Chapter Ten
FRANKIE
When I first thought of the idea for Wolves at Night, I wanted to challenge myself.
Writers occasionally do that throughout their career. Not always. And definitely not everyone.
Some prefer to start out comfortably. Getting to the end of a manuscript is hardship enough, and the pressure of debuting makes it twice as tough. If, by some chance, you manage to get past that milestone, there’s a minefield of challenges down the road.
Unfortunately, I started out ambitious. And I say unfortunately, because I drove myself crazy with that first draft and the dozen that came after it.
I was so close to quitting so many times that I often wondered how I even got here, with a six-book series concluded, independently of how well the last few installments had fared out there.
The ambitious part came from all the ways I wanted to challenge myself.
Test the limits. Play with the boundaries.
Of genres, of morality, of murder, and yes, also of love.
That’s why I threw my characters into a triangle.
A triangle makes you question which side are you on, which corner.
If it’s well done, it knocks you from one apex to the next without you really noticing.
It makes you love and hate those characters for both agreeing and disagreeing about how you’d act if you were thrown into their shoes.
Even I, as the one orchestrating and spinning the story, felt myself switching sides.
The good guy. The bad guy. The hero. The villain. Should she even choose, or is she better off without either of them?
It’s almost funny how many unwritten rules there are.
How the villain should get the girl. Or maybe it’s the hero, because that’s the guy you’d take home to your parents in the real world.
Lovable villains only exist on paper. But oh, how sexy it is to escape to a world where someone bends the rules just for you.
I only made up my mind after getting through multiple versions of Black Honey.
I gave the girl to Elliot. Enzo was a murderer.
Most thought it was predictable, boring.
Some nights I think that’s why it all went downhill for me.
You don’t play with readers expectations.
Those are an untamable beast. Unpredictable.
Merciless. Things had started going downhill a few books prior, though.
But maybe I was never as clever as I thought I was.
Maybe my readers saw me coming with that yawn-worthy conclusion.
Maybe the Frankie that was praised by multiple editors while out on submission years ago had lost her edge. Maybe she never really had it.
In the first draft of Black Honey, Eden ended up with Enzo. She never reformed him. She loved him for his darkness, and not in spite of it.
Just like Eden, I’d always had a soft spot for him. Enzo. Those black cracks that made him. You can hardly spend six books building a villain and not learn to love him. That’s why I challenged myself and took Eden from him.
I took Enzo from me. Because I didn’t get the one I wanted. I never did.
A hand brushed my shoulder softly, easing some of that weight building in my stomach. “How badly is your head spinning?”
“Like a wheel being turned by a hamster on steroids.”
Turner’s palm spread across the side of my neck, making my eyelids flutter while a deliciously soft current flickered down my spine. “Has he ever signed off as Enzo before?”
I looked down at the printed form in my hands. All names had been blacked out except one.
Enzo Romano.
Next to it there was a phone number. Mine.
I sighed. This was all so convoluted it made my head hurt. “No. He’s never done that. This is all new. I wasn’t lying when I said that I believed he was harmless. He’s never airdropped images to my phone, or used my characters names in an attempt to play with me like this.”
Because that was what it felt like.
He was playing a game I didn’t have the rules for.
All I had was three roles he’d assigned to us. Me, Turner and himself.
This man—this stalker—was no longer hiding behind gifts and letters I thought of as benign. He was here, in Vermont, and that was because I’d enabled him. I was as much of a monster as Enzo was.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” I exhaled.
Turner’s eyebrows rose a little, then he frowned. We were sitting on a Chesterfield sofa in his significantly larger room, after we’d collected all my stuff from mine.
“This is all my fault,” I continued. “I should have known that he was dangerous. That potentially, this could happen. I don’t know how I couldn’t think of it. How it all seemed fine and right and okay and—”
Gentle but firm hands closed around mine. “Not your fault,” he said. “Now start. From the beginning. Walk me through it.”
I blew air through my lips loudly, feeling my apprehension build. “He’s written me letters. Long ones. And a lot of them.”
Turner went very still, but then his thumbs curled around my wrists, encouraging. Brushing back and forth over my skin. Comforting me. “What did these letters say?”
