Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 2 of 78

The girl on the phone had a soft voice and a landline hum behind her. Kylie shut her eyes and listened. She said her name. The girl said hers. Arianna. Then a long silence neither of them wanted to break. Kylie asked if they could meet in person. Arianna said yes before Kylie finished the question. That was the easy part. The hard part sat on the nightstand: three call sheets, a label car booked for morning, and two photographers already camped in the hotel lobby. Kylie could not walk her out a front door. She could not send a driver to Arianna's address without it landing on a blog by lunch. Her assistant kept knocking. Kylie kept saying no. The last time she trusted someone with a private thing, that person slept with her ex. She would not hand this girl's name to anyone in a headset. She pulled up a rental listing on her phone. A private estate an hour inland, gated, no staff on the property until the weekend. Stone steps, a fountain out front, a pool tucked along the side. She paid the deposit with a card in her mother's name. She booked it for one night. Then she thought about the lobby. Two photographers. A back service hall she'd used before. A laundry cart. She wrote it out on hotel notepaper like a scene she was blocking. She called Arianna back and told her to take a bus, not a plane, no rideshares, cash only. Arianna said okay in a voice that shook once and steadied. At four in the morning Kylie put on a maintenance jacket from housekeeping and walked out through the loading dock. No car followed. She drove herself. The sky was still black when the gates opened and the house came up out of the dark, a wide stone face with a fountain running for no one. She parked around the side by the pool and waited on the front steps with her hood up. A taxi pulled to the gate at sunrise. Kylie buzzed it through. The door opened and a small dog jumped out first, a shiba puppy on a red leash, ears up, tail curled tight over its back. Then the girl from the photograph, holding the same notebook against her chest. Arianna stopped ten feet from the steps. "I brought her because I didn't want to sit on the bus alone," she said. "I didn't know what else to bring." Kylie stood up. Her hands were shaking again. "You brought yourself," she said. "That's the part I wanted." The puppy sniffed her shoe. Arianna laughed once, wet, and Kylie stepped down onto the gravel. No cameras. No assistant. No one on the property but the two of them and a dog. For the first time in a year, Kylie had the girl in front of her, and a whole day before anyone knew where either of them was.