Chapter 15
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It’s all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.
Viktor
“What happened to the purity wall while I was gone?” Crisis asks the second she’s returned from her wandering, set her purse down in her desk chair, and taken in the heap of pillows I’ve stacked on the floor by my side of the bed. Her deep brown eyes hit me, skeptical. “Do you not care about purity anymore?”
Excellent observation.
I fix my attention back on my computer screen, reference my outline, and type. I’m behind on my goals for today. The writing class earlier on top of the phone call with Crimson and Crisis’s absence made for a terribly underproductive day.
And I know if I don’t meet my goals, she is not above emailing Desmond.
I say, “It takes up a lot of room in the bed. I’m wondering if it’s why I’m not sleeping well. I should have adjusted to being in a new bed after one night, but I still haven’t.” Because I went home last night to print off my love letter after spending several hours wondering how I was supposed to be able to sleep when I could feel her breathing beside me .
“Hm.” Pushing back the waterfall of her hair, Crisis plucks up her laptop and settles cozily in on her side of the bed beneath the throw blanket.
Stretching my fingers, I broach, “Does it…bother you not having a purity wall?”
“No. It’s just unexpected.”
Bracing myself, I ask, “Why?”
“You seemed so keen on being proper a few days ago.” She smiles. “I’ve corrupted you.”
No truer words.
The sound of her keystrokes blend with mine, steady, constant. Pause. Steady and constant again.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
“Nothing. I’m off the clock.”
Yet she’s typing an awful lot. She was typing a lot last night, too. Just like this, on the bed, but with damp hair from a shower. Her lavender soap was unbearably thick in the air, and I couldn’t get used to it. It’s part of what propelled me to escape back home to print the love letter I foolishly, and sleep-deprivededly, typed out in a Google doc on my phone. The other part that propelled me was being unable to locate a printer here and doubting I’d know how to use it if I did.
At least I only tested the waters with a few paragraphs of desperation. Leaving several thousand words for her to find would have been gut wrenching to watch her shred. Worse, she may have connected the tones to my style of writing if I’d given her too much content, and then what would I have done?
I can’t concentrate. Having that writer class this morning on fairly juvenile topics of craft burned my best time to write—according to the schedule that Crisis made me suffer through many, many experiments to learn.
I’m behind according to Crisis’s schedule.
I…am very much not behind according to my publisher’s deadlines, though.
Brow furrowing, I stare at my blinking cursor. Now that I’m thinking about it, the only time Crisis emailed Desmond, I was nearing his deadline for me, and she contacted him about an extension.
Huh.
Yeah, okay, she’s not going to bring Desmond into this. I’m done for tonight.
Time for… bed . Beside her . Without a purity wall providing even a false sense of security.
Finding my resolve, I shut down my computer, pack up my reading glasses, and put my outline back in its folder. Keenly aware of Crisis’s eyes following me, I gather my bathroom kit and nightclothes.
She hasn’t moved by the time I’ve washed up and changed into my pajamas—a pair of grey sweats and a black loose-fit tee. Before her, I slept topless. But the moment I realized she was not shy where it concerned barging into my room and waking me up in the morning, I came to the conclusion that I…was.
Shy, I mean.
I am very, very shy…
A shy guy, without a chance. The only thing I have going for me is a refusal to run from this fight.
Focused on her laptop, she continues typing until she realizes I’ve returned. Blinking at me, she makes to shut down her computer, so I lift my hand. “I’m not going to sleep yet. I’m going to read for a little while first, so you don’t have to stop whatever you’re doing.”
“Reading.” She closes her laptop anyway. “That’s not a bad idea.”
As I slip under the blankets on my side of the bed, she slips out, getting her own change of clothes on the way .
I’m not sure I breathe the entire time I’m waiting for her to get back.
I’m certain I don’t breathe when she slides into bed with me, turns her back toward me, and brings up the Kindle app on her phone.
Forgetting myself and my burning lungs, I…stare.
At the curve of her back and the dip of her waist before the rise of her hips. At the way the blankets mold to her body, rising and falling with her every inhale. At her fingers mindlessly toying with the tips of her hair as she scrolls through page after page of a book I can’t make out the words of without putting on the reading glasses I have in their case on the nightstand beside me.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
“A book.”
Insightful.
“What are you reading?” she asks.
It occurs to me I haven’t yet unlocked my phone or looked at my library. I reach for my reading glasses. “I don’t know yet.”
She rolls over, facing me. Her shoulder birthmark peeks out from beneath her camisole strap as she takes me in. Her fingers splay. “I’ll pick. Do you have Kindle Unlimited?”
I do not know why I unlock my phone and hand it to her, but I do know I’d do it again, and again, and again if the same wicked little smile would overtake her as she wiggles each time.
She gasps, taps something, and hands it to me. “Here. Read aloud.” She snuggles a little deeper into the blankets, gazing at me with those big brown eyes.
I am…frightened, yet intrigued.
Clearing my throat, I shift my attention to the cover on my screen.
My mouth opens to begin reading, but the words get stuck as the picture before me attempts to register.
I do not know what I’m looking at.
Crisis giggles, biting her lip. “Go on. Read.”
I can’t fight my own smile as I sigh and narrate the, um, title: “ Having Quadruplets for My Warrior Alien Mate .”
“Wow,” she breathes, awestruck. “What keywords. What marketing. Applause.”
