m cautious anyway.

It’s amazing how a few little alterations can become an entire disguise.

Part of it boils down to using the same make-up artist for the last few years.

People are trained to see me looking a particular way—the way I appear on screen, in magazine ads, on makeup stalls in Sephora, and all over their social media platforms. If I dress in neutral colors, put on a wig, dot some freckles and layer on heavy eye makeup, change my lip shape, then bam—I smack my lips under the fluorescent lights—I can slide smoothly under the radar.

It’s not foolproof. I’ve been spotted in brunette wigs. But blonde ones are fairly safe. Today’s little mom-bob is so over-highlighted it almost passes for white. I do extra thick eyeliner, widen my lip shape, and bring my cheekbones down with some bronzer.

Good enough.

Now to test it in the wild.

I pack up my disguise kit and toss it in my bag. It would’ve been simpler to charter a plane and cross the country in solitude, but that would leave a paper trail I can’t have. Short of driving from Florida to California, this is my best bet for getting totally off the grid.

Which is vital. If my momager finds me, I’ll have to…no, I’m not ready to think about that yet.

Yes, I’ve messed up. Royally. I WILL fix it eventually. But right now, I need to get away long enough to clear my head.

And maybe eat a few Skittles. Paula isn’t here to slap them out of my hand, so I pick up two packages and a green juice—it counts for vegetables—in the closest convenience shop and take them to the counter.

The checkout girl looks tired, but at somewhere in her early twenties, she’s my prime age bracket.

I smile widely and try to hold her attention while she rings up my colorful breakfast.

She gives me a second glance, making my heart beat faster.

Have I been too cocky? I drop my gaze and see a People magazine with my face on the cover caught mid-frown—nice; they had to choose a day right before a Botox appointment—next to a grainy image of my ex-assistant/ex-fling Alonzo with his new girlfriend.

The title screams in big block letters brEE BELACOURT RUNS FROM HEARTbrEAK!

I take it out of the rack and turn it around. They know nothing. I’m not pining for Lonnie. I’m the one who broke up with him.

But making me look heartbroken sells more songs, so my mom’s letting the media run with it, I guess.

I’ve only ever had one breakup that truly cracked a fracture in my heart, but I was sixteen and na?ve.

Can it even count as real love at such a young age?

It felt that way. Benny the teenage heartthrob was everywhere, the number one celebrity for the twelve-to-eighteen female set.

The age range jumped another decade or two higher if you count women who devoured his music.

But that was a long time ago. He got out of the biz while he was still young—collected his Grammys and disappeared from the limelight with gobs of money and enough royalty credits to keep him swimming in residual income for the rest of his life.

He’s the one who told me about the sleepy little town on the northern Californian coast I’m escaping to.

We’d talked about seeing it together someday, but that was a lifetime ago.

Now he lives somewhere in Montana, surrounded by horses and mountains, and probably has ropes slung over his shoulder at all times so he can lasso his cows.

I haven’t thought of him in ages. Not until I was desperate for somewhere to hide and a conversation popped into my head from a decade ago.

We’d been lounging on his sofa, pretending to watch Brooklyn 99, and I’d asked where he’d want to live if he had to go into witness protection like the characters in the show.

“Bodega Bay,” he’d said without hesitation.

“Why does that sound familiar?”

“My grandma lives there.”

“That’s cute.”

He’d shrugged, tracing patterns on my arms. “It’s a small town with zero connection to the real world. I wouldn’t even need witness protection to stay off the grid there.”

A chill sweeps over my skin as I shoo off the memory. Right now, I need a house out of the way where I can order in groceries and figure out my game plan. Ergo, Bodega Bay.

As long as I can reach it without being recognized.

I pay for my breakfast and notice the image on the magazine next to mine.

Jaida, my once-friend-now-turned-archnemesis, is smiling at the camera, her white teeth gleaming and luscious caramel-colored hair falling over her bare shoulder from its long high ponytail.

My stomach sours with a mixture of regret and disgust. I can’t think about this now. I can’t think about her.

Escape. I’m trying to escape. It’s imperative I get away, and then I won’t have to face any of this yet.

Maybe ever?

I leave the convenience store without being identified and find a place to sit to wait for my flight to board. I have two layovers to go and an entire day ahead of me in airports. All I have to do is make it to California, and I’m home free.

Three flights, two layovers, and one delay later, I’m stepping off the plane onto the tarmac in Santa Rosa, the crisp midnight air cutting through my sweater.

The wig has been itching since noon. Layers of makeup are caked one on top of the other, making my skin feel grimy and greasy.

I need a full day in the spa and an esthetician to reverse the incoming breakout—

Actually, I don’t. Because when I’m alone in the beach house I’ve rented for a month, no one will be there to see the ill effects of this entire day of travel and stress and too many layers of BB cream. Liberation claws through my body, filling me with so much elation I can barely see straight.

For the next four weeks, I don’t have to see anyone.

Human-sized sculptures of Snoopy and Woodstock dot the sidewalk in front of the smallest airport I’ve ever stepped foot in. Once I’ve secured a taxi, the driver informs me we’re forty-two minutes from my destination.

I’m glad this tiny town even has a car service. I was a little worried when we had to deplane outside and walk into the miniscule airport that I’d be footing it the twenty-nine miles to my Airbnb.

And what is the obsession with the Peanuts characters?

But none of that matters. I would sleep in a life-sized replica of Snoopy’s red doghouse if it meant true privacy, and according to a guy I used to know, this is one of the few places left in the country where I’ll be able to get that.

No randos taking my picture.

No guilt-trip text chains forcing me into attending events.

No pasting on a fake smile for thirty whole days.

And no facing my stupid mistakes.

The drive out to Bodega Bay gives me enough time to find the entrance information for my rental and screenshot it.

Which is good, because by the time we reach the house, it’s clear that my phone reception is almost nonexistent.

The house is a little dated, but it’s a small price to pay for anonymity.

Of all the beaches in all the world, I chose this one because very few people have heard of it before, except the locals.

At least, that’s how Benny made it sound when he described it to me all those years ago.

Honestly, I kind of hope I’ll get to meet his grandma. Maybe right before I leave town, I can look her up, pretend to be a massive Benny Rhodes superfan, and ask her to show me his baby pictures. Did his baby eyes crinkle when he smiled the same way they did as a teenager?

Not that it matters. I don’t know why I’m even thinking about him. It’s just this town. It’s making me nostalgic.

“It looks kinda dark, lady,” the taxi driver says, peering at my rental house after putting the car in park.

Lady? I look that old? At least my disguise is working.

“It won’t once I turn the lights on,” I say brightly. “Which house is it?”

“That blue one.” He points.

I pay him, tipping him well for driving me all the way out to the middle of nowhere, and climb out of the car. He helps with my ultra heavy bag, then his brake lights wash red over me while he drives away down the narrow one-car lane.

Cool, salty air fills my lungs. It’s too dark to see, but I can hear the faint hum of the waves in the distance. My Airbnb is on a ledge overlooking the ocean, lined up in a row of squat single-level houses made up of right angles and faded colors.