Page 134 of Fly with Me

“No, I’ll be fine. Stay. This is a big night for you.”

“I’ll go get you a drink.” Stella kissed her cheek. “Come back soon.”

God, this all felt so real now. Was it just as real to her?

As soon as Olive hit the lobby, she called Derek back.

Derek didn’t bother with a greeting. “You have a Lindsay problem.”

“A what?”

“Does Lindsay have a key to your apartment?”

“Uh… no, of course not… Oh wait, yeah, actually she does. I think I gave her one so she could water my plants when I took that trip to Grand Teton. Half my plants died.” She almost crossed herself at the memory of her poor dead ferns, Finnegan and Fergus. “Why do you ask?”

“She put stuff on her Instagram stories about you and Stella. She tagged the TODAY show and People, calling Stella a liar.”

“She’s angry and wanting to get back at me, Derek. I knew she was going to do something. She knew the last event was tonight. She’s known about this for weeks because she saw it on my calendar.”

“She found some binder at your place. Said it proved your relationship was fake.”

Olive froze.

Oh fuck.

The binder would be suspicious, but not completely damning. It would be hugely embarrassing to Stella, though. It also might mean people would go looking into her account. Looking for anything. It might bring up stuff about Jake too if she was getting bad press. People loved dirt. Shit.

She held out a hand to brace herself on the wall, conscious of the way people’s eyes glanced her way as they passed. She felt a flush of heat on the back of her neck as if the room temperature had risen twenty degrees. She worked to keep her breathing steady.

“Are you there, Olive?”

“Just dissociating.”

“Seems healthy.”

“What am I going to do?”

“You have to tell Stella.”

“I can’t tonight. She’s so happy. Everything she wants might finally be happening.” Olive didn’t want anything fucking with tonight. She had pushed the conversation with her father to the back of her mind. She had pushed everything with Jake even further back. She needed a few more hours before everything crumbled.

“Can you tell her after?”

“That’d probably be better.”

But still awful.

“I called Lindsay and told her to take it all down. She hung up on me. Said if you want to talk about it, you should call her about it.”

Olive tightened her grip on her phone. “I need to get my super to change my locks. Jesus, I can’t believe she was snooping in my apartment. Who does that?” A shudder of violation roiled inside her. The apartment where she and Stella had spent such happy times had an intruder.

“Give me your super’s number, and I’ll call him.”

“No, you don’t have to do that. I can handle this. I can handle it.” Her fingertips dug into her scalp.

“Olive, you can handle everything, but please let me help you with this, so you can have a nice night.”

A nice night. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Murphy’s Law. “Okay. I’ll text you the number.”

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