Verity / Тайный дневник Верити (by Colleen Hoover, 2019) - аудиокнига на английском

I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me. I gasp and take a quick step back onto the sidewalk. One of my heels doesn’t clear the curb, so I grip the pole of a No Parking sign to steady myself. The man was in front of me a matter of seconds ago. We were standing in a crowd of people waiting for the crosswalk light to illuminate when he stepped into the street prematurely, resulting in a run-in with a truck. I lunged forward in an attempt to stop him—grasping at nothing as he went down. I closed my eyes before his head went under the tire, but I heard it pop like the cork of a champagne bottle. He was in the wrong, looking casually down at his phone, probably a side effect of crossing the same street without incident many times before. Death by routine. People gasp, but no one screams. The passenger of the offending vehicle jumps out of the truck and is immediately on his knees near the man’s body. I back away from the scene as several people rush forward to help. I don’t have to look at the man under the tire to know he didn’t survive that. I only have to look down at my once-white shirt—at the blood now splattered across it—to know that a hearse would serve him better than an ambulance. I spin around to move away from the accident—to find a place to take a breath—but the crosswalk sign now says walk and the thick crowd takes heed, making it impossible for me to swim upstream in this Manhattan river. Some don’t even look up from their cell phones as they pass right by the accident. I stop trying to move, and wait for the crowd to thin. I glance back toward the accident, careful not to look directly at the man. The driver of the truck is now at the rear of the vehicle, wide-eyed, on a cell phone. Three, maybe four, people are assisting them. A few are led by their morbid curiosities, filming the gruesome scene with their phones. If I were still living in Virginia, this would play out in a completely different manner. Everyone around would stop. Panic would ensue, people would be screaming, a news crew would be on scene in a matter of minutes. But here in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck by a vehicle happens so often, it’s not much more than an inconvenience. A delay in traffic for some, a ruined wardrobe for others. This probably happens so often, it won’t even end up in print. As much as the indifference in some of the people here disturbs me, it’s exactly why I moved to this city ten years ago. People like me belong in overpopulated cities. The state of my life is irrelevant in a place this size. There are far more people here with stories much more pitiful than mine. Here, I’m invisible. Unimportant. Manhattan is too crowded to give a shit about me, and I love her for it. “Are you hurt?” I look up at a man as he touches my arm and scans my shirt. Deep concern is embedded in his expression as he looks me up and down, assessing me for injuries. I can tell by his reaction that he isn’t one of the more hardened New Yorkers. He might live here now, but wherever he’s from, it’s a place that didn’t completely beat the empathy out of him. “Are you hurt?” the stranger repeats, looking me in the eye this time. “No. It’s not my blood. I was standing near him when…” I stop speaking. I just saw a man die. I was so close to him, his blood is on me. I moved to this city to be invisible, but I am certainly not impenetrable. It’s something I’ve been working on—attempting to become as hardened as the concrete beneath my feet. It hasn’t been working out so well. I can feel everything I just witnessed settling in my stomach. I cover my mouth with my hand, but pull it away quickly when I feel something sticky on my lips. More blood. I look down at my shirt. So much blood, none of it mine. I pinch at my shirt and pull it away from my chest, but it sticks to my skin in spots where the blood splatters are beginning to dry. I think I need water. I’m starting to feel light-headed, and I want to rub my forehead, pinch my nose, but I’m scared to touch myself. I look up at the man still gripping my arm. “Is it on my face?” I ask him. He presses his lips together and then darts his eyes away, scanning the street around us. He gestures toward a coffee shop a few doors down. “They’ll have a bathroom,” he says, pressing his hand against the small of my back as he leads me in that direction. I look across the street at the Pantem Press building I was headed to before the accident. I was so close. Fifteen—maybe twenty—feet away from a meeting I desperately need to be in. I wonder how close the man who just died was from his destination? The stranger holds the door open for me when we reach the coffee shop. A woman carrying a coffee in each hand attempts to squeeze past me through the doorway until she sees my shirt. She scurries backward to get away from me, allowing us both to enter the building. I move toward the women’s restroom, but the door is locked. The man pushes open the door to the men’s restroom and motions for me to follow him. He doesn’t lock the door behind us as he walks to the sink and turns on the water. I look in the mirror, relieved to see it isn’t as bad as I’d feared. There are a few spatters of blood on my cheeks that are beginning to darken and dry, and a spray above my eyebrows. But luckily, the shirt took the brunt of it. The man hands me wet paper towels, and I wipe at my face while he wets another handful. I can smell the blood now. The tanginess in the air sends my mind whirling back to when I was ten. The smell of blood was strong enough to remember it all these years later. I attempt to hold my breath at the onset of more nausea. I don’t want to puke. But I want this shirt off me. Now. I unbutton it with trembling fingers, then pull it off and place it under the faucet. I let the water do its job while I take the other wet napkins from the stranger and begin wiping the blood off my chest. He heads for the door, but instead of giving me privacy while I stand here in my least attractive bra, he locks us inside the bathroom so no one will walk in on me while I’m shirtless. It’s disturbingly chivalrous and leaves me feeling uneasy. I’m tense as I watch him through the reflection in the mirror. Someone knocks. “Be right out,” he says. I relax a little, comforted by the thought that someone outside this door would hear me scream if I needed to. I focus on the blood until I’m certain I’ve washed it all off my neck and chest. I inspect my hair next, turning left to right in the mirror, but find only an inch of dark roots above fading caramel. “Here,” the man says, fingering the last button on his crisp white shirt. “Put this on.” He’s already removed his suit jacket, which is now hanging from the doorknob. He frees himself of his button-up shirt, revealing a white undershirt beneath it. He’s muscular, taller than me. His shirt will swallow me. I can’t wear this into my meeting, but I have no other option. I take the shirt when he hands it to me. I grab a few more dry paper towels and pat at my skin, then pull it on and begin buttoning it. It looks ridiculous, but at least it wasn’t my skull that exploded on someone else’s shirt. Silver lining. I take my wet shirt out of the sink and accept there’s no saving it. I toss it in the trashcan, and then I grip the sink and stare at my reflection. Two tired, empty eyes stare back at me. The horror of what they’ve just witnessed have darkened the hazel to a murky brown. I rub my cheeks with the heels of my hands to inspire color, to no avail. I look like death. I lean against the wall, turning away from the mirror. The man is wadding up his tie. He shoves it in the pocket of his suit and assesses me for a moment. “I can’t tell if you’re calm or in a state of shock.” I’m not in shock, but I don’t know that I’m calm, either. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” he says. “I’ve seen worse, unfortunately.” I tilt my head as I attempt to dissect the layers of his cryptic reply. He breaks eye contact, and it only makes me stare even harder, wondering what he’s seen that tops a man’s head being crushed beneath a truck. Maybe he is a native New Yorker. Or maybe he works in a hospital. He has an air of competence that often accompanies people who are in charge of other people. “Are you a doctor?” He shakes his head. “I’m in real estate. Used to be, anyway.” He steps forward and reaches for my shoulder, brushing something away from my shirt. His shirt. When he drops his arm, he regards my face for a moment before taking a step back. His eyes match the tie he just shoved in his pocket. Chartreuse. He’s handsome, but there’s something about him that makes me think he wishes he weren’t. Almost as if his looks might be an inconvenience to him. A part of him he doesn’t want anyone to notice. He wants to be invisible in this city. Just like me. Most people come to New York to be discovered. The rest of us come here to hide. “What’s your name?” he asks. “Lowen.” There’s a pause in him after I say my name, but it only lasts a couple seconds. “Jeremy,” he says. He moves to the sink and runs the water again, and begins washing his hands. I continue to stare at him, unable to mute my curiosity. What did he mean when he said he’s seen worse than the accident we just witnessed? He said he used to be in real estate, but even the worst day on the job as a realtor wouldn’t fill someone with the kind of gloom that’s filling this man. “What happened to you?” I ask. He looks at me in the mirror. “What do you mean?” “You said you’ve seen worse. What have you seen?” He turns off the water and dries his hands, then faces me. “You actually want to know?” I nod. He tosses the paper towel into the trashcan and then shoves his hands in his pockets. His demeanor takes an even more sullen dive. He’s looking me in the eye, but there’s a disconnect between him and this moment. “I pulled my eight-year-old daughter’s body out of a lake five months ago.” I suck in a rush of air and bring my hand to the base of my throat. It wasn’t gloom at all in his expression. It was despair. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. And I am. Sorry about his daughter. Sorry for being curious. “What about you?” he asks. He leans against the counter like this is a conversation he’s ready for. A conversation he’s been waiting for. Someone to come along and make his tragedies seem less tragic. It’s what you do when you’ve experienced the worst of the worst. You seek out people like you…people worse off than you…and you use them to make yourself feel better about the terrible things that have happened to you. I swallow before I speak, because my tragedies are nothing compared to his. I think of the most recent one, embarrassed to speak it out loud because it seems so insignificant compared to his. “My mother died last week.” He doesn’t react to my tragedy like I reacted to his. He doesn’t react at all, and I wonder if it’s because he was hoping mine was worse. It isn’t. He wins. “How did she die?” “Cancer. I’ve been caring for her in my apartment for the past year.” He’s the first person I’ve said that to out loud. I can feel my pulse throbbing in my wrist, so I clasp my other hand around it. “Today is the first time I’ve stepped outside in weeks.” We stare at each other for a moment longer. I want to say something else, but I’ve never been involved in such a heavy conversation with a complete stranger before. I kind of want it to end, because where does the conversation even go from here? It doesn’t. It just stops. He faces the mirror again and looks at himself, pushing a strand of loose dark hair back in place. “I have a meeting I need to get to. You sure you’ll be okay?” He’s looking at my reflection in the mirror now. “Yes. I’m alright.” “Alright?” He turns, repeating the word like a question, as if being alright isn’t as reassuring to him as if I’d said I would be okay. “I’ll be alright,” I repeat. “Thank you for the help.” I want him to smile, but it doesn’t fit the moment. I’m curious what his smile would look like. Instead, he shrugs a little and says, “Alright, then.” He moves to unlock the door. He holds it open for me, but I don’t exit right away. Instead, I continue to watch him, not quite ready to face the world outside. I appreciate his kindness and want to say more, to thank him in some way, maybe over coffee or by returning his shirt to him. I find myself drawn to his altruism—a rarity these days. But it’s the flash of wedding ring on his left hand that propels me forward, out of the bathroom and coffee shop, onto the streets now buzzing with an even larger crowd. An ambulance has arrived and is blocking traffic in both directions. I walk back toward the scene, wondering if I should give a statement. I wait near a cop who is jotting down other eyewitness accounts. They aren’t any different from mine, but I give them my statement and contact information. I’m not sure how much help my statement is since I didn’t actually see him get hit. I was merely close enough to hear it. Close enough to be painted like a Jackson Pollock canvas. I look behind me and watch as Jeremy exits the coffee shop with a fresh coffee in his hand. He crosses the street, focused on wherever it is he’s going. His mind is somewhere else now, far away from me, probably on his wife and what he’ll say to her when he goes home missing a shirt. I pull my phone out of my purse and look at the time. I still have fifteen minutes before my meeting with Corey and the editor from Pantem Press. My hands are shaking even worse now that the stranger is no longer here to distract me from my thoughts. Coffee may help. Morphine would definitely help, but hospice removed it all from my apartment last week when they came to retrieve their equipment after my mother passed. It’s a shame I was too shaken to remember to hide it. I could really use some right about now. When Corey texted me last night to let me know about the meeting today, it was the first time I’d heard from him in months. I was sitting at my computer desk, staring down at an ant as it crawled across my big toe. The ant was alone, fluttering left and right, up and down, searching for food or friends. He seemed confused by his solitude. Or maybe he was excited for his newfound freedom. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was alone. Ants usually travel with an army. The fact that I was curious about the ant’s current situation was a clear sign I needed to leave my apartment. I was worried that, after being cooped up caring for my mother for so long, once I stepped out into the hallway I would be just as confused as that ant. Left, right, inside, outside, where are my friends, where is the food? The ant crawled off my toe and onto the hardwood floor. He disappeared beneath the wall when Corey’s texts came through. I was hoping when I drew a line in the sand months ago, he’d understand: since we no longer have sex, the most appropriate method of contact between a literary agent and his author is email. His text read: Meet me tomorrow morning at nine at the Pantem Press building, floor 14. I think we might have an offer. He didn’t even ask about my mom in the text. I wasn’t surprised. His lack of interest in anything other than his job and himself are the reasons we’re no longer together. His lack of concern made me feel unjustly irritated. He doesn’t owe me anything, but he could have at least acted like he cared. I didn’t text him back at all last night. Instead, I set down my phone and stared at the crack at the base of my wall—the one the ant had disappeared into. I wondered if he would find other ants in the wall, or if he was a loner. Maybe he was like me and had an aversion to other ants. It’s hard to say why I have such a deeply crippling aversion to other humans, but if I had to wager a bet, I’d say it’s a direct result of my own mother being terrified of me. Terrified may be a strong word. But she certainly didn’t trust me as a child. She kept me fairly secluded from people outside of school because she was afraid of what I might be capable of during my many sleepwalking episodes. That paranoia bled into my adulthood, and by then, I was set in my ways. A loner. Very few friends and not much of a social life. Which is why this is the first morning I’ve left my apartment since weeks before she passed away. I figured my first trip outside of my apartment would be somewhere I missed, like Central Park or a bookstore. I certainly didn’t think I’d find myself here, standing in line in the lobby of a publishing house, desperately praying whatever this offer is will catch me up on my rent and I won’t be evicted. But here I am, one meeting away from either being homeless or receiving a job offer that will give me the means to look for a new apartment. I look down and smooth out the white shirt Jeremy lent me in the bathroom across the street. I’m hoping I don’t look too ridiculous. Maybe there’s a chance I can pull it off, as if wearing men’s shirts twice my size is some cool new fashion statement. “Nice shirt,” someone behind me says. I turn at the sound of Jeremy’s voice, shocked to see him. Is he following me? It’s my turn in line, so I hand the security guard my driver’s license and then look at Jeremy, taking in the new shirt he’s wearing. “Do you keep spare shirts in your back pocket?” It hasn’t been that long since he gave me the one off his back. “My hotel is a block away. Walked back to change.” His hotel. That’s promising. If he’s staying in a hotel, maybe he doesn’t work here. And if he doesn’t work here, maybe he isn’t in the publishing industry. I’m not sure why I don’t want him to be in the publishing industry. I just have no idea who my meeting is with, and I’m hoping it has nothing to do with him after the morning we’ve already had. “Does that mean you don’t work in this building?” He pulls out his identification and hands it to the security guard. “No, I don’t work here. I have a meeting on the fourteenth floor.” Of course he does. “So do I,” I say. A fleeting smile appears on his mouth and disappears just as quickly, as if he remembered what happened across the street and realized it’s still too soon to not be affected. “What are the chances we’re heading to the same meeting?” He takes his identification back from the guard who points us in the direction of the elevators. “I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I haven’t been told exactly why I’m here yet.” We walk onto the elevator, and he presses the button for the fourteenth floor. He faces me as he pulls his tie out of his pocket and begins to put it on. I can’t stop staring at his wedding ring. “Are you a writer?” he asks. I nod. “Are you?” “No. My wife is.” He pulls at his tie until it’s secured in place. “Have you written anything I would know?” “I doubt it. No one reads my books.” His lips turn up. “There aren’t many Lowens in the world. I’m sure I can figure out which books you’ve written.” Why? Does he actually want to read them? He looks down at his phone and begins to type. “I never said I write under my real name.” He doesn’t look up from his phone until the elevator doors open. He moves toward them, turning in the doorway to face me. He holds up his phone and smiles. “You don’t write under a pen name. You write under Lowen Ashleigh, which, funny enough, is the name of the author I’m meeting at nine thirty.” I finally get that smile, and as gorgeous as it is, I don’t want it anymore. He just Googled me. And even though my meeting is at nine, not nine thirty, he seems to know more about it than I do. If we really are headed to the same meeting, it makes our chance meeting on the street seem somewhat suspicious. But I guess the odds of us both being in the same place at the same time aren’t all that inconceivable, considering we were headed in the same direction to the same meeting, and therefore, witnessed the same accident. Jeremy steps aside, and I exit the elevator. I open my mouth, preparing to speak, but he takes a few steps, walking backward. “See you in a few.” I don’t know him at all, nor do I know how he relates to the meeting I’m about to have, but even without being privy to any details of what’s happening this morning, I can’t help but like the guy. The man literally gave me the shirt off his back, so I doubt he has a vindictive nature. I smile before he rounds the corner. “Alright. See you in a few.” He returns the smile. “Alright.” I watch him until he makes a left and disappears. As soon as I’m out of his line of sight, I’m able to relax a little. This morning has just been.a lot. Between the accident I witnessed and being in enclosed spaces with that confusing man, I’m feeling so strange. I press my palm against the wall and lean into it. What the hell— “You’re on time,” Corey says. His voice startles me. I spin around, and he’s walking up to me from the opposite hallway. He leans in and kisses me on the cheek. I stiffen. “You’re never on time.” “I would have been here sooner, but…” I shut up. I don’t explain what prevented me from being early. He seems disinterested as he heads in the same direction as Jeremy. “The actual meeting isn’t until nine thirty, but I figured you’d be late, so I told you nine.” I pause, staring at the back of his head. What the hell, Corey? If he’d told me nine thirty rather than nine, I wouldn’t have witnessed the accident across the street. I wouldn’t have been subjected to a stranger’s blood. “You coming?” Corey asks, pausing to look back at me. I bury my irritation. I’m used to doing that when it comes to him. We make it to an empty conference room. Corey closes the door behind us, and I take a seat at the conference table. He sits next to me at the head of the table, positioning himself so that he’s staring at me. I try not to frown as I take in the sight of him after our months-long hiatus, but he hasn’t changed. Still very clean, groomed, wearing a tie, glasses, a smile. Always such a stark contrast to myself. “You look terrible.” I say it because he doesn’t look terrible. He never does, and he knows it. “You look refreshed and ravishing.” He says it because I never look refreshed and ravishing. I always look tired, and maybe even perpetually bored. I’ve heard of Resting Bitch Face, but I relate more to Resting Bored Face. “How’s your mother?” “She died last week.” He wasn’t expecting that. He leans back in his chair and tilts his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Why haven’t you bothered asking until now? I shrug. “I’m still processing.” My mother had been living with me for the past nine months—since she was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. She passed away last Wednesday after three months on hospice. It was difficult to leave the apartment in those last few months because she relied on me for everything—from drinking, to eating, to turning her over in her bed. When she took a turn for the worse, I wasn’t able to leave her alone at all, which is why I didn’t step foot outside of my apartment for weeks. Luckily, a Wi-Fi connection and a credit card make it easy to live life completely indoors in Manhattan. Anything and everything a person could possibly need can be delivered. Funny how one of the most populated cities in the world can double as a paradise for agoraphobics. “You okay?” Corey asks. I mask my disquiet with a smile, even if his concern is only a formality. “I’m fine. It helps that it was expected.” I’m only saying what I think he wants to hear. I’m not sure how he’d react to the truth—that I’m relieved she’s gone. My mother only ever brought guilt into my life. Nothing less, nothing more. Just consistent guilt. Corey heads for the counter lined with breakfast pastries, bottles of water, and a coffee carafe. “You hungry? Thirsty?” “Water’s fine.” He grabs two waters and hands one to me, then returns to his seat. “Do you need help with the will? I’m sure Edward can help.” Edward is the lawyer at Corey’s literary agency. It’s a small agency, so a lot of the writers use Edward’s expertise in other areas. Sadly, I won’t be needing it. Corey tried to tell me when I signed the lease on my two-bedroom last year that I wouldn’t be able to afford it. But my mother insisted she die with dignity—in her own room. Not in a nursing home. Not in a hospital. Not in a hospital bed in the middle of my efficiency apartment. She wanted her own bedroom with her own things. She promised what was left in her bank account after her death would help me catch up on all the time off I had to take from my writing career. For the past year, I’ve lived off what little advance I had left over from my last publishing contract. But it’s all gone now, and apparently, so is my mother’s money. It was one of the last things she confessed to me before she finally succumbed to the cancer. I would have cared for her regardless of her financial situation. She was my mother. But the fact that she felt she needed to lie to me in order for me to agree to take her in proves how disconnected we were from one another. I take a sip of my water and then shake my head. “I don’t really need a lawyer. All she left me was debt, but thanks for the offer.” Corey purses his lips. He knows my financial situation because, as my literary agent, he’s the one who sends my royalty checks. Which is why he’s looking at me with pity now. “You have a foreign royalty check coming soon,” he says, as if I’m not aware of every penny coming in my direction for the next six months. As if I haven’t already spent it. “I know. I’ll be fine.” I don’t want to talk about my financial issues with Corey. With anyone. Corey shrugs a little, unconvinced. He looks down and straightens up his tie. “Hopefully this offer will be good for both of us,” he says. I’m relieved the subject is changing. “Why are we meeting in person with a publisher? You know I prefer to do things over email.” “They requested the meeting yesterday. Said they have a job they’d like to discuss with you, but they wouldn’t give me any details over the phone.” “I thought you were working on getting another contract with my last publisher.” “Your books do okay, but not well enough to secure another contract without sacrificing some of your time. You have to agree to engage in social media, go on tour, build a fan base. Your sales alone aren’t cutting it in the current market.” I was afraid of this. A contract renewal with my current publisher was all the financial hope I had left. The royalty checks from my previous books have dwindled along with my book sales. I’ve done very little writing this past year because of my commitment to my mother, so I have nothing to sell to a publisher. “I have no idea what Pantem will offer, or if it’s even something you’ll be interested in,” Corey says. “We have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they’ll give us more details. The secrecy has me curious, though. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but there are a lot of possibilities and I have a good feeling. We need this.” He says we because whatever the offer is, he gets fifteen percent if I accept. It’s the agent-client standard. What isn’t the agent-client standard would be the six months we spent in a relationship and the two years of sex that followed our breakup. Our sexual relationship only lasted as long as it did because he wasn’t serious about anyone else and neither was I. It was convenient until it wasn’t. But the reason our actual relationship was so short-lived is because he was in love with another woman. Never mind that the other woman in our relationship was also me. It has to be confusing, falling in love with a writer’s words before you meet the actual writer. Some people find it difficult to separate a character from the individual who created them. Corey, surprisingly, is one of those people, despite being a literary agent. He met and fell in love with the female protagonist of my first novel, Open Ended, before he ever spoke to me. He assumed my character’s personality was a close reflection of my own, when in fact, I couldn’t be more opposite from her. Corey was the only agent to respond to my query, and even that response took months to receive. His email was only a few sentences long, but enough to breathe life back into my dying hope. I read your manuscript, Open Ended, in a matter of hours. I believe in this book. If you’re still looking for an agent, give me a call. His email came on a Thursday morning. We were having an in-depth phone conversation about my manuscript two hours later. By Friday afternoon, we had met for coffee and signed a contract. By Saturday night, we had fucked three times. I’m sure our relationship broke a code of ethics somewhere, but I’m not sure that contributed to how short-lived it was. As soon as Corey figured out that I wasn’t the person my character was based on, he realized we weren’t compatible. I wasn’t heroic. I wasn’t simple. I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving. Which was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to be solved. As difficult as it was being in a relationship with him, it is surprisingly easy being his client. It’s why I chose not to switch agencies after our breakup, because he’s been loyal and unbiased when it comes to my career. “You look a little frazzled,” Corey says, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Are you nervous?” I nod, hoping he’ll accept my behavior as nerves because I don’t want to explain why I’m frazzled. It’s been two hours since I left my apartment this morning, but it feels like more has happened in that two hours than in the entire rest of this year. I look down at my hands…my arms…searching for traces of blood. It’s no longer there, but I can still feel it. Smell it. My hands haven’t stopped shaking, so I keep hiding them under the table. Now that I’m here, I realize I probably shouldn’t have come. I can’t pass up a potential contract, though. It’s not like offers are pouring in, and if I don’t secure something soon, I’ll have to get a day job. If I get a day job, it’ll barely leave me time to write. But at least I’ll be able to pay my bills. Corey pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes sweat from his forehead. He only sweats when he’s nervous. The fact that he’s nervous is now making me even more nervous. “Do we need a secret signal if you aren’t interested in whatever the offer is?” he asks. “Let’s listen to what they have to say, and then we can request to speak in private.” Corey clicks his pen and straightens in his chair as though he’s cocking a gun for battle. “Let me do the talking.” I planned to anyway. He’s charismatic and charming. I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who could categorize me as either of those things. It’s best if I just sit back and listen. “What are you wearing?” Corey is staring down at my shirt, perplexed, just now noticing it despite having spent the last fifteen minutes with me. I look down at my oversized shirt. For a moment, I forgot how ridiculous I look. “I spilled coffee on my other shirt this morning and had to change.” “Whose shirt is that?” I shrug. “Probably yours. It was in my closet.” “You left your house in that? There wasn’t something else you could have worn?” “It doesn’t look high fashion?” I’m being sarcastic, but he doesn’t catch it. He makes a face. “No. Is it supposed to?” Such an ass. But he’s good in bed, like most assholes. I’m actually relieved when the conference room door opens and a woman walks in. She’s followed, almost comically, by an older man walking so closely behind her, he bumps into the back of her when she stops. “Goddammit, Barron,” I hear her mumble. I almost smile at the idea of Goddammit Barron actually being his name. Jeremy enters last. He gives me a small nod that goes unnoticed by everyone else. The woman is dressed more appropriately than I am on my best day, with short black hair and lipstick so red, it’s a little jarring at nine thirty in the morning. She seems to be the one in charge as she reaches for Corey’s hand, and then mine, while Goddammit Barron looks on. “Amanda Thomas,” she says. “I’m an editor with Pantem Press. This is Barron Stephens, our lawyer, and Jeremy Crawford, our client.” Jeremy and I shake hands, and he does a good job of pretending we didn’t share an extremely bizarre morning. He quietly takes the seat across from me. I try not to look at him, but it’s the only place my eyes seem to want to travel. I have no idea why I’m more curious about him than I am about this meeting. Amanda pulls folders out of her briefcase and slides them in front of Corey and me. “Thank you for meeting with us,” she says. “We don’t want to waste your time, so I’ll cut right to the chase. One of our authors is unable to fulfill a contract due to medical reasons, and we’re in search of a writer with experience in the same genre who may be interested in completing the three remaining books in her series.” I glance at Jeremy, but his stoic expression doesn’t hint at his role in this meeting. “Who is the author?” Corey asks. “We’re happy to go over the details and terms with you, but we do ask that you sign the non-disclosure agreement. We would like to keep our author’s current situation out of the media.” “Of course,” Corey says. I acquiesce, but I say nothing as we both look over the forms and then sign them. Corey slides them back to Amanda. “Her name is Verity Crawford,” she says. “I’m sure you’re familiar with her work.” Corey stiffens as soon as they mention Verity’s name. Of course we’re familiar with her work. Everyone is. I hazard a glance in Jeremy’s direction. Is Verity his wife? They share a last name. He said downstairs that his wife is a writer. But why would he be in a meeting about her? A meeting she isn’t even here for? “We’re familiar with the name,” Corey says, holding his cards close. “Verity has a very successful series we would hate to see go unfinished,” Amanda continues. “Our goal is to bring in a writer who is willing to step in, finish the series, complete the book tours, press releases, and whatever else is normally required of Verity. We plan to put out a press release introducing the new co-writer while also preserving as much of Verity’s privacy as possible.” Book tours? Press releases? Corey is looking at me now. He knows I’m not okay with that aspect. A lot of authors excel in reader interaction, but I’m so awkward I’m afraid once my readers meet me in person, they’ll swear off my books forever. I’ve only done one signing, and I didn’t sleep for the week leading up to it. I was so scared during the signing that it was hard for me to speak. The next day, I received an email from a reader who said I was a stuck-up bitch to her and she’d never read my books again. And that’s why I stay at home and write. I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me. Corey says nothing as he opens the folder Amanda hands him. “What is Mrs. Crawford’s compensation for three novels?” Goddammit Barron answers this question. “The terms of Verity’s contract will remain the same with her publisher and, understandably, won’t be disclosed. All royalties will go to Verity. But my client, Jeremy Crawford, is willing to offer a flat payment of seventy-five thousand per book.” My stomach leaps at the mention of that kind of payout. But as quickly as the excitement lifts my spirits, they sink again when I accept the enormity of it all. Going from being a nobody writer to co-author of a literary sensation is too much of a jump for me. I can already feel my anxiety sinking in just thinking about it. Corey leans forward, folding his arms over the table in front of him. “I’m assuming the pay is negotiable.” I try to catch Corey’s attention. I want to let him know that negotiations aren’t necessary. There’s no way I’m accepting an offer to finish a series of books that I’d feel too nervous to write. Goddammit Barron straightens up in his chair. “With all due respect, Verity Crawford has spent the past thirteen years building her brand. A brand that wouldn’t exist otherwise. The offer is for three books. Seventy-five thousand per book, which comes to a total of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.” Corey drops a pen on the table, leaning back in his chair, appearing to be unimpressed. “What’s the time frame for submission?” “We’re already behind, so we’re looking to have the first book submitted six months from the contract signing date.” I can’t stop staring at the red lipstick smeared across her teeth as she speaks. “The timeline for the other two is up for discussion. Ideally, we would like to see the contract completed within the next twenty-four months.” I can sense Corey doing the math in his head. It makes me wonder if he’s calculating to see what his cut would be or what my cut would be. Corey would get fifteen percent. That’s almost thirty-four thousand dollars, simply for representing me in this meeting as my agent. Half would go to taxes. That’s just under one hundred thousand that would end up in my bank account. Fifty grand per year. It’s more than double the advance I’ve received for my past novels, but it’s not enough to convince me to attach myself to such a successful series. The conversation moves back and forth pointlessly, since I already know I’ll be declining. When Amanda pulls out the official contract, I clear my throat and speak up. “I appreciate the offer,” I say. I look directly at Jeremy so he’ll know I’m being sincere. “Really, I do. But if your plan is to bring in someone to become the new face of the series, I’m sure there are other authors who would be a much better fit.” Jeremy says nothing, but he is looking at me with a lot more curiosity than he was before I spoke up. I stand up, ready to leave. I’m disappointed in the outcome, but even more disappointed that my first day outside of my apartment has been a complete disaster in so many ways. I’m ready to go home and take a shower. “I’d like a moment with my client,” Corey says, standing quickly. Amanda nods, closing her briefcase as they both stand. “We’ll step out,” she says. “The terms are detailed in your folders. We have two other writers in mind if this doesn’t seem like it would be a good fit for you, so try to let us know something by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.” Jeremy is the only one still seated at this point. He hasn’t said a single word this entire time. Amanda leans forward to shake my hand. “If you have any questions, please reach out. I’m happy to help.” “Thank you,” I say. Amanda and Goddammit Barron walk out, but Jeremy continues to stare at me. Corey looks back and forth between us, waiting for Jeremy to exit. Instead, Jeremy leans forward, focusing on me. “Could we possibly have a word in private?” Jeremy asks me. He looks at Corey, but not for permission—it’s more of a dismissal. Corey stares back at Jeremy, caught off guard by his brazen request. I can tell by the way Corey slowly turns his head and narrows his eyes that he wants me to decline. He’s all but saying, “Can you believe this guy?” What he doesn’t realize is that I’m craving to be alone in this room with Jeremy. I want them all out of this room, especially Corey, because I suddenly have so many more questions for Jeremy. About his wife, about why they reached out to me, about why she’s no longer able to finish her own series. “It’s fine,” I say to Corey. The vein in his forehead protrudes as he attempts to hide his irritation. His jaw hardens, but he yields and eventually exits the conference room. It’s just Jeremy and me. Again. Counting the elevator, this is the third time we’ve been alone in a room together since we crossed paths this morning. But this is the first time I’ve felt this much nervous energy. I’m sure it’s all mine. Jeremy somehow looks as calm as he did while he was helping me clean pieces of a pedestrian off of myself less than an hour ago. Jeremy leans back in his chair, dragging his hands down his face. “Jesus,” he mutters. “Are meetings with publishers always this stiff?” I laugh quietly. “I wouldn’t know. I usually do these things over email.” “I can see why.” He stands and grabs a bottle of water. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting now and he’s so tall, but I don’t remember feeling this small in his presence earlier. Knowing he’s married to Verity Crawford makes me feel intimidated by him even more than when I was standing in front of him in my skirt and bra. He remains standing as he leans against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankles. “You okay? You didn’t really have much time to adjust to what happened across the street before walking into this.” “Neither did you.” “I’m alright.” There’s that word again. “I’m sure you have questions.” “A ton,” I admit. “What do you want to know?” “Why can’t your wife finish the series?” “She was in a car accident,” he says. His response is mechanical, as if he’s forcing himself to detach from any emotion right now. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.” I shift in my seat, not knowing what else to say. “I wasn’t on board with the idea of someone else finishing out her contract at first. I had hope she would fully recover. But—” He pauses. “Here we are.” His demeanor makes sense to me now. He seemed a little reserved and quiet, but now I realize all the quiet parts of him are just grief. Palpable grief. I’m not sure if it’s because of what happened to his wife, or what he told me in the bathroom earlier—that his daughter passed away several months ago. But this man is obviously out of his element here as he’s challenged with making decisions heavier than anything most people ever have to face. “I’m so sorry.” He nods, but he offers nothing further. He returns to his seat, which makes me wonder if he thinks I’m still contemplating the offer. I don’t want to waste his time any more than I already have. “I appreciate the offer, Jeremy, but honestly, it’s not something I’m comfortable with. I’m not good with publicity. I’m not even sure why your wife’s publisher reached out to me as an option in the first place.” “Open Ended,” Jeremy says. I stiffen when he mentions one of the books I’ve written. “It was one of Verity’s favorite books.” “Your wife read one of my books?” “She said you were going to be the next big thing. I’m the one who gave her editor your name because Verity thinks your writing styles are similar. If anyone is going to take over Verity’s series, I want it to be someone whose work she respects.” I shake my head. “Wow. I’m flattered, but…I can’t.” Jeremy watches me silently, probably wondering why I’m not reacting as most writers would to this opportunity. He can’t figure me out. Normally, I would be proud of that. I don’t like being easily read, but it feels wrong in this situation. I feel like I should be more transparent, simply because he showed me courtesy this morning. I wouldn’t even know where to start, though. Jeremy leans forward, his eyes swimming with curiosity. He stares at me a moment, then taps his fist on the table as he stands. I assume the meeting is over and start to stand as well, but Jeremy doesn’t walk toward the door. He walks toward a wall lined with framed awards, so I sink back into my chair. He stares at the awards, his back to me. It isn’t until he runs his fingers over one of them that I realize it’s one of his wife’s. He sighs and then faces me again. “Have you ever heard of people referred to as Chronics?” he asks. I shake my head. “I think Verity might have made up the term. After our daughters died, she said we were Chronics. Prone to chronic tragedy. One terrible thing after another.” I stare at him a moment, allowing his words to percolate. He said he’d lost a daughter earlier, but he’s using the term in plural form. “Daughters?” He inhales a breath. Releases it with defeat. “Yeah. Twins. We lost Chastin six months before Harper passed. It’s been…” He isn’t detaching himself from his emotions as well as he was earlier. He runs a hand down his face and then returns to his chair. “Some families are lucky enough to never experience a single tragedy. But then there are those families that seem to have tragedies waiting on the back burner. What can go wrong, goes wrong. And then gets worse.” I don’t know why he’s telling me this, but I don’t question it. I like hearing him speak, even if the words coming out of his mouth are dismal. He’s twirling his water bottle in a circle on the table, staring down at it in thought. I’m getting the impression he didn’t request to be alone with me to change my mind. He just wanted to be alone. Maybe he couldn’t stand another second of discussing his wife in that manner, and he wanted them all to leave. I find that comforting—that being alone with me in the room still feels like being alone to him. Or maybe he always feels alone. Like our old next-door neighbor who, from what it sounds like, was definitely a Chronic. “I grew up in Richmond,” I say. “Our next-door neighbor lost all three members of his family in less than two years. His son died in combat. His wife died six months later of cancer. Then his daughter died in a car wreck.” Jeremy stops moving the water bottle and slides it a few inches away from him. “Where’s the man now?” I stiffen. I wasn’t expecting that question. The truth is, the man couldn’t take losing everyone that meant anything to him. He killed himself a few months after his daughter died, but to say that out loud to Jeremy, who is still grieving the deaths of his own daughters, would be cruel. “He still lives in the same town. He remarried a few years later. Has a few stepkids and grandchildren.” There’s something in Jeremy’s expression that makes me think he knows I’m lying, but he seems appreciative that I did. “You’ll need to spend time in Verity’s office going through her things. She has years of notes and outlines—stuff I wouldn’t know how to make sense of.” I shake my head. Did he not hear anything I said? “Jeremy, I told you, I can’t—” “The lawyer is lowballing you. Tell your agent to ask for half a million. Tell them you’ll do it with no press, under a pen name, with an ironclad non-disclosure. That way, whatever it is you’re trying to hide can stay hidden.” I want to tell him I’m not trying to hide anything other than my awkwardness, but before I can say anything, he’s moving toward the door. “We live in Vermont,” he continues. “I’ll give you the address after you sign the contract. You’re welcome to stay for however long it takes to go through her office.” He pauses with his hand on the door. I open my mouth to object again, but the only word that comes out is a very unsure “Alright.” He stares at me a moment, as if he has more to say. Then he says, “Alright.” He opens the door and walks out into the hallway where Corey is waiting. Corey slips past him, back into the conference room where he closes the door. I look down at the table, confused by what just happened. Confused as to why I’m being offered such a substantial amount of money for a job I’m not even sure I can do. Half a million dollars? And I can do it under a pen name with no tour or publicity commitment? What on earth did I say that led to that? “I don’t like him,” Corey says, plopping down in his seat. “What did he say to you?” “He said they’re lowballing me and to ask for half a million with no publicity.” I turn in time to watch Corey choke on air. He grabs my bottle of water and takes a drink. “Shit.” I had a boyfriend in my early twenties named Amos, who liked being choked. It’s why we broke up—because I refused to choke him. But sometimes I wonder where I’d be had I entertained his urge. Would we be married now? Would we have children? Would he have moved on to even more dangerous sexual perversions? I think that’s what worried me the most with him. In your early twenties, vanilla sex should satisfy a person without the need to introduce fetishes so early on in a relationship. I like to think about Amos when I find myself disappointed with the current state of my life. As I stare at the pink eviction notice in Corey’s hand, I remind myself that it could be worse—I could still be with Amos. I open my apartment door farther, allowing Corey to step inside. I wasn’t aware he was coming over, or I would have made sure there were no eviction notices taped to my door. It’s the third day in a row I’ve received one. I take it from him and shove it into a drawer. Corey holds up a champagne bottle. “Thought we could celebrate the new contract,” he says, handing me the bottle. I’m appreciative he doesn’t mention the eviction. It’s not as dire now that I have a paycheck on the horizon. What I’ll do until then.I’m not sure. I might have enough money for a few days in a hotel. I can always pawn what’s left of my mother’s things. Corey has already taken off his coat and is loosening his tie. This used to be our routine, before my mother moved in. He’d show up and begin losing pieces of his clothing until we were under the covers in my bed. That came to a complete halt when I found out through social media that he had been on a few dates with a girl named Rebecca. I didn’t stop our sexual relationship out of jealousy—I stopped it out of respect for the girl who wasn’t aware of it. “How’s Becca?” I ask as I open the cabinet to find two glasses. Corey’s hand pauses on his tie, as if he’s shocked I’m aware of what’s going on in his love life. “I write suspense novels, Corey. Don’t be so surprised that I know all about your girlfriend.” I don’t watch for his reaction. I open the bottle of champagne and pour two glasses. When I go to hand one to Corey, he’s seated at the bar. I stay on the opposite side and we raise our glasses. But I lower mine before he can make a toast. I stare down at my champagne flute, finding it impossible to think of anything to toast about other than the money. “It’s not my series,” I say. “They aren’t my characters. And the author responsible for the success of these books is injured. It feels wrong to toast to this.” Corey’s glass is still paused mid air. He shrugs and then downs his entire glass in one sip, handing it back to me. “Don’t focus on why you’re playing the game. Just focus on the finish line.” I roll my eyes as I set his empty glass in the sink. “Have you ever even read one of her books?” he asks. I shake my head and turn on the water. I should probably do dishes. I have forty-eight hours to be out of this apartment, and my dishes are something I want to take with me when I go. “Nope. Have you?” I pour dish soap into the water and grab a sponge. Corey laughs. “No. She’s not my style.” I look up at him, just as he realizes that his words double as an insult to my own writing, considering I was offered this job because of our supposed similar writing styles, according to Verity’s husband. “Not what I meant,” he says. He stands up and walks around the bar, standing next to me at the sink. He waits for me to finish scrubbing a plate, and then he takes it from me and begins rinsing it off. “It doesn’t look like you’ve packed anything. Have you found a new apartment yet?” “I have a storage building and plan to have most of it out by tomorrow. I’ve put in an application at a complex in Brooklyn, but they won’t have anything for two weeks.” “The eviction notice says you have two days to be out.” “I’m aware of that.” “So where are you going? A hotel?” “Eventually. I’m leaving Sunday for Verity Crawford’s house. Her husband says I’ll need to go through her office for a day or two before I start the series.” Immediately upon signing the contract this morning, I received an email from Jeremy with directions to their house. I requested to come on Sunday, and luckily he agreed. Corey takes another dish from me. I can feel him staring at me. “You’re staying at their house?” “How else am I supposed to get her notes for the series?” “Have him mail them to you.” “She has thirteen years’ worth of notes and outlines. Jeremy said he wouldn’t even know where to begin, and it would be easier if I sorted through it myself.” Corey doesn’t say anything, but I can sense he’s biting his tongue. I slide the sponge down the length of the knife in my hand and then hand it to him. “What aren’t you saying?” I ask. He rinses the knife in silence, sets it in the strainer, then grips the edge of the sink and turns his head toward me. “The man lost two daughters. Then his wife gets injured in a car wreck. I’m not sure I’m all that comfortable with you being in his home.” The water suddenly seems too cold for me. Chills run down both arms. I turn off the water and dry my hands, leaning my back against the sink. “Are you suggesting he had something to do with any of it?” Corey shrugs. “I don’t know enough about what happened to suggest anything. But has that thought not crossed your mind? That maybe it’s not the safest thing to do? You don’t even know them.” I’m not ignorant. I’ve been digging up as much as I can find about them online. Their first child was at a sleepover fifteen miles away when she had an allergic reaction. Neither Jeremy nor Verity was there when it happened. And the second daughter drowned in the lake behind their home, but Jeremy didn’t arrive home until the search for her body was already in place. Both were ruled accidents. I can see why Corey is concerned, because I was, too, honestly. But the more I dig, the less I can find to be concerned about. Two tragic, unrelated accidents. “And what about Verity’s car wreck?” “It was an accident,” I say. “She hit a tree.” Corey’s expression suggests he isn’t convinced. “I read there weren’t any skidmarks. Which means she either fell asleep or she did it on purpose.” “Can you blame her?” I’m irritated that he’s making baseless claims. I turn around to finish the dishes. “She lost both of her daughters. Anyone who suffers through something like that would want to find a way out.” Corey dries his hands on the dish towel and then grabs his jacket off the barstool. “Accidents or not, the family obviously has shit luck and a hell of a lot of emotional damage, so you need to be careful. Get in, get what you need, and leave.” “How about you worry about the contractual details, Corey? I’ll worry about the research and writing part of it.” He slips on his jacket. “Just looking out for you.” Looking out for me? He knew my mother was dying, and he hasn’t checked in with me in two months. He’s not looking out for me. He’s an ex-boyfriend who thought he was going to get laid tonight, but instead, was quietly rejected right before finding out I’ll be staying in another man’s home. He’s disguising his jealousy as concern. I walk him to the door, relieved he’s leaving this soon. I don’t blame him for wanting to escape. This apartment has had a weird vibe in it since my mother moved in. It’s why I haven’t even bothered fighting the lease, or informing the landlord that I’ll have the money in two weeks. I want out of this place more than Corey does right now. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “congratulations. Whether you created this series or not, your writing led you to it. You should be proud of that.” I hate it when he says nice things at the height of my irritation. “Thank you.” “Text me as soon as you get there Sunday.” “I will.” “And let me know if you need any help moving.” “I won’t.” He laughs a little. “Okay, then.” He doesn’t hug me goodbye. He salutes me as he backs away, and we’ve never parted more awkwardly. I have a feeling our relationship is finally as it should be: Agent and author. Nothing more. I could have chosen anything else to do on this six-hour drive. I could have listened to “Bohemian Rhapsody” over sixty times. I could have called my old friend Natalie and played catch-up, especially since I haven’t even spoken to her in over six months. We text occasionally, but it would have been nice to hear her voice. Or maybe I could have used the time to mentally prep myself for all the reasons I’m going to stay far away from Jeremy Crawford while I’m in his home. But instead of doing any of that, I chose to listen to the audiobook of the first novel in Verity Crawford’s series. It just ended. My knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. My mouth is parched from forgetting to hydrate on the drive over. My self-esteem is somewhere back in Albany. She’s good. Really good. Now I’m regretting having signed the contract. I’m not sure I can live up to that. And to think she’s already written six of these novels, all from the villain’s point of view. How can one brain hold that much creativity? Maybe the other five suck. I can hope. That way, there won’t be much expectation for the final three books in the series. Who am I kidding? Every time one of Verity’s novels releases, it hits number one on the Times. I just made myself twice as nervous than when I left Manhattan. I spend the rest of the drive ready to go back to New York with my tail between my legs, but I stick it out because thinking I’m not good enough is part of the writing process. It’s part of mine, anyway. For me, there are three steps to completing each of my books. 1) Start the book and hate everything I write. 2) Keep writing the book despite hating everything I write. 