Chapter 13
Thirteen
AVA
Feast and Fiction, my ass.
They should’ve called it Chaos and Crippling Foot Pain. Or Herding Bookish Cats: Live!
Either way, my voice is gone, my Sharpie smells like betrayal, and I’ve officially hit my social limit for the week. Maybe the decade.
The Massachusetts leg of our book tour was supposed to be the calm before the family storm. One more round of panels, photo ops, and pretend-you-love-each-other banter before I escape to Salem for Thanksgiving and let my mom feed me into a coma.
Nothing about this day was calm.
By noon, the fire marshal was threatening to shut us down due to the line snaking through the hotel lobby and out the front entrance.
By two, someone threw a pair of lace-trimmed panties onstage during mine and Soren’s fantasy-romance panel.
By three, I’d lost a contact, and Fisher had to sprint up eight flights of stairs–because the elevators had been overtaken by enthusiastic readers–to my hotel room for a replacement. When he finally returned, he was muttering about “diva-level ocular emergencies.”
And by the signing hour, security had to escort a woman, who was visibly upset, out after she demanded Soren write his phone number inside her book.
He gave her mine.
“I panicked,” he said, later in the green room. “And it felt… thematically appropriate.”
I should’ve murdered him. Instead, I laughed. Because as much as I pretend to roll my eyes at all this—at him—there’s a part of me that doesn’t hate it. The routine, the rhythm of being with him in these tight spaces, the banter we slip into so easily.
He watches me like he's trying to burn every square inch of me into his brain. And, okay, so it’s fake.
For the fans. For the tour. For the algorithm.
But it doesn’t always feel fake. It didn’t in D.C.
It especially doesn’t now, hours after the day has ended, when we’re back in the suite and the world is finally quiet.
The buzz of the crowd is still ringing in my ears, and my feet ache in that deep, satisfying way that means I did something productive.
The air smells faintly of lemon polish and the warm, plasticky scent of overworked electronics. The floor lamp beside the couch throws a soft amber glow across the room, catching the dust motes drifting lazily in the air.
My hoodie sleeves are pushed halfway up my arms. I’m absently rubbing circles against the bare skin of my forearm, chasing a kind of comfort that never quite settles.
Curled up in the corner of the suite’s overstuffed sectional, one leg tucked under me, the other bouncing in a slow rhythm, I turn on the TV.
I tried to write earlier. Opened the doc, stared at the blinking cursor, and rearranged the same three sentences twelve different ways. Deleted them all.
My deadline’s breathing down my neck. It’s a fire-breathing ghost, and my brain’s decided to check out at the worst possible time.
So, Netflix it is. A temporary distraction-slash-bribe for my creativity. Maybe if I feed it enough angst and banter, it’ll finally come out of hiding.
Some old cooking show plays on the flatscreen, quickly background noise against Fisher’s monologue as he flits around the kitchenette.
He’s methodically organizing the minibar, muttering about electrolytes and avoiding sugar crashes–which is comical coming from him.
He’s acting like we’re prepping for a summit in the Andes.
My fingers toy with the tassels on one of the couch pillows, twisting them until they coil tight, and I let them unwind again. It’s either that or check my phone, and I’m not ready to scroll through any more tagged posts of Bell and The Blade.
“You know,” Fisher says, voice casually laced with intent, “you could invite him to Thanksgiving.”
One brow raises. “What? Who?”
“Pembry. He mentioned he didn’t have plans.” He shrugs, no big deal. “Could be good for PR.”
A dry laugh escapes me. “It’s enough that I have to maintain this charade in my daily life—I’m not dragging it into my family’s home.”
The thought hovers in the air.
Soren. Alone.
Nobody should be alone.
I recall the lull between panels, when I asked what he was doing for the holiday. He gave a half-shrug and said, “I don’t do Thanksgiving,” then promptly redirected his attention to the sad little bowl of unwrapped caramels on the refreshments table.
That was the safer conversation. It wasn’t nothing. And I felt it.
Fisher disappears down the hall, now mumbling about immunity boosters and burnout, and I find myself rising from the couch.
I tug down my leggings from where they’ve ridden up on my calves, rub a hand over my face, and suddenly I’m standing outside his door, with fuzzy socks heating my feet.
One hand raises, then hesitates.
This is dumb. I should go to bed.
I knock anyway.
The door creaks open a few seconds later.
Soren stands there shirtless. Again. Apparently, half-naked is his normal state of being while in the confines of a private space.
