Redemption

Most people have moments they wish they could erase from memory. The recollection will flash into their mind unexpectedly, making them flush or cringe or pray the earth cracks open and buries them in obscurity.

I don’t have a single moment. Or even a few. I have four entire years of my life.

In my daydreams, those years never happened. I remained the good girl I’d been all through high school. I never hooked up with that one particular hot guy during my sophomore year of college. I didn’t fall into a downward spiral of rebellion, addiction, and public notoriety. I never threw away my friendships and my future for an endless series of temporary highs.

But the reality of life is simply this: daydreaming doesn’t change things. Nothing changes who we are and what we do except making one better choice after another, and even that can’t cancel past sins.

At twenty-three, I hit rock bottom. The bodyguard my family hired to keep me from dying through my own stupidity found me wasted yet again on the bathroom floor of another club. He made me puke my guts up and walked me around outside until he was convinced I hadn’t overdosed on whatever I took. We both ended up in the back of the SUV he drove me around in, him sitting in the back seat and me sprawled out, sobbing with my head on his lap. I distinctly remember begging him to help me.

Help me, Caleb. Please. I need help.

The first time I really meant it.

I didn’t want to live like that. I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to claim that life.

Caleb hauled my ass to rehab. One he chose rather than me and my dad. It wasn’t one of the fancy places I’d tried in the past, ones that cared only about taking rich people’s money while feeding them empty rhetoric and feel-good vibes. Because it was different, I actually made progress. It took months, but when I finally left, I felt almost like myself again.

My real self. Louisa Worthing. Only daughter of a billionaire workaholic. Not the wild party girl who’d become famous for being bad and creating scenes.

I was once more the girl I’d been for the first nineteen years of my life. Who loved painting and long walks and a few good friends and the rhythmic sound of the waves.

That’s who I’ve been for the past three years.

The only way I’ve been able to manage it—both the constant uphill climb to recovery and the crushing weight of guilt from those four years—was to start an entirely new life where no one knew me. I moved to a small coastal town in Maine. Kept to myself. Slowly got to know new people and permanently blocked everyone I used to party with.

I still cringe and burn with mortification when I think of my worst moments—so many of them, one after another, four years’ worth—but I try to focus instead on each new day before me.

And I’ve finally gotten to the point where I actually like my life and the Louisa I am now.

Which is why, on a cold, gray Saturday in February, the last thing I want is a disruption to my peace.

One of my cousins, William, has come to visit me with his lovely, stylish fiancée. William is more than ten years older than me, but I’ve always liked him, and I’ve never met Jade before, so I’ve been excited about their visit.

It doesn’t take long for me to realize that this isn’t simply a social call.

They arrive in a big fancy chauffeured car, but that isn’t unusual for my family. The huge Worthing fortune—made more than a hundred years ago—was split among the heirs of my father’s generation, but they’ve remained successful at business, so it’s grown rather than been depleted. I’m the only one of us Worthings who has given up all the trappings of wealth to live a simple life.

I invite William and Jade inside, and we chat for twenty minutes, but I can see they’re distracted and have something to say.

So I ask William what’s going on.

He’s a good-looking man with thick, dark hair like me and the same chocolate-brown eyes that all the Worthings have. He opens his mouth to answer, but then his expression twists. Reluctance.

Jade is a blonde with green eyes that match her name. She reaches over to squeeze William’s hand and says mildly, “There’s some trouble, and we’re afraid it might involve you now. It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” William grits out, slanting her an indignant look. “You’ve done absolutely nothing to make this happen. He’s a stalker. No one asks for that.”

I sit up straight. “It’s about that guy who was stalking you? I thought he was in prison.”

“He was.” Jade’s remarkably composed but not in that fake way I used to see in a lot of high-society women. She seems real. I like her. “He got out a few days ago.”

“Are you okay? Is he coming after you?”

“We don’t know,” William replies. “Obviously, we’re taking as many precautions as possible. But a search of his prison cell and his online communication makes us think he might have moved on from Jade. It looks like my connection to her has brought our whole family to his attention. His obsession may have shifted.”