Weeks passed, but not in a blur. More like in a mess.

A few days after Elliot cooked me breakfast and delivered the news of Zane's restaurant, more news came out about him. His book was removed from shelves all across the country.

Across the country. Not a single book with Zane's perfect half-nude body on its cover. No more reviews of it mentioning my name and slandering me. And no explanation, either. The only way I found out was because Wendy called me to notify me before I got wind of it all over the news.

"It's so out of the blue," she said to me, calling to check my reaction live after sending me the text with the information. "I only found out because of some market research I was doing, and called his agent to confirm. Agent who is no longer his agent, by the way."

"Yeah, I heard about that. And wow." I was off to the studio for more shoots of season two of Food Me! and already nervous at meeting more chefs who'd likely only been drawn to the show because of past mistakes. Most of them involving Zane. "Just like that, huh?"

"Trust me, when someone wants a book gone, it's gone."

It wasn't only his book that was gone—so was he. His restaurant remained closed, and according to the press, Zane Rose had wholly disappeared. The tabloids who'd grown used to lingering near his apartment stated he hadn't come or gone in weeks. Former employees at his restaurant claimed he hadn't spoken to them since he'd laid them off. And they were friends, too; these were people he'd hired because he knew them, liked them.

Zane vanished, and no one knew where to. Interviewers reached out to his family, his closest friends, and either they didn't know, or they kept the information private, to give him some space.

It was silent. Too silent. Not seeing a new caption online pitting us against each other was...weird. I'd have thought I'd be pleased by it—left alone, at last—but instead it left a void in me that I didn't know how to fill.

My life carried on as normal; well, as normal as being a billionaire chef could be. I was never completely alone, and still hounded by news outlets and curious fans. They asked me where Zane was, too, and of course I had no answer for them.

To my luck, nothing ever surfaced about Zane and I's last night together, making a mess in my restaurant kitchen. He'd chosen to keep quiet on the matter and not expose or humiliate me again. Which was, like his disappearance, weird.

I gave more details to Elliot, since I remembered more and more stuff as time went by. I told them how we smothered each other with cheesecake—they'd gagged, "whoa, unsanitary much?" but I'd noticed the luster of intrigue in their eyes—and then the snuggling and the fucking that felt more like making love. I'd also admitted to them that Zane basically confessed he was attracted to me and admired me.

"Then it's even more puzzling that he disappeared," they said, lathering my face in powder before filming. "Why would he tell you that and then run off? Unless he thought you wouldn't reciprocate."

I gritted my teeth, trying not to move my lips so Elliot wouldn't smear makeup in the wrong places. "It's not like I came out and told him how I felt."

"How do you feel?" Elliot arched a tweezed eyebrow as they kneeled in front of me, studying my face structure.

I gulped. "I don't know." Not a lie, but there were feelings brewing in me somewhere. I didn't know what to call them. Hate-lust? Intrigue-loathing? Sexual tension coupled with an urge to stab him? "I am attracted to him, obviously. Since every time we're alone, we—"

"—smash into furniture and roll around in cake to fuck each other senseless?" Elliot chuckled. "That's more than attraction."

"It's pure hatred." I flinched. "Well, it was, at least. That night, when he apologized...fuck, I swear I saw something different in him. Heard something different. And the way he touched me, the way he looked at me...something was off."

"Yeah," Elliot snorted, "your clothes."

I hit their arm. "No, quit it, I'm trying to be serious." I tucked a ginger curl behind my ear. My eyes were wide and vivid; I noticed they shifted this way whenever I talked about Zane, and especially lately. "He must have run off because he expected me to say something, and I didn't, and..."

"Hey." Elliot was behind me, their gaze fixed on the mirror, on me. "Him running off is not your fault. Yeah, you fucked again, but he was a consenting adult. Whatever his emotions are...that's not on you. He's hiding. Licking his wounds, whatever caused them."

"Closing the restaurant, though? That was his pride and joy. And the book?"

Elliot scoffed. "Don't pretend you're not happy about the book being gone."

"I am, I just..." I sighed and curled inward on my chair. "I need an explanation. I'm owed an explanation. We've fucked three times now, and two out of those three times, one of us snuck out before the morning and didn't say a word. We're even, fine, but can we, like...ugh, talk about it? Figure out what it means that we loathe each other in public but keep ending up naked in each other's arms?"

"Preach." Elliot lifted their makeup brush, like a wand to the sky. "You should tell him that."

"I would," I said, half-lying, half-wishing I had the guts to hunt him down and demand a chat. "But I don't have his number."

"Right," Elliot pouted their lips, "but you have his email."

That stayed with me all throughout filming the episodes that day. You have his email.

I did still have Zane's email address, and I hadn't blocked it. If he wanted to talk to me, he would have. He should have. And still, he hadn't said a word.

Season two contestants were...curious. Too curious. They kept bringing up the situation with Zane, asking if we were still enemies. I deflected as much as I could, but Grace and Archie kept looking at me as if wanting me to acknowledge it all, expand on it, use it for more drama. More views.

