Chapter Thirty #2
Gradually, my attention slips from the walls to his desktop monitors, and I find…
Brows knitting, I sit up and stare at the moving pictures stretched before me on the other side of the room.
Plastered across the three screens is footage. Live video footage. Of my house.
“Mars…are you…” I begin.
“I can explain,” he says.
I turn toward him, find him stiff, holding the thermos of chicken soup so tight his knuckles have gone white. I ask, “You took my flippant comment from a while ago about getting security cameras in order to observe me seriously?”
“I… Ye…” He winces. “N…no.”
No?
I rise to get a better look. Kitchen window. Back door. Porch. Yard. There are eight feeds grabbing different angles. “What do you mean no ? This is exactly what I suggested.” Exactly how it’s described in Rouge’s book…right down to the locations mentioned. Which…I never said anything about.
“I…mean I didn’t have to take your comment seriously. I was…” He swallows, fights the roughness in his throat. “I already was.”
He already was watching me?
Before I said anything to reference Rouge’s current book project, which starts exactly like this?
The male lead watches his next-door neighbor on eight security cameras.
Because he’s too nervous to approach her without information. Because he’s accustomed to rejection. Because he’s an awful lot like Mars.
I’d be inclined to believe that Mars hacked into my favorite author’s accounts and started writing a book to me, except there’s too much of a trail for her not to notice.
Not to mention that while the overall style of the book I’ve been working on has been different than usual Rouge stories, it still carries the flavor from some of my favorite parts in her past books.
The emotional parts. The agony parts. The deep, bone-chilling in love parts.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Or maybe some of the nonsense I’ve read—like how the male lead is doing pushups to get better shoulders for his shoulder-obsessed lady love, who he made my height—is absolutely, completely, and utterly Mars .
Even now, thinking back on conversations I’ve had with Rouge, there’s a distinct tone to them that screams familiar . Mars has been familiar from the first moments, because Mars and I have known each other for five years .
In the stilted silence growing thick in the air, I pull my phone from my pocket and go to my chat with Rouge. Just to check. Just to make sure.
The humor. The patterns. The…everything.
It’s Mars.
“Huh,” I say.
Choked, Mars echoes, “Huh?”
“I’m glad I don’t like to walk around my house naked.”
Red explodes in his cheeks. “I wouldn’t— I would never— If you did, then I wouldn’t— I swear. It’s not about that. It’s not .” Broken, he whispers, “Please believe me.”
Catching sight of Mars’s phone on his nightstand beside his tea, I send a message to Rouge…and watch it light.
His attention flies to the device, and he turns into a noir painting. Sheer black hair. Pure white flesh.
Mars is Rouge.
The book he’s been working on…has been about me. About us.
I have been sticking needles into his insecurities through criticism of his male lead for…
months . I thought we were having fun. He thought there was no way I’d ever like someone exactly like him.
He poured his thoughts and feelings into a book, tested the waters, tried to see if there was even a chance, and I literally—on numerous occasions—said ew, change this .
Because that’s my job.
And the people in the stories aren’t supposed to be real like this.
I’m supposed to be able to joke about shoulder complexes without worrying that I’m actually hurting someone or undermining their very real efforts.
But, genuinely, what part of having a dark romance male lead doing hundreds of pushups a day in a last ditch effort to get the shoulders his object of affection wants screams anything but joke ?
I do not know how to correctly break this suffocating silence. So I just say, “How…many pushups are you doing each day?”
His shoulders bunch. “Um.” His hand shakes as he runs it through his hair.
“Uh.” He wets his lips, reaches for his tea, forgets about his soup, and knocks it all over his floor.
He swears, closes his eyes, and whispers, “I’m so sorry.
You…you made that for me. I’m so sorry. I…
” He begins to push his blankets aside. “There’s towels in my closet. I’ll…”
I open his closet before he can step out of bed into the damp puddle on his floor. “This one?” I ask, lifting a towel off a stack beneath a handful of hanging leather jackets.
“Y-yes.”
Crossing the room to reach his bedside, I crouch at the mess and sop it up, hoping there aren’t gaps in the wood flooring that would result in worse problems later.
“Ceres,” he croaks, “I…”
Lifting my face, I find his fragile green eyes.
Every scrap of worry and fear from his male lead in the book he’s been writing ignites in him tenfold. His male lead’s concerns of she’ll never love me, she’ll never want me, not when I’m like this, not when I’m like this blast in my ears.
His male lead knows it’s not normal to have cameras pointed at his neighbor.
