Chapter 29
Present Day
Karma has a twisted sense of humor. Thanks to a hotel fire, a tense breakfast, and a last-minute stop to purchase a second dress from a shop on University, I’m late to my signing. It feels like cosmic payback for making West late to his.
It’s another overcast day, the sky filled with slate clouds that promise rain.
I’m worried it’ll keep people at home, but by the time I arrive on campus, the festival is buzzing.
Signings and presentations and panels are in full swing for the last day of the event, and it’s a stark reminder that my joint panel with West is tonight.
If this crowd holds, there will be a lot of people around to see us share a stage.
My stomach roils with anxiety. I’m starting to think this entire weekend was a mistake.
I should have been one of those authors who kept my identity a secret, like Elena Ferrante.
Daphne always jokes that she’ll know she’s “made it” as an author when she can delete her social media.
Right now, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
The closer I get to my assigned tent, the more my stomach tangles up in knots.
They loosen when I arrive and see that my signing line stretches to the back of the tent and snakes through the grass past several vendor tables.
I spot two people in Fox shirts and one in pointed fae ears, and I can’t help but smile.
It’s not the biggest line I’ve ever had, but it’s a relief.
It’s good. It’s not embarrassing. That’s what this weekend was supposed to be about before West showed up and screwed with my head.
This book will succeed, even if it kills me. (Sometimes it feels like it might kill me.)
I uncap a Sharpie and wave forward the first person in line. She’s wearing a Wildcats shirt and holding a stack of my books. When I see her smile, I let myself breathe.
She’s nice; the next person in line is nice; they’re all nice. They say all the things I never thought I’d hear again.
You’re my favorite author.
Your book saved my life.
I started reading again because of you.
I have to pretend your third book doesn’t exist.
So maybe they aren’t all nice, but I’ve heard worse.
I scrawl my name in black ink, my energy draining with each signature.
I look up at the line, sweat forming on my brow as it grows.
It’s not like me to have my social battery zapped by an event; I usually end a signing with enough energy to power a small city, but today I’m dragging, and I’m frustrated.
I’ve spent too many years clinging to this career by my fingernails.
I clawed myself out of a depressive valley for moments like this, and instead of feeling happy or accomplished or proud, I don’t feel anything.
I sign the last book, cap my marker, and take stock of my situation. I have a new book. I have fans who haven’t abandoned me. No one said anything openly hostile. This is the moment I fought so hard to get back—so why don’t I feel better?
A vision of West appears at the edge of my tent.
I blink. I’m either hallucinating or dreaming again, because not even he is dumb enough to show up at my signing after our fight this morning.
But as he walks toward me with determined strides, he doesn’t look like a hallucination.
He doesn’t smell like one, either; the scent he carries with him is exactly like the soap I tried to inhale last night.
“Take your BDE and leave,” I say as I pack up my pens.
West lets out a surprised laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Big debut energy. It’s the spark you see in the eyes of a new author. Unlike me.”
He frowns. “You have a spark.”
“No, I don’t. Publishing beat it out of me a million years ago. And I’m off the clock.”
West drops a heavy backpack on my table and points to his watch. “You have one minute left.”
“Fine.” Sixty seconds. I fix him with my blandest expression and pretend it’s a chore.
It’s decidedly not. Even when he was the skinny emo kid in eyeliner, I couldn’t stop looking at his face.
I saw the vision. If West and I were together now, I’d feel like a genius, like people who bought Apple stock in the nineties.
West unzips his backpack and pulls out a stack of books. My books. He pushes them wordlessly toward me.
“What are you doing?”
He opens the beat-up copy of Torched and stabs the title page with his finger.
“You write my name here”—he points to the top of the page—“and your name here.” He speaks slowly, an almost word-for-word repeat of the conversation we had two days ago.
But my brain can’t compute any of it, because West is somehow in possession of three very worn copies of my novels.
