Prologue #3
Knowing he thought so helped. A guy I’d not seen in person in five years could text me, and my day would brighten. I’d feel more confident. Our friendship was odd but made sense, all at the same time. We’d become pen pals with a modern twist.
Me: I hope so. How are things in Madison?
There was a long pause, and I thought he must have gotten busy at work. That happened sometimes, and he’d get back to me hours later. I started to slip the phone back into the pocket inside my robe when it lit up again.
Ransom: Crosby was shot last night. He’s dead. Than was there.
I paled as I reread his words. I hadn’t known Crosby Cash personally, but I knew how close the Carver boys were to the Cashes.
You rarely saw Than Carver without Crosby.
My chest hurt. Several things ran through my head as a response, but I didn’t type them out.
I settled on the one thing that I cared about the most.
Me: Are you okay?
Because I knew everyone in his family would be worried about Than. But he loved his brother. This would affect him.
Ransom: I don’t think any of us are.
Me: I’m here to listen (read) if you need to talk about it. Things. Or just vent.
I wanted to tell him he could call me if he wanted to, but we’d never taken that step.
All these years, and it was just the texting.
Even back when he’d gone to school with me, he would simply nod as we passed in the hallway.
He never stopped and spoke with me or showed me any kind of attention.
Some girl was always beside him, his arm draped over her thin, tanned shoulders most often.
It had bothered me—no, it had stung. The constant reminder that I didn’t fit in his world of the beautiful elite.
But once he’d graduated and the texting continued, I had let that go.
Because he’d left all the others behind.
Gotten bored with them. But me, he’d kept.
Ransom: Thank you.
Noa
Age Twenty-Four
My fingers hovered over the screen of my phone as I stared at the text I hadn’t written yet. Unsure if I was going to. This was a big deal, and most of my successes and lows I shared with Ransom. But this time, I was afraid to because what if I failed? I didn’t want him to know.
The phone began to ring, and Jellie’s name appeared on the screen. I’d texted her the news only moments ago, and she was already calling. Smiling, I hit Accept.
“Yessss.” I drew out the word.
She began to squeal the way that only Jellie could. It was a giddy, ecstatic sound that made my mouth spread even wider across my face. She might possibly be more excited than I was.
“OH-MY-GOD! OH-MY-GOD!” she cried out with glee. “How are you so quiet? I mean, this is what you wanted! Dreamed of! And you’re getting it at only twenty-four years old!”
I chuckled softly. “Not necessarily. The book could bomb. Then the publisher will have given me this advance, and it will never make their money back. What then? I’ll never get another publishing deal.”
That was my greatest fear. I’d put years into that manuscript. It had been rewritten and edited so many times that I had lost count. I loved every word … but what if no one else did? What if Arden was wrong? What if he was biased because of how he felt about me? My stomach turned with anxiety.
“Shut UP! You are brilliant! You have always been incredible with words. How many times did you save my ass, editing slash rewriting my papers for classes? A bajillion. You’re the rock star of words!”
Her enthusiasm helped ease my worry some, but it was still there. I knew it would be until it was released and had some moderate success.
“I just want to at least sell enough to make back the advance they gave me. I still think it’s too much, but Arden is adamant that it isn’t.”
“Only you, Noa. Not taking money that is being handed to you. When are you going to stop, look in the mirror, and see the woman you have become? It’s like you missed your transformation, and all you see is the girl you were when you walked onto campus freshman year.
Even with that Hottie McTottie senior-editor boyfriend who adores you!
That should be enough right there to see yourself clearly.
You are a gorgeous, badass genius with words, and the world is about to find out!
GOD! I wish I could be there when Ella and Bindie see your name on books in store windows! Bitches gonna be green!”
Ella and Bindie had been the mean girls in college. At least for me. They’d singled me out on day one and made it their mission to make me miserable. Having a roommate who became my best friend that was a powerhouse like Jellie had put a kink in their plans of destruction.
I sighed. “Well, that won’t be happening.”
“What?! Yes, it will!” she shot back.
I’d already made this decision. For many reasons. One being that if I failed, I didn’t want the world that knew Noa Raines, the loser nerd, had taken a chance and crashed.
“I’m using a pen name.”
There was a pause, then, “NOA! No! Please don’t! They all need to have it shoved in their faces! Like when I loudly mentioned, in Ella’s earshot, that Pike asked you out after he broke up with her, I want to continue to shove your success in her face. She was horrid to you freshman year. HORRID!”
I grinned and sat down on the sofa in the living room I shared with my three roommates. None of whom I had grown close to the way I had with Jellie.
“What Ella thinks of me or feels about me is of no importance to me. That’s the past. We grew up.”
“You might have, but Ella absolutely has not. She’s still as vile as she was in college. I follow her Instagram just to know what hex to put on the voodoo doll I had made of her.”
Rolling my eyes, I laughed. “You’re still using that doll?”
“I sure as shit am! I will do so until the day I die! Then I am taking it to the grave with me so I can haunt her ass. That is, if she doesn’t bite it before me. Which, if the universe is fair and just in the slightest, she will go years before I do.”
“We might need to get you a therapist for this,” I told her.
“Someone has to hate for you since you seem to forgive all those who have caused you pain. I took that position at nineteen years old, and I will be doing it at ninety.”
