The Book of Luke

by Lovell Holder

Genres: Friendship; Family Life

Synopsis

For fans of Survivor and Less, this fast-paced debut novel shines an unflinching light on the drama of reality TV when a gay man returns to the cut-throat show he won in his youth after his adult life begins to unravel.

Following the car accident that ended his football career and left his body scarred, 22-year-old Luke Griffin joins the cast of Endeavor, a new competition-based reality show that pits the tabloids’ darlings against one another in tasks of endurance and problem solving. At first, he thrives, effortlessly forming friendships and even a romantic relationship that he thinks will last a lifetime. But Luke has aspirations far bigger than the show's million-dollar prize, and soon a series of betrayals leads to irreversible tragedy, changing the course of his and his fellow contestants' lives forever.
 
Ten years later, Luke’s world looks very different: he is now a father of two and the stay-at-home husband to America’s only openly gay senator. When his husband's serial cheating is exposed, Luke impulsively joins the cast of Endeavor's latest season in a desperate bid to earn some fast cash. Back on set, he is confronted with everything he tried to leave in the past: bitter rivalries, shattered friendships, and crushing guilt, all of which threaten to tear down the walls he’s spent a decade building. As Season 20 of Endeavor kicks off, Luke must give everything to the game, even as he finally learns what it means––and what it costs––to face the truth.

Combining the fabulous rivalries of The Traitors with the epic physical stunts of The Challenge, THE BOOK OF LUKE offers a grounded portrait of what it means to reinvent yourself when no one will let you forget your past - especially if it's immortalized on streaming services.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

You caught me.” He sheepishly paused the TV as I emerged from our bathroom.

“You aren’t actually watching what I think you are.”

“Greta said last night’s episode was insane, so I recorded it.”

“She’s a good judge of insanity,” I replied. “Is it delivering?”

“Some bimbo from Texas went ballistic during the vote, screaming at this hairy goon, ‘Your rent is due! Your rent is due!’”

I squinted at the screen, where a shirtless hunk cowered before a blond tornado. Standard fare for Endeavor. “Glad they’re keeping the lights on.”

My husband then tapped his lips with a mischievous grin. “Luke? Your rent is due.”

“Wow, an invoice on April 15th? You’re a monster.” I chuckled. My mom was an accountant, so Tax Day’s eternally emblazoned on my brain.

“But I’m your monster.” He smirked, and I pressed my lips against his.

Thirty minutes later, I’d roused the kids, dressed them, and dispatched breakfast (their Eggo phase admittedly a time saver). My husband was already on a call with the Minority Whip, but he still managed one last kiss when I bundled the kids out the door.

As I maneuvered the Escalade down the driveway, I mentally noted that one of the box hedges by the front gate was definitely dying, a blemish on the otherwise immaculate property. We’d been in our five-bedroom white Colonial almost ten years, the design choices no doubt influenced by my mother’s aspirational stacks of Southern Living magazines, though this house would have fit two of the modest brick split-level my parents had owned.

Once the kids were at school, my Wednesday was consumed with the standard errands. Grocery shopping would come later, since Andie had become insistent about selecting her own fruit. I fished Wallace from his gang of four-year-old bruisers at day care by early afternoon, then powered to Andie’s soccer practice in my usual grayscale uniform: hat, sweats, sunglasses. A decade in the District had taught me to dress for a low profile, but when you’re “the happy homemaking husband of America’s only openly gay senator” (Page Six’s words), not to mention 6’4” and 235 pounds, you’re more conspicuous than the average citizen. Unlike most journalists, however, the carpool moms willfully stonewalled me.

At Whole Foods afterward, I indulged Wallace’s fantasy that the shopping cart was a pony while Andie perused the oranges with the discernment of a Manhattan gallerist and recounted her coach’s strategy for the upcoming tournament. “But it only works if the other team are troglodytes,” she concluded, her pronunciation wildly precise for a six-year-old.