I pick up Torched with trembling fingers and thumb through the pages. It’s a librarian’s worst nightmare—full of highlighted passages and notes in the margins. It seems like half of the pages are dog-eared, and the spine is cracked.
This is a book that has been read. A lot.
“Where did you get this?”
West looks confused. “My house?”
I flip through the other books, and unbelievably, they’re all in the same condition.
No matter how West’s opinion of me has shifted over the last decade, I can’t accuse him of being indifferent.
“Why?” I say, unsure what question I’m really asking.
Why did you read them? Why are you asking me to sign them?
Why does it suddenly feel like there’s not enough air in this open tent?
“I went to your event at the Page Turner,” he says abruptly.
“What? When?”
“Right after Torched came out. You were wearing a black dress with stars on it.”
I’ve done so many bookstore signings and events that most of them have faded to gray, but then it hits me.
At the first event my family attended, I was distracted by a man who looked like West at the back of the room.
“I saw you there! You disappeared.” My brain scrambles to make sense of this new information. “Why were you there?”
He throws his arms wide before letting them fall to his sides. “Why do you think?”
A beat passes in which we blink at each other in surprise. Before I can get another thought in, he changes the subject. “Will you get lunch with me?”
He leans his weight on his hands as he splays them across the table, the taut lines of his arms mirroring the tension in his brow, his jaw, his mouth.
Without thinking, I uncap my Sharpie and slowly color in the nail on his middle finger.
If it weren’t so supremely weird of me, I’d do the rest. Anything to keep touching him.
“Why?” I ask again. Apparently, I can’t say anything else.
He looks at his hands for a long time. “We need to plan for this evening.”
I narrow my eyes; somewhere buried deep in the forgotten recesses of my mind—deeper even than all the events I’ve nearly forgotten about—is the sensible, responsible version of me, and she’s screaming at me to say no.
But there’s something about seeing West’s handwriting in the margins of my book that makes my world tilt.
It’s like I’ve been looking at life through a fun-house mirror and he just shattered the glass.
I sweep my markers into my bag and stand up, acting braver than I feel. “I’ll go to lunch with you, but I have to run an errand first.”
His eyes flash. “I’ll come with.”
“You’ll miss your interview.”
“No. The interview is off.”
My eyes fall to his copies of my books, knowing it’s too little, too late. But I find myself unable to turn him away.
We walk together to Gentle Ben’s, and the air around us is different.
We’re both being so cautious. Watching what we say.
Staying far enough away from each other that our elbows won’t bump.
I feel like a freshman on a walk with my brand-new crush.
It’s disorienting, like time has cast a spell on West and me in a way that allows us to be every version of ourselves at once.
I miss him, and I hate him, and I’m over him, and I want the back of his hand to brush mine at least one more time.
Gentle Ben’s is busy with the lunch crowd. I tell West to wait for me outside, and I navigate through the tables back to the bar, where an unfamiliar face in a bartender’s apron asks what he can get for me. He has brown hair pulled back in a bun and tattoos down both arms.
“I’m looking for Evie. I was told she’d be working today,” I say.
“She called out sick.”
I swear under my breath as I sit on the stool to think. He leans across the bar toward me and lets his eyes rove obviously over my body. “I mix a better Aperol Spritz than she does. Want one?” He reaches for a large wineglass.
“No, thanks. I just really need to talk to Evie. Do you know any way that I could contact her?”
“Are y’all friends?”
“She helped me out the other night while she was working and held on to something important. I was supposed to pick it up today because I have an early flight in the morning.” I figure it doesn’t hurt to tweak the story to make me sound less like a stalker going off a vague hunch that she might have stolen my book.
He grabs a napkin and a pen from his apron and scribbles two phone numbers after glancing at his contacts list. “Evie’s and mine,” he says with a suggestive wink. “In case you’re looking to work up a sweat tonight.”
“What a charming offer.” I snatch the napkin out of his fingers and hightail it out of the bar.