I take him in. The muscles of his chest are carved, lightly flushed from the warmth of the room, a faint sheen glistening along his collarbone—as if he’s been pacing. Or maybe just existing too hard.
Ink sprawls across him, a mix of calculated and cluttered—snatches of script, bold strokes, and fragments of poetry etched into skin.
But it’s the runes that catch me, hidden messages along his ribs, curling down the slope of muscle.
Old shapes, honed edges, ancient and private, as though the man himself is written in a language nobody else gets to read.
I caught glimpses of them that first night at the Great Booksgiving, when neither of us could sleep. Shadows of ink beneath dim light, not enough to see their weight or meaning. But here, in full view, they’re impossible to ignore—impossible not to wonder about.
Every mark tells a story. Why do I suddenly want all of them?
A pair of reading glasses sits low on his nose, and he’s holding a pen in one hand, a stack of pages clutched in the other.
Soren glares at me from behind the lenses. “Hey.”
“I—uh…” I clear my throat. “Sorry to bother you.”
He opens the door wider. “You’re not. Come in.”
I stumble at the threshold and try to play off the embarrassment by blaming my fuzzy socks for slipping on the floor.
Soren chuckles.
His now familiar scent of pine trees and magic fills the room, mixed with a new one–old paper and lukewarm coffee. I inhale as if I’ll never get another chance to breathe it all in while surveying his room.
His bed is unmade. The desk is tidy, covered in color-coded sticky tabs, a coffee mug full of pens, and a printed manuscript thick with handwritten notes.
Soren sets his pages down carefully. “Working through my latest draft.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I know, wild Saturday night.”
Curiosity tugs at me. I move closer to where the manuscript sits, highlighted in blue and green ink, with some lines circled with arrows and others marked with blunt comments: cut this or not relatable.
I trail a finger along the edge. “Let me guess…you are your own worst enemy.” Catching a line, I read it out loud.
“When Daxion kissed Elira, the moan that escaped her was etched into his memory by moonlight—sacred, trembling—and now he’s retracing it with reverent hands, the rhythm of her body a sacred text written in heat and breath, and worshiped in silence. ”
“Bit much?” he asks, nervous.
“No,” I say, surprised. “It’s good. Excellent, actually. You used sacred twice though.”
Soren’s head tilts. He checks it. “Hm, so I did.” His eyes peer up at me, mischief swimming in them. “Wanna trade notes?”
I hesitate—then nod, grinning. “Sure. I’m warning you though, I’m ruthless with adverbs.”
Soren’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles. “That’s okay. I overuse em-dashes like I get paid for it.”
We settle side-by-side on the edge of his bed, knees brushing, a nervous quiet filling the space between us.
This is where he sleeps. Right here, in this space. Probably sprawled out with one arm behind his head, the other thrown across the pillow, owning the universe.
The thought shouldn’t feel so intimate, but it does. And now I can’t stop wondering what he dreams about—if he tosses and turns, if he wakes up swaddled in the sheets.
Has he ever thought about me while lying right here?
I shift slightly, and my knee bumps against his. Neither of us moves to break the contact.
He hands me a page, and I pass one back.
Our notes start playful, him teasing me for a sarcastic margin comment, me calling him out on an overly brooding line of internal monologue. Somewhere along the way, the tone morphs into thoughtful. Mutual. Exposed.
“You could go deeper here,” I say, tapping a paragraph. “You keep pulling away right when it starts to hurt. Let it sting.”
After reading over the spot I marked, he glances up at me. “You always this thorough in revisions?”
“Yeah, I am.”
He’s quiet for a second too long before he says, “I appreciate thorough.”
A heavy invisible weight settles between us. Surprisingly, it’s not uncomfortable. Just... honest. Unexpectedly easy. A little scary. Okay, a lot.
Eventually, I circle back to the real reason I knocked on his door.
“So, listen.” I fold one knee under me. “About Thanksgiving.”
His expression shutters slightly.
“Why don't you come home with me. Fisher is coming too.”
One of his brows quirks.
I rush ahead. “PR, of course. Fisher thought it might solidify how serious we are. Show the fans a softer side. Make you more ‘relatable.’” I hold up a piece of his manuscript with the word scribbled next to a highlighted paragraph and smile.
Nodding once, his shoulders fall, and the space between us suddenly feels a lot wider than it did a second ago.
Pressing my lips together, I swallow my pride. “Nobody should be alone on the holidays. Least of all you.”
His head turns. Our eyes meet.
“I’d like it if you came with me,” I add. “Us, I mean.”