A Face She Couldn't Escape

Apparently Wes had always dreamed of being famous.

For him, it wasn’t enough to be wealthy, to have a powerful last name, or to sit at the helm of Carter Industries. He wanted more. He wanted adoration. The kind of financial independence that meant never having to listen to his father, never being tied down to a desk or a city he didn’t want to be in. He wanted the world to know his name, to chant it in theaters, to plaster it across billboards and magazine covers.

About a month into their marriage, Vivi had noticed her husband’s ambition—the late-night phone calls, the thick stack of audition scripts that cluttered his office, the hushed conversations with his talent manager, filled with frustration and desperate ambition.

He had gotten roles. Small ones. Walk-on parts, nameless characters in forgettable films. But never what he wanted. Never the lead, never the starring roles in the multi-million-dollar movies he aspired to. Despite calling in every favor, leveraging every business connection his family had, Wes remained on the outskirts of an industry that refused to let him in.

And through it all, there was one name he fixated on. A star who embodied everything Wes longed for.

A man from a similar background—privileged, well-connected—but whose family’s wealth and influence made the Carters look small in comparison. A man who had turned down more leading roles than Wes had ever been considered for.

A man who had yet to return a single one of Wes’s emails, calls, or business-to-business meetings hastily arranged under the guise of potential collaborations.

It was an obsession so deep it teetered on hatred.

Knox Maddox. 

She had never been interested in films or celebrity gossip, yet even Vivi recognized that name when she heard it. 

A name that had been on everyone’s lips long before Wes had begun his relentless obsession.

And when Vivi had finally seen his face on the collection of magazines, news articles, and posters that littered Wes’s office, her heart had almost stopped.

Because she knew that face.

She saw it in her dreams, she knew the scent of his rain-soaked skin.

The man her husband envied, her savior.

A stranger who had witnessed her lowest moment and she had hoped never to see him again.

Yet now, he was everywhere.

His face stared back at her from glossy pages, from posters pinned up behind Wes’s desk, from the articles strewn about as if Wes were trying to absorb him, to figure out how to become him.

And today, like many days, she had been humiliated. Bent over a desk covered in his face, her husband grunting out another woman’s name while the world’s most unattainable man watched, captured in still images.

Vivi left Wes’s office without a glance back, her stomach churning as she stepped out into the city air. She had become an expert at flagging cabs—out of necessity. Every second spent in or near Carter Industries made her skin crawl, and all she wanted was to disappear. To scrub every trace of Wes off her body and vanish into the quiet solitude of her temporary existence.

She lived in Wes’s guest house—not in his home, not in their home, but in the sleek, modern annex built at the edge of his formal home. A lonely glass box, too open, too exposed, that made her feel like a fish in a bowl.

Wes and Celeste barely came here, preferring his penthouse in the city. That, at least, was a small mercy.

When the cab pulled through the gates, Vivi paid quickly and hurried inside, locking the door behind her as if the world itself was trying to get in.

She went straight to the bathroom.

Turned on the shower and let the water scald her skin until steam curled thick in the air.

She scrubbed herself raw.

It was the only way to feel clean.

When she finally stepped out, skin burning and pink, she reached for the same hooded sweatshirt she always did.

It was long enough to wear as a dress, its dark fabric soft and worn from too many washes.

It didn’t belong to her.

And it didn’t belong to Wes.

She curled up on top of her bedsheets, pulling the familiar fabric close.

It had become a habit, this ritual she didn’t entirely understand after each soul destroying encounter. A small, irrational comfort that soothed her because it still carried the faintest, long-faded trace of the man who had shielded her from the rain.

The man who had held her when she had fallen apart.

The man whose name her husband now whispered in bitter envy.

Vivi shut her eyes, willing herself into nothingness.

A while later, the deep hum of an approaching car vibrated through the guest house’s walls.

A town car.

Delivering Wes and Celeste to the main house.

Vivi stayed curled up in the dark, gripping the last remnants of a memory that she should have banished long ago.