But I had nothing to say. Zane was gone from the world, hiding, like Elliot implied. So all I could do was remind the contestants of that.

"What happened?" they'd ask. "What did you do to make him leave?" Many of them assumed I was the reason he'd vanished from the public eye, and only half of those believed me when I said I had nothing to do with it. "When will you cave and try his ratatouille?"

I shrugged, I smiled, I nodded. I listened. And I tried to move the show along, so that these chefs could test their skills and win some money for it.

But my heart wasn't in it. Grace could tell; that, and she of course was still attached to Elliot, who spilled every detail of my life to her.

"Do you need another vacation?" she asked me one day, barging into my dressing room as I was getting ready. Elliot wasn't there yet; they'd have stopped her from invading my privacy if they were.

"What are you talking about?" I buttoned my shirt before she was able to sneak a long peek at my bra.

"You're off your game," she said, sitting on my couch without invitation.

I snarled as I turned away from her. "Try hosting a show about your cooking when every guest who comes on wants to talk about Zane."

"Use that." I knew she was eyeing my backside now, but it was better than her seeing me mimic her mouth and face as she spoke. "Take advantage of this and turn it in your favor."

"Oh, so slander him for views? No, Grace." I twisted back around, grimacing. "I won't use whatever he's going through to get ahead in my career. I'm not like that, and the fact that you and Archie keep trying to force me to be is seriously getting on my nerves."

"Then figure out where he is and talk to him. Tell him to speak with the press and clear this shit up." Grace stood and as she walked by me, she puckered her lips and narrowed her overly mascara-coated eyes. "If he keeps distracting you, it's going to be a problem."

I slammed the door behind her and pressed my back to it, sliding down until I was sitting on the floor. She had brought Zane into all this, but I was getting the blame for him distracting me?

"Pursue Zane, don't pursue Zane, insult Zane, don't insult Zane. Use his name for your benefit. Tell everyone you slept with him. Don't tell anyone you slept with him again." I huffed. "This is not what I signed up for."

Grace and Archie had no idea how to handle feelings. Mine, Zane's, their own. And I was stuck with this show that was slowly slipping out of my control and into theirs.

How the fuck was I supposed to figure out where he was? Zane didn't want to be found, clearly. Less so by me.

"She needs to filter the guests she invites on the show, that's what needs to happen." I glanced up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. "If I have to answer another question about Zane..."

I wondered what went on in his mind, after he left me that morning, naked and rolled up in tablecloths. Was he mad at himself? Mad at me? Disgusted? Or was there something else, something more he hadn't told me? He'd said so much that night—verbally and physically. The tension between us had shifted, the hatred no longer as flagrant as the desire.

But maybe it hadn't been that way for him. Or it did, and it bothered him too much to stick around and face it.

Later that day, I sat at my computer and pulled up my emails, staring at the last exchange between us: the agreement to a truce.

Elliot's voice echoed in my mind. You have his email.

Was it too forward of me to shoot him a quick message to make sure he was all right.? Did sworn enemies do that when the other was incapacitated, sick, out of the game? I didn't know the protocol. I didn't know what we, him and I, were, if anything.

But the more I heard about him on my show, the more I saw the press reporting on the lack of his presence, the more I grew worried. I had no right to be, but the sensation wouldn't quit unless I tried to reach out.

Trying to type something like this to him was...awkward. I'd never expressed any concern for him before, and this would be considered totally out of character for me.

Hey. Are you okay?

I revised and retyped the sentence fifteen times before reverting to this; four words, a question mark, and a smidgen of worry infused in my tone.

I hit send, and chewed on my lower lip as I stared at the screen, as if expecting he'd answer me immediately. As if he'd been waiting for me to reach out, to say something.

I received an email five minutes later, but not from him—it was from my email service, saying the message to zrosecooks had bounced back and the address was "no longer in use".

"What?" I squinted at the words, rereading them over and over until they burned into my brain. "He...deactivated his email? What the fuck?"

If my worry was only superficial before, it was now pronounced. Roiling around in my gut, pinching at my insides, provoking ominous images in my head. Thoughts of him being hurt, gravely ill, maybe even dead. The more I focused on the screen, the worse my imagination became.

He'd been so busy insulting me, and me so busy insulting him, that it got to our heads. The violence and cruelty of our exchanged words grew too heavy. Maybe it had all gotten to him, depressed him. Maybe his admiration for me turned into intimidation, and he'd felt the need to conceal himself for a while.

And maybe our one-time-too-many-night-stand had evolved into something else for him. For both of us. It wasn't one-sided; he'd sensed my behavior shifting, too. He'd sensed me more open to him than ever before. I'd thought he was different that night, but...I'd been different, too. Wounded by him, surprised by his appearance, wooed by his charm.

And there was always the option that that night was so incredibly bad for him that he'd moved across the world and removed himself from the public eye to forget.

I wondered if I'd ever know.

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