Chapter 25 Margot
25 MARGOT
Unsurprisingly, nearly ruining Thanksgiving does not get me out of wilderness excursions. It’s my second-to-last Saturday, and contrary to his assurances that he’s not mad at me, Forrest has strapped me to a pair of cross-country skis. They look cute but feel like a medical bill waiting to happen.
Weirdly, I was almost looking forward to this outing. Apart from Thanksgiving, it was a busy week of failing to make the edits Anjali suggested and tripping into Forrest’s bed at every opportunity. A little fresh air seemed appealing. But now, as I’m forced to duckwalk up another hill, I realize what I took for a newfound outdoorsiness was just the sex-fueled dopamine fog I’ve been living in for the past week.
“How much farther?” I call-slash-whine up to him. He’s ahead of me on the trail, and I almost regret interrupting him. With every back-and-forth swish of his skis, his muscular ass has been the dangling carrot keeping me going.
“Just another mile,” he says, smiling back at me like this is welcome news.
I consider going full dead bug in the snow and forcing him to drag me.
“You can do this,” he says in his steady voice before continuing to ski. It’s not the first time today that I’ve almost looked beside me, hoping for a sympathetic smile from Ollie or another group member, but after we exchanged contact information and tearful hugs goodbye yesterday, I’m the only guest left. It makes today’s trek with Forrest feel less like a wilderness excursion and more like an overly ambitious date. But ten million minutes later, the woods break into a clearing, and I’m looking at—
“A resort ?” I scream, startling some birds from a tree. “You took me to a resort ?”
“Surprise,” he says, smiling down at me.
I look down the hill to where people—actual human beings other than Forrest, Trapper, Jo, and me—are milling about in stylish winter gear, sipping from steaming coffee mugs or pulling on ski gear. I suddenly feel like Mowgli stumbling from the jungle into civilization for the first time. Gratitude and excitement fill me up like a hot-air balloon, ready to send me into the stratosphere. I could just kiss him, so I do, leaning over the side of my skis and almost falling down in the process.
When I pull away, breathless for more reasons than one, he says, “Come on. I hear the spa offers very overpriced mud baths.”
At this, I dig my ski poles into the snow and bomb down the slope like I’m Mikaela Shiffrin going for gold, leaving his laughing baritone behind me to catch up.
After being peeled, wrapped, and exfoliated within an inch of my life, I decide I still haven’t had quite enough pampering to make up for the last month, which is how I find myself in our room’s private outdoor hot tub. It’s currently a balmy five degrees outside, but apparently, enjoying the contrast of hot water and soul-freezing temperatures is an Alaskan tradition.
“So how was the return to your natural habitat?” Forrest asks from across the tub. His head is tilted back, steam curling from his wet, sunset-lit shoulders, confirming he’s the hottest man on the planet.
“ Such a relief.” I sigh, sinking a little lower as I put my feet in his lap. “I’ve been needing to molt for weeks now.”
I feel his soft chuckle more than I hear it.
“Are you too blissed out to read your letter?”
“You brought it?” I ask, yanking my foot from his grip and sitting up. The buoyancy of the water carries me halfway to him, and he pulls me onto his lap.
“On second thought, no,” he rumbles, lifting me to lick quickly cooling water from my cleavage. “Must’ve forgotten it.”
Unfortunately for him, I get a good view of the table beside his shoulder and see a corner of an envelope sticking out from underneath our bathrobes. I feel the usual sharp thrill of desperation to read it, but to my surprise, it doesn’t linger.
“You okay?” he asks, picking up on my hesitation.
I tear my eyes from the envelope. “I’m good. I think I’ll read it later,” I say, leaning in to kiss him.
He stops me short and arches a brow. “Who are you, and where have you buried Margot Bradley?”
It’s impossible to escape his scrutiny, but I try anyway, and after a moment, he makes a hum of understanding. Without a word, he twists around and grabs my letter. He holds it between us, examining it. “I don’t think it’ll bite you.”