“Where did we hear ‘troglodytes’?”

“Baba.”

That point had been brokered early. If he was the biological father, I got to be “Daddy.” My husband was allergic to “Papa,” protesting it sounded contrived by Brooklyn hipsters, but when our baby daughter’s P sounded like a B, he took the malapropism as a sign and “Baba” was born.

A frumpy woman passed us amid the lettuces and did the classic double take. No matter how neutrally I dressed, the combo of my black hair, pale blue eyes, and large frame usually betrayed me when people got a long enough look. Plus, the scars.

The lady clumsily snapped pictures, drifting perilously close to jars of tomato sauce. I hated people photographing the kids, but worse to call it out, especially if she was recording video. I discreetly guided us down the aisle rather than allow a full magazine spread.

My sister called as I ushered the kids into the checkout, but before I could answer, I noticed even the cashier’s jaw had inexplicably plunged. She’d seen us here countless times, but now her pained smile trembled, as if attempting condolences at a stranger’s funeral.

“Oh! Oh, hello! How are you?” she asked.

“We’re fine,” I replied, nodding awkwardly as I silenced my cell. “Right, kids?”

My phone pulsed again. My husband now, but I dismissed his call, too, swiping my Visa.

Andie pointed by the register. “Daddy, can I have a macaroon?”

“Take it, honey,” the cashier answered.

“We can pay,” I said as she shoved three macaroons into Andie’s hand.

“Just… to brighten your day.” She shrugged, practically wincing now.

Increasingly unnerved, I marched the kids outside only for Jenny to ring yet again, and this time I picked up. “Sorry, just finishing up the weirdest trip to Whole Foods.”

“You don’t know,” she said. A statement, not a question. Though we spoke almost every day, it was unlike her to be this blunt unless my husband had found a new way to piss her off. I tried to remember if he’d had an interview today, preparing to remind her I didn’t agree with all his policies either. “Luke, are you with the kids?” she asked, her voice uniquely strained.

I lowered my voice, stomach hollowing. “Okay, you’re scaring me. What’s up?”

“Turn off your phone and drive home. Call me there.”

Had it finally happened? Had there been the shooting, the deranged homophobe, the cost for the life we lived? Had I just silenced his last phone call? I couldn’t bring myself to say his name, for then it would become real. “Jen, is he hurt? He just tried calling.”

“Jesus, how have you never set up Google alerts? He is… physically fine,” she gritted out. “He’s had affairs with five of his former staffers. It’s on every channel.”

But he loves me, I thought, despite instantly realizing the news was true. Those were my two truths: My husband loves me, and he has cheated on me. Still I asked, “Could they be lying?”

“Luke, there’s video. It’s bad,” Jenny continued. “I’m already driving down and should beat the traffic out of Philly. Go home and don’t let that fascist fuck past the front door.”

I hung up to find Andie and Wallace staring, clearly sensing my distress. Even as the heat simmered in my throat, I wouldn’t lose it in front of them. They’d always remember this.

His texts started coming then, but I shut off my phone rather than read them. Instead I gunned the car home, mumbling meaningless assurances to the kids and only realizing later I’d left the shopping cart filled with groceries in the parking lot.

News vans and protestors awaited us in our oak-lined cul-de-sac, photographers hanging on the streetlamps I’d always found so charming. At our driveway, the crowd engulfed my SUV. I rammed my fists on the horn, avoiding the questions Andie howled at me.

Suddenly, Secret Service agents cut through the morass, carving a path to the porch as I forced my way out of the car. I noticed him then, dumbfounded in our doorway. For once, he actually appeared scared.

Andie bolted from the back seat to his outstretched arms. They looked so alike, father and daughter, a photo-op pietà waiting to be documented—though like hell I’d permit that. “Get her inside!” I called, prying Wallace from his car seat and shielding his face against my chest.