I sit on the curb while I dial Evie’s phone number. West’s eyebrows skyrocket when he sees both phone numbers. “Who’s Evie? And who’s Zach?” he asks, his expression darkening.
“Don’t worry about it.” Evie’s phone is ringing.
“This was the errand you needed me for? Copping phone numbers?”
His tone makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Calm down.” I roll my eyes as Evie’s phone sends me to voicemail. I hang up.
“Was that bartender hitting on you?”
“Yes.”
“And you took his number?”
“Yes.”
He grinds his molars, looking possibly more annoyed than I’ve seen him all weekend. I type a text explaining the situation and send it to Evie. She responds in less than a minute with confirmation and an address. I stand up as the first raindrop hits the sidewalk.
“What now? Do I get to help you get ready for your date?” West asks dryly.
“No. But you do get to take me for a drive.”
The address Evie sent is in the foothills on the north side of town. As we drive out of downtown Tucson, the landmarks turn from university buildings and housing developments to cacti and mountains. Even with the drizzly sky, it’s stunning. “I forgot how pretty the desert is.”
I feel the weight of West’s gaze on my profile. “Would you ever move back?”
I laugh in surprise. “Why would I?”
“Just making conversation, Darling.”
By the time the road begins to rise in elevation, the rain is coming down steadily.
West’s fingers are drumming on the steering wheel, and I take sick pleasure in knowing that he’s stewing over the napkin in my lap.
I stare at it and pretend to contemplate giving Zach a text, but eventually the pretending stops, and I am contemplating it.
He’s cute. He’s interested. It’d be easy. I could stop by the bar tonight and flirt a little. Maybe more. I could have one night of uncomplicated fun before going back home, and I’ve never wanted anything less.
I glance sideways at West, who is tense and frustrated and more than a little annoyed that I’ve dragged him here with zero information.
We have about eighteen hours left until my flight leaves, give or take.
Eighteen hours until we slip seamlessly back into our lives and this weekend becomes another footnote in our history.
Since the first day West kissed me, it’s felt like I’ve only ever had him in brief moments.
And I realize now that I’d rather spend the rest of this weekend with him than waste even a minute of it with anyone else.
“I didn’t ask for his phone number,” I say at last.
West’s shoulders relax marginally. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
I wave the napkin in the air. “I left something at the bar, and this employee has it.”
“That’s it?” He eyes me skeptically.
“That’s it.”
He presses his lips into a thin line and lets the subject drop.
The rain is coming down in sheets as West pulls into the driveway of the address Evie sent. “I’ll be back in two minutes,” I say.
Evie’s mom answers the door and hands me the book. I shove it in my bag and run to the car. “Let’s go,” I say as I shut the door behind me and buckle in.
West is pulling his sweater over his head, revealing a white button-up stretched tight across his chest, and I’m momentarily stunned by the movement. He hands it to me. “You look cold.”
“Thank you.” I pull it on and wait. “You ready?”
The car is still in park, and West is in no hurry. “As soon as you tell me why we’re here.”
“What? No.”
“I drove you all the way out here. I want to know why we made the trip.”
“Are you serious?”
He turns the car off and pockets the keys. “I’ve got time.”
“Ugh, you’re annoying. And this forfeits your right to lunch, by the way.” I unzip my bag and retrieve my signed copy of Drought. “It’s your book, okay? Can we go now?” My hair drips water on the pages. As a booklover, it pains me. As someone who wants to get under West’s skin, I let it happen.
Lightning flashes over the nearest mountain peak.
He starts the car, and we pull onto an empty road, the rain making it hard to see more than a few feet ahead of us. “You’ve got to help me out, Mars,” he says quietly.
I swallow heavily. “With what?”
His eyes fall to the book grasped tightly in my fingers, and I know I’ve been caught. If he asks why I care so much about it, I’ll have no defense.
I glance up as a coyote darts in front of the car. “Look out!”
West swerves. The car lurches off the road and spins into a ditch.