44
NOVA
It had been three weeks since the hunt, and I had spent all my waking hours either writing, editing, walking around the city, or cramming as many comedy podcasts and live shows into my veins as possible, like laughter was the only thing that could keep me alive.
I sat at my desk, two chapters away from finishing my first draft. I pulled out my phone to take a break.
The Circle had infected and ruined my social media feeds like a cancer, the effects remaining even after I’d blocked them. No matter how many times I scrolled past, I received videos and posts from pseudo-spiritual trad wives about embracing feminine energy, letting men be providers and leaders, and all manner of content about sexuality and mysticism.
Exhausted? Burnt out? Lonely? Depressed?the women asked.We weren’t meant to live this way…
I closed the apps, and I got back to writing. These psyops campaigns would never convince me that a man was the solution to my problems.
Men had directly causedallmy current problems, in fact.
After Wes shattered my heart, my first thought was that I would never be able to look at the book I was writing ever again.
I could admit it now. This novel was about a woman falling in love for the first time. Though the details were different, the spirit was the same. I was writing a love story; I was writingourlove story.
That was why I couldn’t let him read it. I knew it would reveal something I couldn’t even admit to myself.
Instead, what happened in the wreckage of my real first love surprised me. I didn’t abandon the novel. I lost myself in it. Every tear, every scream into my pillow, every nightmare in which I confronted Wes and all he did was stare at me coldly as I fell apart—I used it all as fuel. I still could barely taste food. I ghosted the agent and the publisher, knowing that because of Roman Graves, I lost the biggest dream I’d chased since I was a child.
I’d lost almost everything that had mattered to me for the past two and a half decades in the blink of an eye. Lorelei. My author aspirations. My deepest, best hidden fantasy of being saved by a white knight, loved for all parts of myself, even the darkness.
It was all gone, and only my words remained.
Perhaps it was a twisted form of masochism, but in this one-hundred-and-forty-thousand-word document, I’d written myself falling in love. I’d written myself getting my heart broken. Every drop of my pain, I bled onto the pages. When I wrote my characters reconciling, I cried myself to sleep that night. I was glad they could have a happy ending, even if I couldn’t.
By the time I finished the last page, I was wrecked and broken all over again. I imagined Wes’s smile, his soft lips on my temple, his infectious laugh. Every time my phone buzzed, I wondered if it was him. I hadn’t found the strength to block him.
But it never was. He didn’t fight for me. He let me go. That was all the closure I needed.
The next week and a half, I self-edited. I’d found an alpha reader among my current cozy romance readers who also read darker, smuttier novels. I decided to send the draft to her before it went to an editor or an agent. If it sucked, I needed to know now so I could look for another job. Because if this book wasn’t the one to change my career, I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I’d still write, but it would become more of a hobby. I would need to just let it go.
My heart clenched, imagining the final nail in the coffin, my last shred of hope taking its final breath. This book was the only thing keeping me sane. I couldn’t fathom the grief of falling out of love with my characters too.
I wouldn’t know who I was if I could no longer dream at all.
I hit send. A breath left my lungs. My phone buzzed.
Hudson
Get your ass out here. It’s trick or treat time, bitch!
After I read the text, I closed out of my phone and turned the ringer off so I could try to enjoy the first holiday of the season without Wes haunting me like a ghost.
The alpha reader’s first email two weeks later was an apology. She’d had a death in the family, so she couldn’t get to my book yet. She promised to dig in over Thanksgiving, and I’d of course told her there was no rush and to take care of herself.
I started babysitting again over the weekends, something I hadn’t done since college. But I needed to save enough for professional editing and a book cover.
Unless, of course, I queried this book to agents instead of indie publishing. But every time I sat down to write a synopsis, I thought of Roman and Jayne. Were they connected enough to sabotage my efforts of ever working with a traditional publisher? And was this book even good enough to make it without Roman’s help?
I needed feedback before I made a move in either direction. All I could do was wait.
“I hate that you’re not coming with me,” Hudson said as I lay on the couch, in and out of a restless nap. “I’m worried about you.”
He rolled his suitcase across the living room before stopping to face me.