My eyes roll, but I’m still smiling, and I can’t stop, and I want this . So badly. Someone to be stupid with, unashamed. I want the giggles and the wiggles and her beautiful smile and her mischievous eyes. I want this . I want her . I swipe past the front matter. “Chapter one: This can’t be happening. I can’t be an alien warrior’s mate.” I settle in, ignoring the way Crisis’s eyes widen as her smile teeters on the edge of delirium and shock that I’m actually plowing ahead. I skim the next paragraph before I dare to read it, then I hum. “Crisis.”
“Yes?”
“This is immediately graphic. Do you still want me to read it to you?”
A becoming slice of red deepens the shade of her cheeks. “You should, definitely. Also, add commentary.”
“Commentary?” I turn the page, see that absolutely nothing in this first scene slows down any time soon. “What kind of commentary do you want me to add to…this?” I blink at…whatever is happening here. “It seems fairly exhaustive on its own.”
“Critique the writing.”
What an odd request. I turn another page. And another. When I’m on my fifth page without any hope of reaching an end to the tunnel, I say, “It’s grotesquely appealing to a market that is very much entirely not me. The language is tired, reused, scattered with surplus adverbs and repeating adjectives. In the first five pages, there’s not a single thing about the characters that makes them stand out as real people. My disbelief remains. Even though it’s clear the purpose of this book is smut fantasy, I’m entirely unsure that it is even half decent smut fantasy.”
She holds out her hand, so I pass her my phone.
When she returns the device, a different book is on my screen. Something more tame. Still sci-fi, if alien romance falls beneath that genre category. I skim the walls of text that make up the first few pages. “The author seems enamored with themself and their broad vocabulary. The writing doesn’t move. It’s front heavy with told descriptions that could have been woven into action or plot more effectively than it has been. Given that there are no characters introduced amid the history, I can’t relate to anyone. I’m bored, strongly considering that reading a dictionary might prove more engaging.”
This time, Crisis takes my phone. Another book appears when she sets it back in my hand. A romcom this time. Pink. Sweet. “Juvenile. Immediately, I recognize that the author intends to be writing to an adult market, but something about the style says preteen.”
Crisis sits up, pushes herself closer, and picks another book, at random. I skim a few chapters, then I provide my notes. The cycle repeats four times, then she takes my phone, types something in that I can’t see, swipes, and holds the screen out toward me on a chapter from the middle of a book. Seems high fantasy. My genre. “Clinical,” I say. “The writing lacks all heart.” I swipe to the next page. “The author seems to be constructing a story from a tired, overdone template.”
“Shut up…” Stunned, she lowers my phone and stares at me.
“What’s wrong?” I offer her a small, tentative smile. “This is fun, isn’t it?”
She says, “This…is your book. You wrote this.”
My brows rise. “Did I?”
Her head dips twice, nodding.
“That makes sense.”
Confusion darkens her eyes.
I elaborate, “I write by template according to a pattern. I keep the pattern shuffled so what I’m doing is not as obvious and the flow of sentences doesn’t turn long-winded or choppy, but every line is calculated without emotion.”
Her lashes flutter as her lips hang, parted. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a job. I follow the system that gets words on the page.” Slipping the phone from her fingers, I go back a few books, to the alien one, since it’s the most outrageous. Pulling up its sales page on Amazon, I show her the rank. “This book had a hundred sales or downloads today alone. I don’t need to write anything profound. I just need to know what the market expects, and deliver on that promise.”
Her hand lifts to push a strand of hair back behind her ear, failing to latch it. The chestnut wave returns to where it was against her cheek, and she doesn’t opt to try again. “You…don’t like writing?”
“It’s tolerable enough, but it doesn’t really matter to me, no.”
“Why do you do it?” she asks, incredulous now. “You’re rich. You have thousands of sources of income. You don’t need to publish books to make a living. Even if you never wrote anything else, your backlist…” Her breaths tighten, turning rapid. “Your backlist could support you all on its own. Why are you writing, every day, when you don’t care ?”
Because, once, my parents made me does not sound like the kind of response a thirty-five-year-old is allowed to have—especially not when those parents have been gone for years. I know they played a part in why I’m stuck on this routine, but the longer they’re out of my life, the more I’m finding my own reasons to act.
Why am I publishing, still, when the people who once made me are gone and I know I don’t have to?
“Because—” I lock my phone and set it on the nightstand beside my glasses case. “—I’m human.” Taking my glasses off, I close the arms down against the lenses. “I get emails every day from people thanking me for the books I write. I don’t care about the words I line up, but I do care about them. As long as what I’m doing means something to them, it’s okay. It’s not that bad to press on. I’d rather not leave them hanging or let them down.”
“What about you?” Her fists grip against the comforter. “What about what you want?”
What I want is her. Curled up. In my arms.
She’s all I’ve ever really let myself want other than a safe place to sleep and peace for my brothers.
I want family.
Just like everyone else in this world, I want what I’ve never been able to have.
I say, “I like the community. Being here, seeing people excited and loving something, I like that. I like feeling like maybe the parts of me I don’t think matter inspire someone to believe the same parts in themselves do.”
Her shaking fists loosen as all strength leaves her. Her tongue flicks out, wetting her lips as she drops her gaze. Her mouth opens, but she shakes her head before words come, then she sinks back under the blankets, putting her back to me. “I’m…tired,” she says. “Goodnight, Viktor.”
Hoping I’ve not ruined something between us, I say, “Goodnight, Crisis,” and do my best to let her lavender air lull me to a few spare hours of rest.