3) Finish the book and pretend I’m happy with it. There’s never a point in my writing process where I feel like I’ve accomplished what I set out to accomplish, or when I believe I’ve written something everyone needs to read. Most of the time, I cry in my shower and stare at my computer screen like a zombie, wondering how so many other authors can promote their books with so much confidence. “This is the greatest thing since the last book I wrote! You should read it!” I’m the awkward writer who posts a picture of my book and says, “It’s an okay book. There are words in it. Read it if you want.” I’m afraid this particular writing experience will be even worse than I imagined. Hardly anyone reads my books, so I don’t have to suffer through too many negative reviews. But once my work is out there with Verity’s name on it, it’s going to be read by hundreds of thousands of readers with built-in expectations for this series. And if I fail, Corey will know I failed. The publishers will know I’ve failed. Jeremy will know I’ve failed. And…depending on her mental state…Verity may know I’ve failed. Jeremy didn’t clarify the extent of Verity’s injuries when we were in the meeting, so I have no idea if she’s injured beyond the point of communication. There was very little online about her car wreck other than a couple of vague articles. The publisher released a statement shortly after the wreck stating Verity received non-life-threatening injuries. Two weeks ago, they released another statement that said she was recovering peacefully at home. But her editor, Amanda, said they wanted to keep the extent of her injuries out of the media. So, it’s a possibility they downplayed it all. Or, maybe, after all the loss she’s experienced over the past two years, she simply doesn’t want to write again. I guess it’s understandable they’d need to ensure the completion of the series. The publishers don’t want to see their biggest source of income crash and burn. And while I’m honored I was asked to complete it, I don’t necessarily want to be thrown into that kind of spotlight. When I started writing, it wasn’t my goal to become famous. I dreamt of a life where enough people would buy my books and I could pay my bills and never be propelled into a life of riches and fame. Very few authors reach that level of success, so it was never a concern that it would happen to me. I realize attaching my name to this series would boost sales of my past books and ensure more opportunity in the future, but Verity is extremely successful. As is this series I’m taking over. By attaching my real name to her series, I would be subjecting myself to the kind of attention I’ve spent most of my life fearing. I’m not looking for my fifteen minutes of fame. I’m looking for a paycheck. It’s going to be a long wait for that advance. I spent most of the rest of my money renting this car and putting my things in storage. I paid a deposit for an apartment, but it won’t be ready until next week, or maybe even the week after, which means what little I have left will need to go to a hotel once I leave the Crawford home. This is my life. Sort of homeless, living out of a suitcase just one and a half weeks after the last of my immediate family members passes away. Can it get worse? I could be married to Amos right now, so life could always be worse. “Jesus, Lowen.” I roll my eyes at my inability to realize how many writers would kill for this kind of opportunity, and here I am thinking my life has hit rock bottom. Ungrateful, party of one. I have to stop looking at my life through my mother’s glasses. Once I get the advance on these novels, everything will start looking up. I’ll no longer be between apartments. I took the exit for the Crawford home a few miles back. The GPS is leading me down a long, windy road flanked by flowering dogwood trees and houses that keep getting bigger and more spread apart. When I finally reach the turn-in, I put the rental in park to stop and admire the entrance. Two tall brick columns loom on both sides of the driveway—a driveway that never seems to end. I crane my neck, trying to see the length of it, but the dark asphalt snakes between the trees. Somewhere up there is the house, and somewhere inside of that house lies Verity Crawford. I wonder if she knows I’m coming. My palms start to sweat, so I lift them off the steering wheel and hold them in front of the air vents to dry them. The security gate is propped open, so I put the car in drive and slowly amble past the sturdy wrought iron. I tell myself not to freak out, even as I notice that the repetitive pattern on top of the iron gate resembles spider webs. I shiver as I follow a curve, the trees getting denser and taller until the house comes into view. I spot the roof first as I climb the hill: slate gray like an angry storm cloud. Seconds later, the rest of it appears, and my breath snags in my throat. Dark stone works its way across the front of the house, broken only by the blood red door, the only relief of color in this sea of gray. Ivy covers the left side of the house, but instead of charming, it’s threatening—like a slow-moving cancer. I think of the apartment I left behind: the dingy walls and too-small kitchen with the olive green refrigerator circa 1970. My entire apartment would probably fit into the entrance hall of this monster. My mother used to say that houses have a soul, and if that is true, the soul of Verity Crawford’s house is as dark as they come. The online satellite images did not do this property justice. I stalked the home before showing up. According to a realtor website, they purchased the home five years ago for two and a half million. It’s worth over three million now. It’s overwhelming and huge and secluded, but it doesn’t have the typical formal vibe of homes of this caliber. There isn’t an air of superiority clinging to the walls. I edge the car along the driveway, wondering where I’m supposed to park. The lawn is lush and manicured, at least three acres deep. The lake behind the house stretches from one edge of the property to the other. The Green Mountains paint a picturesque backdrop so beautiful, it’s hard to believe the awful tragedy its owners have experienced. I sigh in relief as I spot a concrete parking area next to the garage. I put my car in park and then kill the engine. My car doesn’t fit in with this house at all. I’m kicking myself for selecting the cheapest car I could possibly rent. Thirty bucks a day. I wonder if Verity has ever sat in a Kia Soul. In the article I read about her wreck, she was driving a Range Rover. I reach to the passenger seat to grab my phone so I can text Corey to let him know I made it. When I put my hand on the driver’s side door handle, I stiffen, stretching my spine against the back seat. I turn and look out my window. “Shit!” What the fuck? I slap my chest to make sure I still have a heartbeat as I stare back at the face staring into my car window. Then, when I see that the figure at my door is only a child, I cover my mouth, hoping he’s heard his fair share of curse words. He doesn’t laugh. He just stares, which seems even creepier than if he’d have scared me on purpose. He’s a miniature version of Jeremy. The same mouth, the same green eyes. I read in one of the articles that Verity and Jeremy had three children. This must be their little boy. I open the door, and he takes a step back as I get out of the car. “Hey.” The child doesn’t respond. “Do you live here?” “Yes.” I look at the house behind him, wondering what that must be like for a child to grow up in such a home. “Must be nice,” I mutter. “Used to be.” He turns and begins walking up the driveway, toward the front door. I instantly feel bad for him. I’m not sure I’ve given much thought to the situation this family is in. This little boy, who can’t be more than five years old, has lost both of his sisters. And who knows what that kind of grief has done to his mother? I know it was apparent in Jeremy. I save my suitcase for later and shut my door, following the little boy. I’m only a few feet behind him when he opens the front door and walks into the house, then closes the door in my face. I wait a moment, wondering if maybe he has a sense of humor. But I can see through the frosted window of the front door, and he continues through the house and doesn’t come back to let me in. I don’t want to call him an asshole. He’s a little kid, and he’s been through a lot. But I think he might be an asshole. I ring the doorbell and wait. And wait. And wait. I ring the doorbell again but get no answer. Jeremy put his contact information in the email he sent me, so I pull up his number and text him. “It’s Lowen. I’m at your front door.” I send the text and wait. A few seconds later, I hear steps descending the stairs. I can see Jeremy’s shadow through the frosted glass grow larger as he approaches the door. Right before it opens, I see him pause like he’s taking a breath. I don’t know why, but that pause reassures me that maybe I’m not the only one nervous about this whole situation. Weird how his potential discomfort brings me comfort. I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. He opens the door, and although he’s the same man I met a few days ago, he’s…different. No suit or tie, no air of mystery about him. He’s in sweatpants and a blue Bananafish T-shirt. Socks, no shoes. “Hey.” I don’t like the buzz rushing through me right now. I ignore it and smile at him. “Hi.” He stares for a second and then steps aside, opening the door wider, waving me in with his arm. “Sorry, I was upstairs. I told Crew to get the door. Guess he didn’t hear me.” I step into the foyer. “Do you have a suitcase?” Jeremy asks. I spin around to face him. “Yeah, it’s in my back seat, but I can get it later.” “Is the car unlocked?” I nod. “Be right back.” He slips on a pair of shoes next to the door and walks outside. I spin in a slow circle, checking out my surroundings. Not much is different from the pictures I saw of the home online. It feels odd because I’ve seen all the rooms in the house already, thanks to the realtor website. I feel like I already know my way around, and I’m only five feet into the house. There’s a kitchen to the right and living room to the left. They’re separated by an entryway with a staircase that leads to the second floor. The kitchen in the pictures was trimmed with dark cherry cabinetry, but it’s been updated, and all the old cabinets have been ripped out, replaced mostly by shelves and a few cabinets above the countertop that are a blonder wood. There are two ovens, and a refrigerator with a glass door. I’m staring at it from several feet away when the little boy comes bounding down the stairs. He runs past me and opens the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of Dr. Pepper. I watch as he struggles to twist open the lid. “Want me to open it for you?” I ask him. “Yes, please,” he says, looking up at me with those big green eyes. I can’t believe I thought he was an asshole. His voice is so sweet and his hands are so tiny, they can’t even open a bottle of soda yet. I take it from him and twist open the bottle with ease. The front door opens as I’m handing the soda back to Crew. Jeremy narrows his eyes in Crew’s direction. “I just told you no sodas.” He leaves my suitcase against the wall and walks over to Crew, pulling the soda out of his hands. “Go get ready for your shower. I’ll be there in a minute.” Crew rolls his head and stalks back toward the stairs. Jeremy cocks an eyebrow. “Never trust that kid. He’s smarter than both of us put together.” He takes a sip of the soda before returning it to the refrigerator. “You want something to drink?” “No, I’m fine.” Jeremy grabs my suitcase and carries it down the hallway. “I hope it’s not weird, but I’m giving you the master bedroom. We all sleep upstairs now, and I thought it would be easier because it’s the closest room to her office.” “I’m not even sure I’m staying the night,” I say as I follow behind him. The place gives me an eerie vibe, so it would be nice if I could grab what I need and find a hotel. “I was planning to check out her office and assess the situation.” He laughs, pushing the bedroom door open. “Trust me. You’ll need at least two days. Maybe more.” He lays the suitcase on a chest at the foot of the bed, then opens the master closet and points to an empty area. “I made some space in case you need to hang anything.” He points toward the bathroom. “Bathroom is all yours. I’m not sure if there are toiletries, so let me know if you need anything. I’m sure we have it.” “Thank you.” I look around the room, and this all feels so bizarre. Especially that I’ll be sleeping in their bed. My eyes are pulled to the headboard—specifically to the teeth marks bitten into the top edge of the headboard in the center of the bed. I immediately tear my eyes away before Jeremy catches me looking. He’ll probably see all over my face that I’m wondering which one of them had to bite the headboard in order to keep quiet during sex. Have I ever had sex that intense? “You need a minute alone in here, or would you like to go ahead and see the rest of the house?” Jeremy asks. “I’m good,” I say, following him. He walks into the hallway, but I pause, eyeing the bedroom door. “Does this door lock?” He takes a step back inside the bedroom, looking at the door handle. “I don’t know that we’ve ever locked it.” He jiggles the handle. “I’m sure I can find a lock if it’s important to you.” I haven’t slept in a bedroom without a lock since I was ten. I want to beg him to find a lock, but I also don’t want to be even more intrusive than I already am. “No, it’s fine.” He lets go of the door, but before stepping back out into the hallway, he says, “Before I take you upstairs, do you know what name you’ll be writing this series under?” I hadn’t thought about it since finding out Pantem agreed to the demands Jeremy told me to make. I shrug. “I haven’t really thought about it.” “I’d like to introduce you to Verity’s nurse using your pen name, in case you never want anyone attaching you to the series.” Her injuries are bad enough that she needs a nurse? “Okay. I guess…” I’m clueless as to what name I should use. “What street did you grow up on?” Jeremy asks. “Laura Lane.” “What was the name of your first pet?” “Chase. He was a Yorkie.” “Laura Chase,” he says. “I like it.” I tilt my head, recognizing that pattern of questioning from Facebook quizzes. “Isn’t that how people figure out their pornstar name?” He laughs. “Pen name, pornstar name. Works across the board.” He motions for me to follow him. “Come meet Verity first, and then I’ll take you to her office.” Jeremy takes the stairs two at a time. There’s an elevator that looks newly installed right past the kitchen. Verity must be in a wheelchair now. God, the poor woman. Jeremy is waiting for me when I reach the top of the stairs. The hallway splits, with three doors on one end and two on the other. He turns left. “This is Crew’s bedroom,” he says, pointing toward the first room. “I sleep in that room.” He points to the door next to Crew’s. Across the hall from those two bedrooms is another room. The door is shut, so he taps on it gently and then pushes it open. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting this. She’s on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, her blonde hair spilled over her pillow. A nurse in blue scrubs is at the foot of her bed, putting socks on her feet. Crew is lying next to Verity on the bed, holding an iPad. Verity’s eyes are vacant, uninterested in her surroundings. She’s unaware of the nurse. Unaware of me. Of Crew. Of Jeremy as he leans over and brushes hair from her forehead. She blinks, but there’s nothing else there. No recognition that the man she had three children with is trying to be affectionate with her. I try to cover the chills that have appeared on my arms. The nurse addresses Jeremy. “She seemed tired, so I thought I’d put her to bed early tonight.” She pulls a blanket over Verity. Jeremy moves to the window and closes the curtains. “Did she take her after-dinner meds?” The nurse lifts Verity’s feet, tucking the blanket beneath them. “Yeah, she’s good until midnight.” The nurse is older than Jeremy, maybe in her mid-fifties, with short red hair. She glances at me, then back at Jeremy, waiting for an introduction. Jeremy shakes his head like he forgot I’m even here. He waves toward me while looking at the nurse. “This is Laura Chase, the author I was telling you about. Laura, this is April, Verity’s nurse.” I shake April’s hand, but feel her judgment as she eyes me up and down. “I thought you’d be older,” she says. What do I even say to that? Coupled by the way she looks at me, her comment feels like a dig. Or an accusation. I ignore it and smile. “It’s good to meet you, April.” “You too.” She grabs her purse off the dresser, directing her attention to Jeremy. “I’ll see you in the morning. Should be an easy night.” She reaches down and pinches Crew’s thigh. He giggles and scoots away from her. I step aside as April exits the bedroom. I glance at the bed. Verity’s eyes are still open, connecting with nothing. I’m not sure she’s even aware her nurse left. Is she aware of anything? I feel terrible for Crew. For Jeremy. For Verity. I don’t know that I’d want to live in this condition. And knowing Jeremy is tied to this life… It’s all so depressing. This house, the tragedies in this family’s past, the struggles in their present. “Crew, don’t make me do it. I told you to shower.” Crew looks up at Jeremy and smiles, but fails to get off the bed. “I’m gonna count to three.” Crew sets his iPad beside him, but continues to defy Jeremy. “Three…two…” And then, at the count of one, Jeremy lunges at Crew, gripping his ankles and pulling him up in the air. “Upside down night it is!” Crew is laughing and squirming. “Not again!” Jeremy looks over at me. “Laura, how many seconds can a kid hang upside down before their brain flips over and they start talking backward?” I laugh at their interaction. “I heard twenty seconds. But it could be fifteen.” Crew says, “No, Daddy, I’ll go shower! I don’t want my brain to be upside down!” “And you’ll clean out your ears? Because they clearly weren’t working before when I told you to take a shower.” “I swear!” Jeremy tosses him over his shoulder, turning him right side up before placing him back on his feet. He ruffles his hair and says, “Go.” I watch as Crew rushes out the door and into his bedroom across the hall. Watching Jeremy interact with Crew makes the house seem a little more welcoming. “He’s cute. How old is he?” “Five,” Jeremy says. He reaches down to the side of Verity’s hospital bed and raises it a bit. He grabs a remote off the table next to her bed and turns on the TV. We both exit the bedroom, and he pulls the door slightly shut. I’m standing in the middle of the hallway when he faces me. He slides his hands into the pockets of his grey sweatpants. He acts like he wants to say more—explain more. But he doesn’t. He sighs and looks back at Verity’s bedroom. “Crew was scared to sleep up here by himself. He’s been a trooper, but nights are rough for him. He wanted to be closer to her, but he didn’t like sleeping downstairs. I moved us both up here to make it easier on him.” Jeremy makes his way back down the hallway. “Which means you have the run of the downstairs at night.” He flips off the hallway light. “Want to see her office?’ “Of course.” I follow him downstairs, to the double doors near the stairwell landing. He pushes open one of the double doors, revealing the most intimate part of his wife. Her office. When I step inside, it feels like I’m rummaging around her underwear drawer. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with books tucked into every vacant crevice. Boxes of papers line the walls. The desk… My God, her desk. It extends from one end of the room to the other, stretching along a wall lined with huge window panes overlooking the entirety of the backyard. There isn’t an inch of desk that isn’t covered with a stack of pages or files. “She’s not the most organized person,” Jeremy says. I smile, recognizing a kinship with Verity. “Most writers aren’t.” “It’ll take time. I would attempt to organize it myself, but it’s all Greek to me.” I walk to one of the shelves closest to me and run my hand over some of the books. They’re foreign editions of her work. I pluck a German copy from the shelf and examine it. “She has her laptop and a desktop,” Jeremy says. “I wrote the passwords on sticky notes for you.” He picks up a notebook next to her computer. “She was constantly taking notes. Writing down thoughts. She’d write ideas down on napkins. Dialogue in the shower on a waterproof notepad.” Jeremy drops the notepad back onto the desk. “She once used a Sharpie to write down character names on the bottom of Crew’s diaper. We were at the zoo, and she didn’t have a notepad.” He does a full, slow circle as he looks around at her office like it’s been a while since he’s stepped foot in here. “The world was her manuscript. No surface was safe.” My insides warm at the way he seems to appreciate her creative process. I spin in a circle, taking it all in. “I had no idea what I was getting into.” “I didn’t want to laugh when you said you might not need to stay the night. But in all honesty, this might take you more than two days. If it does, you’re welcome to stay as long as you need. I’d rather you take your time and make sure you have everything you need than go back to New York unsure of how to tackle this.” I look at the shelves containing the series I’m taking over. There are to be nine total books in the series. Six have been published, and three are still to be delivered. The series title is The Noble Virtues, and each book is a different virtue. The three that are left up to me are Courage, Truth, and Honor. All six books are on her shelves, and I’m relieved to see extras. I pull a copy of the second novel off the shelf and skim through it. “Have you read the series yet?” Jeremy asks. I shake my head, not wanting to reveal I listened to the audiobook. He might ask me questions about it. “I haven’t yet. I didn’t have time between signing the contract and coming here.” I place the book back on the shelf. “Which is your favorite?” “I haven’t ready any of them, either. Not since her first book.” I spin and look at him. “Really?” “I didn’t like being inside her head.” I hold back my smile, but he sounds a little bit like Corey right now. Unable to separate the world his wife creates from the one she lives in. At least Jeremy seems to be a little more self-aware than Corey ever was. I look around the room, slightly overwhelmed, but I’m not sure if it’s because Jeremy is standing here or because of the chaos I’m about to have to sort through. “I don’t even know where to start.” “Yeah, I’ll let you get to that.” Jeremy points to the office door. “I should probably go check on Crew. Make yourself at home. Food…drinks…the house is yours.” “Thank you.” Jeremy closes the door, and I settle in at Verity’s desk. Her desk chair alone probably cost more than a month’s rent in my apartment. I wonder how much easier writing is for someone who has money to burn on things I’ve always dreamt of having at my disposal while I write. Comfortable furniture, enough money to have an on-call masseuse, more than one computer. I imagine it would make the writing process a lot easier and a lot less stressful. I have a laptop with a missing key and Wi-Fi when a neighbor forgets to password protect theirs. I sit on an old dining room table chair at a makeshift desk that’s really just a plastic folding table I ordered from Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Most of the time, I don’t even have enough money for printer ink and computer paper. I guess being here in her office for a few days will be one way to test my theory. The richer you are, the more creative you’re able to be. I take the second book of the series off the shelf. I open it, only intending to glance at it. See how she picked up from where book one left off. I end up reading for three hours straight. I haven’t moved from my spot, not even once. Chapter after chapter of intrigue and fucked up characters. Really fucked up characters. It’s going to take me time to work myself into that mindset while writing. No wonder Jeremy doesn’t read her work. All her books are from the villain’s point of view, so that’s new to me. I really should have read all these books before arriving. I stand up to stretch out my spine, but it doesn’t even really hurt; the desk chair I’ve been sitting in is the most comfortable piece of furniture my ass has ever pressed against. I look around, wondering if I should go through computer files next or printed files. I decide to check out her desktop. I browse several files in Microsoft Word, which seems to be the program she prefers. All the files I find are related to books she’s already written. I’m not too worried about those yet. I want to find any plans she had for the books yet to be written. Most of the files on her laptop are the same as the files on her desktop. Maybe Verity was the type of author who hand-wrote her outlines. I turn my attention to the stacks of boxes on the back wall, near a closet. A thin layer of dust coats the tops of them. I go through several boxes, pulling out versions of manuscripts at various stages in the writing process, but they’re all versions of books in her series that she’s already written. Nothing hinting at what she planned to write next. I’m on the sixth box, rummaging through the contents, when I find something with an unfamiliar title. This one is called So Be It. I flip through the first few pages, hoping I’ll get lucky and find that it’s an outline for the seventh book in the series. Almost immediately, I can tell that it isn’t. This seems…personal. I flip back to the first page of chapter one and read the first line. I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same? As soon as I see Jeremy’s name mentioned, I scan a little more of the page. It’s an autobiography. It’s not at all what I’m searching for. An autobiography isn’t what the publishers are paying me to turn in, so I should just move on. But I look over my shoulder to make sure the door is shut because I’m curious. Besides, reading some of this is research. I need to see how Verity’s mind works to understand her as a writer. That’s my excuse, anyway. I carry the manuscript to the couch, make myself comfortable, and begin reading. So Be It by Verity Crawford Author’s note: The thing I abhor most about autobiographies are the counterfeit thoughts draped over every sentence. A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed. An autobiography encouraging the reader to like the author is not a true autobiography. No one is likable from the inside out. One should only walk away from an autobiography with, at best, an uncomfortable distaste for its author. I will deliver. What you read will taste so bad at times, you’ll want to spit it out, but you’ll swallow these words and they will become part of you, part of your gut, and you will hurt because of them. Yet…even with my generous warning…you’re going to continue to ingest my words, because here you are. Human. Curious. Carry on. “Find what you love and let it kill you.” - Charles Bukowski I sometimes think back on the night I met Jeremy and wonder, had we not made eye contact, would my life still end the same? Was it my destiny from the beginning to suffer such a tragic end? Or is my tragic end a result of poor choices rather than fate? Of course, I haven’t met a tragic end yet, or I wouldn’t be able to recount what led to it. Nevertheless, it’s coming. I can sense it, just as I sensed Chastin’s death. And just as I embraced her fate, I will embrace my own. I wouldn’t say I was lost before the night I met Jeremy, but I had certainly never been found until the moment he laid eyes on me from across the room. I’d had boyfriends before. One-night stands, even. But I’d never come close to imagining life with someone else until that moment. When I saw him, I pictured our first night together, our wedding, our honeymoon, our children. Until that moment, the idea of love had always felt very manufactured to me. A Hallmark ploy. A marketing scheme for greeting card companies. I had no interest in love. My only goal that night was to get drunk on free booze and find a rich investor to fuck. I was already halfway there, having downed three Moscow Mules. And judging by the look of Jeremy Crawford, I was going to leave that party an overachiever. He looked rich, and it was a charity event, after all. Poor people don’t show up to charity events unless they’re serving the rich. Present company not included. He was talking with a few other men, but every time he’d glance in my direction, I felt like we were the only two people in the room. Every now and then, he would smile at me. Of course he did. I had on my red dress that night, the one I stole from Macy’s. Don’t judge me. I was a starving artist and it was ridiculously expensive. I intended to make up for the theft when I had the money. I’d donate to a charity or save a baby or something. The good thing about sins is they don’t have to be atoned for immediately, and that red dress was too perfect for me to pass up. It was a fuckable dress. The kind of dress a man can easily bypass when he wants between your legs. The mistake women make when they choose their clothes for events like the one I was at, is that they don’t think about them from the man’s perspective. A woman wants her breasts to look good, her figure to be hugged. Even if that means sacrificing comfort and wearing something impossible to remove. But when men look at dresses, they aren’t admiring the way it hugs the hips or the cinch at the waist or the fancy tie up the back. They’re sizing up how easy it will be to remove. Will he be able to slip his hand up her thigh when they’re seated next to each other at a table? Will he be able to fuck her in a car without the awkward mess of zippers and Spanx? Will he be able to fuck her in the bathroom without having to remove her clothes completely? The answers to my stolen red dress were yes, yes, and hell yes. I realized, with that dress on, there was no way he would be able to leave the party without approaching me. I chose to stop paying attention to him. It made me seem desperate. I was not the mouse, I was the cheese. I was going to stand there until he came to me. He did, eventually. I was standing at the bar, my back to him, when he put his hand on my shoulder and leaned forward, motioning for the bartender. Jeremy didn’t look at me in that moment. He simply kept his hand on my shoulder, as if he were laying claim to me. When the bartender approached, I watched in fascination. Jeremy nudged his head toward me and said, “Make sure you only serve her water for the rest of the evening.” I hadn’t been expecting that. I turned, leaning an arm on the bar, and faced him. He dropped his hand from my shoulder, but not before his fingers grazed all the way down to my elbow. A flicker of electricity flashed through me, mixed with a surge of anger. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding when I’ve had enough to drink.” Jeremy smirked at me and even though I hated the arrogance behind that smirk, he was good-looking. “I’m sure you are.” “I’ve only had three drinks all evening.” “Good.” I stood up straight and called the bartender back over. “I’ll have another Moscow Mule, please.” The bartender glanced at me, then Jeremy. Then back at me. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ve been asked to serve you water.” I rolled my eyes. “I heard him ask you to serve me water, I’m standing right here. But I don’t know this man, and he doesn’t know me, and I’d like another Moscow Mule.” “She’ll take a water,” Jeremy said. I was definitely attracted to him, but his looks were quickly fading with that chauvinistic attitude. The bartender lifted his hands and said, “I don’t want to get involved in whatever this is. If you want a drink, go order it from the bar over there.” He pointed to the bar across the room. I grabbed my purse, tipped my chin up in the air, and walked away. When I reached the other bar, I found a stool and waited for the bartender to finish with his customer. In that time, Jeremy appeared again, this time leaning his elbow across the bar. “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain why I’d like you to have water.” I rolled my head in his direction. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I owed you my time.” He laughed, moving until his back was against the bar, and stared at me with a tilted head and a crooked smile. “I’ve been watching you since the moment I walked through the door. You’ve had three drinks in forty-five minutes, and if you keep going at that rate, I won’t feel comfortable asking you to leave with me. I’d much rather you make that choice while you’re sober.” His voice sounded like his throat was coated in honey. I held eye contact with him, wondering if it was an act. Could a man that good looking and presumably rich also be considerate? It felt more presumptuous than anything, but I was drawn in by his gall. The bartender approached with impeccable timing. “What can I get for you?” I straightened up, breaking eye contact with Jeremy. I turned and faced the bartender. “I’ll have a water.” “Make it two,” Jeremy said. And that was that. It’s been years since that night, and it’s difficult to recall every detail, but I do remember being drawn to him in those first few moments in a way I’d never been drawn to a man. I liked the sound of his voice. I liked his confidence. I liked his teeth, perfect and white. I liked the stubble on his jaw. It was the perfect length to scratch my thighs. Maybe even scar them if he stayed down there long enough. I liked that he wasn’t afraid to touch me while we talked, and every time he did, the graze of his fingers made my skin tingle. After we both finished our waters, Jeremy led me to the exit, his hand on my lower back, his fingers caressing my dress. We walked to his limousine, and he held the back door open for me as I climbed inside. He took the seat across from me rather than next to me. The car smelled like a bouquet, but I knew it was perfume. I quite liked it, despite knowing another woman had been in this limousine tonight. My eyes fell to a bottle of champagne that was half empty next to two wine glasses, one lined with red lipstick. Who is she? And why did he leave the party with me and not her? I didn’t care to ask those questions out loud, because he was leaving with me. That’s really all that mattered. We sat in silence for a minute or two, staring at each other with anticipation. He knew he had me in that moment, which is why he felt confident enough to reach forward and lift my leg, draping it across the seat next to him. He left his hand on my ankle, caressing it, watching as my chest began to rise and fall in response to his touch. “How old are you?” he asked. The question made me pause because he looked older than I was, maybe late twenties, early thirties. I didn’t want to scare him off with the truth, so I lied and said I was twenty-five. “You look younger.” He knew I was lying. I kicked off my shoe and ran my toes across the outside of his thigh. “Twenty-two.” Jeremy laughed and said, “A liar, huh?” “I stretch truths where I see fit. I’m a writer.” His hand moved to my calf. “How old are you?” “Twenty-four,” he said with as much truth as I’d given him. “So.twenty-eight?” He smiled. “Twenty-seven.” His hand was on my knee at this point. I wanted it even higher. I wanted it on my thigh, between my legs, exploring me from the inside. I wanted him, but not here. I wanted to go with him, see where he lived, judge the comfort of his bed, smell his sheets, taste his skin. “Where’s your driver?” I asked. Jeremy glanced behind him, toward the front of the limousine. “I don’t know,” he replied, looking back at me. “This isn’t my limousine.” His expression was mischievous, and I couldn’t tell if he was lying. I narrowed my eyes, wondering if this man had really led me to a limousine that didn’t even belong to him. “Whose limousine is this?” Jeremy’s eyes had left mine and were focused on his hand. The one tracing circles over my knee. “I don’t know.” I expected my desire to wane at the realization that he may not be rich, but instead, his admission made me smile. “I’m an entry-level scrub,” he said. “I drove my car here. Honda Civic. Parked it myself because I’m too cheap to pay the ten bucks for valet.” I was surprised by how much I loved that he had brought me to a limo that wasn’t even his. He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t rich, yet I still wanted to fuck him. “I clean office buildings in the city,” I admitted. “I stole an invitation to this party out of a trash can. I’m not even supposed to be here.” He smiled, and I’ve never wanted to taste a grin like I wanted to taste the one that spread across his face. “Aren’t you resourceful?” he asked. His hand slipped behind my knee and he pulled me toward him. I slid across the seat and onto his lap because that’s what dresses like mine were for. I could feel him growing hard between my legs as he pressed a thumb against my bottom lip. I swiped my tongue across the pad of his thumb, and it made him sigh. Not groan. Not moan. He sighed, like it was the sexiest thing he’d ever felt. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Verity.” “Verity.” He said it twice. “Verity. That’s really pretty.” His eyes were on my mouth, and he was about to lean in and kiss me, but I pulled back. “What’s yours?” His eyes flickered back to mine. “Jeremy.” He said it fast, like it was a waste of his time, an inconvenient interruption to our kiss. As soon as the word left his mouth, his lips touched mine, and as soon as they touched mine, the interior light kicked on above our heads and we both froze, our lips grazing, our bodies suddenly stiff as someone climbed into the driver’s seat of the limousine. “Shit,” Jeremy whispered against my mouth. “What an untimely return.” He pushed me off of him and opened the door. He ushered me out of the car just as the driver realized someone else was in the car with him. “Hey!” he yelled into the backseat. Jeremy grabbed my hand and began to pull me after him, but I needed out of my shoes. I tugged on his arm, and he stopped as I slipped my shoes off my feet. The driver started heading in our direction. “Hey! What the hell were you doing in my car?” Jeremy grabbed my shoes in one hand, and we ran down the street, laughing in the dark, out of breath when we finally reached his car. He hadn’t been lying about it. It was a Honda Civic, although it was a newer model, so that counted for something. He pushed me against the passenger door, dropped my shoes on the concrete, and then swept a hand into my hair. I looked over my shoulder at the car we were leaning against. “Is this really your car?” He smiled as he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his key fob. He unlocked the doors to prove it was his, which made me laugh. He stared down at me, our mouths thisclose, and I could swear he was already imagining what life with me would be like. You can’t look at someone the way he looked at me—with the entirety of his past—without also imagining the future. He closed his eyes and kissed me. The kiss was full of both desire and respect—two things a lot of men didn’t seem to know could go hand in hand. His fingers felt good in my hair, and his tongue felt good in my mouth. I felt good to him, too. I could feel how good I felt to him in the way he kissed me. We knew very little about each other in that moment, but it was almost better that way. Sharing a kiss that intimate with a stranger was like saying, “I don’t know you, but I believe I would like you if I did.” I liked that he believed he could like me. It almost made me believe I was likeable. When he pulled away from me, I wanted to go with him. I wanted my mouth to follow his, my fingers to stay wrapped around his. It was torture remaining in the passenger seat of his car as we drove. I was burning inside for him. He had lit a fire in me, and I was determined to make sure it didn’t go out. He fed me before he fucked me. Took me to a Steak ’n Shake, and we sat on the same side of the booth, eating French fries and sipping chocolate shakes between kisses. The restaurant was mostly empty, so we were in a quiet corner booth, far enough away that no one noticed when Jeremy’s hand slid up my thigh and disappeared between my legs. No one heard me when I moaned. No one cared when he pulled his hand away and whispered that he wasn’t going to give me an orgasm in a Steak ’n Shake. I wouldn’t have minded. “Take me to your bed, then,” I said. He did. His bed was in the middle of a studio apartment in Brooklyn. Jeremy wasn’t rich. He could barely afford the Steak ’n Shake he had bought me. But I didn’t care. I was on his bed, lying on my back, watching him undress, when I realized I was about to make love for the first time. I’d had sex before, but never with more than just my body. There was so much more of me invested in that moment than my body. My heart felt full—of what, I don’t know. But my heart had felt empty with the men who came before Jeremy. It was amazing how different sex felt when a person used more than their body. I involved my heart and my gut and my mind and my hope. I fell in that moment. Not in love. I just…fell. It was as if I’d been standing on the edge of a cliff my whole life, and finally, after meeting Jeremy, I felt confident enough to jump. Because—for the first time in my life—I felt confident that I wouldn’t land. I would keep flying. Looking back, I realize how crazy it is that I fell for him so fast. But it was only crazy because it never stopped. Had I woken up the next morning and slipped out of his apartment, it would have ended as a fun one-night stand, and I wouldn’t even be recalling any of this all these years later. But I didn’t leave the next morning, so it became more. With every day that passed, that first night with him was further validated. And that’s what love at first sight is. It isn’t really love at first sight until you’ve been with the person long enough for it to become love at first sight. We didn’t leave his apartment for three days. We ate Chinese takeout. We fucked. We ordered pizza. We fucked. We watched TV. We fucked. We both called in sick to work that Monday, and by Tuesday, I was obsessed. I was obsessed with his laugh, with his cock, with his mouth, with his skill, with his stories, with his hands, with his confidence, with his gentleness, with a new and intense need to please him. I needed to please him. I needed to be what made him smile, breathe, wake up in the mornings. And for a while, I was. He loved me more than he loved anything or anyone. I was his sole reason for living. Until he discovered the one thing that meant more to him than I did. It’s like I have surpassed opening Verity’s underwear drawer, and now I’m rummaging around among the silk and lace. I am well aware that I shouldn’t be reading this. This is not why I came here. But… I slide the manuscript onto the couch next to me, and I stare at it. I have so many questions about Verity. Questions I can’t ask her and questions Jeremy probably doesn’t feel like answering. I need to get to know her better to see how her mind works, and you can’t get more answers from any other source like you can from an autobiography. One this brutally honest. I can see myself getting sidetracked by this, and I really shouldn’t. I’m here to find what I need and get out of this family’s hair. They’ve been through enough and don’t need an intruder touching their underwear. I walk over to the monster desk and pick up my phone. It’s already after eleven. I arrived around seven this evening, but I didn’t expect it to be this late already. I didn’t even hear anything outside of this office. Like it’s soundproof. Hell, it probably is. If I could afford to work in a soundproof office, I would. I’m hungry. It’s an awkward feeling, being hungry in a house you aren’t familiar with. I know Jeremy said to help myself, so I head for the kitchen. I don’t make it far. I pause right when I open the office door. The office is definitely soundproof, or I would have heard this noise. It’s coming from upstairs, and I have to still myself completely to focus on it. To pray it’s not at all what it sounds like. I move quietly and cautiously to the foot of the stairs, and sure enough, the sound seems to be coming from the direction of Verity’s room. It’s the creaking of a bed. Repetitive creaking, like the sound a bed would make if a man were on top of a woman. Oh, my God. I cover my mouth with unsteady fingers. No, no, no! I read an article about this once. A woman was injured in a car wreck and was in a coma. She lived in a nursing facility and her husband came to visit her every day. The staff became suspicious that he was having sex with her despite her being in a coma, so they set up hidden cameras. The man was arrested for rape because his wife was unable to give consent. Much like Verity. I should do something. But what? “It’s noisy, I know.” I gasp and spin around, coming face to face with Jeremy. “I can turn it off if it bothers you,” he says. “You scared me.” My voice is full of breath. I blow out a sigh of relief, knowing that whatever I’m hearing is not at all what I thought it was. Jeremy looks over my shoulder, up at where the noise is coming from. “It’s her hospital bed. It’s on a timer every two hours to lift different parts of her mattress. Takes weight off her pressure points.” I can feel the embarrassment creeping up my neck. I pray to God he doesn’t know what I thought that noise was. I cover my chest with my hand to hide the redness I know is there. I’m fair skinned, and anytime I get nervous or worked up or embarrassed, my skin tells on me, erupting in angry red splotches. I wish I could sink into the lush, rich-people carpet and disappear. I clear my throat. “They make beds like that?” I could have used one when my mother was on hospice. It was hell trying to move her on my own. “Yeah, but they’re obscenely expensive. Several thousand for a brand new one, and insurance wouldn’t even cover it.” I choke on that price. “I’m heating up leftovers,” he says. “You hungry?” “I was just on my way to the kitchen, actually.” Jeremy walks backward. “It’s pizza.” “Perfect.” I hate pizza. The microwave timer goes off right when Jeremy reaches it. He pulls out a plate of pizza and hands it to me, then makes himself another plate. “How’s it going in there?” “Good,” I say. I grab a bottle of water out of the fridge and take a seat at the table. “You were right, though. There’s a lot. It’s gonna take me a couple of days.” He leans against the counter as he waits for his pizza to finish. “Do you work better at night?” “Yeah. I stay up pretty late and then sleep in most mornings. I hope that’s not an issue.” “Not at all. I’m actually a night owl, too. Verity’s nurse leaves in the evenings and comes back at seven in the morning, so I stay up until midnight and give Verity her nighttime medications. Nurse takes over when she gets here.” He grabs his plate from the microwave and sits across from me at the table. I can’t even make eye contact with him. All I can think of when I look at him is the part of Verity’s manuscript I read where she mentioned his hand was between her legs at the Steak ’n Shake. God, I shouldn’t have read that. Now I’ll be blushing every time I look in his direction. He has really nice hands, too, which doesn’t help the situation. I need to change the direction of my thoughts. Like now. “Did she ever talk with you about the series she was writing? Like what she had planned for the characters? The ending?” “If she did, I can’t remember,” he says, looking down at his plate. He absentmindedly moves around a slice of pizza. “Before her car wreck, it had been a while since she’d written anything. Or even talked about writing.” “How long ago was her wreck?” I already know the answer, but I don’t want him to know I Googled his family’s history. “Not long after Harper died. She was in a medically induced coma for a while, then went into an intense rehabilitation center for several weeks. She’s only been home for a few weeks now.” He takes another bite. I feel bad for talking about it, but he doesn’t seem put off by the conversation. “Before my mother died, I was her only caregiver. I don’t have any siblings, so I know it isn’t easy.” “It isn’t easy,” he says in agreement. “I’m sorry about your mother, by the way. I’m not sure I said that when you told me about it in the coffee shop bathroom.” I smile at him, but say nothing else about it. I don’t want him to ask about her. I want the focus to remain on him and Verity. My mind keeps going back to the manuscript, because even though I know very little about the man sitting across from me, I almost feel as though I know him. At the very least, I know him the way Verity described him. I’m curious to know what kind of marriage they had, and why she ended the first chapter with the sentence she chose. “Until he discovered the one thing that meant more to him than I did.” The sentence is ominous. It’s almost as if she were setting up the next chapter to reveal some terrible, dark secret about this man. Or maybe it was a writing strategy, and she’s going to say he’s a saint and that their children mean more to him than she did. Whatever it means, I’m dying to read the next chapter now that I’m staring at him. And I hate that I have so many other things that should be my focus right now, but all I want to do is curl up and read about Jeremy and Verity’s marriage. It makes me feel a little pathetic. It’s probably not even about them. I know a writer who admitted she uses her husband’s name in every manuscript until she can come up with a name for her character. Maybe that’s what Verity does. Maybe it was just another work of fiction, and Jeremy’s name was only there as a placeholder. I guess there’s only one way to find out if what I read was true. “How did you and Verity meet?” Jeremy pops a pepperoni in his mouth and grins. “At a party,” he says, leaning back in his chair. Finally, he doesn’t look sad for once. “She was wearing the most amazing dress I’d ever seen. It was red, and so long that it dragged on the floor a little bit. God, she was beautiful,” he says with a hint of wistfulness. “We left the party together. When I walked outside, I saw a limousine parked out front, so I opened the door and we climbed inside and talked a little. Until the driver showed up and I had to admit the limousine wasn’t mine.” I’m not supposed to know any of this, so I force a laugh. “It wasn’t yours?” “No. I just wanted to impress her. We had to make an escape after that because the driver was pretty pissed.” He’s still smiling, like he’s right back in that night with Verity and her fuckable red dress. “We were inseparable after that.” It’s hard for me to smile for him. For them. Seeing how happy they seemed back then, and then looking at what their life turned into. I wonder if her autobiography explains in detail how they got from point A to point B. At the beginning of it, she mentions Chastin’s death. Which means she wrote it, or at least added to it, after that first huge tragedy. I wonder how long she’s been working on it? “Was Verity already an author when you met her?” “No, she was still in grad school. It was later, when I had to take a temporary position in Los Angeles for a few months, that she wrote her first book. I think it was her way of passing the time until I came back home. She was passed up by a couple of publishers at first, but once she sold that first manuscript, everything just. It all happened so fast. Our lives changed practically overnight.” “How did she handle the fame?” “I think it was harder for me than it was for her.” “Because you like being invisible?” “Is it that obvious?” I shrug. “Fellow introvert, here.” He laughs. “Verity isn’t your typical author. She loves the spotlight. The fancy events. It all makes me uncomfortable. I like being here with the kids.” There’s a very subtle shift in his expression when he realizes he spoke of his girls in the present tense. “With Crew,” he says, correcting himself. He shakes his head and then clasps his hands behind his neck, leaning back like he’s stretching. Or uncomfortable. “It’s hard sometimes—remembering they aren’t here anymore.” His voice is quiet, and he’s staring past me, at nothing. “I still find their hairs on the sofa. Their socks in the dryer. Sometimes I yell out their names when I want to show them something, forgetting they aren’t going to come running down the stairs.” I watch him closely, because not all of me is convinced yet. I write suspense novels. I know when there are suspicious situations, suspicious people almost always accompany those situations. I’m torn between wanting to find out more about what happened to his girls, and getting out of here as fast as I can. But right now, I’m not looking at a man who is putting on a show to garner sympathy. I’m looking at a man who’s sharing his thoughts out loud for the first time. It makes me want to do the same. “My mother hasn’t been gone that long, but I know what you mean. Every morning that first week, I’d get up and make her breakfast, only to remember she wasn’t there to eat it.” Jeremy drops his arms to the table. “I wonder how long it lasts. Or if it’ll always be this way.” “I think time will definitely help, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to entertain the idea of moving. If you’re in a house they’ve never been in, the reminders of them might fade. Not having them around would become your new normal.” He runs a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “I’m not sure I want a normal where there aren’t traces of Harper and Chastin.” “Yeah,” I say in agreement. “I wouldn’t either.” His eyes remain on me, but it’s quiet. Sometimes a look between two people can last so long, it shakes you. Forces you to look away. So I do. I look at my plate and run my finger along the scalloped edge of it. His stare felt like it was going far past my eyes, into my thoughts. And even though he doesn’t mean for it to, it feels intimate. When Jeremy’s eyes are on mine, it feels like an exploration of the deepest parts of me. “I should get back to work,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. He’s unmoving for a few seconds, but then sits up straight, quickly scooting back his chair as if he just broke out of a trance. “Yeah,” he says, reaching for our plates as he stands. “I should get Verity’s meds ready.” He walks our plates to the sink, and as I’m exiting the kitchen, he says, “Goodnight, Low.” When I hear him call me that, my goodnight gets stuck in my throat. I release a flicker of a smile and then walk out of the kitchen, in a hurry to get back to Verity’s office. The more time I spend in Jeremy’s presence, the more eager I am to dive back into that manuscript and get to know him even better. I grab it from the couch, turn off the lights in Verity’s office, and take the manuscript to the bedroom with me. There isn’t a lock on the door, so I push a wooden chest from the foot of the bed all the way to the door, blocking it off. I’m exhausted after traveling the entire day, and I still need to shower, but I can fit in at least one more chapter before I sleep. I have to. So Be It I could write entire novels about the first two years we dated, but they wouldn’t sell. There wasn’t enough drama between Jeremy and me. Hardly any fighting at all. No tragedies to write about. Just two years of saccharine love and adoration between the two of us. I. Was. Taken. By. Him. Addicted to him. I’m not sure it was healthy—how codependent I was. Still am, really. But when a person finds someone who makes all the negativity in their lives disappear, it’s hard not to feed off that person. I fed off Jeremy in order to keep my soul alive. It was starving and shriveled before I met him, but being in his presence nourished me. Sometimes I felt if I didn’t have him, I couldn’t function. We had been dating almost two years when he was temporarily transferred to Los Angeles. We had recently moved in together, unofficially. I say unofficially because there was a point when I just stopped going back to my place. Stopped paying the bills, the rent. It wasn’t until two months after I’d completely moved out that Jeremy found out I didn’t have my own apartment anymore. He had suggested I move in with him one night, during sex. He does that sometimes. Makes huge decisions about our lives together while he’s fucking me. “Move in with me,” he said, thrusting slowly into me. He lowered his mouth to mine. “Break your lease.” “I can’t,” I whispered. He stopped moving and pulled back to look down on me. “Why not?” I lowered my hands to his ass and made him start moving again. “Because I broke my lease two months ago.” He stilled inside me, staring down at me with those intense green eyes and lashes so black, I expected to taste licorice when I kissed them. “We already live together?” he asked. I nodded, but realized he wasn’t reacting the way I’d hoped he’d react. He seemed blindsided. I needed to fix things—to take over and sidetrack him. Make him realize it wasn’t that big of a deal. “I thought I told you.” He pulled out of me, and it felt like a punishment. “You did not tell me we’re living together. That’s something I would have remembered.” I sat up and positioned myself so that I was on my knees right in front of him, face to face with him. I ran my fingernails across both sides of his jaw and brought my mouth close to his. “Jeremy,” I whispered. “I haven’t spent a night away from you in six months. We’ve lived together for a while now.” I grabbed his shoulders and then pushed him onto his back. His head met the pillow, and I wanted to lie on top of him and kiss him, but he seemed a little angry with me. Like he wanted to talk about this subject I considered closed. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I just wanted him to make me come. So, I straddled his face and lowered myself onto his tongue. When I felt his hands grip my ass, pulling me closer to his mouth, my head rolled back for a delicious moment. This is why I moved in with you, Jeremy. I leaned forward, gripped his headboard, and then bit down on it, stifling my screams. And that was that. I was happier than I’d ever been until he was transferred. Sure, it was only temporary, but you can’t take away someone’s only means of survival and expect them to function on their own. That’s how I felt, anyway—like the only nourishment for my soul had been ripped from me. Sure, I got small bouts of replenishment when he’d call me or FaceTime me, but those nights alone in our bed were grueling. Sometimes, I would straddle my pillow and bite down on the headboard while I touched myself, pretending he was beneath me. But then, after I came, I’d fall back onto an empty bed and stare up at the ceiling, wondering how I’d survived all the years of my life that he hadn’t been a part of. Those were thoughts I couldn’t admit to him, of course. I might have been obsessed with him, but a woman knows if she wants to keep a man forever, she has to act like she could get over him in a day. And that is when I became a writer. My days were filled with thoughts of Jeremy, and if I didn’t figure out how to fill them with thoughts of something else until he returned, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hide how much his absence gutted me. I created a fictional Jeremy and called him Lane. When I was missing Jeremy, I’d write a chapter about Lane. My life over those next few months became less about Jeremy and more about my character. Who was, in a sense, still Jeremy. But writing about it instead of obsessing about it felt more productive. I wrote an entire novel in the few months he was gone. When he showed up at our front door to surprise me with his return home, I had just finished editing the final page. It was kismet. I congratulated him with a blowjob. It was the first time I swallowed. That’s how happy I was to see him. I acted like a lady after I swallowed, smiling up at him. He was still standing by the front door, fully clothed, other than the jeans that were now down to his knees. I stood up and kissed him on the cheek and said, “Be right back.” When I got to the bathroom, I locked the door, turned on the water in the sink, and then puked in the toilet. When I let him come in my mouth, I had no idea how much there would be. How long I would have to continue swallowing. Keeping my composure was tough while his dick was in my throat, drowning me. I brushed my teeth and then returned to the bedroom, where I found him sitting at my desk. He had a couple of pages of my manuscript in his hands. “Did you write this?” he asked, spinning in my desk chair to face me. “Yes, but I don’t want you to read it.” I could feel my palms beginning to sweat, so I wiped them across my stomach and walked toward him. He stood up as I launched myself forward to snatch the pages from him. He held them over his head, too high for me to reach. “Why can’t I read it?” I jumped, trying to pull his arm down so I could reach the pages. “It needs work.” “That’s fine,” he said, backing up a step. “But I still want to read it.” “I don’t want you to read it.” He gathered the rest of the manuscript and tucked it to his chest. He was going to read it, and all I could think about was stopping him. I didn’t know if it was any good, and I was scared—terrified—that it would make him love me less if he thought I was a bad writer. I dove across the bed to try and reach him faster, but he slipped into my bathroom and locked the door. I beat on it. “Jeremy!” I yelled. No answer. He ignored more for ten minutes as I tried to pry open the door with a credit card. A bobby pin. Promises of another blowjob. Fifteen more minutes went by before he made a noise. “Verity?” I was on the floor at this point, my back pressed against the bathroom door. “What?” “It’s good.” I didn’t respond. “Really good. I am so proud of you.” I smiled. It was my first taste of what it felt like for a reader to enjoy what I had created for them. That one comment—that sweet, simple comment—made me want him to finish reading it. I left him alone after that. I went to our bed, crawled under the covers, and fell asleep with a smile on my face. He woke me up two hours later. His lips were skimming my shoulder, his fingers tracing an invisible line down my waist, over my hip. He was behind me, curved around me, molded to me. I had missed him so much. “Are you awake?” he whispered. I made a soft moaning sound to let him know I was. He kissed a spot below my ear, and then he said, “You’re fucking brilliant.” I don’t think I’ve ever smiled so big. He rolled me onto my back and swept my hair out of my face. “I hope you’re ready.” “For what?” I asked. “Fame.” I laughed, but he didn’t. He pulled off his pants and removed my panties. After he pushed into me, he said, “Do you think I’m kidding?” He kissed me, then continued. “Your writing is going to make you famous. Your mind is incredible. If I could fuck it, I would.” My laughter was mixed with a moan as he continued to make love to me. “Are you saying that because you believe it? Or because you love me?” He didn’t answer right away. His moves became slow and deliberate. His stare was intense. “Marry me, Verity.” I didn’t react, because I thought maybe I had misheard him. Did he really just ask me to marry him? I could tell by the intensity in his expression that he was more in love with me in that moment than he’d ever been before. I should have said yes immediately, because that’s where my heart was. But instead, I said, “Why?” “Because,” he said, grinning. “I’m your biggest fan.” I laughed, but then his smile disappeared and he started to fuck me. Hard, fast thrusts that he knew would drive me crazy. The headboard was slapping against the wall, and the pillow beneath my head was slipping. “Marry me,” he pleaded again, and then his tongue was in my mouth, and it was the first real kiss we’d shared in months. We needed each other so badly in that moment, our bodies were making it difficult for our mouths to stay aligned, so the kiss was sloppy and painful and “Okay,” I whispered. “Thank you,” he said in the middle of a sigh, his words full of more breath than voice. He continued to fuck me, his fianc?e, until we were covered in sweat, and I could taste blood in my mouth where he had accidentally bitten my lip. Or maybe I’d bitten his. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter because his blood was my blood now. When he finally came, he did it inside me, without a condom, while his tongue was in my mouth and his breath was sliding down my throat and my eternity was entwined with his. When he was finished, he reached to the floor for his jeans. He crawled back on top of me and lifted my hand, then slipped a ring on my finger. He’d planned to ask me all along. I didn’t even look at the ring. I brought my hands up over my head and closed my eyes, because his hand was between my legs and I knew he wanted to watch me come. So I did. For two months, we looked back on that night as the night we got engaged. For two months, I would grin every time I looked at my ring. For two months, I would tear up when I thought about what our wedding would be like. What our wedding night would be like. But then the night we got engaged became the night we conceived. And here is where it gets real. The guts of my autobiography. This is the point when other authors would paint themselves in a better light, rather than throw themselves into an X-ray machine. But there is no light where we’re going. This is your final warning. Darkness ahead. The upside to Verity’s office is the view from these windows. The glass starts at the floor and rises all the way up to the ceiling. And there aren’t any obstructions. Just huge panes of solid glass, so I can see everything. Who cleans these? I study the panes of glass for a spot, a smudge—anything. The downside to Verity’s office is also the view from these windows. The nurse has parked Verity’s wheelchair on the back porch, right in front of the office. I can see her entire profile as she faces west of the back porch. It’s a nice day out, so the nurse is sitting in front of Verity, reading her a book. Verity is staring off into space, and I wonder, does she comprehend anything? And if so, how much? Her fine hair lifts in the breeze, like the fingers of a ghost are playing with the strands. When I look at her, my empathy magnifies. Which is why I don’t want to look at her, but these windows make it impossible. I can’t hear the nurse reading to her, presumably because these windows are as soundproof as the rest of this office. But I know they’re there, so it’s hard to concentrate on work without glancing up every few minutes. I’ve had issues finding any notes so far for the series, but I’ve only been able to wade through a portion of the stuff in here. I decided my time would be better spent this morning skimming the first and second books, making notes about every character. I’m creating a filing system for myself because I need to know these characters as well as Verity knows them. I need to know what motivates them, what moves them, what sets them off. I see movement outside the window. When I look up, the nurse is walking away, toward the back door. I stare at Verity for a moment, wondering if she’ll react now that the nurse has stopped reading to her. There’s no movement at all. Her hands are in her lap, and her head is tilted to the side, as if her brain can’t even send a signal to let her know she needs to straighten up her posture before it causes her neck to ache. The clever and talented Verity is no longer in there. Was her body the only thing that survived that wreck? It’s as if she were an egg, cracked open and poured out, and all that’s left are the tiny fragments of hard shell. I glance back down at the desk and try to focus. I can’t help but wonder how Jeremy is handling all this. He’s a concrete pillar on the outside, but the inside has to be hollow. It’s disappointing, knowing this is his life now. Caring for an egg shell with no yolk. That was harsh. I’m not trying to be harsh. I’m just… I don’t know. I feel like it would have been better for everyone if she hadn’t survived the wreck. I immediately feel guilty for thinking that, but it reminds me of the last few months I spent caring for my mother. I know my mother would have preferred death over being as severely incapacitated as the cancer made her. But that was just a few months of her life.of my life. This is Jeremy’s whole life now. Caring for a wife who is no longer his wife. Tied to a home that’s no longer a home. And I can’t imagine this is how Verity would want him to live. I can’t imagine this is how she would want to live. She can’t even play with or speak to her own child. I pray she isn’t in there, for her own sake. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if her mind were still there, but the brain damage had left her with no physical way to express herself, robbing her of any ability to react or interact or verbalize what she’s thinking. I lift my head again. She’s staring straight at me. I jump up, and the desk chair moves backward across the wood floor. Verity is looking right at me through the window, her head turned toward me, her eyes locked on mine. I bring my hand up to my mouth and step back; I feel threatened. I want out of her line of sight, so I creep to my left, toward the office door. For a moment, I can’t escape her gaze. She’s the Mona Lisa, following me as I move across the room. But when I reach her office door, we’re no longer making eye contact. Her eyes didn’t follow me. I drop my hand and lean against the wall, watching as April walks back outside with a towel. She wipes Verity’s chin and then takes a small pillow from Verity’s lap and lifts her head, placing it between her shoulder and her cheek. With her head adjusted, she’s no longer staring into the window. “Shit,” I whisper to no one. I’m scared of a woman who can barely move and can’t even speak. A woman who can’t willingly turn her head to look at someone, much less make intentional eye contact. I need water. I open the office door, but let out a yelp when my cell phone rings behind me on the desk. Dammit. I hate adrenaline. My pulse is racing, but I blow out a breath and try to calm down as I answer the phone. It’s an unknown number. “Hello?” “Ms. Ashleigh?” “This is she.” “This is Donovan Baker from Creekwood apartments. You put in an application a few days ago?” I’m relieved to have a distraction. I walk back over to the window, and the nurse has moved Verity’s chair so that I’m only looking at the back of her head now. “Yes, how can I help you?” “I’m calling because the application you submitted was processed today. Unfortunately, there was a recent eviction that showed up in your name, so we can’t approve you for the apartment.” Already? I just moved out a couple of days ago. “But my application was already approved with you guys. I’m supposed to move in next week.” “Actually, you were only pre-approved. Your application wasn’t fully processed until today. We can’t approve applications with recent evictions. I hope you understand.” I squeeze the back of my neck. I won’t get my money for another two weeks. “Please,” I say to him, trying not to sound as pathetic as I feel right now. “I’ve never been late on my rent until now. I was just hired for another job, and in two weeks, if you let me move in now, I can pay you an entire year’s rent. I swear.” “You can always appeal the decision,” he says. “It might take a few weeks, but I’ve seen applications get approved due to extenuating circumstances.” “I don’t have a few weeks. I already moved out of my last apartment.” “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll email you our decision, and at the bottom of the email, contact that number for an appeal. Have a good day, Ms. Ashleigh.” He ends the call, but I still have the phone pressed to my ear as I squeeze my neck. I’m hoping I’ll wake up from this nightmare any second now. Thank you, Mother. What the hell am I going to do now? There’s a soft knock on the office door. I spin around, startled again. I can’t deal with today. Jeremy is standing in the office entryway, looking at me with a face full of empathy. I left the door open when my phone rang. He probably heard that entire conversation. I can tack mortified onto the list of adjectives that describe today. I set my phone on Verity’s desk, then fall into her desk chair. “My life wasn’t always this much of a hot mess.” He laughs a little, stepping into the room. “Neither was mine.” I appreciate that comment. I look down at my phone. “It’s fine,” I say, spinning my phone around in a circle. “I’ll figure it out.” “I can loan you money until your advance is processed through your agent. I’ll have to pull it from our mutual fund, but it can be here in three days.” I have never been this embarrassed, and I know he can see it because I practically curl into myself as I lean forward on the desk and drop my face into my hands. “That’s really sweet, but I’m not taking a loan from you.” He’s quiet for a moment, then chooses to take a seat on the couch. He sits casually, leaning forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “Then stay here until your advance hits your account. It’ll only be a week or two.” He looks around the office, seeing how much progress I haven’t made since I arrived yesterday. “We don’t mind. You aren’t in the way at all.” I shake my head, but he interrupts. “Lowen. This job you’ve taken on is not easy. I’d rather you spend too much time in here prepping for it than get back to New York tomorrow and realize you should have stayed longer.” I do need more time. But two weeks in this house? With a woman who scares me, a manuscript I shouldn’t be reading, and a man I know way too many intimate details about? It’s not a good idea. None of it is good. I start to shake my head again, but he holds up a hand. “Stop being considerate. Stop being embarrassed. Just say alright.” I look past him, at all the boxes lining the walls behind him. The things I haven’t even touched yet. And then I think about how, with two weeks in here, I would have time to read every book in her backlist, make notes on each of them, and possibly outline the three new ones. I sigh, conceding with a little bit of relief. “Alright.” He smiles a little, then stands up and walks toward the door. “Thank you,” I say. Jeremy turns back around and faces me. I wish I had let him walk out the door, because I swear I can see a trace of regret in his expression. He opens his mouth, like he wants to say, “You’re welcome,” or “No problem.” But he just closes his mouth and forces a smile, and then shuts the door behind him when he leaves. ••• Jeremy told me earlier this afternoon that I needed to be outside before the sun disappeared behind the mountains. “You’ll see why Verity wanted an unobstructed view from her office.” I brought one of her books with me to read on the back porch. There are about ten chairs to choose from, so I take a seat at a patio table. Jeremy and Crew are down by the water, tearing old pieces of wood out of their fishing dock. It’s cute, watching Crew grab the pieces of wood Jeremy’s handing to him. He carries them to a huge pile, then grabs another from his dad. Jeremy has to wait for him each time, because it takes Crew longer to dispose of the wood than it does for Jeremy to rip it out of the wooden frame. It proves how much patience he has as a father. He reminds me a little of my father. He died when I was nine, but I’m not sure I ever saw him angry. Not even at my mother, with her prickly comments and frequent hot temper. I grew to resent that about him, though. Sometimes I perceived his patience as weakness when it came to her. I watch Crew and Jeremy a little longer, in between attempts at finishing my chapter. But I’m finding it hard to comprehend anything because Jeremy took his shirt off a few minutes ago and, while I’ve seen him take his shirt off before, I’ve never seen him without an undershirt. His skin is slick from the sweat he’s worked up over the past two hours of being down at the dock. When he yanks at the wood with the hammer, his muscles stretch across his back, and I immediately recall the last chapter Verity wrote. There were so many intimate details about their sex life, and from what I read, it was very active. More so than any of my relationships have been. It’s hard looking at him and not thinking about sex now. Not that I want to have sex with him. And not that I don’t. It’s just that, as a writer, I know he was her inspiration for several of the men in her books. And it makes me wonder if I need to view him as my inspiration as I tackle the rest of this series. I mean…it’s not the worst thing. Being forced to step into Verity’s shoes and visualize Jeremy for the next twenty-four months as I write. The back door slams shut, and I tear my eyes away from Jeremy. April is standing on the patio, staring at me. Her gaze follows the path of mine, and then she cuts her eyes back to me. She saw. She saw me eyeing my new boss. Pathetic. How long was she watching me stare at him? I want to cover my face with this book, but instead, I smile like I was doing nothing wrong. I mean, I wasn’t. “I’m heading out,” April says. “I put Verity in bed and turned on her television. She’s had dinner and her meds, in case he asks.” I don’t know why she’s telling me this, since I’m not in charge. “Okay. Have a good night.” She doesn’t tell me to have a good night in return. She walks back into the house and lets the door fall shut again. A minute later, I hear the hum of her engine as her car pulls out of the driveway, disappearing between the trees. I glance back at Jeremy and Crew, and Jeremy is ripping up another piece of wood. Crew is staring at me, standing near the pile of discarded fishing dock. He smiles and waves. I lift my hand to wave back, but curl my fingers into a soft fist when I realize Crew isn’t waving at me. He’s looking above me, to the right. He’s looking up at Verity’s bedroom window. I spin around and look up, just as her bedroom curtain falls shut. I drop her book onto the patio table, knocking over my bottle of water in the process. I stand up and take three steps farther back to get a better look at the window, but there’s no one there. My mouth falls open. I look back at Crew, but he’s retreating back to the dock to grab another piece of wood from Jeremy. I’m seeing things. But why was he waving at her window? If she wasn’t there, why was he waving? It doesn’t make sense. If she was looking out her window, Crew would have had a much bigger reaction, considering she hasn’t been able to speak or walk on her own since her wreck. Or maybe he doesn’t understand that his mother walking to her window would be a miracle. He’s only five. I look down at the book, now covered in water, and pick it up and shake the liquid from it. I blow out an unsteady breath because it feels like I’ve been on edge all day. I’m sure I’m still a little shaken from thinking she was staring at me earlier, and that’s why I assumed I saw the curtain move. Part of me wants to forget it and lock myself in the office and work the rest of the night. But I know I won’t be able to if I don’t check on her. Make sure I didn’t see what I thought I saw. I lay the book open on the patio table to dry and make my way into the house, toward the stairs. I’m quiet. I’m not sure why I feel the need to be quiet as I work to sneak a peek at her. I know she probably can’t process much, so what would it matter if I made my approach known? Even still, I remain quiet as I make my way up the stairs, down the hallway, and to her bedroom door. It’s slightly ajar, and I can see the window that overlooks the backyard. I press my palm to the door and begin to open it. I’m biting my bottom lip as I peek my head in. Verity is in her bed, eyes closed, hands to her sides on top of the blanket. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief, and then feel even more relief when I open the door a little wider, revealing an oscillating fan moving back and forth from Verity’s bed to the window overlooking the backyard. Every time the fan points toward the window, the curtain moves. My sigh is louder this time. It was the damn fan. Get a grip, Lowen. I turn off the fan because it’s a little too chilly in here for it. I’m surprised April left it on to begin with. I cut my eyes toward Verity again, but she’s still asleep. When I get to the door, I pause. I look at the dresser—at the remote sitting on top of it. I look up at the TV mounted to the wall. It isn’t on. April said she turned on the TV before she left, but the TV is not on. I don’t even look back at Verity. I pull the door shut and rush down the stairs. I’m not going back up there again. I’m scaring myself. The most helpless person in this house is the one I’m the most afraid of. It doesn’t even make sense. She wasn’t staring at me through the office window. She wasn’t standing at her window, looking at Crew. And she didn’t turn off her own TV. It’s probably on a timer, or April accidentally hit the power button twice and assumed she turned it on. Regardless of the fact that I’m aware this is all in my head, I still walk back to Verity’s office, close the door, and pick up another chapter of her autobiography. Maybe reading more from her point of view will reassure me that she’s harmless and I need to chill the fuck out. So Be It I knew I was pregnant because my breasts looked better than they had ever looked. I’m very aware of my body, what goes into it, how to nourish it, how to keep it toned. Growing up watching my mother’s waistline expand with her laziness, I work out daily, sometimes twice a day. I learned very early on that a human is not merely comprised of only one thing. We are two parts that make up the whole. We have our conscious, which includes our mind, our soul, and all the intangible parts. And we have our physical being, which is the machine that our conscious relies on for survival. If you fuck with the machine, you will die. If you neglect the machine, you will die. If you assume your conscious can outlive the machine, you will die shortly after learning you were wrong. It’s very simple, really. Take care of your physical being. Feed it what it needs, not what the conscience tells you it wants. Giving in to cravings of the mind that ultimately hurt the body is like a weak parent giving in to her child. “Oh, you had a bad day? Do you want an entire box of cookies? Okay, sweetie. Eat it. And drink this soda while you’re at it.” Caring for your body is no different from caring for a child. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it sucks, sometimes you just want to give in, but if you do, you’ll pay for the consequences eighteen years down the road. It’s fitting when it comes to my mother. She cared for me like she cared for her body. Very little. Sometimes I wonder if she’s still fat—if she’s still neglecting that machine. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spoken to her in years. But I’m not interested in speaking about a woman who chose never to speak of me again. I’m here to discuss the first thing my baby ever stole from me. Jeremy. I didn’t notice the theft at first. At first, after we found out that the night we got engaged became the night we conceived, I was actually happy. I was happy because Jeremy was happy. And at that point, other than my breasts looking better than ever, I didn’t realize how detrimental the pregnancy was going to be to the machine I had worked so hard to maintain. It was around the third month, a few weeks after I found out I was pregnant, that I started to notice the difference. It was a small little pooch, but it was there. I had just gotten out of the shower, and I was standing in front of the mirror, looking at my profile. My hand was flat on my stomach and I felt something foreign, and my stomach was slightly protruding. I was disgusted. I vowed to start working out three times a day. I’d seen what pregnancy could do to women, but I also knew most of the damage was done in that last trimester. If I could somehow figure out how to deliver early…maybe around thirty-three or thirty-four weeks, I could avoid the most detrimental part of pregnancy. There have been so many advances in medical care, babies born that early are almost always fine. “Wow.” I dropped my hand and looked at the doorway. Jeremy was leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded over his chest. He was smiling at me. “You’re starting to show.” “I am not.” I sucked in. He laughed and closed the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me from behind. He placed both hands on my stomach and looked at me in the mirror. He kissed my shoulder. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.” It was a lie to make me feel better, but I was grateful. Even his lies meant something to me. I squeezed his hands and he spun me around to face him, then he kissed me, walking me backward until I reached the bathroom counter. He lifted me onto it, then stood between my legs. He was fully clothed, just returning from work. I was completely naked, fresh from the shower. The only thing between us were his pants and the pooch I was still trying to suck in. He started fucking me on the counter, but we finished in bed. His head was on my chest, and he was tracing circles over my stomach when it rumbled loudly. I tried to clear my throat to hide the noise, but he laughed. “Someone’s hungry.” I started to shake my head, but he lifted off my chest to look at me. “What’s she craving?” “Nothing. I’m not hungry.” He laughed again. “Not you. Her,” he said, patting my stomach. “Aren’t pregnant women supposed to get weird cravings and eat all the time because of the babies? You barely eat. And your stomach is growling.” He sits up on the bed. “I need to feed my girls.” His girls. “You don’t even know if it’s a girl yet.” He smiled at me. “It’s a girl. I have a feeling.” I wanted to roll my eyes, because technically, it was nothing. Not a boy, not a girl. It was a blob. I wasn’t that far along yet, so assuming the thing growing inside me was actually hungry or craving any particular type of food was absurd. But it was hard for me to state my case because Jeremy was so ecstatic about the baby, I didn’t really care if he treated it like it was more than it was. Sometimes his excitement excited me. For the next few weeks, his excitement helped me cope. The more my stomach grew, the more attentive he became. The more he would kiss it when we were in bed together at night. In the mornings, he would hold my hair while I puked. When he was at work, he would text me potential baby names. He became as obsessed with my pregnancy as I was with him. He went to my first doctor’s visit with me. I’m thankful he was at the second doctor’s visit, too, because that was the day my world shifted. Twins. Two of them. I was quiet when we left the doctor’s office that day. I had already feared becoming the mother of one baby. Being forced to love the one thing Jeremy loved more than me. But when I found out there were two, and that they were girls, I was suddenly not okay with being the third most important thing in Jeremy’s life. I tried to force my smile when he’d talk about them. I would act like it filled me with joy when he rubbed my stomach, but it repulsed me, knowing he was only doing it because they were in there. Even if I delivered early, it didn’t matter. Now that there were two of them, my body would suffer even more damage. I shuddered daily at the thought of them both growing inside me, stretching my skin, ruining my breasts, my stomach, and god forbid the temple between my legs where Jeremy worshipped nightly. How could Jeremy still want me after this? During the fourth month of my pregnancy, I started hoping for a miscarriage. I prayed for blood when I went to the bathroom. I imagined how, after losing the twins, Jeremy would make me his priority again. He would dote on me, worship me, care for me, worry for me, and not because of what was growing inside me. I took sleeping pills when he wasn’t looking. I drank wine when he wasn’t around. I did anything I could to destroy the things that were going to push him away from me, but nothing worked. They kept growing. My stomach continued to stretch. In my fifth month, we were lying on our sides in the bed. Jeremy was fucking me from behind. His left hand gripped my breast, and his right hand was against my stomach. I didn’t like it when he touched my stomach during sex. It made me think of the babies and ruined my mood. I thought maybe he had reached orgasm when he stopped moving, but I realized he’d stopped moving because he’d felt them move. He pulled out of me and then rolled me onto my back, pressing his palm against my stomach. “Did you feel that?” he asked. His eyes were dancing with excitement. He wasn’t hard anymore. He was excited for reasons that had nothing to do with me. He pressed his ear to my stomach and waited for one of them to move again. “Jeremy?” I whispered. He kissed my stomach and looked up at me. I reached down and teased at strands of his hair with my fingers. “Do you love them?” He smiled because he thought I wanted him to say yes. “I love them more than anything.” “More than me?” He stopped smiling. He kept his hand on my stomach, but he scooted up, sliding an arm under my neck. “Different from you,” he said, kissing my cheek. “Different, yes. But more? Is your love for them more intense than your love for me?” His eyes scanned mine, and I was hoping he would laugh and say, “Absolutely not.” But he didn’t laugh. He looked at me with nothing but honesty and said, “Yes.” Really? His reply crushed me. Suffocated me. Killed me. “But that’s how it should be,” he said. “Why? Do you feel guilty because you love them more than me?” I didn’t answer. Did he really think I loved them more than I loved him? I don’t even know them. “Don’t feel guilty,” he said. “I want you to love them more than you love me. Our love for each other is conditional. Our love for them isn’t.” “My love for you is unconditional,” I said. He smiled. “No, it isn’t. I could do things you would never forgive me for. But you’ll always forgive your children.” He was wrong. I didn’t forgive them for existing. I didn’t forgive them for forcing him to put me third. I didn’t forgive them for taking the night we got engaged from us. They weren’t even born yet, but they were already taking things that had once belonged to me. “Verity,” Jeremy whispered. He wiped a tear that had fallen from my eye. “Are you okay?” I shook my head. “I just can’t believe how much you already love them and they aren’t even born yet.” “I know,” he said, smiling. I didn’t mean it as a compliment, but he took it that way. He laid his head back on my chest and touched my stomach again. “I’ll be a fucking mess when they’re born.” He’s going to cry? He had never cried for me. Over me. About me. Maybe we haven’t fought enough. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I whispered. I didn’t have to go, I just needed to get away from him and all the love he was aiming in every direction but mine. He kissed me, and when I climbed off the bed, he rolled over, his back to me, and forgot we’d never even finished fucking. He fell asleep while I was in the bathroom, attempting to abort his daughters with a wire hanger. I tried for half an hour, until my stomach started to cramp and blood was running down my leg. I was certain more would follow. I climbed into bed, waiting for the miscarriage. My arms were shaking. My legs were numb from the squatting. My stomach hurt and I wanted to puke, but I didn’t move because I wanted to be in the bed with him when it happened. I wanted to wake him up, frantic, and show him the blood. I wanted him to panic, to worry, to feel bad for me, to cry for me. To cry for me. I drop the last page of the chapter. It flutters to the polished wood floor and disappears under the desk, like its trying to get away from me. I immediately drop to my knees, searching for it, arranging it back into the pile of pages I’m determined to hide. I’m… I don’t even… I’m still on my knees in the middle of Verity’s office when the tears come. They don’t spill; I hold them off with deep breaths, focusing on the grinding pain in my knees to distract my thoughts. I don’t even know if it’s sadness or anger. I only know this was written by a very disturbed woman—a woman whose house I currently inhabit. Slowly, I lift my head until my eyes are fixed to the ceiling. She’s there right now, on the second floor, sleeping, or eating, or staring blankly into space. I can feel her lurking, disapproving of my presence. Suddenly, I know, without a doubt, that it’s true. A mother wouldn’t write that about herself—about her daughters—if it weren’t the truth. A mother who never had those feelings or thoughts would never even dream of them. I don’t care how good of a writer Verity is; she would never compromise herself as a mother by writing something so horrid if she didn’t actually experience that. My mind begins to spin with worry, sadness, fear. If she did that—if she actually tried to take their lives over a streak of maternal jealousy—what else was she capable of? What actually happened to those girls? After a while of processing it, I put the manuscript in a drawer, beneath a slew of other things. I don’t ever want Jeremy to come across that. And before I leave here, I will destroy it. I can’t imagine how he would feel if he read that. He’s already grieving the deaths of his daughters. Imagine if he knew what they endured at the hands of their own mother. I pray she was a better mother after they were born, but I’m honestly too shaken to continue reading. I’m not sure if I want to read more at all. I want a drink. Not water or soda or fruit juice. I walk to the kitchen and open the refrigerator, but there’s no wine. I open the cabinets above the refrigerator, but there’s no liquor. I open the cabinet below the sink and it’s bare. I open the refrigerator again, but all I see are small boxes of fruit juice for Crew and bottles of water that aren’t going to help me shake this feeling. “Are you okay?” I spin around, and Jeremy is sitting at the dining room table with papers strewn out in front of him. He looks concerned for me. “Do you have anything alcoholic at all in the house?” I plant my hands firmly on my hips, attempting to hide the trembling in my fingers. He has no idea what she was truly like. Jeremy studies me for a moment, then heads for the pantry. On the top shelf is a bottle of Crown Royal. “Sit down,” he says, concern still embedded in his expression. He watches me as I take a seat at the table and drop my head in my hands. I hear him open a can of soda and mix it with the liquor. A few moments later, he sets it in front of me. I bring it to my lips so fast, a few drops spill onto the table. He’s back in his chair now, watching me closely. “Lowen,” he says, watching as I try to swallow the Crown and Coke with a straight face. I squint because it burns. “What happened?” Oh, let’s see, Jeremy. Your brain-damaged wife made eye contact with me. She walked to her bedroom window and waved at your son. She tried to abort your babies while you were asleep in your bed. “Your wife,” I say. “Her books. I just. There was a scary part and it freaked me out.” He watches me for a moment, expressionless. Then he laughs. “Seriously? A book did this to you?” I shrug and take another sip. “She’s a great writer,” I say, setting the glass on the table. “I’m easily spooked, I guess.” “Yet you write in the same genre as her.” “Even my own books do this to me sometimes,” I lie. “Maybe you should switch to romance.” “I’m sure I will once this contract is over.” He laughs again, shaking his head as he begins gathering the papers in front of him. “You missed dinner. It’s still warm if you want some.” “I do. I need to eat.” Maybe that will help me calm down. I carry my drink to the stove, where there’s a chicken casserole covered in tinfoil. I make myself a plate and grab a water out of the refrigerator, then take a seat at the table again. “Did you make this?” “Yep.” I take a bite. “It’s really good,” I say with a mouthful. “Thanks.” He’s still staring at me, but now he looks more amused than concerned. I’m happy to see the amusement take over. I wish I could find this entertaining, but everything I just read makes me question Verity. Her condition. Her honesty. “Can I ask you a question?” Jeremy nods. “Just tell me if I’m being too nosey. But is there a chance Verity could make a full recovery?” He shakes his head. “The doctor doesn’t believe she’ll ever walk or talk again since she hasn’t already made that kind of progress.” “Is she paralyzed?” “No, there wasn’t any damage to her spinal cord. But her mind.it’s similar to the mind of an infant now. She has basic reflexes. She can eat, drink, blink, move a little. But none of it is intentional. I’m hoping with continued therapy, she’ll be able to improve a little, but—” Jeremy looks away from me, toward the kitchen entryway, when he hears Crew coming down the stairs. Crew rounds the corner in his footed Spiderman pajamas and then jumps onto Jeremy’s lap. Crew. I forgot about Crew while I was reading. If Verity actually despised those girls after they were born as much as she despised them in utero, there’s no way she would have agreed to have another child. That can only mean she must have bonded with them. That’s probably why she wrote what she wrote, because in the end, she fell just as in love with them as Jeremy was. Maybe writing about her thoughts during pregnancy was like a release for Verity. Like a Catholic going to confession. That thought calms me, along with Jeremy’s explanation of her injuries. She has the physical and mental capabilities of a newborn. My mind is making all of this more than it is. Crew leans his head back against Jeremy’s shoulder. He’s holding his iPad, and Jeremy is scrolling through his phone. They’re cute together. I’ve been so focused on the negative things that have happened in this family, I need to remember to focus more on the positive that still remains. And that is definitely Jeremy’s bond with his son. Crew loves him. Laughs around him. He’s comfortable with his dad. And Jeremy isn’t afraid to show him affection, because he just kissed the side of Crew’s head. “Did you brush your teeth?” Jeremy asks. “Yep,” Crew says. Jeremy stands up and lifts Crew with him, effortlessly. “That means it’s bedtime.” He throws Crew over his shoulder. “Tell Laura goodnight.” Crew waves at me as Jeremy rounds the corner and disappears with him upstairs. I take note of how he calls me by the pen name I’ll be using in front of everyone else, but he calls me Lowen when it’s just us. I also take note of how much I like it. I don’t want to like it. I eat the rest of my dinner and wash the dishes in the sink while Jeremy remains upstairs with Crew. When I’m finished, I feel somewhat better. I’m not sure if it was the alcohol, the food, or the realization that Verity probably wrote that horrific chapter because a much better one follows it up. One where she realizes what a blessing those girls were to her. I walk out of the kitchen, but my eye is drawn to several family photos that hang on the hallway wall. I pause to look at them. Most of them are of the kids, but a few of them have Verity and Jeremy in them. They bear a striking resemblance to their mother, while Crew takes after Jeremy. They were such a beautiful family. So much so that these photos are depressing to look at. I take them all in, noticing how easy it is to distinguish the girls from each other. One of them has a huge smile and a small scar on her cheek. One of them rarely smiles. I lift my hand to touch a photo of the girl with the scar on her cheek and wonder how long she’d had it. Where it came from. I move down the line of pictures to a much older photo of the girls when they were toddlers. The smiling one even has the scar in that picture, so she got it at a young age. Jeremy walks down the stairs as I’m looking at the photos. He pauses next to me. I point at the twin with the scar. “Which one is this?” “Chastin,” he says. He points to the other one. “This is Harper.” “They look so much like Verity.” I’m not looking at him, but I can see him nod out of the corner of my eye. “How did Chastin get that scar?” “She was born with it,” Jeremy says. “The doctor said it was scarring from fibrous tissue. It’s not uncommon, especially with twins because they’re cramped for room.” I look at him this time, wondering if that’s actually where Chastin’s scar came from. Or if maybe—somehow—it was a result of Verity’s failed abortion attempt. “Did both the girls have the same allergy?” I ask. As soon as I ask it, I bring a hand up and squeeze my jaw in regret. The only way I know one of them even had a peanut allergy is because of what I read about her death. And now he knows I was reading about the death of his daughter. “I’m sorry, Jeremy.” “It’s fine,” he says quietly. “And no, just Chastin. Peanuts.” He doesn’t elaborate, but I can feel him staring at me. I turn my head, and our eyes meet. He holds my gaze for a moment, but then his eyes drop to my hand. He lifts it with delicate fingers, flipping it over. “How’d you get this one?” he asks, running his thumb over the scar across my palm. I make a fist, not because I’m trying to hide it. It’s faded, and I rarely think about it anymore. I’ve trained myself not to think about it. But I cover it because of how my skin felt when he touched it, like his finger burned a hole right through my hand. “I can’t remember,” I say quickly. “Thank you for dinner. I’m gonna go shower.” I point past him, toward the master bedroom. He steps out of my way. When I get to the room, I open the door quickly and close it just as fast, pressing my back against the door, willing myself to relax. It’s not that he makes me uncomfortable. Jeremy Crawford is a good man. Maybe it’s the manuscript that makes me uncomfortable, because I have no doubt that he would have shared his love equally with his three children and his wife. He doesn’t hold back, even now. Even when his wife is virtually catatonic, he still loves her selflessly. He’s the sort of man a woman like Verity could easily become addicted to, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand how Verity could be so consumed and obsessed with him, to the point that creating a child with him would ignite that kind of jealousy in her. But I do understand her attraction to him. I understand it more than I want to. When I push off the door, something pulls my hair, and I end up back against it. What the hell? My hair is tangled in something. I pull at my hair until I break free, and then turn around to see what I got hung up in. It’s a lock. He must have installed it today. He really is considerate. I reach up and lock the door. Does Jeremy think I wanted a lock on the inside of this bedroom door because I don’t feel safe in this house? I hope not because that’s not why I wanted the lock at all. I wanted a lock so they would all be safe from me. I walk to the bathroom and turn on the light. I look down at my hand, trailing my fingers across the scar. After the first few times my mother caught me sleepwalking, she became concerned. She put me in therapy, hoping it would help more than the sleeping pills did. My therapist said it was important to unfamiliarize myself with my surroundings. He said it would help if I created obstacles that would be hard for me to move past while I was sleepwalking. A lock on the inside of my bedroom door was one of those obstacles. And, while I’m almost certain I locked it before I fell asleep all those years ago, it doesn’t explain why I woke up the next morning with a broken wrist and covered in blood. I choose not to read more of Verity’s manuscript. It’s been two days since I read about the attempted abortion, and the manuscript is still at the bottom of her desk drawer, hidden and untouched by me. I can feel it, though. It exists with me in Verity’s office, breathing shallowly beneath the junk I covered it with. The more I read, the more unsettled I become. The more unfocused I become. I’m not saying I’ll never finish it, but until I make progress on what I’m here to do, I can’t get sidetracked by it again. I’ve noticed, now that I’ve stopped reading it, being in Verity’s presence doesn’t creep me out as much as it did a few days ago. I actually came up for air after working all day yesterday in the office to find Verity and her nurse seated at the dinner table with Crew and Jeremy. In the first couple of days I was here, I was in the office while they had dinner, so I wasn’t aware that they brought her to the table when they ate together. I didn’t want to intrude, so I went back to my office. There’s a different nurse today. Her name is Myrna. She’s a little older than April, round and cheerful with two rosy spots on her cheeks that make her look like an old-fashioned Kewpie doll. Right off the bat, she’s a lot more pleasant than April. And honestly, it’s not that April is unpleasant. But I get the vibe she doesn’t trust me around Jeremy. Or Jeremy around me. I’m not sure why she dislikes my presence, but I can see how being protective of her patient would mean judging another woman who is staying in her invalid patient’s home. I’m sure she thinks Jeremy and I lock ourselves in the master bedroom together after she leaves every evening. I wish she were right. Myrna works on Fridays and Saturdays, while April takes the rest of the week. Today is Friday and, while I expected to be moving into my apartment today, I’m relieved it’s all worked out the way it has. I would have left here unprepared. The extra time I’ve been given has been a lifesaver. I’ve knocked out reading two more books in the series in the past two days, and I actually enjoyed them a lot. It was fascinating, seeing how Verity always writes from the antagonist’s point of view. And I have a good sense of the direction I need to take with the series. But just in case, I still search for notes now that I know what I’m actually looking for. I’m on the floor, digging through a box when Corey texts me. Corey: Pantem did a press release this morning, announcing you as the new co-author of Verity’s series. Sent a link to your email if you want to take a look. As soon as I open my email, there’s a knock on the door of the office. “Come in.” Jeremy opens the door, peeking his head in. “Hey. I’m headed to Target to get a few groceries. If you make me a list, I can grab whatever you need.” There are a few things I need. Tampons being one of them, even though I only have a day or two left of my period. I just wasn’t expecting to be here this long, so I didn’t pack enough. I’m not sure I want to tell Jeremy that, though. I stand up, dusting off my jeans. “Actually, do you mind if I go with you? Might be easier.” Jeremy opens the door a little wider and says, “Not at all. Leaving in about ten minutes.” ••• Jeremy drives a dark grey Jeep Wrangler with jacked-up tires, covered in mud. I’ve never actually seen it because it’s been in the garage, but it’s not what I expected him to drive. I assumed he’d drive a Cadillac CTX or an Audi A8. Something a man in a suit would drive. I don’t know why I keep picturing him as the professional, clean-cut businessman I met that first day. The man wears jeans or sweatpants every day, is always outside working, and has a rotating stock of muddy boots he leaves by the back door. A Jeep Wrangler actually fits him better than any other vehicle I’ve been picturing him in. We’re out of his driveway, about half a mile down the road, when he turns down his radio. “Did you see Pantem’s press release today?” he asks. I grab my phone from my purse. “Corey sent me the link, but I forgot to read it.” “It’s only one sentence long in Publishers Weekly,” Jeremy says. “Short and sweet. Just how you wanted it.” I open the email and read the link. It’s not a link to Publishers Weekly, though. Corey sent me a link to the announcement made on Verity Crawford’s social media page, via her publicity team. Pantem Press is excited to announce that the remaining novels in The Virtue Series, made successful by Verity Crawford, will now be co-written with author Laura Chase. Verity is ecstatic to have Laura on board, and the two are looking forward to the co-creation of an unforgettable conclusion to the series. Verity is ecstatic? Ha! At least I know never to trust another publicity announcement. I start reading the comments below the announcement. -Who the heck is Laura Chase? -WHY IS VERITY HANDING OVER HER BABY TO SOMEONE ELSE? -Nope. Nope, nope, nope. -That’s how it usually works, right? Mediocre author gets successful, hires shittier author to do her job? I set down my phone, but it’s not enough. I turn off the ringer and put it in my purse, then zip it shut. “People are brutal,” I mutter under my breath. Jeremy laughs. “Never read the comments. Verity taught me that years ago.” I’ve never really had to deal with comments because I’ve never really put myself out there. “Good to know.” When we arrive at the store, Jeremy hops out of the Jeep and runs around to open my door for me. It makes me uneasy because I’m not used to this kind of treatment, but it would probably make Jeremy even more uneasy if he allowed me to open the door myself. He is just the type of guy Verity describes him to be in her autobiography. This is the first time I’ve ever had a guy open a door for me. Dammit. How messed up is that? When he grabs my hand to help me out of the Jeep, I tense up because I can’t prevent my reaction to his touch. I want more of it when I shouldn’t want any of it. Does he feel the same around me? Sex for him has been out of the picture for quite a while now, which leads me to wonder if he misses it. That has to be a hard adjustment. To have a marriage that seemed to revolve around sex in the beginning, only to have sex ripped out of the marriage overnight. Why am I thinking about his sex life as we’re walking into Target? “Do you like to cook?” Jeremy asks. “I don’t dislike it. I’ve just always lived alone, so I don’t make meals very often.” He grabs a shopping cart, and I go with him to the produce section. “What’s your favorite meal?” “Tacos.” He laughs. “Simple enough.” He grabs all the vegetables he’ll need to make tacos. I offer to make spaghetti for them one night. It’s really the only thing I cook that I can honestly say I’m good at. He’s on the juice aisle when I tell him I’ll be back, that I need a few things outside of the grocery department. I get the tampons, but grab other things to throw in the cart with them, like shampoo, socks, and a few shirts since I didn’t really bring any with me. I have no idea why I’m embarrassed to buy tampons. It’s not like he’s never seen them. And, knowing Jeremy, he’s probably purchased them for Verity a few times. He seems like the type of husband who wouldn’t think twice about it. I find Jeremy in the grocery section, and as I walk toward him, I notice he’s flanked by two women who have abandoned their carts to talk to him. His back is pressed against the ice cream cooler, giving the impression that he wishes he could melt right into it and escape. I can only see the backs of their heads as I approach, but when Jeremy’s eyes meet mine, an attractive blonde turns around to see what he’s looking at. The brunette seems more my speed, but only until she looks at me. Her glare changes my mind instantly. I approach the cart as if it’s a wild animal, cautiously, timidly. Do I place my items into the cart or will that make this awkward? I decide to set my things in the upper basket, a clear line in the red-cart sand: We are together but not together. The women both look at me, simultaneously, their eyebrows climbing higher with each item I set in the basket. The one standing closest to Jeremy, the blonde, is staring at my tampons. She looks back up at me and tilts her head. “And you are?” “This is Laura Chase,” Jeremy answers. “Laura, this is Patricia and Caroline.” The blonde looks like she’s been handed a warm cup of gossip tea. “We’re friends of Verity’s,” Patricia says. She gives me a very noticeable condescending look. “Speaking of, Verity must be feeling better if she’s got a friend in town.” She looks at Jeremy for more explanation. “Or is Laura your friend?” “Laura is here from New York. She’s working with Verity.” Patricia smiles at the same time she makes an mhm sound and looks back at me. “How does one work with a writer, exactly? I assumed it would be more of a solitary job.” “That’s usually what non-literary people assume,” Jeremy says. He nods at them, dismissing us from the conversation. “Have a good afternoon, ladies.” He begins to move the shopping cart, but Patricia places her hand on it. “Tell Verity I said hello and we hope she’s recovering well.” “I’ll share the message,” Jeremy says, walking past her. “Give my best to Sherman.” Patricia makes a face. “My husband’s name is William.” Jeremy nods once. “Oh. That’s right. I get them confused.” I hear Patricia scoff as we walk away. When we make it to the next aisle, I say, “Um. Who is Sherman?” “The guy she fucks behind her husband’s back.” I look at him, shocked. He’s smiling. “Holy shit,” I say, laughing. When we get to the register, I can’t stop smiling. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that kind of epic burn in person. Jeremy begins placing things on the conveyor belt. “I probably shouldn’t have stooped to her level, but I can’t stand hypocrites.” “Yes, but without hypocrites, there would be no epic karmic moments like the one I just witnessed.” Jeremy grabs the rest of the things from the cart. I try to keep mine separate, but he refuses to let me pay for it myself. I can’t stop staring at him as he runs his credit card. I feel something. I’m not sure what. A crush? That would make complete sense. I would develop a crush on a man who is so devoted to his ailing wife that he’s too blind to see anyone or anything else. He’s too blind to even see who his own wife was. Lowen Ashleigh, falling for an unavailable man with more baggage than even she has. Now that’s karma. I only arrived here five days ago, but it seems like longer. The days here drag, whereas in New York, well, New York minute. I heard Myrna tell Jeremy this morning that Verity had a fever, which is why she didn’t bring Verity down at all today before she left for the evening. I wasn’t sad about that. It meant I didn’t have to be in her presence, or look at her from my office window during their outdoor breaks. I’m looking at Jeremy, though. He’s sitting alone on the back porch, staring out at the lake, leaning back in a rocking chair that he hasn’t rocked in over ten minutes. He’s sitting completely still. Every now and then, he remembers to blink. He’s been out there for a while now. I wish I knew what thoughts were going through his head right now. Is he thinking of the girls? Of Verity? Is he thinking about how much his life has changed in the past year? He hasn’t shaved in a few days, so his stubble is getting thicker. It looks good on him, but I’m not sure much could look bad on him. I lean forward on Verity’s desk and drop my chin in my hand. I immediately regret moving, because Jeremy notices. He turns his head and looks at me through the window. I want to look away, force myself to appear busy, but it’s obvious I’ve been staring at him, now that I’m leaned forward on the desk with my head propped on my hand. It would look worse if I tried to hide it at this point, so I just smile gently at him. He doesn’t return the smile, but he doesn’t look away. We hold eye contact for several seconds, and I feel his stare stirring things up inside me. It makes me wonder if it does anything to him when I look at him. He inhales a slow breath and then lifts up from his chair and walks away, toward the dock. When he reaches it, he picks up his hammer and begins ripping at the remaining few slabs of wood. He was probably craving a moment of peace, without Crew or Verity or a nurse or myself invading his privacy. I need a Xanax. I haven’t taken one in over a week. It makes me groggy, which makes it difficult for me to focus on writing or research. But I’m tired of the moments in this house that send my pulse racing like it is right now. Once the adrenaline kicks in, I can’t seem to reel it in. Whether it’s Jeremy, Verity, or Verity’s books, there’s always something wreaking havoc on my anxiety levels. My reaction to this house and the people in it are more distracting than a little grogginess would be. I walk to the bedroom to sift through my bag for the Xanax. As soon as I get the bottle open, I hear a scream come from upstairs. Crew. I drop my unopened bottle of pills on the bed and rush out of the room and up the stairs. I can hear him crying. It sounds like it’s coming from Verity’s room. As much as I want to turn around and run in the other direction, I also realize he’s a little boy who might be in trouble, so I keep walking. When I reach the door, I push it open without knocking. Crew is on the floor, holding his chin. There’s blood on his hands and fingers. A knife next to him on the floor. “Crew?” I reach down and pick him up, then rush him to the bathroom down the hall. I set him on the counter. “Let me see.” I pull his shaky fingers from his chin to assess the injury. It’s seeping blood, but it doesn’t look to be very deep. It’s a cut right underneath his chin. He must have been holding the knife when he fell. “Did you cut yourself with the knife?” Crew is wide-eyed, looking up at me. He shakes his head, probably trying to hide that he had a knife. I’m sure Jeremy wouldn’t approve of that. “Mommy said I’m not supposed to touch her knife.” I freeze. “Your mommy says that?” Crew doesn’t respond. “Crew,” I say, grabbing a washcloth. It feels like my heart is stuck in my throat as I speak to him, but I try to hide my fear as I wet the washcloth. “Does your mommy talk to you?” Crew’s body is rigid, and the only thing that moves is his head when he shakes it. I press the washcloth to his chin right before I hear Jeremy’s footsteps bounding up the stairs. He must have heard Crew scream. “Crew!” he yells. “We’re in here.” Jeremy’s eyes are full of worry when he reaches the door. I step out of his way while still holding the washcloth to Crew’s chin. “You okay, buddy?” Crew nods, and Jeremy takes the washcloth from me. He bends down and looks at the injury on Crew’s chin and then at me. “What happened?” “I think he cut himself,” I say. “He was in Verity’s bedroom. There was a knife on the floor.” Jeremy looks at Crew, his eyes full of more disappointment than fear now. “What were you doing with a knife?” Crew shakes his head, sniffling as he tries to stop crying. “I didn’t have a knife. I just fell off the bed.” Part of me feels bad, like I tattled on the poor kid. I try to cover for him. “He wasn’t holding it. I saw it on the floor and assumed that’s what happened.” I’m still shaken from what Crew said about Verity and the knife, but I remind myself that everyone talks about Verity in present tense. The nurse, Jeremy, Crew. I’m sure Verity told him not to play with knives in the past, and now my imagination is turning it into more than it is. Jeremy opens the medicine cabinet behind Crew and grabs a first-aid kit. When he closes the mirror, he’s staring at my reflection. “Go check,” he mouths, motioning toward the door with his head. I leave the bathroom, but pause in the hallway. I don’t like going in that room, no matter how helpless Verity is. But I also know Crew doesn’t need to have access to a knife, so I trudge forward. Verity’s door is still wide open, so I tiptoe in, not wanting to wake her. Not that I could. I round the bed, to where Crew was on the floor. There’s no knife. I turn around, wondering if maybe I kicked it somewhere when I picked him up. When I still don’t see it, I lower myself to the floor to check under the bed. It’s completely empty beneath the frame, other than a thin layer of dust. I slide my hand beneath the nightstand next to the hospital bed, but find nothing. I know I saw a knife. I’m not going crazy. Am I? I put my hand on the mattress to lift myself up off the floor, but immediately shift backward onto my palms when I catch Verity watching me. Her head is in a different position, turned to the right, her eyes on mine. Holy shit! I choke on my fear as I scoot myself backward, away from her bed. I end up several feet away from her, and even though her head is the only thing different about her from when I walked into the room, my fear is telling me to run for my life. I pull myself up, using the dresser for support, and keep my eyes fixated on her as I move back toward the door, facing her the whole time. I’m trying to suppress my terror, but I’m not convinced she isn’t about to lunge at me with the knife she picked up from the floor. I close her door behind me and stand there, gripping the doorknob, until I can control my panic. I breathe in and out, steadily, five times, hoping Jeremy doesn’t see the terror in my eyes when I walk back to tell him there was no knife. But there was a knife. My hands are shaking. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust this house. As much as I know I need to stay in order to do the best job, I’d much rather sleep in my rental car on the streets of Brooklyn for the next week than sleep in this house another night. I squeeze the tension from my neck as I return to the bathroom. Jeremy is bandaging up Crew’s chin. “You’re lucky you don’t need stitches,” Jeremy says to Crew. He’s helping Crew wash the blood from his hands, and then tells him to go play. Crew brushes past me and returns to Verity’s room. I find it odd that sitting on her bed while he plays his iPad is fun for him. But then again, I’m sure he just wants to be near his mother. Have at it, buddy. I don’t want to be near her at all. “Did you grab the knife?” Jeremy asks, drying his hands on a towel. I try to refrain from sounding as scared as I still feel. “I couldn’t find it.” Jeremy eyes me for a second and then says, “But you saw one?” “I thought I did. Maybe I didn’t. It wasn’t there.” Jeremy brushes past me. “I’ll look around.” He walks toward Verity’s room, but turns around and pauses as he reaches her door. “Thanks for helping him.” He smiles, but it’s a playful grin. “I know how busy you’ve been today.” He winks at me before walking into Verity’s room. I close my eyes and allow the embarrassment to sink in. I deserved that. He probably thinks all I do is stare out that office window. I should probably take two Xanax at this point. When I get back to Verity’s office, the sun is beginning to set, which means Crew will shower and go to bed soon. Verity will remain in her room for the night. And I’ll feel somewhat safe, because for whatever reason, I’m only scared of Verity in this house. And I don’t have to be around her at nighttime. In fact, nighttime has become my favorite time around here because it’s when I see the least of Verity and the most of Jeremy. I’m not sure how much longer I can try to convince myself that I don’t have a serious crush on that man. I’m also not sure how much longer I can try to convince myself that Verity is a better person than she really is. I think, after reading every book in her series, I’m beginning to understand the reason her suspense novels do so well is because of how she writes them from the villain’s point of view. Critics love that about her. When I listened to her first audiobook on the drive over, I loved that her narrator seemed a little psychotic. I wondered how Verity got in the mind of her antagonists like she did. But that was before I knew her. I still don’t technically know her, but I know the Verity who wrote the autobiography. It’s apparent that the way she wrote the rest of her novels wasn’t a unique approach for her. After all, they say write what you know. I’m beginning to think Verity writes from a villainous point of view because she’s a villain. Being evil is all she knows. I feel a little evil myself as I open the drawer and do exactly what I swore to myself I wouldn’t do again: read another chapter. So Be It They were determined to live, I’ll give them that. Nothing I tried worked. The attempted self-abortion, the random pills, the “accidental” fall down a flight of stairs. The only thing any of my attempts resulted in was a small scar on one of the baby’s cheeks. A scar I’m sure I’m responsible for. A scar Jeremy couldn’t shut up about. A few hours after they brought me to the room after their birth—cesarean, thank god—their pediatrician came by to check on the girls. I closed my eyes, pretending to nap, but really I was just scared to interact with their pediatrician. I feared he would see right through me and know I had no idea how to be a mother to these things. Jeremy asked the doctor about the scar before he left the room. The doctor brushed it off, said it’s not uncommon for identical twins to accidentally scratch each other in utero. Jeremy disagreed. “It’s too deep to be a simple scratch, though.” “Could be scarring from fibrous tissue,” the doctor said. “No worries. It’ll fade with time.” “I’m not worried about the way it looks,” Jeremy said, almost defensively. “I’m worried it could be something more serious.” “It’s not. Your daughters are perfectly healthy. Both of them.” Figures. The doctor left and the nurse was gone and it was just Jeremy, the girls, and me. One of them was asleep in the glass bed thing—I don’t know what it’s called. Jeremy was holding the other one. He was smiling down at her when he noticed my eyes were open. “Hey, Momma.” Please don’t call me that. I smiled at him anyway. He looked good as a dad. Happy. Never mind that his happiness had little to do with me. But even in my jealousy, I could appreciate him. He was probably going to be the type of dad to change their diapers. To help with feedings. I knew I’d appreciate that side of him even more with time. I just needed to get used to this. To being a mother. “Bring me the scarred one,” I said. Jeremy made a face, indicating he was disappointed in my choice of words. I guess that was a weird way to put it, but we hadn’t named them yet. The scar was her only identifier. He carried her to me and placed her in my arms. I looked down at her. I waited for the flood of emotions, but there wasn’t even a trickle. I touched her cheek, ran my finger down the scar. I guess the wire hanger wasn’t strong enough. I probably should have used something that didn’t give so easily under pressure. A knitting needle? I’m not sure it would have been long enough. “The doctor said the scarring could be a scratch.” Jeremy laughed. “Fighting before they were even born.” I smiled down at her. Not because I felt like smiling, but because it’s probably what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want Jeremy to think I wasn’t in love with her like he was. I took her hand and wrapped it around my pinky. “Chastin,” I whispered. “You can have the better name since your sister was so mean to you.” “Chastin,” Jeremy said. “I love it.” “And Harper,” I said. “Chastin and Harper.” They were two of the names he had sent me. I liked them okay. I chose them because he mentioned them both more than once, so I gathered they were at the top of his list. Maybe if he could see how much I was trying to love him, he wouldn’t notice the two areas in which my love lacked. Chastin started to cry. She was wriggling in my arms, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that. I started bouncing her, but that hurt, so I stopped. Her cries continued to grow louder. “She might be hungry,” Jeremy suggested. I was so sold on the thought of them not actually surviving their birth with all I had put them through, what I would do beyond that wasn’t given much thought. I knew breastfeeding them would be the best choice, but I had absolutely no desire to do that kind of damage to my breasts. Especially since there were two of them. “Sounds like someone is hungry,” a nurse said as she pranced into the room. “Are you breastfeeding?” “No,” I said immediately. I wanted her to prance right back out of there. Jeremy looked at me, concerned. “Are you sure?” “There are two of them,” I replied. I didn’t like the look on Jeremy’s face—like he was disappointed in me. I hated to think this was how it was going to be. Him taking their side. Me not mattering anymore. “It’s not any more difficult than bottle-feeding them,” Prancing Nurse said. “It’s actually more convenient. Do you want to try it? See how it goes?” I couldn’t take my eyes off Jeremy as I waited for him to dismiss me of that kind of torture. It killed me to know that he wanted me to breastfeed them when there were so many other perfectly adequate alternatives. But I nodded and pulled the sleeve of my gown down because I wanted to please him. I wanted him to be happy that I was the mother of his children, even though I wasn’t happy about it. I removed my breast and brought Chastin toward my nipple. Jeremy was watching the whole thing. He saw her latch on to my nipple. He saw her head move back and forth, her little hand press into my skin. He watched her begin to suck. It felt wrong. This infant, sucking on something Jeremy had sucked on before. I didn’t like it. How would he find my breasts attractive after seeing babies feed from them every day? “Does it hurt?” Jeremy asked. “Not really.” He put a hand on my head and brushed back my hair. “You look like you’re in pain.” Not in pain. Just disgusted. I watched as Chastin continued to feed from me. My stomach clenched as I tried my hardest not to show him how repulsed I was. I’m sure some mothers found this beautiful. I found it disturbing. “I can’t do it,” I whispered, my head falling back against the pillow. Jeremy reached down and pulled Chastin from my breast. I sighed with relief when I was free of her. “It’s fine,” Jeremy said reassuringly. “We’ll use formula.” “Are you sure?” the nurse asked him. “She seemed to be taking to it.” “Positive. We’ll use formula.” The nurse conceded and said she’d grab a can of Similac as she left the room. I smiled because my husband still supported me. He had my back. He put me first in that moment, and I reveled in it. “Thank you,” I said to him. He kissed Chastin’s forehead and then sat down on the edge of my bed with her. He stared at her and shook his head in disbelief. “How can I already feel so protective over them, and I’ve only known them a couple of hours?” I wanted to remind him that he’s always been protective of me, but it didn’t feel like the right moment. I almost felt as if I were intruding on something I wasn’t a part of. This father-daughter bond I was never going to be included in. He already loved them more than he had ever loved me. He was eventually going to take their side, even if I wasn’t in the wrong. This was so much worse than I had imagined it would be. He lifted a hand to his face and wiped away a tear. “Are you crying?” Jeremy snapped his head in my direction, shocked at my words. I panicked. Recovered. “That came out weird,” I said. “I meant it in a good way. I love how much you love them.” His sudden tension disappeared with my quick recovery. He looked back down at Chastin and said, “I’ve never loved anything this much. Did you think you were capable of loving someone so much?” I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, I have loved someone this much, Jeremy. You. For four years. Thanks for noticing. I don’t know why I’m surprised when I set the manuscript back in the drawer. The contents of the drawer rattle as I slam it shut angrily. Why am I angry? This isn’t my life or my family. I’d trolled Verity’s reviews before coming here, and in nine out of ten of them, the reviewer referenced wanting to throw their Kindles or books across the room. I kind of want to do the same with her autobiography. I was hoping she’d have seen the light with the birth of the girls, but she didn’t. She only saw more darkness. She seems so cold and hard, but I’m not a mother. Do a lot of mothers feel this way about their children at first? If so, they certainly aren’t honest about it. It’s probably similar to when a mother claims she doesn’t have a favorite child, but they probably do. It’s an unspoken thing between mothers. One I suppose you don’t become aware of until you are one. Or maybe Verity just didn’t deserve to be a mother. I think about having children sometimes. I’ll be thirty-two soon and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry the opportunity might never present itself. But if I ever do find myself in a relationship with a man I’d want to father my child, it would be someone like Jeremy. Rather than appreciate the wonderful father he seemed to be, Verity resented him. Jeremy’s love for his girls seemed genuine from the very beginning. It still seems genuine. And it hasn’t been that long since he lost them. I keep losing sight of that. He’s still probably moving through the stages of grief, while dealing with Verity and being there for Crew and ensuring the income they’ve gotten used to as a family doesn’t come to a complete halt. Just a fraction of what he’s been through would be too much for some people. But he’s dealing with all of it at once. I found boxes of pictures in Verity’s office closet this week as I was rummaging through her things. I pulled a box down, but haven’t gone through the pictures yet. It seems like another invasion of privacy on my part. This family, at least Jeremy, has entrusted me to finish this series, and I keep getting sidetracked by my obsession with Verity. But if Verity is putting so much of herself into her series, I really do need to get to know her as well as possible. This really isn’t snooping. It’s research. There you go. Justification complete. I take the box of pictures to the kitchen table, pry open the lid, and then pull a handful of the pictures out, wondering who had them developed. People don’t really have a lot of physical pictures on hand nowadays, thanks to the invention of smartphones. But there are so many pictures of the kids in here. Someone went through the trouble of making sure every picture they took was in physical form. My bet is on Jeremy. I pick up a picture of Chastin. A close-up. I stare at her scar for a moment. I couldn’t stop thinking about it yesterday, so I Googled to find out if attempted abortions could actually cause damage in utero. That’s something I’ll never Google again. Sadly, a lot of babies survive the attempts and are born disfigured in much worse ways than just a small scar. Chastin was really lucky. She and Harper both were. Well.until they weren’t. Jeremy’s footsteps approach the stairs. I don’t try to hide the pictures, because I’m not sure he would mind that I’m down here looking at them. When he walks into the kitchen, I smile at him and continue sorting through them. He hesitates on his way to the refrigerator, his eyes falling to the box on the table. “I feel like getting to know her helps put me in her headspace,” I explain. “Helps with the writing.” I look away from him, down at a picture of Harper, the one who rarely smiles in pictures. Jeremy takes a seat next to me and picks up one of the pictures of Chastin. “Why did Harper never smile?” Jeremy leans over, taking the picture of Harper from my hand. “She was diagnosed with Asperger’s when she was three. She wasn’t very expressive.” He runs a finger over her picture and then puts it aside, pulling another from the box. This one is of Verity and the girls. He hands it to me. The three of them are dressed alike, in matching pajamas. If Verity didn’t love the girls in this photo, she was certainly good at faking it. “Our last Christmas before Crew was born,” he says, explaining the photo. He pulls a handful out and begins flipping through them. He pauses every now and then on pictures of the girls, but flips past pictures of Verity. “Here,” he says, pulling one out of the stack. “This is my favorite picture of them. A rare smile from Harper. She was obsessed with animals, so we had a zoo come in and set up in the backyard for their fifth birthday.” I smile down at the picture. But mostly because Jeremy is in the photo with a rare look of joy spread across his face. “What were they like?” “Chastin was a protector. A little spitfire. Even when they were young, she could sense Harper was different from her. She mothered her. She’d try to tell me and Verity how to parent. And God, when Crew came along, we thought we were going to have to hand him over to her. She was obsessed.” He puts a picture of Chastin in the pile of pictures he’s already looked at. “She would have made a great mother someday.” He picks up a picture of Harper. “Harper was special to me. Sometimes I’m not sure Verity understood her like I did, but it’s almost as if I could sense her needs, you know? She had trouble expressing her emotions, but I knew what made her tick, what made her happy, what made her sad, even when she didn’t quite know how to reveal that to the world. She was mostly happy. She didn’t have an immediate interest in Crew, though. Not until he turned three or four and could actually play with her. Before that, he might as well have been another piece of furniture.” He picks up a picture of the three of them. “He hasn’t asked about them. Not even once. Hasn’t even mentioned their names.” “Does that worry you?” He looks at me. “I don’t know if I should be relieved or worried.” “Probably both,” I admit. He picks up a picture of Verity and Crew, right after Crew’s birth. “He went to therapy for a few months. But I was scared it was just a weekly reminder of the tragedies, so I pulled him out. If he shows signs that he needs it when he’s older, I’ll take him back. Make sure he’s okay.” “And you?” He looks at me again. “What about me?” “How are you?” He doesn’t break eye contact. Doesn’t skip a beat. “My world was turned upside down when Chastin died. And then when Harper died, it ended completely.” He looks back down at the box of pictures. “When I got the call about Verity…the only thing left in me to feel was anger.” “Toward who? God?” “No,” Jeremy says, his voice quiet. “I was angry at Verity.” He looks back at me, and he doesn’t even have to say why he was angry at her. He thinks she hit the tree on purpose. It’s quiet in the room…in the house. He’s not even breathing. Eventually, he scoots back in his chair and stands. I stand up with him because I feel like that’s the first time he’s ever admitted this to anyone. Maybe even to himself. I can tell he doesn’t want me to see what he’s thinking, because he turns away from me and clasps his hands behind his head. I place my hand on his shoulder, and then I move so that I’m standing in front of him, whether he wants me to or not. I slip my arms around his waist and press my face against his chest and I hug him. His arms clasp around my back with a heavy sigh. He squeezes me, tight, and I can tell it’s a hug he’s needed for no telling how long. We stand like this longer than a hug should last, until it’s obvious to us both that we shouldn’t still be clinging to each other. The strength in his hug eases, and at some point, we’re no longer hugging. We’re holding each other. Feeling the weight of how long it’s been since either of us has probably felt this. It’s quiet in the house, so I hear it when he tries to hold his breath. I feel all of his hesitation as his hand moves slowly up to the back of my head. My eyes are closed, but I open them because I want to look at him. There’s a pull in me, tilting my head back into his hand as I lift my face from his chest. He’s looking down at me now, and I have no idea if he’s about to kiss me or pull away, but either way, it’s too late. I feel everything he’s been trying not to say in the way he holds me. In the way he’s stopped inhaling. I can feel him bringing me closer to his mouth. But then his eyes flicker up and his hand falls. “Hey, buddy,” Jeremy says, looking over my shoulder. Jeremy steps back. Releases me. I grip the back of the chair, feeling as if I weigh twice as much now that he’s let go of me. I glance at the doorway, and Crew is staring at us. No expression. He looks a lot like Harper right now. His eyes fall to the box of pictures on the table and he rushes toward them. Lunges, almost. I step back in a hurry, shocked by his movements. He’s picking up the pictures, angrily slamming them back into the box. “Crew,” Jeremy says, his voice gentle. He tries to grab his son’s wrist, but Crew pulls away from him. “Hey,” Jeremy says, leaning down closer to him. I can hear the confusion in Jeremy’s voice, as if this is a side of Crew he’s never seen before. Crew starts crying as he’s slamming all the pictures back inside the box. “Crew,” Jeremy says, unable to hide his concern now. “We’re just looking at pictures.” He tries to pull Crew to him, but Crew rips himself out of Jeremy’s arms. Jeremy grabs Crew again, pulling him to his chest. “Put them back!” Crew yells toward me. “I don’t want to see them!” I grab the rest of the pictures and shove them into the box. I put the lid on it and pick it up, clutching it to my chest as Crew tries to wrangle himself from Jeremy’s grip. Jeremy picks him up and rushes out of the kitchen with him. They go upstairs, and I’m left standing in the kitchen, shaken, concerned. What was that? It’s quiet upstairs for several minutes. I don’t hear Crew putting up a fight or yelling, so I think that’s a good sign. But my knees feel weak and my head feels heavy. I need to lie down. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken two Xanax tonight. Or maybe I shouldn’t have brought family pictures out and put them on display in front of a family who still hasn’t recovered from their loss. Or maybe I shouldn’t have almost kissed a married man. I rub at my forehead, suddenly feeling the urge to bolt—flee—and never come back to this house of sadness. What am I still doing here? Even at the height of day, when the sun is keeping watch over this part of the world, it still feels eerie inside this house. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Jeremy is working on the dock again, and Crew is playing near him in the sand. An unsettling energy buzzes throughout the house. It’s always here, and I can’t seem to shake it. It seems to be getting worse at night, nocturnal and intense. I’m sure it’s mostly in my head, but that doesn’t put me at ease, because the things lurking around inside the mind can be just as dangerous as tangible threats. I woke up last night to use the restroom. I thought I heard a noise in the hallway—footsteps lighter than Jeremy’s and heavier than Crew’s. Then, shortly after, it sounded as though the stairs were creaking, one at a time, as if someone were creeping up them with a deliberately light foot. It took me a while to go to sleep after that because in a house this size, noises are inevitable. And with the imagination of a writer, every noise becomes a threat. My head jerks toward the office door. I’m jumpy, even now, and all I hear is April in the kitchen talking to someone. She uses the same calming tone when she speaks to Verity, like she’s trying to coax her back to life. I’ve never heard Jeremy speak to his wife. But he did admit to being angry at her. Does he still love her? Does he sit in her room and tell her how much he misses the sound of her voice? That seems like something he would do. Or would have done. But now? He cares for her, helps feed her sometimes, but I’ve never actually seen him speak directly to her. It makes me wonder if he doesn’t believe she’s in there at all anymore. As if the person he cares for is no longer his wife. Maybe he’s able to separate his anger and disappointment toward Verity from the woman he cares for, because he no longer feels they’re the same person. I go to the kitchen because I’m hungry, but also because I’m curious to watch April as she interacts with Verity. I’m curious to see if Verity has any sort of physical response to her interaction. April is seated at the table with Verity’s lunch. I open the refrigerator and watch as she feeds her. Verity’s jaw moves back and forth, almost robotically, after April feeds her a spoonful of mashed potatoes. It’s always soft foods. Mashed potatoes, apple sauce, blended vegetables. Hospital foods, bland and easy to ingest. I grab a cup of Crew’s pudding and then sit at the table with April and Verity. April acknowledges me with a fleeting glance and a nod, but nothing else. After eating a few bites of the pudding, I decide to try making small talk with this woman who refuses to interact with me. “How long have you been a nurse?” April pulls the spoon out of Verity’s mouth and dips it back into the potatoes. “Long enough to be in the single-digit countdown to retirement.” “Nice.” “You’re my favorite patient, though,” April says to Verity. “By far.” She’s directing her answers at Verity, even though I’m the one asking the questions. “How long have you worked with Verity?” Again, April answers toward Verity. “How long have we been doing this now?” she asks, as if Verity is going to answer her. “Four weeks?” She looks at me. “Yeah, I was officially hired about four weeks ago.” “Did you know the family? Before Verity’s accident?” “No.” April wipes Verity’s mouth and then places the tray of food on the table. “Can I speak with you for a moment?” She nudges her head toward the hallway. I pause, wondering why we need to leave the kitchen in order for her to have a conversation with me. I stand up, though, and follow her out. I lean against the wall and spoon another bite of pudding into my mouth as April shoves her hands into the pockets of her scrub top. “I don’t expect you to know this, especially if you’ve never been around someone in Verity’s condition. But it’s not respectful to discuss people like her as though they aren’t right in front of you.” I’m gripping my spoon, about to pull it out of my mouth. I pause for a moment, then shove the spoon back into the pudding cup. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware that’s what I was doing.” “It’s easy to do, especially if you believe the person can’t acknowledge you. Verity’s brain doesn’t process like it used to, obviously, but we don’t know how much she does process. Just watch how you word things in her presence.” I stand up straight, pulling away from my casual position against the wall. I had no idea I was being insulting. “Of course,” I say, nodding. April smiles, and it’s actually genuine for once. Luckily, our awkward moment ends thanks to Crew. He runs through the back door, cupping something in his hands. He rushes between me and April, into the kitchen. April follows him. “Mom,” Crew says, excitedly. “Mom, Mom, I found a turtle.” He stands in front of her, holding the turtle up for her to see. He runs his fingers over its shell. “Mom, look at him.” He’s holding it up higher now, trying to get Verity to make eye contact with the turtle. Of course she doesn’t. He’s only five, so he probably can’t even process all the reasons she can no longer speak to him or look at him or react to his excitement. I immediately hurt for him, knowing he’s probably still waiting for her to fully recover. “Crew,” I say, walking over to him. “Let me see your turtle.” He turns and holds it up for me. “He’s not a snapping turtle. Daddy said those kind have marks on their necks.” “Wow,” I say. “That’s really awesome. Let’s go outside and find something to put him in.” Crew jumps with excitement, then brushes past me. I follow him out of the house and help him search around the property until he finds an old red bucket to put him in. Then Crew plops down on the grass and brings the bucket onto his lap. I sit down next to him, partly because I’m starting to feel really bad for this kid, but also because we have a clear view of Jeremy from this spot in the yard as he works on the dock. “Daddy said I can’t have another turtle because I killed my last turtle.” I swing my head toward Crew. “You killed him? How did you kill him?” “Lost him in the house,” he says. “Mommy found him under her couch and he was dead.” Oh. Okay. My mind was going somewhere much more sinister with that. For a second, I thought he’d murdered the turtle intentionally. “We could let him go right here in the grass,” I tell him. “That way you can watch and see which direction he crawls. He might lead you to his secret turtle family.” Crew picks him up out of the bucket. “Do you think he has a wife?” “He might.” “He could have babies, too.” “He could.” Crew puts him down in the grass, but naturally, the turtle is too scared to move. We watch him for a while, waiting for him to come out of his shell. I can see Jeremy approaching out of the corner of my eye. When he’s closer, I look up at him, shielding the sun from my eyes with my hand. “What’d you two find?” “A turtle,” Crew says. “Don’t worry, I’m not keeping him.” Jeremy shoots me an appreciative smile. Then he sits down next to Crew in the grass. Crew scoots closer to him, but when he grabs Jeremy’s arm, Crew pulls away. “Gross. You’re sweaty.” He is sweaty, but I don’t really think it’s gross. Crew pushes off the grass. “I’m hungry. You promised we could go out to eat tonight. We haven’t been to a restaurant in years.” Jeremy laughs. “Years? It’s only been one week since I took you to McDonald’s.” Crew says, “Yeah, but we used to go out to eat all the time before my sisters died.” I watch Jeremy’s shoulders tense with that comment. He said himself that Crew hasn’t mentioned the girls since they died, so this moment feels significant. Jeremy breathes deeply and then pats Crew on the back. “You’re right. Go wash your hands and get ready. We’ll need to be back before April leaves tonight.” Crew rushes toward the house, forgetting all about the turtle. Jeremy watches him for a while, his eyes full of thoughts. Then he stands up and reaches out a hand to help me up. “Wanna come?” he asks. He’s asking me to a friendly dinner with his child, but my wistful heart responds like I was just asked out on a date. I smile as I brush off the backs of my jeans. “I’d love that.” ••• I haven’t had a reason to make an effort with my physical appearance since I arrived at Jeremy’s house. Even though I still didn’t make much of an effort before we left, Jeremy must have noticed the mascara, the lip gloss, and the fact that my hair is down for the first time. When we arrived at the restaurant and he was holding the door for me, he said quietly, “You look really nice.” His compliment settled in my stomach, and I can still feel it, even though we’re finished eating. Crew is sitting on the same side of the booth as Jeremy. He’s been telling jokes since he finished eating his dessert. “I have another one,” Crew says. “What is E.T. short for?” Jeremy doesn’t attempt to answer Crew’s jokes because he says he’s heard them a million times. I smile at Crew and pretend I don’t know the answer. “Because he has little legs,” Crew says, falling back into his seat with laughter. His reaction to his own jokes make me laugh more than the jokes themselves. And then, “Why don’t they play poker in the jungle?” “I don’t know, why?” I say. “Too many cheetahs!” I don’t know that I’ve stopped laughing since he started telling us jokes. “Your turn,” Crew says. “Mine?” I ask. “Yeah, it’s your turn