“Then maybe you could,” I suggest in a halfhearted attempt to distract him. He pinches my ass beneath the water.
“It won’t be worse than the last one,” he says, getting right to the heart of my avoidance. “Unless you’ve been through another life-altering trauma I’m unaware of.”
“No, you’re right,” I say. “I mean, there was that time my career did cartwheels into an active volcano, but that was just a blip.”
He scoops warm water with his free hand and pours it over my shoulders, warming me. “Do you want me to read it first?”
The opportunity to tease him for being nosy barely registers under the weighted blanket of relief I feel. “Would you?”
With damp but careful fingers, he opens the letter. There’s a sheaf of folded paper inside, but when he pulls out a trio of friendship bracelets, I feel like a house of cards facing down a hurricane. He slips two of them on my wrist, stretching one onto his own, and tosses the envelope back on the table. Gently, I spin the letters on each bracelet to face upright: #1 MB FAN. HEA CLUB. I do the same for Forrest’s, and my heart bucks like a wild horse when I read the words stretched over his thick wrist: LOVE U MB.
Trying not to read too much into his probably random bracelet choice, I focus on the gifts themselves. They’re from my readers. A handful of the endless tokens of appreciation I used to receive. I look up at Forrest to see if he understands the magnitude of this small gift, but his eyes are scanning Savannah’s letter. After a few more seconds, he smiles, a glow of affection softening his cut-from-granite features. “You need to read it.”
“There’s no way you already finished it.”
He shrugs. “Fast reader.”
I make a sound of disgust and take the letter from him, looping my arms around his neck and leaning against his chest so I can read over his shoulders. With his hands slowly scooping hot water down my spine, holding me to him, I feel about as ready as I ever will be.
Dear Margot,
The last one was a doozy, eh? I feel like I should apologize for getting your hopes up about all these letters only to keep bringing up some of the hardest moments of your life. But I promise I’m not a complete asshole. For this letter, instead of talking about the past, I want to take a little road trip into the future. I’ve packed your avocados, my favorite seaweed chips, sunglasses, and even one of those female urination cups that gives you a little plastic penis, in case we need to pee on the side of the road. Ready, Thelma?
In the future I’m imagining, your fans have forgiven you, and Barker has taken you back as their favorite pet author. I know you probably just read that and either winced, rolled your eyes, cried, or did all three at the same time. But listen. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but romance readers are the best kinds of readers. For one, we buy ALL the books. The publishing industry would probably just lie down and die without us. Secondly, and most importantly, we believe in true love. And the thing is, you can’t have true love without forgiveness, Margot. Try reading a romance novel sometime—you’ll see.
My point is, I see a detour up ahead, and if (and ONLY if) you want to take it, I think it might help you win everyone back. I know your team released that official statement way back when everything went down, but you and I both know it sounded like a committee of stuffy PR dude-bros wrote it. Since then, no one has heard a peep from you. And yes, I realize that may have something to do with someone bundling you onto a plane and sending you to the Alaskan bush (you’re welcome), but I’m guessing your fans needed this time. That you did too.
I also realize you went to Alaska with murder in your heart (just the fictional kind, hopefully) and that you’re trying your hand at a new genre. For the record, this is not me telling you to abandon it. Go ahead and finish your dead-body book and then write some Pokémon fan fiction if that’s what you’re called to do. But I happen to know, as your sister and an authority on all things Margot Bradley, that despite what your Happily Never After file may suggest, the real secret is that you love being a romance author. More than anything, you love your readers. And now that we’ve all had a minute to calm down, maybe it’s time to reach back out? Because on behalf of all of Romancelandia, may I humbly say, we fucking miss you.
Stay safe, but not too safe,
Savannah
Sometimes—no, all the time—it’s scary how well my sister knows me. I drop the letter back on the table, and it’s hard to know if it’s the wonder or the water making me float. This morning, with dawn filtering through the snow-powdered windows of our cabin, I left Forrest asleep in bed and snuck out to the living room with my laptop, intending to get a few more pages done. Instead I found myself writing something else entirely: an explanation to my readers.
