Chapter 2
Two
SOREN
The crowd hums like a live wire.
Lighting: Tolerable.
Energy: Feral.
In the crush of perfume and paper, a woman in full Beneath the Bloom cosplay—from my latest bestseller—glides past, complete with a red corset, thigh holsters, and attitude.
Usually, that level of dedication would start a small riot in my pants.
I’m a simple man: put a heroine in leather and I’m halfway to plotting a bonus scene.
But somewhere between the third tear-streaked hug and the girl who asked me to press my sword against her thigh for a photo, someone yanked the plug on higher brain functions, short-circuiting my mind altogether.
That someone is Ava Bell.
Queen of Steam, Mistress of Meet-Cutes, the woman whose entire brand is chock-full of cinnamon-roll heroes and guaranteed happy endings. She’s my rival, my foil, the bane of my ShelfSpace existence. And she’s across the ballroom, blazing like fire and defiance.
This is a whole different battlefield than online. There, Ava’s words on a screen, a sparring partner I can mute with a swipe or outmaneuver with a post. In the flesh, she’s devastating, not to mention so fucking beautiful.
My heart slams once, twice, then forgets how to recover. Fingers tighten on my sword hilt. Sweat sneaks beneath my collar despite the AC’s arctic blast.
Battle scenes don’t faze me. Crowds don’t faze me.
Ava Bell in cable knit, absolutely does.
She’s making it physically impossible for me to concentrate.
Okay, fine. It’s the tight sweater dress.
My brain said, Be cool.
My dick said, We are absolutely not being cool.
Ava bent—just to fix a zipper. The hem of her dress lifted a fraction, flashing the underside of her ass. The air left my lungs. And downstairs? Captain Pembry—who, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly known for subtlety—sprang to attention. Full salute. No hesitation.
Standing with a Sharpie in one hand and a situation down below that would embarrass a lesser man, I nearly came in my leather. One more millimeter of curve and I would’ve been handing out signed paperbacks with post-nut clarity.
When she straightened, Ava’s gaze hooked on mine—autumn bright, impossible to dodge—cleaving straight through the armor I didn’t realize I was wearing.
Captain Pembry, ever loyal, reacted once again with enthusiasm.
What Ava doesn’t know. Nor will ever know, is that I’ve spent a year losing sleep over her. Writing letters I’ll never send. Wondering how her laugh sounds. Imagining the warmth behind her most cutting quips. Fisting myself to the point my body can’t tell the difference between tension and need.
Now she’s real. And right in front of me.
No amount of flirtation, attention, or bare skin from another woman means a damn thing when the one with the cinnamon-colored curls and glasses perched on her cute little nose undid me with words alone—words that sliced and sparked, sank under my skin, and have stayed there, because I’ve let them. Because they’re hers.
Another satisfied reader approaches. Flashing a practiced grin, I drag my pen across her book with a flourish that’s become muscle memory.
The ink bleeds dark against cream pages, my signature a bold slash of black that matches the leather wrapped around my wrist. I hand it back with a smile that once came naturally to me.
Now, it’s just me putting on a mask. Every. Single. Time.
The woman’s fingers tremble as she clutches the book to her chest like a holy relic.
“Thanks for reading.”
She lets out a squeak so shrill, I half-expect steam to shoot out of her ears. Full kettle meltdown. Then she floats away.
The next wide-eyed person in line steps up immediately, radiating with a mix of desire and hero worship that once fed my ego. Not anymore. Not for a long time.
Please don’t mistake me. I love my readers. Christ, I do. They’ve changed my life in ways I’ll never be able to repay. They’ve funded my ridiculously overpriced sword collection, my downtown loft in Seattle with floor-to-ceiling windows, and so much more.
But this version of me—the carefully crafted book boyfriend persona that ShelfSpace devours? Well, he’s slowly suffocating the man underneath.
I’m caged by my own charisma, forced to perform the same seductive dance until my soul feels scraped bare.
The Blade.
Fuck, I hate that name. It tastes like copper and lies every time anyone says it.
I finish another signature, the pen sliding smoothly across the paper, and force out another laugh that grates against my throat.
As if drawn by some cosmic pull, my focus veers left—straight to where Ava Bell is standing. Little does she know, she’s my lighthouse in this bookish storm, surging inside this ballroom.
Somewhere between the cheers, the selfies, and the hundredth book shoved under my nose, my mind drifts toward the woman who’s labeled as the thorn in my side.
