Chapter Two
Now
THE SOUND OF THE TYPEWRITER ECHOES OFFthe walls.
She’s finally getting the hang of the keys, with their deep indents. She still can’t go as fast as she would like, but it’s miles better than when she started, and there’s something deeply satisfying about the volume of theclack-clack-clack.Her own keyboard is nearly silent, but with this one, you reallyfeelthe story being brought into the world.
She slows to a stop, rereading the last few paragraphs.
In some ways, it feels like the first time. The words pour out of her so fast, she hardly knows what she’s written until she goes back and reads. She knows some people like to plan ahead, but she’s always believed in letting the story surprise her, getting to know the characters as they come into the world, discovering the plot twists as they do—more than once she’s gasped in shock, or been genuinely mad at the characters for misbehaving. She goes back over it, of course, finds and cinches all the threads, but the first draft is for dreaming.
And, apparently, for processing trauma.
She’s written the love interest, Harlow, at the edge of the cliff, a bloody dagger hanging at his side. He looks into the heroine’s eyes and says, “Cassia, I didn’t do it.” He comes toward her, knife in hand. “I didn’t do it.” The tip angled toward her heart as he steps closer still, and—
Yeah. There are definitely parallels.
Millie rubs her eyes and lets herself look at the window. The weather has gone from bad to worse, the wind up and the rain coming in jagged bursts, but even through the storm, she can see the stone bench at the end of the drive, and the jagged line of cliff beyond. She knows what she saw. Jaxon, rushing up toward Malcolm. Malcolm, going back over the edge, arms flailing in surprise as Jaxon pushed him over.
Are you sure?Priscilla’s voice echoes through her head, paired with that look, the one that saysI don’t believe you.
Millie slams her hands down on the desk. Fine, okay, so she didn’t technicallyseeJaxon’s hands on Malcolm’s body, didn’tseehim physically force the man over the edge, but you don’t need to see every moment in a scene to piece the story together.
And if she’s not entirely sure that that is how it happened, she’s notnotsure either. Experience is subjective, after all. She can only tell her own version of the truth.
Which, as far as anyone is concerned, is nowthetruth, since whoever was up there in that room clearly isn’t coming forward to say otherwise. Which is as good as confirmation. And Millie has no reason to feel guilty for doing the right—or at least, theresponsible—thing and warning the group.
Unless you remembered wrong.
This time the voice is Freya’s, the words said during one of their first fights, when Millie explained why she couldn’t—wouldn’t—come home, when she tried to make her sister understand whatherparents had been like. And instead of believing her, Freya had said those words.
Maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Maybe you just remembered wrong.
At the time, Mille had hung up in frustration. Now she shakes her head, imagines hittingENDon the call in her head.
“I know what I saw,” she says aloud, and the voice—her voice—is enough to make her feel steady, feel sane, feel heard.
She drags her gaze from the window to the words on the page, to the world that she’s made.
Her fingers fly as fast as they can across the heavy keys as she pounds out the remainder of the scene, has Cassia draw her own blade at the last moment, parry Harlow’s murderous thrust. As it’s revealed that he wasn’t her love interest, after all, but the villain enchanted to deceive her.
She slides the paper out, adds it to the stack of pages already on the desk. There are actuallytwostacks, her own work on the right, and the ending for Fletch’s novel on the left.
She gathers the pages she’s just written and starts to count the words. This is the downside of working on a typewriter instead of a computer. No shortcut for tallying the work. She knows there’s a way to calculate a ballpark, but a rough estimate won’t do. She needs to know exactly how many words she’s written.
Three thousand—that’s the magic number.
She tallies softly as her finger slides along the words.
And yes, okay, maybe it’s weird to work so hard, given all that’s happening, but rain or shine means rain or shine, and besides, she’s on deadline. A book a year, that’s what it takes, just to stay afloat, to keep her readers satisfied. She was hoping this new trilogy would be the one that helped her break out of the midlist, but so far—not really. Which sucks, because it’s the best thing she’s written, not that that seems to matter as much as whether it’s on trend. Which it was, back when she sold it, but the publisher’s excitement has dwindled in the time it’s taken her to write the second book, and the headline on the latest marketing plan they sent her started and ended with “Millie’s social media?”—they had the nerve to write it just like that, down to the goddamn question mark—and the industry is so saturated with Courts of Blood and Blades of Stone and Crowns of blah blah blah that it seems like the only way to stand out is to have a promo post go viral, and even then, the comments instantly fill up with trolls, and who knows if any of it even leads to sales, or if they’re all just performing for each other while some random book by a lady in Iowa about selkies is somehow taking the YA world by storm, even though there’s nothing sexy about seals.
Aaannnd she’s lost count of the number.
Millie groans, and starts again.
The counted pages gather on the desk, but she’s careful not to let them mingle with the other stack.