As I slammed the car door, I noticed one of the protestors behind the stone wall surrounding our property. She was almost six feet tall, long braids in a ponytail, skin dark, rainbow T-shirt, eyes unflinching. For one impossible moment, I almost thought she was Imogen. The woman stared at me with complete disgust and raised a simple handmade sign:

CONGRATULATIONS ON GETTING EVERYTHING YOU DESERVE.

I never imagined I’d be on reality television. When I arrived at the Charlotte airport in 2003, I didn’t even know what the show would be called.

My dad had parked in the garage, dragging my mammoth suitcases from the bed of his pickup. “Off to the Cayman Islands, and you still packed enough books to kill a man.” He grinned, but I only fidgeted with my sunglasses in response. “Kid, I can’t even see the scars.”

“Stop, Mitch. It’s just bright.”

Jenny and I had called our dad by his first name since childhood, an early rebellion against addressing him as “Coach Griffin” at school. Mitch was the athletic director at Morrocroft Prep, the best private K-12 in Charlotte. Faculty kids received free tuition; otherwise we’d never have afforded it. He’d been my own varsity coach in high school, and no one grieved the loss of my football career—and the protection it might have afforded—more than him. From the moment I came out at fourteen, he’d never had a problem with me being gay; he was just terrified how the world might treat me. Even though we were in the most liberal state in the South, he had good reason.

Still, I suppose I wasn’t ever bullied in the traditional sense. Not by my peers, for whom I was largely an afterthought, the pudgy boy who spent recess buried in a book. I do remember one November day in first grade when I asked pigtailed Cindy Miles to collect leaves with me, and she tentatively mumbled, “I’m… not supposed to.” Years later, I’d learn from our clueless guidance counselor that a coalition of Morrocroft moms had, not long after my mother’s death, righteously put the fear of God in their children that Jenny and I were never to be “bothered.” In these kids’ minds, we’d been so bubble-wrapped in perpetual grief they forgot we were there, naturally pursuing friendships that didn’t come with caution tape. Of course, I had no clue; I just assumed I was radioactive.

Fifth grade at Morrocroft Prep commenced with “School in the Sticks,” a three-day camping trip just north of Asheville designed for class bonding, though I was stunned the first night when the boys were all marched into a cavernous group shower room. Naturally shy, I clung to my swim trunks, discreetly trying not to disrobe, as afraid of showing my plump frame as accidentally revealing a boner at the sight of the other boys around me.

Then came Mr. Adamson, a portly veteran of the math department. “What kind of pansy are you, Luke Griffin? Nobody here wants to smell you ’cuz you didn’t wash your privates. Take the pants off, boy. Now.”

I shoved my bathing suit down, frantically scraping a bar of Dove soap over my exposed crotch. When I made to flee, I collided with Ian Butler at the next showerhead over, our naked bodies tumbling onto the grimy tile.

“For God’s sake, don’t play grab-ass. You’re not in San Francisco yet, kid!” Adamson barked, pulling me up roughly by the arm. While the reference eluded me then, I grasped the undercurrent of his words and cried silently all night, my face turned into the cabin wall. That Friday, Ian’s mom called Mitch to check on me after she’d heard the story, and by Sunday Adamson had been fired. Mitch was a valued member of the faculty, leading the top athletics program in the state. He’d never thrown his weight around, maybe waiting precisely for an occasion like this.

A week after the shower incident, Mitch conscripted me for the defensive line on the middle school’s football team. Anticipating my dread, he’d come prepared: “Have you heard of a ‘Renaissance man’? It means you’re exceptional at every skill…”

To Mitch’s credit, he hadn’t defaulted to shoving sports on me. A widower before forty, he’d been so fearful of putting a foot wrong as a single dad that he never laid down any mandates. However, he recognized the stakes were changing, and he was certain football would guarantee I’d be untouchable, though perhaps he was biased. Our personal histories often convince us the most familiar choice is the only one.