Ava’s polite smiles never quite touch her eyes. The little waves she gives look genuine enough, but there’s tension simmering beneath them. She plays her part, posing when readers ask, but it’s her hands that betray her—nails chewed down to the quick. She’s holding herself together, bite by bite.
Every so often, she glances at me. Quick. Curious. Checking to see if I’m still here. Each time she does, hope burrows under my ribs and yanks. I feel it everywhere. Gravity. Hunger. Want. Desire.
Dread.
Ava’s fan line has dwindled to almost nothing. Not because she isn’t magnetic—she is. That woman is whip-smart, sharp-tongued, and funny as hell. She deserves a line out the damn door.
The second I walked in, the energy changed. Heads turned. Lines shifted. Phones came up. My name trended. I didn’t plan it, didn’t want it—but, I stole the room just by existing in it.
That reality nags at me. Gnaws, if I’m being honest. The worst part is, every smile aimed at me feels like I’m robbing her blind. I hate that because I like her. A lot. Even though I don’t even know her. Even though she hates me.
I’m not wired for empathy; it was never standard issue. Charm, sure. Graciousness on cue. Genuine concern, however? Rare.
Yet watching Ava fight to stay composed stirs something unfamiliar inside me. It reminds me that beneath the sharp edges and the sparring, a real magnetic pull has always been there, dragging us closer.
We started as a feud.
Ava showed up on my Got You page in a video that disemboweled my entire genre with pinpoint accuracy, triggering a fan war that crashed the app’s servers for two days.
I retaliated with candlelight melodrama and a poetry-slam wig. She countered with a stitch that said my heroes had the emotional depth of a puddle.
In the span of one week, that tiny, five-foot-nothing female managed to pick apart three years of carefully crafted brand identity.
I decided to go full scorched earth.
Reading the steamiest scenes from her book, The Lumberjack’s Love Letters, I wore a flannel button-down, no shirt underneath, boots, and sawdust in my hair—because if I was going down, I was taking her libido with me.
At the time, it felt deserving.
Ava didn’t even wait a full day. She posted a video captioned, Two can play the forestry fantasy game.
The clip opened with her in a cute, checkered dress, featuring delicate straps and a daring neckline that tested my self-control.
In the video, Ava’s voice dropped into a mock-serious narrator cadence as she started reading one of my most tortured passages.
“I want to touch her,” Ava read, tone perfectly flat, expression bored. “But I shouldn’t.” She glanced up at the camera. “Touch her, you jackass. She wants you to. We all do.”
She flipped a page. With the same disinterested, almost teacherly delivery, Ava read one of the steamiest scenes I’ve ever written—every filthy, fevered word—like she was dictating a grocery list.
The effect was devastatingly funny. My passionate prose had never sounded more virginal. Ava wasn’t just roasting me; she was dismantling my ego with a witty scalpel. I watched it on loop, hand in my hair, half mortified, half turned on.
By the time she shut the book, took a prim sip of wine, and said, “Five stars. Would recommend for anyone suffering from insomnia,” the internet had blown up.
#BellAndTheBlade was trending by morning with two million views.
It was war. Beautiful, vicious, intoxicating war.
Until it wasn’t.
After that, I actually read The Lumberjack’s Love Letters in its entirety, rather than skimming the spicy parts for ammunition. I discovered Ava’s not just good. She’s fucking brilliant.
Between the catalyst and the climax, tectonic plates shifted beneath my feet. I ended up staying awake until 4 a.m., wrecked beyond reason.
That ending? A gut punch wrapped in flannel and burning sincerity, dipped in whatever literary witchcraft she uses to make fictional kisses feel like sacraments.
The prose? Gorgeous.
The pacing? Immaculate.
Her character arcs? Absolutely lethal.
I will never admit this to anyone, but I cried—big, messy, not-cute, ugly sobs. Then I preordered the special edition. Twice. Downloaded her entire backlist and tore through all ten in under a week.
Her words revealed a part of her that she never shares. The part that bleeds into the pages. The part only another writer would recognize for what it was.
After that, I saw my online nemesis in a whole different light. In those late-night moments, while reading her works, I developed a very real, very inconvenient, major thing for Ava Crowley Bell.
Yes, I know her middle name. I did some light internet stalking. Mind your business.
I tried to deny it at first. Then, I caught myself anticipating her posts, like a teenager waiting for a text. Watching her lives with the sound turned up, studying the way she laughed at her own jokes.