“Big ones.”
“No. I love you—that’sa big detail. I don’t want to live another day of my life without you. You think I’m going to throw my hands up based on something as trivial as location or comments on the internet? Give me more credit than that. Giveusmore credit than that.”
My breath sticks in my chest until I’m choking from lack of oxygen. Helovesme. My insides shift to make room for this new truth. It changes my brain chemistry and my cellular structure. It changes absolutely everything—except the reality of our lives and circumstances.
“You don’t want to come to New York,” I say.
His jaw clenches around the truth.No, he doesn’t. “I want to be anywhere you are.”
“What about your job?”
“I’ll find a new one.”
“What about your sister? And your home?”
He pushes his hands through his hair in frustration. “I lost you once because of distance and fear. What kind of coward would I be to not hold on to you this time?”
My body twitches with the urge to launch myself into his arms and tell him that I’ve loved him for so long I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t. After a stilted moment in which I stand motionless, I realize that West is right about all of it. My fear is overwhelming, smothering every other instinct and thought.
Tears build behind my eyes, and a fluttery panic takes root in my stomach. It branches out and digs in until I feel woozy. You’d think experience would have prepared me to say goodbye to West, but the time and the fight and the effort it took to bring us to this moment make this goodbye excruciating.
“Maybe we can try again when things settle down,” I say, a last-ditch effort to calm the beast clawing at my ribs.
He leans against the desk and stretches his legs out as he studies me. “I’m done with first kisses, Darling. I can’t keep losing you. I won’t survive it again.”
“What does that mean?”
His hands grip the edge of the desk as he studies me. The unwavering intensity in his eyes makes my skin hot and my chest cold. He looks at me as if he’ll never get another chance. “It means this is our last goodbye. I hope you eventually find what makes you happy. You deserve it.” With one final, searing look, West pushes off the desk and drops a kiss to my head before leaving me alone in the office he wanted to be mine.
37
Present Day
New York isfreezing when I land at JFK. It’s cloudy and gray in that way that screamsseasonal depression. The subway line to my apartment is down, because that only ever happens on what is already the worst day of your life, and it takes more than two miserable hours to get home. Inside, my fridge is empty, the air smells stale, and there’s a pile of mouse poop in the corner by my bed. I have the jarring realization that I wouldn’t care about any of that if West were with me, followed by the even harsher understanding that hewouldbe with me if only I’d asked him to come.
New York hasn’t felt less like home since my first summer here.
I never blamed Daphne for leaving the city, but I feel the sharp ache of her absence now more than ever. I’m so tired of being alone. I’ve learned to live with it, but at the moment it feels less like living and more like existing.
As I sit in the middle of my empty apartment, I scroll through the Notes app statements on my phone, unable tobelieve I’ve become such a cliché. Another author mired in internet scandal. I numbly delete the statements defending West. What I end up posting doesn’t mention his name at all.
Hi, Torchers! Festival schedules are often changed last minute and without any input from the participants, which is what happened to me at the Tucson Festival of Books. I will never tolerate or excuse any hate toward my readers, and I don’t associate with people who do. I’m thankful for all of you, and I can’t wait to see you on tour for my new book,Shattered, which hits shelves SOON!
I wonder if it’s vaguely tacky to promote myself in a Notes-app non-apology but decide that I don’t care. I typeLove, Marsbut delete it right before I hit post. For some reason, the move gives me a tiny buzz of vindication. The ones who will care about this note are the same ones who spent the last few days dragging West and me through the mud. I don’t have to love them right now. I just have to give them what they want.
Next, I email Whitney and tell her not to postpone the release or cancel my events. I swear that I’m mentally capable of handling the job and that my name won’t be associated with another scandal. I promise to keep my head down.
I’m too hollow to cry. My head and my chest and my limbs ache in a way that is unfamiliar and terrifying. Losing West has never felt quite likethis. The days that follow are an endless stretch of gray wanting. At first, they move too slow. Every hour feels like ten. As my book tour gets closer, however, time plays tricks on me. I blink, and the sun has moved halfway across the sky.
The first morning of the tour comes too quickly, and I’m scrambling to get out the door. Just as I turn off the lights, I realize I have nothing to read on the plane, not even my Kindle, which I forgot at West’s. I scan my bookshelf for whatever will distract me from my life, but I’m not in the mood for any of it. I don’t want to read about people falling in love or casting spells or solving mysteries. I drag my finger across spines, stalling on a little black book I’ve never even opened. I put it in my bag with a heavy sigh.What could it hurt?I can’t possibly be sadder than I already am.
I sleep on the flight to LA, where a car picks me up and drives me straight to the first bookstore, giving me plenty of time stuck in traffic to stew in my own nerves. I write a dozen disaster scenarios in my head, each one ending in my utter humiliation because no one shows up, or they do and it’s a joke, or they film me saying the wrong thing,or, or, or.
The event is standing room only, with a line out the door. The store sells out of stock. People cry. (Not me.) I see fae ears and Fox T-shirts and a teenage girl with a tail. It gives me some reassurance to know that the fandom is alive and well and that these books exist in a universe that in some ways has nothing to do with me. A woman close to my mom’s age shows up with seventeen books for me to sign: foreign editions, movie tie-in covers, original hardcovers, and more.
This is exactly the moment I’ve been dreaming of since I wrote the first chapter ofShattered, my book about a magical world that’s lost its magic and the girl on a quest to restore it. I was broken when I started, but writing this book brought me back to life. It gave me a reason to get out of bed again. I carved out writing spots all over the city. I cried and complained withDaphne. I fell back in love with stories and characters and the feeling of writing something with zero expectations.
All that work and dreaming led to this moment. For years, this was my North Star; this success would make me happy again.
