Also blank.
My hands move faster now, rifling through the remaining pages with increasing desperation. Blank. Blank. Blank. Nothing but empty cream-colored paper where the rest of the story should be, where Molly and Charlos's journey should continue, where the resolution of every thread Etienne has so carefully woven should finally come together.
"Where is the rest?"
My voice comes out strangled.
A whimper follows, the sound escaping my throat before I can suppress it. Small and wounded and carrying the specific grief of a reader who has reached the end of an unfinished story and discovered there is no more.
The bed shifts behind me.
Etienne's eyes open. Or rather, one eye opens, the other remaining stubbornly closed as his sleep-fogged brain tries to process the sound that disturbed his rest. He looks for me immediately, his gaze scanning the space until it lands on my figure sitting at the edge of the mattress.
The moment he sees the tear running down my cheek, he is sitting upright.
The transition from sleeping to alert happens so fast it gives me whiplash. One second he is a drowsy Alpha blinking at the morning light, and the next he is fully vertical with his hands reaching for me, his storm-blue eyes wide with concern.
"Why are you crying?" The question tumbles out rapid and urgent. "Are you in pain? Is it your knee? Do I need to get the nurse? Call someone? What is wrong?"
"No." I shake my head, more tears escaping despite my efforts to contain them. "I am not in pain."
I lift the journal, holding it up between us like evidence at a trial.
"It is not finished."
My voice cracks on the last word.
Etienne stares at the journal in my hands. His expression cycles through a rapid series of emotions. Confusion at first, as he processes what he is seeing. Then recognition, as he realizes which journal I am holding and what it contains. Then horror, raw and unfiltered, as the implication of my tears settles into his consciousness.
"Oh shit." He runs a hand through his disheveled hair, making the dark strands stand up in even more chaotic directions. "You... you read that? The whole thing? Already?"
"Where is the rest?" I demand, ignoring his question in favor of the one burning through my chest. "What happens to Molly? Does she compete again? Does she find a way to love the ice without it destroying her? And Charlos!" My voice rises with the fervor of someone who has been emotionally compromised by fictional characters. "Why will he not just stand up to his brother? Why will he not tell his family that his dream is to create, not to live in someone else's shadow? There is so much left to resolve! So many threads you left hanging!"
More tears escape, tracking down my cheeks in twin rivers of readerly distress.
"Obviously Molly loves the shit out of him!" I continue, aware that I am ranting but unable to stop. "Anyone can see it! She came back to return that handkerchief every day for two weeks! She read his stories and cried over them! She sees him, Etienne, she really sees him, and he is being foolish! Who cares about his brother? His brother is an asshole! His brother does not get to define his worth! Why can Charlos not see that the person who is supposed to matter most already thinks he is worth everything?"
I am breathing hard by the time I finish, clutching the journal to my chest like it contains the answers to the universe.
Etienne is staring at me.
Not with the embarrassment I expected. Not with the defensive walls that should have risen at having his private work exposed without permission. He is looking at me with an expression I cannot fully name. Wonder, maybe. Disbelief. The quiet, fragile hope of someone who has been waiting years to hear another person say these words and had given up believing it would ever happen.
"You actually read it," he whispers.
"I just told you I did! I read the whole thing! And now I need to know what happens next!" I thrust the journal toward him. "Where is the rest?"
He takes the journal from my hands gently, turning it over in his grip like he is seeing it for the first time.
"I have not written it yet."
The confession is quiet. Almost ashamed.
I gawk at him.
"You wrote this masterpiece and it is not on bookshelves?" The words burst out of me with the indignation of someone who has just discovered a crime against literature. "This should be published! This should be in bookstores! This should be in the hands of every reader who has ever felt like Molly or Charlos, who has ever hidden their dreams because the world told them those dreams were not practical!"
Etienne's cheeks flush with color, the pink spreading across his pale skin in a way that makes him look younger. More vulnerable.
