I pull them on and walk back into the living room, where I find her curled up on the couch with her laptop. Having changed into flannel pajama pants covered in tiny cats and an oversized T-shirt, she’s typing furiously, hair twisted up in a messy bun held together by a pencil, glasses perched on her nose.
I sit down beside her. “Whatcha writing?”
She gestures at the screen. “I’m trying to figure out what happens next.”
I peek over her shoulder. The title reads ‘Chapter 8’ but the page is mostly blank except for a few false starts.
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know how to write you anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Finally, she glances at me, and I can see the exhaustion in her eyes before something vulnerable flickers across her face and she looks away. “When I wrote about you before, it was all fantasy. I could control everything—what you said, what you did, how you made the heroine feel.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re here, making your own decisions, saying things I’ve never even thought about writing.” She closes the laptop with a soft click. “It’s confusing and scary.”
I reach over and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Visibly shivering at the contact, she doesn’t pull away.
“Scary isn’t always bad,” I murmur.
“Says the man who started a bar fight.”
“Says the woman who finished it.”
That earns me a small smile, and something loosens in my chest.
“How do you feel?”
Her question throws me off. “About what?”
“I mean, you’ve gotta be pretty pissed about being pulled away from everything you know.”
I sit back and consider her question. It’s the first time she’s actually asked me how I feel about being ripped from my world and dropped into hers like some sort of cosmic joke.
“Honestly?” I run a hand through my damp hair. “I should be furious. But the weird thing is... now I’m not sure I had much of a life to be pulled away from.”
She frowns, turning to face me fully. “Explain.”
“I keep trying to remember what I was doing before I ended up here. What my apartment looked like, what I ate for breakfast, who I talked to.” I shake my head. “It’s all fuzzy. Like trying to remember a dream after you wake up.”
“That’s because I haven’t written those parts,” she says softly. “Your backstory is mostly trauma and angst. I haven’t gotten around to the mundane details yet.”
“So what you’re telling me is that my entire existence was basically one long, dramatic monologue punctuated by motorcycle rides and a brooding attitude?”
She winces. “Well, when you put that way…”
“Kitten, it sounds like I was one leather jacket away from being a walking cliché.” I grin at her horrified expression. “But you know what I’m not mad about? Tonight. The bar, the fight, that fucking kiss...” I lean closer. “It felt real. More real than anything I can remember.”
Her cheeks flush a beautiful shade of pink. “Ryder...”
“I’m not done.” I reach for her hand and thread our fingers together. “You want to know how I feel? I feel alive. For the first time since I can remember, I feel like I’m actually living instead of just existing on a page.”
“But what happens when the story ends? When I figure out how to sendyou back?”
“Maybe that’s not the right question.”
