Page 5 of The Challenger

A sportswriter nicknamed Chavez after a natural disaster because he swept over his opponents and left behind a path of destruction, just like the real thing. If the internet whispers are true, tornado refers more to his demeanor than his play in the past few years, but the pressure of not living up to all the hype cannot be an immediate concern for anyone driving around in this flashy beast. A Ferrari is beyond my pay grade, but we would look good in it together—top down, my curls whipping in the wind.

Señorita.

The fiery melody of his voice thrums through me, somehow more powerful even in absentia. I mentally sift through our charged conversation and latch onto the one tidbit niggling at the back of my mind.

Let it go, Flynn.

But I can't.

And intel gathering is hard to resist when the opportunity stares me in the face. I glance around for potential witnesses, feeling like a second-rate spy. Careful not to brush against anything and trigger an alarm, I peer through the tinted driver’s side window. Not that I expected a Big Gulp in the cupholder or candy wrappers littering the floor but talk about immaculate. And go figure, he was telling the truth. Slowly cooking to death on the caramel leather dash is his cell phone.

But the Lotería card dangling from the rearview mirror on a yellow ribbon is what sends a shiver up my spine. I stagger back, thumping against the sheet metal of my Escalade. Memories start to fog my brain like poison gas.

El Corazon.

I am not particularly superstitious, but the image of a bloody arrow slicing through a heart—a real one, not one of those soft and round Valentine's Day affairs—once unraveled my future. And no pill has managed to piece it back together. Suddenly all thumbs, I fumble for my keys buried deep in my purse. Once I'm inside my car with the door shut tight, the storm of adrenaline sluicing through me calms. But the knot in my heart refuses to unbundle. The El Corazon card doesn’t actually infer trouble in the Mexican game of Lotería, although I forever associate it with doom. If I needed another sign to stay far away from Chavez, the void cracking open in my stomach is pretty damn clear.

One wrong decision can ripple through your life for eternity.

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Get out of here. Now.

I push the starter button and the car roars to life like a dragon prodded out of a deep slumber. I feel woozy, borderline nauseous, and if I start thinking about the past, it will smother me like cold river water. But our histories have a way of creeping up on us. And to prove the point, as I plug my phone into the charger, it flashes with an incoming message.

Unknown number: Flynn, I’m getting closer! Soon we will be together.

The hairs on my arms stand on end. A stalker started harassing me during my speaking tour last year. Before that, I believed only three people knew the truth about me. But this guy, and I know it is a man, also knows. His choice of words radiates familiarity. Whatever technology is available for tracking texts back to a specific phone or location has not worked on this guy, and the police couldn’t do much twelve months ago when he first surfaced. They advised me to save every text as evidence, but when the stalker suddenly went radio silent, I erased them all in the hopes of erasing him. Nothing for months, and now this is the third text in as many days.

My face turns ashen in the rearview mirror, and I feel the old fear like a cold hand at my neck. It does not let go on the drive down Santa Monica Boulevard. It will never let go unless I do something about it.

The irony of this does not escape me.

Flynn Dryden has made a career out of encouraging people to face their truths, but the last thing I want to do is face mine.

ChapterThree

“Over here, babes!”

Vandana waves at me from across the tiled courtyard, looking every inch the style icon in a couture jumpsuit, ankle boots, and fur shrug. She recently split from her husband of six years and is now involved with a gorgeous French yacht designer named Morgan. She leaves tonight for several months of “finding herself” in Monaco, which apparently will involve endless, amazing fucking on yachts bigger than my house.

No one ever said I wasn’t the teensiest bit jealous of her.

We embrace tableside, and I’m caught off guard by her double air-kiss.

“So good to see you,” she gushes. “You look great.”

“June’s running late," I say. “In case you were wondering.”

She takes a seat, smirking. “Quarter past?”

“Right on time in her world.”

She laughs and runs a hand over her immaculate blowout, oblivious to the tension humming under my skin. I debated bowing out from brunch, but Vandana and June are my only real friends and Baxter's is our favorite restaurant. The West Coast homage to the French Quarter in New Orleans is the place to be seen—unless you are a nobody, in which case, you will be seated as such. Four Asian ladies crammed in at a nearby table for two have ice in their glares, none too pleased that Vandana has commandeered the best table in the house, which seats eight. Her reign might be on temporary hiatus, but for now, the queen of public relations still has all of LA's hot spots under her rule.

“So,” she says, pressing her hands flat on the table. “Tell me everything. I heard nothing but rave reviews about your book tour, and I loved that shift dress you wore onGood Morning America. It brought out the green in your eyes.”

“Thanks. And yeah, so far, so good. Sold a gazillion books. My hand has finally stopped cramping from all the signing.”

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