I’d once thought that I wasn’t missing out on anything by not having a friend. I had been very wrong. The day that Jellie had walked into my life was fate’s way of apologizing to me for the isolation that high school had been.
“I love you,” I told her, feeling my throat tighten up with a lump.
“You’d better, ho, because you’re stuck with me for life. Now, since I know already that I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this pen-name bullshit, what name are you going to use?”
I had thought about it for months. Even before the deal was finalized.
And the name I’d come up with meant something.
But only I would ever understand its meaning.
There had been many different names I could have used; however, this one held significance.
Jellie might have become my very best friend in the world, but there was someone before her who had changed me.
Given me a confidence I hadn’t even realized at the time.
He had made me feel seen. Smart. Witty. Worth the effort. Even if it was never romantic. Ransom Carver had shown an interest in my mind. And that was where it all changed for me. I’d wanted to be the girl he thought I was. The one behind the words I texted.
“Juliette Romeo,” I told her.
“Huh, I like it. You’re giving a nod to your favorite Shakespeare work.”
No … I was giving a nod to the boy who had called me Shakespeare and the man who still did.
Noa
Age Twenty-Six
Ransom: I’m starting to get a complex.
I looked down at my phone and read his text, then bit back a laugh.
There were still three more hours left on my flight to London.
I’d thought about texting him, but I hadn’t.
Lately, there had been an annoying guilt about texting with Ransom.
The moment I’d said, “Yes,” and Arden slid the diamond onto my finger, I’d begun to feel as if I was lying to him.
But this wasn’t cheating. It was … it was pen-pal stuff.
It had been almost ten years since we’d seen each other in person.
The texting we did was just friendly. Never had Ransom flirted with me.
He never said inappropriate things to me.
But if I was going to marry Arden, then shouldn’t my future husband know that I regularly texted another man? Even if it was completely platonic.
Me: And why is that?
Ransom’s texts were a major part of my life. Stopping them … it was literally painful to think about.
Ransom: You haven’t texted me in almost a week. What’s happening in life, Shakespeare? Something must be keeping you busy.
My current book tour. That was keeping me busy.
But my career as a romance novelist wasn’t something I’d shared with him.
He’d want to know the name of the book, see my pen name, read the first book I had published …
about a librarian and a very dark, elusive stranger who snuck into her apartment at night and watched her.
My hero became obsessed, and his physical description was Ransom Carver in every way, right down to the cleft in his chin.
No way in hell was Ransom Carver ever going to know he was the hero in the first three books I’d published.
All of which had shot to the top of the bestsellers list and then been published internationally.
I’d been translated into twenty-four different languages so far.
It was all surreal. Turned out that Arden had been right about that.
With my fourth release, I had spent two weeks on a US tour and was now being sent to the UK. London was my first stop. Arden was going to meet me in Berlin at the end of the week.
Me: Work. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours.
That wasn’t a lie.
Ransom: You can’t stay locked up, editing your life away, Shakespeare. You gotta get out and live a little. You still dating the editor?
I never gave him Arden’s name because, well, he hadn’t asked.
I also hadn’t told him we’d gotten engaged.
I wasn’t sure why, but I was struggling with a way to say it.
Not that Ransom would care. Our relationship wasn’t like that.
But he was anti-marriage. That I knew. And I didn’t want to hear his negativity on the subject.
Me: I am. But we’re both busy.
Ransom: Don’t be that girl. The one who waits around for a guy to call. Go do something without him.
Me: Eh, that requires peopling. I love the written word more than humans. You know that.
Ransom: You might be onto something there. Most people suck.
It might have been nine years, eleven months, and three days since I’d last heard his voice, but it was still so clear in my head. That was weird, wasn’t it?
Me: Which people are sucking in your world as of late?
Ransom: Than is being a dumb shit. I’m getting fucking anxiety because of him.
I stared down at the words. It wasn’t the first time he’d complained about his brother, but this seemed different. Or I was reading into it because I had been awake for twenty-one hours.
Me: Problems in the distillery?
That was normally his complaint with Than.
Ransom: No. It’s a female. A hot one. But off-limits. He’s got his head messed up over her. I don’t get it. There are a million hot females out there. Pick another.
Comments like this I was used to. Ransom acting as if one beautiful woman was interchangeable with another.
He never looked deeper than their appearance.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted more.
Just a hot fuck. His words, not mine. And unlike my books, I couldn’t write him into changing.
Wanting more, getting completely obsessed with one woman and not being able to see any other. This was real life. Not my imagination.
Me: Maybe he’s in love.
Like I’d expected, his response was immediate.
Ransom: That’s bullshit, and you know it, Shakespeare. I’ve explained men to you. We want sex. The more kink, the better. Then we want to move on to the next one. That’s the real thing going on in men’s heads. We are driven by our dick. Then our dick gets bored and wants a new cunt.
I rolled my eyes with a sigh. This was reality with Ransom. Perhaps that was why I’d loved writing him into the role of a man who believed this way, then found out that love was real, and when he met the right woman, he’d change.
Me: Then I am sure Than will move on and forget her soon enough.
If he was anything like his brother at least.
Ransom: I fucking hope so.