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Riley
I was going to throw up.
Or pass out. Or maybe both, in whichever order my body decided would be most humiliating in front of the twenty people currently staring at me from their folding chairs at Chapter & Verse bookstore.
Deep breaths. I was fine. This was fine. Everything was completely, totally, absolutely fine.
My fingers found my godmother’s watch on my wrist, the one that stopped working three years ago but I couldn’t bring myself to take off. I rubbed the worn face of it, counting the seconds in my head, trying to convince my nervous system that this was not, in fact, a life or death situation.
It was just a book signing. My first book signing. No big deal.
I’d been a published spicy fantasy romance author for four years. Four years of pouring my guts onto pages, writing about werewolves and fated mates and monster men who would burn down the entire world for the women they loved. Because real men?
Real men were disappointing. Real men signed you to predatory contracts and took forty percent of your income while smiling at you and telling you they loved you. Fictional men, instead…They couldn’t hurt you.
“Tell them about chapter fourteen, Ri!” Sloane hollered from the third row, all black lipstick and tattoos and chaos. “Tell them about the knot!”
The audience tittered. My previous book, Moonbound Hearts, had gone viral on BookTok a few months ago. Some college girl with fairy lights and a sobbing problem had filmed herself ugly crying over chapter twenty-six and suddenly my sales exploded. Online, at least. In my little mountain town of Lysmont, population three hundred thousand, nestled deep in the mountains, I was still just “that girl who writes the werewolf porn.”
Thanks, Mrs. Henderson from the grocery store. Real supportive.
I pointed at my friend Sloane with my pen, embarrassed. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you and write a book about it and dedicate it to your memory.”
“Aw, babe.” She clutched her chest. “That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It’s not romance, it’s a threat.”
“Same thing in your books.”
The audience laughed. Jade, sitting next to Sloane, was already crying a little, clutching my book against her chest. Margo gave me a subtle thumbs up from behind a mini wine bottle she definitely snuck in.
My girls. My ride-or-dies. My reasons for not committing arson.
For one moment, just one shining moment, I felt real. I felt like a real author. Like someone who mattered.
Then I caught Damien’s eye from across the room, and my stomach clenched.
He stood near the biography section, charming a bookstore employee with his Nice Guy smile. The smile that used to make me feel special. The smile I now recognized as a warning sign.
Damien Cross. Literary agent. Ex-boyfriend. The human equivalent of stepping on shit. He’d swooped into my life when I was twenty-four and stupid and desperate for someone to believe in me. He’d promised me the moon, told me I was special, told me he’d make all my dreams come true. And I’d signed a contract without reading the fine print.
The fine print that gave him forty percent of my royalties.
Forty percent. Industry standard was fifteen. But did I know that at twenty-four? No. Did Damien conveniently fail to mention it? Absolutely.
It took two years of dating, of “I love you”s and “you’re so talented” and “what would you do without me?” before I realized his love was manipulation, the compliments were control, and the answer to “what would you do without me” was “literally anything else.”
He winked at me, possessive, like he owned me, and I looked away quickly, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Hello, everyone! Thank you so much for coming out.” My voice only shook a little. Victory. “I’m Riley, and yes, I do write the spicy werewolf books, and no, I will not apologize for it.”
More laughter. I held onto it with both hands. Good. I could do this.
I talked about my newest book, The Alpha’s Reluctant Heart. Yes, it was cheesy. Yes, it sold. No, I had no shame. Women in the audience asked questions. A few made teasing comments about specific chapters, eyebrows waggling suggestively.
And through it all, I could feel Damien’s gaze on me like a weight. I felt his cold eyes all over me, calculating, already tallying up what tonight would bring him. My money, my time, even my damn energy.