“A lot,” I answered sincerely. “It isn’t like they were love letters, or anything like that.
It felt more like fan mail. Some of them were a little messy, neurotic.
I … should have been more worried than I was, in hindsight.
But—” I shook my head. “I don’t know how to say it without sounding like someone horrible. Sick. Fucked-up.”
“You aren’t. Sick or fucked-up or horrible.”
I laughed a little weakly. “I’ve spent years terrorizing these characters, Turner. Writing murder scenes in extremely graphic detail. Playing with morality and trying to make it sexy.”
“You’re not what you’ve written. You’re not just the ugly, gory, fucked-up things. You’re also the beautiful ones. And there’s beauty in horror. There’s hope.”
“You’re …” I trailed off. Jesus. Where the fuck have you been this past year, Turner?
Why couldn’t you be with me, reminding me of this.
Why couldn’t you love me? I swallowed, and then confessed to something I’d never said out loud.
“I know I sound entitled, but I’ve been feeling let down by the world.
Abandoned. Not just lonely but … Invisible. ”
“Frankie—”
“I’m partly responsible,” I continued, because I needed to say it.
To get it out, finally. “I’ve blamed myself a lot for it.
Writing is such a lonely job, and I get that.
I always knew that. But at least I had …
my readers. My characters. My team. Myself.
It’s silly, but it felt like if I had all those things, then it wasn’t so bad. ”
He nodded, and this time, he just let me go on.
“That’s why I thought I’d be fine moving to Boston. But for the last few months, ever since Black Honey came out, what started as a mild fear turned into the confirmation that I no longer have those things. That they turned their backs on me because I wasn’t valuable. Worth keeping.”
Turner’s face twisted with more of that concern, not stopping that back and forth of his fingers.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to write more books,” I admitted with a shaky breath. “It doesn’t seem like there’s any point in it. Not even my publisher believes in me.”
His expression filled with shock.
“They’re not interested in more books,” I continued, before he could speak.
I couldn’t hear the nice things I knew he had to say about me.
Not yet. Not before he had the full story.
“You should have seen the reaction they had to the new stuff I brainstormed with my editor. It was lukewarm, at best. It felt like they were doing me a favor by letting me continue to publish with them.” My eyes closed for an instant, recalling how I’d felt when my agent called me with their offer.
Worthless. Like I was failure. “I’m not prideful, it wasn’t about my ego.
But God. The world was screaming at me that I wasn’t good enough.
That I wasn’t wanted. The reception of a book or the way the industry works doesn’t need to define you as a writer but … ”
“But it’s impossible not to let it define you,” he finished for me.
“Yes. I’m not blaming them. Anyone. But it all made me feel like I was fading away. Becoming invisible. Unseen.” My voice broke and I patted my chest. “Of no importance.”
“Frankie, baby—” Turner tried again.
I stopped him with a shake of my head. “It doesn’t justify what I’m about to tell you, but I hope it makes it more palatable.
Because those letters I just told you about?
I welcomed them. I came to look forward to them, Turner.
It felt good to matter to someone, when I felt like no one believed in me.
When I no longer believed in myself. This man set a shed on fire and all I could think was: I hope he’s not caught.
I hope the next letter comes so I know he’s still out there, writing to me.
And that’s—” My vocal cords closed for an instant, making me gasp for air to continue.
“That’s why I’m fucked up. That’s why I’m broken.
That’s why I stacked one of his letters in my glovebox, in case I needed it.
And that’s why he’s followed me here and is leaving shit on mirrors, and playing with us. Because I enabled him.”
Turner looked like I’d delivered a hook to his jaw.
Dread rose from my stomach, leaving me with a bitter taste on my tongue. “This is all my fault,” I told him. “And I’m sorry that you’re somehow involved in this mess now. I just hope you don’t think I’m completely horrible and dumb because I am sorry I—”
“Stop apologizing. Please. Just—Stop for one second.”
I swallowed, chest heaving up and down from how fast my heart was speeding. I waited for Turner to speak. To compose himself after what I had just told him.