I was shocked I actually enjoyed it. Not the sport of football itself, but feeling athletic, an instrument of force and velocity. While I wasn’t the most imaginative player, I was a workhorse who did well with a mission. When I joined Morrocroft’s varsity team and Mitch officially became my coach, I broke the record for quarterback sacks my freshman season. Before long, I was team captain, catching the eyes of people who mattered—including the scouts at Dartmouth.

Mitch’s plan was working, and teenage Luke started to dream his own dreams, the fantasies that security and safety provide. Through pro football, I’d be able to live whatever life I wanted: banking enough cash to retire in a beautiful house with kids running wild, even if I had to do it on my own. After all, hadn’t I been successfully raised by a single dad? I’d never attracted much attention from the scant gay boys who’d crossed my path, so as nice as a partner would be, that imaginary man was simply a hazy outline. Fatherhood alone felt concrete. And football was my ticket to achieving that.

Just before my senior year at Dartmouth, my coaches and agent suggested some flashy press might build buzz in advance of the NFL draft. Admittedly, it’s rare an openly gay middle linebacker comes along. We never dreamed Liberty Today, the biggest news program on television, would spotlight me that October. I was unprepared for a national audience to latch on to my story, though my coaches valiantly tried to protect my privacy, even screening my mail on campus. Mostly, it was kind: older gay men writing to say what a landmark it was, how many people I’d inspire. Not that we’d find out. Cue the car crash a month later that rendered me a bittersweet curiosity of what could have been.

That June, college degree in hand and several months of physical therapy behind me, I resolved to take a gap year helping Mitch coach while I applied to PhD programs in English literature. Wasn’t that actually best for the boy who’d been so quiet, heavy, and bookish?

Then I got the call. Mitch summoned me to the phone a week after graduation, a curious twinkle in his eye. The Liberty Today producers were on the line to introduce four high-level executives at the network, all curious if I’d healed up. “Enough,” I’d replied nervously.

“Luke, as you probably know, our reality shows are killing it in the ratings, so this summer we’re exploring a new venture…” The execs described a still-untitled “Battle of the Reality TV Stars,” a chance for people to see their favorites compete for a “significant” cash prize. I admittedly didn’t watch reality TV (really, any TV), but even I’d noticed the proliferation peppering every channel.

“But why are you calling me?”

“You really made an impression on Liberty Today. We want you in the cast.”

“That was an eight-minute segment. Nobody knows who I am.”

“You’re wrong about that,” one smoky-voiced female exec answered. “But we need an answer tomorrow. Filming starts in Grand Cayman next week.”

I’d instantly been opposed. Who wanted to watch some battered rando attempt a comeback for a stillborn sports career? Well, aside from my dad.

“Think big picture, bud. Maybe you win some cash for grad school? Even if you lose, they said you get a couple grand for each episode you’re in,” Mitch said over dinner that night.

“I said no. Final answer.”

“Is this about the scars?” Jenny asked. She’d been on sabbatical from her PhD program at Penn ever since the crash. My sister had mothered me forever, but lately she’d taken it to new heights—and obliterated my patience. She’d even lived with me in Hanover my last semester, practically dragging my depressed ass to class to guarantee I graduated.

Mitch flushed, too familiar with this routine. “Jenny—”

“You can’t keep babying him! Luke acts like he’s deformed now. It’s not healthy.”

When the janitor hit us, he’d plowed into my side of the car. I remembered nothing after impact, but the hospital mirror eventually revealed how glass and shrapnel had slashed the right side of my face all the way down my torso, my skin reconceived as a jarring landscape of deep intersecting cuts. I’d never been uniquely handsome, but I’d made peace with my face. Now I was a horror show, brushing my teeth each night with my back to the mirror.

Mitch wearily leaned across the table. “Kid, you need to find something this summer. You can’t sulk around the house,” he said. “Can’t you do it for the old man?”

I could have screamed the most awful things—no one would have blamed me—but I saw it in his eyes, how desperate he was for me to say yes.

