Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
The woman ahead of me in line checks two massive suitcases and I wonder where she's going, if it's somewhere normal, somewhere that makes sense. I adjust my grip on my bag and don't move when the line shifts forward.
I need a change.
Not just a trim or a new lipstick shade or one of those magazine makeover articles that promises transformation in five easy steps. Not a tiny change. A massive change. The kind that turns you into someone else entirely—someone you can pretend to be until maybe, eventually, you forget you were ever anyone different.
I need advice about this change too. Professional advice. Like, actual cut-and-color expertise from someone who went to school for this, who knows what they're doing, who can look at me and see potential instead of the girl who's been wearing the same oversized hoodie rotation for the past two years.
Someone who can work miracles with highlights, and layers, and whatever else people pay for at real salons.
And not just hair advice either—I need the whole package. The full Pretty Woman treatment, the complete before-and-after transformation montage where the frumpy nobody walks into the boutique and walks out looking like she belongs in a different tax bracket.
Because I do belong there now. In that different tax bracket, with all the women who smell like expensive perfume, and have skin that glows from regular facials, and bodies maintained by personal trainers.
Who cares if I didn't earn it the normal way—and objectively, didn't I earn it? I mean, what the fuck, right? After everything that happened, after the island and the cabin and watching him—no. Not thinking about that. But still. If anyone's earned the right to spend money they didn't technically work for in any traditional sense, it's me.
I'm not poor, dirty, sick Scarletta anymore. I'm not the girl who wore the same leggings for four days straight because laundry felt impossible. I'm not the one who forgot to eat, who lived on instant ramen and black coffee, who couldn't afford a haircut.
In fact, all this working out—the endless treadmill sessions, the yoga classes I rotate through to avoid familiar faces, the weights I habitually lift while zoning out—has given me a hot bod I only dreamed of as a teenager.
I'm practically cut. Lean muscle in my arms, definition in my abs, thighs that don't jiggle anymore when I walk. My ass is an actual shape now instead of just existing.
I look good. I know I look good because men tell me constantly, and I smile and say thank you and ghost them before the third date.
So I check in at the airport counter, sliding my ID across with the kind of casual confidence that still feels like I'm playing dress-up in someone else's life.
I go through security without incident—no beeping, no pat-downs, just a smooth glide through the scanner and a polite nod from the TSA agent who doesn't look at me twice because I'm nobody worth remembering.
I get on the plane, settle into my window seat, buckle in, and let myself disappear into the hum of takeoff while scrolling mindlessly through my phone.
And two hours and five minutes later—after a complimentary ginger ale I didn't finish and a packet of pretzels I ate just to have something to do with my hands—I'm stepping off the jetway into McCarran International Airport, surrounded by the chaotic symphony of slot machines dinging and chiming, people rushing past with roller bags, and that enormous Welcome to Las Vegas sign lit up like a whore on Christmas, glittering, and shameless, and utterly, perfectly alive.
My smile is so big it feels like my face might crack open. I feel reborn before the glow-up has even officially started, before I've set foot in a salon, or touched a poker chip, or done anything except breathe in recycled airport air that somehow smells like possibility.
Modern life is a fucking miracle when you have money.
The taxi pulls up to a porte-cochère that's quieter than the main Strip chaos, bronze-toned and understated in that way expensive things whisper instead of shout. A sign reads Wynn Tower Suites - Private Entrance and I feel like I'm sneaking into somewhere I don't belong.
Except I do belong. I paid for this. Well. Caleb paid for this, technically, but the money's in my account now so it counts.
The valet opens my door before I can reach for the handle. "Welcome to the Tower Suites, miss."
I mumble something that might be thank you and step out onto pavement so clean it looks freshly scrubbed. My single carry-on bag feels pathetic suddenly—everyone else arriving here has matched luggage sets and personal assistants.
Inside, the lobby isn't a lobby. It's more like walking into someone's very rich, very tasteful living room. Warm wood paneling, soft amber lighting, a massive floral arrangement on a center table.