Page 5 of The Unexpected

I laugh because actually, Kayleigh hooked up with Trevor that way - by accidentally sending her stepbrother saucy nudes of herself. But the sound comes out tight, almost clipped. “Trust me, I am well aware. Last time I saw him was at Thanksgiving and I literally walked into a door because I was too busy staring at his arms.”

Kayleigh’s voice drops to a conspiratorial hush. “Is he single? Like, officially? Because if you don’t climb him like a tree, I will be extremely disappointed.”

“Kayleigh!” I snort, but my cheeks go warm anyway. “He’s single, but also the world’s biggest manwhore. He dates models. Like, actual models, not the Instagram kind. His last girlfriend was on the cover of Italian Vogue.”

“Damn,” MK says, but she looks almost proud. “Respect.”

I swirl the champagne in my glass, watching the little vortex I create. “Honestly, he’s out of my league. He’s probably just going to ignore me and spend the entire time on Zoom meetings with his investors.”

Mary Kate isn’t having it. “Oh, come on. If anyone can seduce a CEO, it’s you. All you have to do is act mysterious and occasionally walk around in a towel.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I say, but the idea takes root in my brain and refuses to let go. My mind floods with images: Hunter in a crisp suit, Hunter at the kitchen counter with his sleeves rolled up, Hunter in nothing but a towel, water beading on his chest.

The three-way call devolves, as it always does, into a war of escalating dares. Kayleigh challenges me to “accidentally” leave my door open while changing. Mary Kate demands daily updates, preferably in the form of blurry surveillance shots. I keep my responses breezy, tossing out jokes and laughing along, but beneath it all I’m wound so tight my fingers ache.

Then my phone vibrates with a new notification: an unknown number, but I know instantly who it is.

Arriving Saturday evening. Do you need anything from town? – H

No signature. No emoji. Just “H,” as if the rest of the world’s Hunters had been wiped off the planet and only he remained.

I stare at the message for a full minute, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Then, without thinking, I press the phone flat against my chest and close my eyes. The contact of cold glass against skin makes me shiver.

“Stell? You there?” Kayleigh’s voice rings out, tinny and distorted, through the still air.

I peel the phone off my collarbone and say, “Yeah, sorry. Just making sure the WiFi isn’t dying. Saturday night, guys. The games begin Saturday night.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Mary Kate says, “So you have Friday all to yourself. And that house all to yourself too.”

I blink, startled by the sudden sense of opportunity. “Yeah,” I say, letting the word expand in my mouth like a bubble. “I guess I do.”

Kayleigh gives a low, evil cackle. “You know what that means, don’t you? I mean, we were just in jail a few months ago and it was so confining. You know what you need to do.”

It’s true. When I did the striptease for the guard, I was actually in jail with Kayleigh after I beat up that girl at the party. I don’t even remember her name, that’s how lame it was. But I raise the champagne glass again, the bubbles fizzing at my nose, and let myself savor the thought: alone in this vast, echoing house, with all the potential in the world and nothing to hold me back.

“I guess we’ll see,” I say, voice low and reckless, “just how much trouble I can get into with only one night of freedom.”

And for the first time in days, I don’t feel alone at all.

The party starts in my head long before I send the first text. Maybe that’s my true talent—seeing a silent house as a set piece, a stage to fill with chaos and energy and strangers’ perfume.

It’s after midnight but I’m wide awake, the adrenaline of plans forming prickling at my skin. I move from room to room, champagne glass in hand, surveying the Moreland mansion through fresh, subversive eyes. Not as a museum or a mausoleum, but as my own personal playground.

I start in the great room. The space is meant to impress: pale walls, sky-high windows, a pair of custom sofas arranged in a conversational circle. The kind of place you’d expect to see in an Architectural Digest feature—elegant, cold, meant for eyes rather than bodies. But tonight I see it as it could be: people slouched on the furniture, heels kicked off, laughter echoing up into the rafters. I open the patio doors and step out onto the terrace, letting the crisp air snap at my bare ankles.

The backyard slopes down toward a copse of leafless birch, and the grass is brittle under a skin of frost. Beyond the French doors, the kitchen is lit up like a spaceship. I can see my own reflection in the glass, all high cheekbones and waterfall hair, pale in the moonlight. I toast my shadow with a sip of champagne.

Inside again, I run my hand along the slick edge of the kitchen island—twelve feet of quartz, cool to the touch. It would make a hell of a bar. I pop open a new tab on my phone’s browser and search “signature party cocktails,” already imagining the parade of coupe glasses and artfully rimmed tumblers. I open the pantry, lined with enough supplies to survive a nuclear winter, and start a mental shopping list: bitters, fresh herbs, more limes, maybe some fancy cheese to replace the hunk I ate earlier.

The dining room is next. I flick on the chandelier and watch as the light ricochets across the cut crystal and silver. There’s something satisfying about knowing I can throw a party here that would piss Thomas off and make Andie want to join.

Texting is almost muscle memory by now. I thumb out a quick save-the-date to Kayleigh and Mary Kate—“Tomorrow night, my place, bring whoever”—and follow up with a string of fire and champagne emojis. They reply instantly. Kayleigh: “I’m there, bitch.” MK: “Will wear something slutty.” My heart thumps harder than it should. I add Chloe from work, then three more friends from the Nicolette group chat, then a guy I met once at a gallery opening who was cute enough to remember and smart enough to never hit on me after.

I put the phone down, scroll through the house sound system, and hit play on a playlist labeled “Stupid Sexy.” Synths and basslines bleed through the walls, shaking off the silence one decibel at a time. I pour another glass, then climb the stairs to my room, feeling the music reverberate in my bones.

The hallway up here is a runway, lined with empty rooms and faint, echoing versions of myself in every gold-framed mirror. My bedroom is at the very end, a suite designed to be Instagrammed: king bed, canopy, velvet bench at the foot. The only thing not perfectly curated is the heap of laundry on the chaise. I ignore it and go straight to the closet.

There’s a ritual to this. I flip on the track lights, letting them spotlight my wardrobe, and pull out the black minidress. It’s slinky and soft, the kind of thing that rides up on your thighs if you so much as breathe. The back plunges low enough to make even Andie raise an eyebrow, which is precisely the point. I drape it across the bed, set out a pair of strappy stilettos beside it, and stand back to consider the full effect.