Now here I was, about to board a plane with no clue what lay ahead. Mitch nudged me as we approached security. “Remember, it won’t kill you to have fun.”

“Said the man who despises reality TV.”

“If it’s your ticket back to the land of the living, then I’m its biggest fan.”

I finally permitted myself a smile. “I’ll probably get booted the first episode.”

“You will with that attitude, you little shit.” Even though he chuckled, I couldn’t ignore the flash of concern. He waited until I was past security, giving one final salute from the other side of the barricade, just as he’d done every time I’d flown north during college.

At the gate, I opened my backpack and arranged paperbacks on the floor, debating between A Doll’s House and Miss Julie, two plays from my Modern Drama class at Dartmouth that I’d skipped during physical therapy but still felt an obligation to read. I’d also packed my beloved copy of Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which I’d devoured five times. I identified heavily with underestimated motorcyclist Cleveland; indeed, most of college had consisted of convincing professors the jock hadn’t plagiarized his paper.

“You look like Pavlov’s dog.” Above me stood a striking Indian guy—lithe and jaunty, dark hair jutting at an overly gelled angle, puka-shell necklace clinging to his throat—a beacon of early-2000s cool boy chic. He grinned, gently testing me even then.

I tried not to stutter. “Better than Schrödinger’s cat.”

“Touché,” he replied, British accent playful. “Brains and brawn, but we knew that.”

“… We did?” I asked, recalling the handful of creepy letters since Liberty Today from strangers who’d requested my post-exercise underwear.

“Sorry, thought you’d recognize me. I’m Arjun Bhaduri.” He looked at me expectantly. “Dude, I’m on the show with you.”

Mortified, I rose, clumsily kicking my books across the lounge area. “Whoa there, tiger,” he said, taking my hand. Sunlight glinted off his light brown eyes, and I recalled what an old history teacher once said was born when arrogance fused with generosity. Charisma.

“So, who’s Miss Julie, and why’d you drop-kick her?” A tall, muscular Black girl approached, long braids swaying down her back. My book, cover snapped back like a broken wing, flapped in her hand. “I’m guessing you’re here for the reality show? I saw two guys who could be Abercrombie models and figured they must be on TV… Please don’t be assholes.”

I sheepishly took my book from her. “I’ll definitely do my best, but I can’t speak for the Abercrombie models, whoever they are—”

“You’re Imogen Cuthbert, right?” Arjun smiled. “I loved you on Medals!”

She eyed him skeptically. “How? I was third out.”

“Those lunkheads targeted you because you were the biggest threat.”

“Sorry, what’s Medals?” I asked.

“You didn’t watch Medals of Honor?” Arjun exclaimed. “With the Olympians racing the military vets around the world? It blew up the Nielsen ratings!”

I squirmed, so out of my depth. I’d spent years getting fluent in “football.” How long would it take to speak “reality television”? “I don’t watch much TV.”

“That is the most refreshing thing I’ve heard in months,” Imogen replied. “But I still have no clue who either of you are.”

“Clearly I’m the only one who did their research.” Arjun smirked, already effortlessly familiar. He eagerly ushered us to the corner of the waiting area, positioning his back to the gathering passengers. He was twenty-six, fresh off his third season of Gone Bollywood. His parents were media titans in the UK and in their native India. To break into the American market, they’d launched a reality show under the guise of documenting their move to Los Angeles. They had money to burn, Arjun disclosed with theatrical annoyance, and had crafted the most lavish portrait of aspirational wealth on television, brimming with mansions, product placement, and rigorously scripted celebrity cameos. Arjun graduated from Cambridge during the move to America, so his storyline involved reconnecting with the family in LA, including Emaan, the little preteen brother he adored. Arjun was “learning the ropes” as an “assistant” in the family conglomerate, but it was all staged. “Convincing my mother to loan me out was a fucking feat,” he said breathlessly. “But I need something without my parents preening beside me. Establish my own brand, you know?”