“Well?” Forrest says, sliding a hand over my lower back in the water. “Are you going to make a statement, Thelma?”
Disbelief stretches my lips into a smile. If there’s any reason I was finally able to pin down the feelings Savannah wants me to share with my readers, it’s because of Forrest. Despite all our obstacles, I can see a future together spooling out ahead of us like the thread of hope woven through any great romance novel. Maybe it’s been there all along.
“I wrote it this morning,” I tell him, looping my arms around his neck.
He looks at me like he’s not surprised but laughs all the same. “Your sister is something else.”
“Just wait till you meet her.”
The seemingly casual words feel like a promise and a plea. At Thanksgiving, I defended his decision to stay behind. But every new morning I’ve woken up in his arms, it’s gotten harder not to beg him to come home with me. And right now he’s looking at me like all I have to do is ask.
“I wrote a letter, too,” he confesses, and my whole body goes still. He reaches back toward the table and grabs his phone. After unlocking his screen and tapping it a few times, he exhales and says, “Here.”
He hands it to me, and I see an email draft. At the words an honor and privilege to accept the Bauer-Hinckley Grant , I nearly drop his phone in the hot tub. My eyes jerk up to his as my heart starts a sprint to nowhere. I’m about to either speak, or scream, or pass out when he takes his phone back, places it on the table, and kisses me.
We sink lower into the water, my hands slipping up his powerful neck into his hair as our mouths find a now familiar rhythm that’s all our own. When he groans softly, the terrifying thought occurs that I want to do this forever. I could kiss this man for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. He breaks away, panting, and rests his forehead on mine with his eyes closed.
“Let’s send them,” he says, low and fervent.
“Right now?” I ask as fear/excitement/nausea bolts through me.
“We’re never going to have a better Internet connection.”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” I say, earning a low husk of a laugh.
“I mean it,” he says, opening his evergreen eyes to gaze at me. The sun is setting over pristine Alaskan hillsides, painting the snow every shade of warm pink and orange, but all I can see is him. I’m almost trembling with the temptation to say yes, but if there’s anyone who knows what this means for him, it’s me.
“It would mean leaving your dad,” I state the obvious. “You can’t do that, Forrest.”
His hands tighten on me like I’m already slipping away from him. “You heard him at Thanksgiving,” he argues, his eyes reckless and hungry over me. “He wants me to do this. I’ll visit once a month to keep an eye on things, but he hasn’t had any backsliding. There’s every reason to believe his health will only continue to improve.” He says this like it’s a line he’s been repeating to himself for days.
“And what about helping with his physical therapy?” I force myself to ask. “His medication management and nerve blocks? Jo can’t care for him like you do.”
What I can’t ask are the harder questions, like “what if?” What if something happens to Trapper? Would the grant legally bind Forrest to stay in California? Or might he leave again? The thought sends a chill through me that has nothing to do with the frost forming at the ends of my damp hair.
“He may need to spend more time in Anchorage during the busy season when Jo isn’t as available to help. He also won’t have nerve blocks at home any more, but I know Jo will take him to Anchorage if his pain meds aren’t cutting it,” Forrest concedes. “I’ll buy him and Jo a place in the city that’s close to the hospital.”
“You can afford that?” I ask. Pulling in multimillion-dollar grants is one thing, but I have no idea what kind of salary a cancer researcher makes.
The look he gives me is a little embarrassed. “I don’t really spend a lot of money, and they paid me well. I’m… comfortable.”
I bite my lip. “I can’t imagine your dad and Jo living anywhere but the lodge.”
Forrest takes a sobering breath, making ripples in the water with his chest. “It wouldn’t be the first time my dad’s given up North Star to live there.”
It takes me a second to understand what he’s saying. Over the last week, I’ve gleaned more details about the woman who raised Forrest, but he guards his memories of her like a dragon over rubies. “For your mom?” I ask, sliding my hands up his chest.
