Nina gives me a sideways look and squeezes my knee. “You’re starting something real here, Olive. Somethingyoubuilt.”
I nod, tears prickling again—but these aren’t from heartbreak.
They’re from joy.
***
By the time the sun begins to dip behind the buildings outside Nina’s apartment window, the day feels like it’s passed in one big, breathless blur.
The call with Eliza from Bloom & Finch lit a fire under me. Since then, I’ve barely stopped moving. Outlines. Blog post drafts. A pitch sheet she asked me to polish and send over. I’ve even revisited my manuscript, poking at the messy middle section that’s been haunting me for weeks. Somehow, now it doesn’t scare me. It excites me.
It's all happening so fast—and for once, in therightdirection.
I pace across the living room, waving my arms as I talk a mile a minute, my laptop open on the coffee table beside us. Nina lounges on the couch, eating popcorn straight from the bag, nodding along with half-focused amusement.
“So if I cut chapter twelve entirely, I think I can streamline the pacing and shift the emotional climax toward the end, right? Make it sharper. Cleaner. More of a gut-punch,” I say, fingers twitching like I need to get back to the keyboard right now.
“Sure,” Nina says, amused. “Gut-punches. Always good in fiction.”
My phone vibrates on the side table with another call.
I glance over.
Liam again.
I sigh, internally wincing. I know I’ve been ignoring him—not on purpose, exactly, but I’m also kind of busy, working with an urgencylike never before to get everything to Eliza, that she asked for. This is important.
I’ll call him later.
My thumb hovers over the call notification. Then I hit “decline” and tap out a quick message.
Olive:
Hey! In the middle of something—I’ll call you tonight.
I watch the message send, the familiar whoosh giving me a flicker of relief—then I’m right back to work, mapping out the last few chapters, brainstorming titles, and figuring out how to make the reader feel everything my characters do.
***
I wake up tangled in too many blankets and not enough rest. The light slanting through the blinds is soft and golden, but my head feels like it's stuffed with wool. I blink blearily at the unfamiliar ceiling.
It takes me a second to remember where I am. Nina’s. Her guest room.
I groan and stretch, limbs heavy from too little sleep and too much adrenaline the day before.
Yesterday feels like a fever dream.
The email. The call. The overwhelming swirl of plans and possibilities and lists scribbled across Nina’s kitchen whiteboard in three different colors of dry-erase marker. I was running on pure adrenaline and half a sandwich.
I reach for my phone.
And freeze.
There’s a notification from Liam. A message, timestamped just after midnight:
Liam:
You need to listen to Ash’s voice message. Please.