I nodded through the monologue, but Imogen stayed deadpan: “So, your name’s Arjun?”

“Already exhausted by me?”

“Not sure yet,” she said as I simultaneously replied, “Not at all.”

Arjun beamed at me, and my eyes retreated to the matted gray carpet, too aware that my scars flared when I blushed. I prayed I wouldn’t develop some pathetic crush, reminding myself he had to be straight. Even I knew they’d never cast two gay guys on the same show.

“Get used to me, Imogen. We might be on the same team,” Arjun continued.

“There are teams?” I asked.

“They didn’t explain the format when they pitched you the show?”

Imogen released a dry laugh that might as well have been a cough. “I was told ‘in or out’ for the chance at $1 million. Enough for me.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait—we could win $1 million?!”

Arjun nodded eagerly. “It’s two teams, equal numbers of men and women. Every episode, we compete in a Tribulation, which is a different physical task or puzzle every time. Then the winners pick someone from each team to battle in the elimination round… the Trial.”

“A Tribulation, then a Trial,” I repeated. “Should it be the other way around?”

He ignored me, pressing onward. “The episodes alternate between male and female eliminations. The last people standing on each team compete in the final episode for the $1 million, divided evenly amongst the winners. And that is how you play Endeavor.”

“Endeavor?”

“The working title. I suggested alternates. I like naming things.”

“Hope you didn’t come up with ‘Tribulations and Trials,’” Imogen muttered, right as two wiry, freckled hands landed on Arjun’s shoulders.

“Plotting already?”

Arjun’s face briefly soured at the new voice. “Barnes, I hadn’t heard you were coming.”

“I got the call yesterday. Somebody dropped, and I was the alternate. Lucky me, huh?” The newcomer chuckled, his scrawny frame drowning in an oversized neon tank top and hideous pink boardshorts. He brushed his shaggy sandy bangs aside to eye me like a prize steer. “And what do we have here?” He extended a hand, ignoring Imogen, who noticed. “Barnes Appleby.”

“Luke Griffin. This is Imogen—”

“Wait, you’re the gay football player!” he interrupted. “Who’s never done reality TV.”

“Liberty Today is on the network. It counts,” Arjun replied on my behalf, for the first time, hardly the last. Clearly my imposter status wouldn’t be excused by everybody.

“I guess they need some muscle on the show. Besides, I won’t complain about another homo in the house,” Barnes said with a conspiratorial wink. So they had cast two gay guys. Still, no matter how unsure I was about my type, I was positive it wasn’t the goblin boy currently leering at me. “You’re going to win someone a lot of money this summer.”

My stomach flipped at the attention. “Or I’ll royally suck.”

“You won’t,” Barnes and Arjun both answered, but Imogen stayed quiet. I smiled nervously at her, unsure if she was evaluating me or them.

“What show are you from?” I asked Barnes, desperate to change the subject.

“Lobby Boys. Lots of guys in suits screaming. Good practice for this bloodbath.”

“You think the game will be that competitive?”

Barnes blinked, amused. “Isn’t everything?”

Boarding soon commenced for Grand Cayman, but Arjun guided me and Imogen out of line once Barnes was on the plane. “That douchebag goes the first chance we get.”

Imogen’s feet shifted. “We don’t even know if we’re on the same team.”

“Listen, I’ve known everyone else who’s been cast for years,” Arjun insisted. “The only people I want to work with are you two, and I have a lot on the line here.”

“Really? You clearly don’t need the money,” Imogen fired back.

“I don’t want to make a fool of myself on national television either.” Arjun burrowed those magnetic eyes into me. “We have to trust each other, okay?”

Did I know then? That the summer of 2003 would be ours, the cameras framing our blossoming friendship so America would adore us as much as we adored each other? I didn’t. I didn’t know Endeavor would become such a hit that the star players would return season after season. I didn’t know I’d film three editions of the show before I fled, totally in love and completely notorious. I never thought there would be consequences to the decisions I’d make on a game show with people I’d just met. All I knew, even then, was I already trusted Arjun.