He knows it. His male lead hates himself for it.
His male lead is terrified of losing the woman he loves.
His male lead saves clips of his female lead working in her garden or reading her books and watches them on loop to find something like peace sometimes.
He’s so…so… so broken. Desperate. Scared.
He studies people. Not just his female lead.
He’s kept notes since middle school about people, desperate to learn them, to figure out why they didn’t like him, to figure out what it was he was doing wrong.
He watches her because he needs to know she’s okay.
He watches her because loving her from afar is all he believes he’ll ever be allowed.
He watches her, trying to study how he can possibly be what she needs.
His notes about her are tear-stained compilations of him trying to figure out if he should give up, or if he’s worth loving anyway.
Even if he’s just him .
In the story, thus far, the characters have only interacted in brief ways.
He’s crossed paths with her at the store and helped her find something she needed.
He’s saved her from a rude guy when they happened to be at the same cafe.
Most recently, he’s left orchids on her porch with nothing but his email in the note, signed from a Secret Admirer.
Right now, they’re emailing, and he sends her heart-wrenching love letters while they get to know one another. He replays every word she says to him in his mind as he falls asleep each night, and insanity crawls ever closer.
The descent into madness has been delicious , and I’ve been leaving about seven thousand does he kidnap her now? how about now? comments all over the document. Because I am feral.
I am feral.
And Mars is just scared, insecure, and fighting—every single day—to be kind and respectful despite it. With about negative percentages of help from me.
I do not know what to say to a man like this.
I do not know how to be loved like this, to the brink of insanity, on the precipice of what only belongs in fiction. This is probably a deeply unsafe and unhealthy situation.
But it’s too late for me to pretend I am any more sane than him.
My lips part. “How many pushups?”
Raw, he replies, “A hundred and three…”
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
“Even…” I glance at the thermos of tea, the fire honey, the trash full of tissues.
His body droops. “Yes…Jove peeled me off the floor before you came in. I…” His eyes close, and his head drops into his hands. “I need to be enough for you, Ceres. I don’t know how to explain that in a way that…that isn’t just…problematic.”
I love problematic.
Problematic is great.
Problematic is passes out on the floor while sick trying to attain actually probably impossible body standards for a girl who barely smiles or does anything at all for you in return .
Problematic, banzai .
Although, thinking about it like that, I do believe I’m the problem.
I whisper, “I am beyond attracted to you right now.”
Mars lifts his face from his hands to pin me with wide eyes.
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. You’re sweet, funny, kind, gentle, respectful—much to my chagrin at times.
You’re my best friend. The only person who takes no energy to talk to.
Every message from Rouge has brightened my day and made me feel less lonely all by myself.
These past five years, you gave me the strength and the stability to make it on my own.
I owe the confidence in my career to your hard work.
Any time I’ve faced rejection or missed things in my clients’ stories, I am kinder with myself because you know what books I’ve edited?
Rouge novels . And you know what Rouge novels do?
Rise into the top charts. If Rouge still wants me to work with her, if she’s sending me year-long spreadsheets with her release schedule timelines, then who cares what anyone else thinks?
I’m good enough for you. And that’s good enough for me. ”
Pained, Mars drags his eyes off me, and whispers, “Rouge…isn’t just… me .”
“You’re the one I talk to, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes. But…Jove and I. It’s us. He drafts. I edit. Then you and I edit. Then I format. Then I publish and market and all the other stuff.”
Jove…writes…dark romance novels…
That’s.
News.
I say, “You and your brother have a very cohesive storytelling style. You can’t tell you’re two people at all. Excellent work.”
Mar’s lips part, and he deflates before saying, “It’s all him. Up until your story, I’ve only added the mush and tweaked things here and there in his drafts. I’m really…very genuinely…not much of a storyteller.”
“I think you’re an excellent storyteller. My favorite, even.”
Covering his mouth and stretching his fingers over blistering cheeks, Mars murmurs, “I love you…so much…”
The realization that those words aren’t stemming from mere months of interaction after a couple years of attraction hits me through the chest. Rouge knows me better than anyone.
She’s the only person in my life who has been a stark two-way street.
She’s never trauma-dumped on me. I’ve rarely ever had to be there for her beyond what my job entails. She knows me .
He knows me, and welcomes all the most mentally unstable parts as though they’re a twisted reflection of him.
The difference in the book he’s writing now versus Rouge’s backlist is because Jove’s not in this one. This one is all of Mars. For all of me.
And it’s my favorite.
Because he’s my favorite.