to tell a joke.” Oh, God. I’m feeling pressure from a five-year-old. “Okay, let me think.” A few seconds later, I snap my fingers. “Okay, I’ve got one. What is green, fuzzy, and if it fell out of a tree, it could kill you?” Crew leans forward with his chin in his hands. “Ummmm. I don’t know.” “A fuzzy green piano.” Crew doesn’t laugh at my joke. Neither does Jeremy. At first. Then, a few seconds later, Jeremy releases a burst of laughter that makes me smile. “I don’t get it,” Crew says. Jeremy is still laughing, shaking his head. Crew looks up at Jeremy. “How is that funny?” Jeremy puts his arm around Crew. “It’s not,” he says. “It’s funny because it’s not funny.” Crew looks at me. “That’s not how jokes are supposed to work.” “Okay, I have another one,” I say. “What’s red and shaped like a bucket?” Crew shrugs. “A blue bucket painted red.” Jeremy squeezes his jaw, trying to hold back his laughter. Seeing him laugh is probably the best thing that’s happened since I showed up here. Crew scrunches up his nose. “You aren’t very good at telling jokes.” “Come on. Those were so funny.” Crew shakes his head, disappointed. “I hope you don’t try to make jokes in your books.” Jeremy leans back in his seat and grips his side, trying to hold back his laughter as the waitress approaches with the check. Jeremy takes it from her. “My treat,” he manages to say. When we return to the house, Crew makes it inside before we do. “Run upstairs and let April know we’re back,” Jeremy calls after him. Jeremy closes the door that leads into the garage, and we both pause before moving farther into the house. We’re tucked away into an unlit corner near the stairs, but a stream of light from the kitchen streaks across his face. “Thank you for dinner. That was fun.” Jeremy pulls off his jacket. “It was.” He’s smiling as he hangs his jacket on a coat rack next to the door. He looks different tonight, like he’s less weighed down by his life than he usually is. “I should get Crew out more often.” I nod in agreement, slipping my hands into my back pockets. The next few seconds fill with thick silence. It almost feels like that moment at the end of real dates when you can’t decide between a kiss or a hug. Of course, neither would be appropriate in this case because it wasn’t a date. Why did it feel like one? Our eye contact is broken when Crew begins to descend the stairs. Jeremy’s gaze diverts to his feet for a moment, but before he walks away, I see him release a quick breath, as if Crew interrupted something Jeremy was about to regret. Something I’m not sure I would have regretted. I sigh heavily and then go straight to Verity’s office and close the door. I need to distract myself. I feel an emptiness—an ache in my stomach that I don’t think is going to go away. Like I need more moments with him. Moments I can’t get. Moments I shouldn’t get. I flip through the pages of Verity’s manuscript, hoping to find an intimate scene with Jeremy. I’m not sure what kind of person that makes me in this moment, because reading this is wrong on so many levels, but it isn’t as wrong as crossing that line with him physically would be. I can’t have him in real life, but I can learn what he’s like in bed to aid in all my fantasies I’m probably going to have about him. So Be It I was about to have a breakdown. I could feel it. Or at least a meltdown. A temper tantrum. A hissy fit. Any of them would have been inappropriate, though. I just couldn’t take it anymore. If one of them wasn’t crying, the other one was. If one of them wasn’t hungry, the other one was. They rarely slept at the same time. Jeremy was a big help and did half the work with them, but if we’d only had one child, I’d at least have gotten a break. But there were two, so it was as if we each were full-time single parents of an infant. Jeremy was still selling real estate at the time the girls were born. He took two weeks off to help me with the girls, but his two weeks were up, and he needed to go back to work. We couldn’t afford a nanny because the advance I had recently received for the sell of my first manuscript was small. I was terrified of being left alone with the babies while he was away from the house for nine hours every day. However, once Jeremy returned to work, it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. He would leave at seven in the morning. I would wake up with him so he could see me caring for the girls. After he was gone, I would put them back in their cribs, unplug their monitors and go back to bed. From the day he started back to work, I began getting more sleep than I think I’d ever gotten. We were in a corner apartment, and their room didn’t butt up to any other apartment, so no one could hear them cry. I couldn’t even hear them when I put my earplugs in. After three days of Jeremy being back at work, I felt like my life was returning to normal. I was getting so much sleep during the day, but before Jeremy would come home, I’d feed them, bathe them, and start on dinner. Every night when he would walk in the door, the babies would be calm from finally being tended to, the smell of dinner would be coming from the kitchen, and he’d be blown away by how well I was tackling life. Nighttime feedings didn’t even bother me at that point, because my sleep schedule had shifted. I was doing most of my sleeping while Jeremy was at work. And the girls would sleep fairly well at night due to the exhaustion from crying all day. But the crying was probably good for them. I was able to write most nights while everyone slept, so I was even ahead career-wise. The only place I was lacking was in the bedroom. I hadn’t been cleared to have sex from my doctor yet, as it had only been four weeks since their births. But I knew if I didn’t keep that part of my marriage alive, it could quickly spread into other areas of our marriage. A terrible sex life is like a virus. Your marriage can be healthy in all other aspects, but once the sex dies out, it starts to infect all the other parts of your relationship. I was determined not to let that happen to us. I had tried the night before to have sex with him, but Jeremy was worried he would hurt me. Even though it had been a cesarean, he still worried about the incision. He had read online that he couldn’t even so much as finger me until we got the okay from my doctor, and that appointment was still two weeks away. He refused to have sex with me until a medical professional approved it. I didn’t want to wait that long, though. I couldn’t. I missed him. I missed that connection with him. Jeremy woke up that night at two in the morning because my tongue was sliding up his dick. I’m almost positive his dick was rock hard before he was even fully awake. The only reason I knew he was awake is because his hand moved to my head and his fingers snaked through my hair. That’s the only movement he made. He didn’t even lift his head off his pillow to look at me, and for some reason, I liked that. I’m not even sure he opened his eyes. He remained still and silent while I drove him mad with my tongue. I licked him, teased him, touched him for fifteen minutes without ever putting him inside my mouth. I knew how much he wanted me to, because he was growing restless and needed that relief, but I didn’t want him to get relief from my mouth. I wanted him to get it by fucking me for the first time in weeks. His hand was impatient, squeezing the back of my head, pressing me down on his dick as he silently begged me to take him in my mouth. I refused and continued to fight against the pressure of his hand as I kissed and licked him, when all he wanted to do was shove it into my mouth. When I was certain I had driven him so crazy that his desire outweighed his concern for me, I moved away from him. He followed. I fell onto my back, spread my legs, and he was inside me without a second thought about whether or not it was too soon for him to be there. He wasn’t even gentle. It was as if my tongue had driven him to a point of madness, because he was pounding into me so hard, it actually did hurt. It lasted almost an hour and a half because as soon as he finished, I sucked him off until he was hard again. Both times we fucked, we never said a word. And even after it was all over and I was crushed beneath the weight of his exhausted body, we still didn’t speak. He rolled off me and wrapped himself around me. Our sheets were covered in sweat and semen, but we were too consumed with sleep to care. I knew then that it was okay. We would be okay. Jeremy still worshipped my body as much as he always had. The girls might have taken a lot from us by then, but his desire was the one thing I knew would always be mine. This chapter has been the most difficult to continue reading by far. How a mother could sleep soundly down the hall from her crying infants baffles me. She’s callous. I’ve been under the impression that Verity might have been a sociopath, but now I’m leaning more toward psychopath. I put the manuscript away and use Verity’s computer to refresh my memory of the exact definition for psychopath. I scroll through every personality trait. Pathological liar, cunning and manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt, callousness and lack of empathy, shallow emotional response. She displays every characteristic. The only thing about her that makes me question if she was a psychopath is her obsession with Jeremy. Psychopaths find it more difficult to fall in love, and if they do, it’s difficult for them to retain that love. They tend to move on quickly from one person to the next. But Verity didn’t want to move on from Jeremy. He was Verity’s entire focus. The man is married to a psychopath, and he has no idea because she did everything she could to hide it from him. There’s a soft knock on the office door, so I minimize the screen on the computer. When I open the door, Jeremy is standing in the hallway. His hair is damp and he’s wearing a white T-shirt with a pair of black pajama bottoms. This is my favorite look on him. Barefoot, casual, easygoing. It’s sexy as hell, and I hate how attracted to him I am. Would I even be attracted to him if it weren’t for the intimate details I’ve read about him in that manuscript? “Sorry to bother you. I need a favor.” “What’s up?” He motions for me to follow him. “There’s an old aquarium somewhere in the basement. I just need you to hold the door open for me so I can bring it upstairs and clean it out for Crew.” I smile. “You’re gonna let him have a turtle?” “Yeah, he seemed excited today. He’s a little older now, so hopefully he’ll remember to feed this one.” Jeremy reaches the basement door and opens it. “The door was installed backward. It’s impossible to come up the stairs with your hands full or you can’t open the door to get out.” Jeremy flips on a light and begins to descend the stairs. The basement doesn’t feel like an extension of the house. It feels abandoned and uncared for, like a neglected child. Creaky steps and dust on the handrail attached to the wall. Normally, I would have zero desire to walk into a basement this unwelcoming. Especially in a house that already terrifies me. But their basement is the only place in this house I’ve yet to see, and I’m curious what’s down there. What kind of things could Verity have packed away? The stairwell leading into the basement is dark because the light switch at the top of the stairs only powered a light that was inside the actual basement. When I reach the bottom step, I’m relieved to see the room isn’t at all as eerie as I had expected. To the left is an office desk that looks to have gone unused for quite some time. There are stacks of files and papers all over the desk, but it looks more like a corner used for storage than a place where a person could actually sit and get work done. To the right are boxes of things accumulated over the years they’ve been together. Some with lids, some without. There’s a baby video monitor sticking out of one of the boxes and I cringe, thinking about the chapter I just read and how Verity admitted to unplugging it during the day so she couldn’t hear them crying. Jeremy is sorting through a collection of things behind and in between the boxes. “Did you used to work down here?” I ask him. “Yeah. I owned a realty firm and brought a lot of work home most days, so this was my office.” He lifts a sheet and tosses it aside, revealing an aquarium that’s covered in a layer of dust. “Bingo.” He begins to rummage through the contents inside the aquarium to ensure he has all the pieces. I’m still thinking about the career he casually mentioned giving up. “You owned your own firm?” He lifts the aquarium and walks it to the desk on the other side of the room. I make room by pushing papers and files out of the way so he can set it down. “Yep. Started it the same year Verity started writing books.” “Did you love it?” He nods. “I did. It was a lot of work, but I was good at it.” He plugs the lid to the aquarium into an outlet, checking to see if the attached light still works. “When Verity’s first book released, we both thought it was more of a hobby than an actual career. When she sold it, we still didn’t take it very seriously. But then word started to get out, and more copies of her books were selling. After a couple of years, her checks started to make mine look cute.” He laughs, as if it’s a fond memory and not one that bothers him at all. “By the time she got pregnant with Crew, we both knew I was only working for the sake of working. Not because my income had a real impact on our lifestyle. It was the only choice, really. For me to quit, since the job required so much of my time.” He unplugs the light to the aquarium, and when he does, there’s a popping sound behind us, followed by the escape of the only light we had in the basement. It’s pitch black now. I know he’s right in front of me, but I can no longer see him. My pulse quickens, and then I feel his hand on my arm. “Here,” he says, bringing my hand to his shoulder. “Must have flipped a breaker. Walk behind me, and when we make it to the top of the stairs, just slip around me and open the door.” I feel his shoulder muscles contract as he lifts the aquarium. I keep my hand on his shoulder, following closely behind him as he makes his way toward the stairs. He takes each step slowly, probably for my benefit. When he stops, he moves so that his back is against the wall. I slip around him and feel around for the doorknob. I pull the door open and a flood of light pours in. Jeremy walks out first, and as soon as he’s out of my way, I pull the door shut quickly, causing it to slam. He laughs when I release a shaky breath. “Not a fan of basements, huh?” I shake my head. “Not a fan of dark basements.” Jeremy walks the aquarium to the kitchen table and looks at it. “That’s a lot of dust.” He picks it up again. “Do you mind if I wash it in the master shower? It’d be easier than trying to do it in the sink.” I shake my head. “Not at all.” Jeremy carries the aquarium to the master shower. Part of me wants to follow him and help, but I don’t. I go back to the office and do my best to focus on the series I’m supposed to be working on. Thoughts of Verity continue to distract me like they do every time I finish a chapter in her autobiography. Yet, I can’t stop reading it. It’s like a train wreck and Jeremy doesn’t even realize he was mangled in the wreckage. I choose to work on the series rather than read more of the manuscript, but I’ve gotten very little done by the time Jeremy finishes up in the master bath. I decide to call it a night and head back to the bedroom. After I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth, I stare at the handful of shirts I brought with me that are hanging in the closet. I have no desire to wear any of them, so I begin to rummage through Jeremy’s shirts. The shirt he lent me smelled like him the entire day I wore it. I thumb through them until I find a T-Shirt of his that’s soft enough to sleep in. In small print over the left breast, it reads, “Crawford Realty.” I pull the shirt on over my head and then walk over to the bed. Before climbing into it, I focus on the bite marks on the headboard. I walk closer to them, running my thumb over them. I look down the length of the headboard and notice there is more than one imprint of teeth. There are five or six areas where Verity bit the headboard, some not as noticeable as the others until you’re up close. I crawl onto the bed and lift up onto my knees as I face the headboard. I straddle a pillow and imagine being in this position—sprawled over Jeremy’s face as I grip the headboard. I close my eyes and slide a hand up into Jeremy’s T-shirt, imagining it’s his hand that drags up my stomach and caresses my breast. My lips part and I suck in air, but a noise above me breaks me out of the moment. I look up at the ceiling and listen to the sound of Verity’s hospital bed as it begins to hum and move. I pull the pillow out from under me and lie on my back as I stare up at the ceiling, wondering what—if anything—goes through Verity’s mind. Is it complete darkness in there? Does she hear what people say to her? Does she sense the sunshine when it’s on her skin? Does she know whose touch is whose? I put my arms at my sides and lie still, imagining what it would be like not to be able to control my movements. I remain in the same position on the bed, even though I’m growing more and more restless with each passing minute. I need to scratch my nose, and it makes me wonder if that bothers Verity, not being able to lift a hand to scratch an itch. Or if her condition even allows her to feel an itch. I close my eyes and all I can think about is that Verity possibly deserves the darkness, the stillness, the quiet. Yet for a psychopath, she certainly has so many still wrapped around her immobile finger. The smell is different when I open my eyes. So are the noises. I’m not confused about where I am. I know I’m in Jeremy’s house. I just…I’m not in my room. I’m staring at a wall. The wall in the master bedroom is light grey. This wall is yellow. Yellow, like the walls in the upstairs bedrooms. The bed beneath me begins to move, but it isn’t because someone in the bed is moving. It’s different…like it’s…mechanical. I squeeze my eyes shut. Please, God. No. No, no, no, please don’t tell me I am in Verity’s bed. I’m trembling all over now. I open my eyes, slowly, and turn my head at the slowest pace possible. When I see the door and then the dresser and then the TV mounted to the wall, I roll out of the bed, falling to the floor. I scramble to the wall and slide up it with my back against it. I squeeze my eyes shut. I can hardly hold myself up I am so hysterical. My body is shaking so badly, I can hear it when I breathe. Whimpers at first, but as soon as I open my eyes and see Verity on her bed, I scream. Then I slap my hand over my mouth. It’s dark outside. Everyone is asleep. I have to be quiet. It’s been so long since this has happened. Years, probably. But it’s happening and I am terrified and I have no idea why I ended up here. Was it because I was thinking about her? “Sleepwalking is patternless, Lowen. It has no meaning. It is unrelated to intention.” I hear my therapist’s words, but I don’t want to process them. I need to get out of here. Move, Lowen. I slide across the wall, keeping as far from that bed as I can while I make my way to Verity’s bedroom door. I’m flat against the door, tears streaming down my cheeks as I turn the handle and open it, then flee the bedroom. Jeremy flings his arms around me, pulling me to a stop. “Hey,” he says, turning me to face him. He sees the tears on my face, the terror in my eyes. He loosens his grip, and as soon as he does, I run. I run down the hall, down the stairs, and I don’t stop until I slam the bedroom door and I’m back on my bed. What the fuck? What the fuck? I curl up on top of the covers, facing the door. My wrist begins to throb, so I grip it with my other hand and tuck it against my chest. The bedroom door opens and then closes behind Jeremy. He’s shirtless, in a pair of red flannel pajama bottoms. It’s all I see, a blur of red plaid as he rushes toward me. Then he’s on his knees, his hand on my arm, his eyes searching mine. “Lowen, what happened?” “I’m sorry,” I whisper, wiping at my eyes. “I’m sorry.” “For what?” I shake my head and sit up on the bed. I have to explain it to him. He just caught me in his wife’s bedroom in the middle of the night, and his head is probably swarming with questions. Questions I don’t really have answers to. Jeremy takes a seat next to me on the bed, lifting a leg so he can face me. He puts both his hands on my shoulders and lowers his head, looking at me very seriously. “What happened, Low?” “I don’t know,” I say, rocking back and forth. “Sometimes I walk in my sleep. I haven’t in a long time, but I took two Xanax earlier and I think maybe… I don’t know…” I sound just as hysterical as I feel. Jeremy must sense that, because he pulls me to him, putting pressure around me with his arms, trying to calm me. He doesn’t ask me anything else for a couple of minutes. He runs a comforting hand over the back of my head and as good as it feels to have his support, I feel guilty. Undeserving. When he pulls back, I can see his questions practically spilling from his mouth. “What were you doing in Verity’s room?” I shake my head. “I don’t know. I woke up in there. I was scared and I screamed and…” He grabs my hands. Squeezes them. “You’re okay.” I want to agree with him, but I can’t. How am I supposed to sleep in this house after that? I can’t count how many times I’ve woken up in random places. It used to happen so often, I went through a period where I had three locks on the inside of the bedroom door. I’m not unfamiliar with waking up in strange rooms, but why, out of all the rooms in this house, did it have to be Verity’s? “Is this why you wanted a lock on your door?” he asks. “To stop yourself from getting out?” I nod, but for whatever reason, my response makes him laugh. “Jesus,” he says. “I thought it was because you were afraid of me.” I’m glad he finds levity in the moment, because I can’t seem to. “Hey. Hey,” he says gently, tilting my chin up so that I’ll look at him. “You’re okay. It’s okay. Sleepwalking is harmless.” I shake my head in profound disagreement. “No. No, Jeremy. It’s not.” I hold my hand up to my chest, still clutching my wrist. “I’ve woken up outside before, I’ve turned on stoves and ovens in my sleep. I even…” I blow out a breath. “I broke my hand in my sleep and didn’t even feel it until I woke up the next morning.” A rush of adrenaline surges through my body as I think about how I can now add what just happened to the list of disturbing things I’ve done in my sleep. Although unconscious, I still walked up those stairs and crawled into that bed. If I’m capable of doing something that disturbing, what else am I capable of? Did I unlock the door in my sleep or did I forget to lock it? I can’t even remember. I push off the mattress and head for the closet. I grab my suitcase and the few shirts I brought with me that are hanging up. “I should go.” Jeremy says nothing, so I continue to pack my things. I’m in the bathroom gathering my toiletries when he appears in the doorway. “You’re leaving?” I nod. “I woke up in her room, Jeremy. Even after you put a lock on my door. What if it happens again? What if I scare Crew?” I open the shower door to grab my razor. “I should have told you all this before I ever stayed the night here.” Jeremy takes the razor out of my hand. He places my bag of toiletries back on the counter. Then he pulls me to him, wrapping a hand around my head as he tucks me into his chest. “You sleepwalk, Low.” He presses a comforting kiss into the top of my hair. “You sleepwalk. It’s not that big of a deal.” Not that big of a deal? I laugh halfheartedly against his chest. “I wish my mother would have felt that way.” When Jeremy pulls back, there’s worry in his eyes. But is he worried for me or because of me? He walks me back into the bedroom, where he motions for me to sit down on my bed while he begins to hang up the shirts I shoved into my suitcase. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. “Which part, exactly?” “Why your mother thought it was a big deal.” I don’t want to talk about it. He must see my expression change because he pauses as he’s reaching for another shirt. He drops it back into the suitcase and sits on the bed. “I don’t mean to sound harsh,” he says, pegging me with a firm stare. “But I have a son. Seeing you this worried about what you’re capable of is starting to make me worry. Why are you so scared of yourself?” A small part of me wants to defend myself, but there’s nothing to defend. I can’t tell him I’m harmless, because I’m not sure that I am. I can’t tell him I’ll never sleepwalk again, because it just happened twenty minutes ago. The only thing I could probably say to defend myself is to tell him I’m not nearly as horrific as his own wife, but I’m not even sure if I believe that. I’m not horrific yet, and I don’t trust myself enough to say that I never will be. I drop my eyes to the bed and swallow, preparing to tell him all about it. My wrist begins to throb again. When I look down at it, I trace the scar over my palm. “I didn’t feel what happened to my wrist when it happened,” I say. “I woke up one morning when I was ten. As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt this intense pain shoot up from my wrist to my shoulder. And then it was like a bright light exploded in my head. I screamed because it hurt so bad. My mother ran into my bedroom, and I remember lying on the bed in the most pain I’d ever been in, but in that second I realized my door had been unlocked. I knew I had locked it the night before.” I look up from my hand, back at Jeremy. “I couldn’t remember what had happened, but there was blood all over my blanket, my pillow, my mattress, myself. And dirt on my feet, as if I’d been outside during the night. I couldn’t even remember ever leaving my room. We had security cameras that monitored the front of the house and several of the rooms inside it. Before my mother checked them, she took me to the hospital because the cut on my hand needed stitches and my wrist needed an X-ray. When we got home later that afternoon, she pulled up the security footage of our front yard. We sat on the couch and watched it.” I reach to the nightstand and grab my water to ease the dryness in my throat. Before I continue, Jeremy places a hand on my knee, his thumb rubbing back and forth reassuringly. I stare at it as I finish telling him what happened. “At three o’clock that morning, the footage showed me walking outside, onto the front porch. I climbed up on the thin porch railing and stood there. That’s all I did at first. I just…stood there. For an hour, Jeremy. We watched the entire hour, waiting, hoping to see if the footage was broken because no one should be able to remain balanced for that long. It was unnatural, but I never moved. I never spoke any words. And then…I jumped. I must have hurt my wrist in the fall, but in the footage I showed no reaction. I pushed off the ground with both hands and then walked up the porch steps. You could see the blood already coming from my hand and dripping onto the porch, but my expression was dead. I walked straight back to my room and I fell asleep.” My eyes return to his. “I have no recollection of that. How can I inflict that much pain on myself and not be aware of it? How can I stand on a railing for an entire hour without swaying, not even a little bit? The video frightened me more than the injury did.” Again, he hugs me, and I am so grateful that I cling to him tightly. “My mother sent me away for a two-week psychiatric evaluation after that,” I say into his chest. “When I returned home, she had moved farther down the hall, into a spare bedroom where she placed three locks on the inside of her bedroom door. My own mother was terrified of me.” Jeremy buries his face in my hair and sighs heavily. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “And I’m sorry your mother didn’t know how to handle it. That had to have been hard for you.” Everything about him is exactly what I needed tonight. His voice is calm and caring, and his arms are protective, and his presence is comforting. I don’t want him to let go of me. I don’t want to think about waking up in Verity’s bed. I don’t want to think about how much I don’t trust my own mind in my sleep, and even when I’m awake. “We can talk more tomorrow,” he says, releasing me. “I’ll try to come up with a plan to make you feel more comfortable. But for now, just try to get some sleep, okay?” He squeezes my hands reassuringly and then goes to the door. I feel panicked by the thought of him leaving me alone in here. Of going back to sleep. “What do I do about the rest of tonight? Just lock my door?” Jeremy looks at the alarm clock. It’s ten minutes to five. He stares at the clock for a moment and then walks back to me. “Lie down,” he says, lifting the covers. I crawl into the bed and he scoots in behind me. He wraps his arm around me, tucking my head under his chin. “It’s almost five, I won’t go back to sleep. But I’ll stay until you do.” He’s not rubbing my back or soothing me in any way. If anything, the arm that’s holding me is stiff, like he doesn’t want me to misconstrue our position on this bed in any way. But even with how uncomfortable he is right now, I appreciate he’s making an effort to make me comfortable. I try to close my eyes and sleep, but all I see is Verity. All I hear is the sound of her bed upstairs, moving. It’s after six when he assumes I’m asleep. His arm moves and his fingers end up in my hair for a moment. It’s quick, as quick as the kiss he plants on the side of my head, but his actions linger long after he leaves the bedroom and closes the door.