I probably shouldn’t have.

When you throw your husband out, there’s supposed to be endless yelling, smashed dishware, and a hastily packed suitcase flung across a yard. Instead we died quietly in the kitchen. I stood silent against the marble island, mesmerized by the shapes in the stone, all of which seemed to suddenly have teeth.

I eyed the kid I’d fallen in love with in the Caribbean over a decade prior, four years older than me and five inches shorter. No one ever believed he was older, not with that trademark mischievous glint in his eye. His neatly groomed hair was disheveled, a far cry from the ideal candidate, the photogenic father, the devoted husband, the man who was never flustered.

“Luke, these men meant nothing. It was a mistake. One I made more than once, yes, but it was still the same mistake, the same impulse. It was purely mechanics, never my heart or my mind, and I hate that you found out like this… but I will tell you whatever you want to know,” he continued, voice trembling in a way I’d never heard. “All that matters is you and the kids.”

I thought about our children, waiting in the playroom with the Secret Service agents. Did they sense life would never be the same? My mind raced through the hazy echoes of when the police arrived to tell Mitch about my mom, how I’d heard him collapse to the floor while I ate Frosted Flakes. How quickly did I realize the only world I’d known had ended?

Today could never be undone. I was forever the fool who stood idly by while he’d run rampant. How many sacrifices had I made for him? How many times had I kept quiet while he “did what was necessary” to secure the lifestyle he’d insisted on? How had I blindly upheld the empty illusion—so perfect, so respectable, so palatable—and missed the rot beneath?

A year before, I’d lost Andie while chaperoning her class trip to the National Zoo. He’d received his fifth death threat that morning. “Why is it only the fringe on our side? Can’t one radical liberal plan a credible bombing?” he’d emptily joked. Still, we’d gone about our day; him to the office, me to the animals. Andie’s teacher made me accompany a sniffling boy to the bathroom, and when we returned, Andie had vanished. I raced to security, a thunderous pounding in my head as I understood the lunatics had succeeded, striking where it would hurt most, the cosmic punishment for every wrong step we’d taken… until I saw her by the pandas, totally unbothered.

“Where were you?!” I screamed, practically shaking her.

“The bathroom,” she whispered. “I don’t need help to pee.”

I’d been certain she was gone. How could I forget that? How had we returned to normal? We’d changed nothing, now here we were. Ruined.

My husband was still talking when his arm draped across my back. His forehead boldly pressed against my temple, and it finally hit me. He thought he would get away with this.

“You should say goodbye to the kids.”

His hands strained for my face. “Luke, no…”

I shrugged him off, recoiling from the marble island and its swirling teeth. “You can see them this weekend. Jenny will bring them wherever you are—”

“Please, I’ll do anything. Just say what you want!”

He stared at me desperately, like I still had something to give him. But never again. I would reclaim my life, starting with one sentence.

“I want a divorce, Barnes.”

Upon landing in the Caymans, we were greeted by perky, curvy Mary Peach (her God-given name, she swore) and Clem Cooper, a grizzled veteran of daytime soaps whose penchant for conspiracy theories prompted Arjun to nickname him “Papa Cuckoo.” They would be our showrunners, as much lead producers as head counselors. We were last to arrive, completing Endeavor’s inaugural roster of nineteen reality stars and one washed-up college athlete.

The seaside villa we’d inhabit was a stunning terra-cotta palazzo drenched in vivid blues and greens. I was so entranced walking up that I didn’t realize we’d begun filming, accidentally crashing into some poor sound guy. I pleaded apologies as Mary Peach swooped in, her walkie blaring chatter. “Crew can’t speak to cast, honey,” she explained. “It’s network policy to guarantee you only interact with the other on-camera talent. Keeps the storylines clear.”