After a moment, he nods. “Dad rented an apartment in Anchorage while she was undergoing treatment. I only learned about it when they let me visit her at the very end.”
My stomach twists. “What do you mean, they let you?” When he doesn’t answer, I ask, “What exactly happened that year, Forrest?”
Forrest exhales, and it’s abundantly clear he’d rather talk about anything else. But I think he knows that this isn’t me prying. This is about the walls I’ve torn down to trust him, and asking if he’s willing to do the same for me.
“She was diagnosed during my second year of residency, and I decided to switch my focus after getting my license,” he says eventually. “But going from patient care to oncology research required making up a lot of lost ground. I was stretched… very thin that year.” He blinks quickly down at the gently rippling water. “So my parents shielded me from how bad her condition was, hoping she would rebound.”
At the drawn look on his face, my heart feels like it’s been tenderized by a hammer, each thump pulsing like a bruise.
“The whole time, Mom insisted that I stay in L.A.,” he says. “Always insisted she was beating it. But when she didn’t, I realized too late that I’d thrown away my last months with her. I could have been by her side but chose not to be.” He looks at me, and the anguish in his eyes is something I want to wrap up in a warm blanket and rock until it’s soothed.
“You did what she wanted,” I insist in an unsteady voice, but it feels like offering drugstore carnations when he deserves a whole acre of roses.
“I didn’t, though,” he says bitterly. “What my mom wanted more than anything was for me to live my own life. It’s why she kept me away from Alaska. But after Dad’s accident, I came right back.” He presses his lips together, and I stop breathing, afraid to say anything that might discourage him from sharing this piece of himself. “I’ve been so scared,” he admits. “Scared of losing Dad and making the same mistake I made with Mom. I’d made my peace with giving up work and staying here to care for him. But then you showed up. Jumped right into my arms, and now I’ve got something I’m even more afraid to lose.”
His gaze travels over me feverishly, his hands pulling me in tighter against him. When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “So fucking smart, and beautiful, and giving, and difficult. Every day you’ve been here, I’ve thought that Mom must have sent you. She knew you’d be the only person who’d get me back to California.”
My world tips over, the same old pieces I’ve always known rearranging themselves into a kaleidoscope of possibilities. I feel the spaciousness of being with him without a clock counting down until my departure flight. I imagine visiting his lab and discovering yet another side of him to admire and pine over. I imagine introducing him to Savannah, and I’m filled to overflowing with a rightness I’ve never felt before.
The selfish words I’ve tried hiding tumble clumsily out of my mouth, tripping to get out. “I don’t want to go home without you.”
At this, Forrest grabs his phone from the table. He unlocks and taps it a few times, and he’s so casual about it, he could be checking the weather. But then I hear the small whoosh of an email being sent off before he turns back to me. “Now you won’t have to.”
An incredulous laugh bursts out of me, high and panicky. “Did you just—”
He smiles and lets out a shaky breath. I want to kiss him, but there’s something I need to do first. “Hand me my phone,” I say.
“Margot, you don’t have to,” he says. “If you’re not ready—”
“I do have to,” I argue. “I came here to write a murder mystery, and I didn’t, Forrest. After you dragged me through every trope under the sun, how could I write anything but a romance novel?” I take a breath, trying to steady myself. “I stopped believing in Happily Ever Afters a long time ago. But now… if there’s any chance I could win my readers back by admitting I’ve been completely wrong, then I have to try.”
He hands me my phone, but it’s not as simple as shooting off an email. When I’m done turning my letter into slides for an Instagram post, I swipe over to my camera app. With my chest pressed against Forrest’s so that only my face and the back of his head, neck, and mile-wide shoulders are showing, I snap a photo and add it to the end of my post.
Holding my breath and silently vowing to enact holy vengeance on Savannah if this letter backfires, I post it and immediately silence my phone. There are looming question marks about the future, but it’s our future, and I want it to start right now.