CHAPTER FIFTEEN – ADVICE FROM A FRIEND
Kat
If you put a stethoscope to my chest right now, you’d hear the sound of hummingbird wings and a lit fuse.
I’m pacing my room in six-foot intervals, phone jammed to my ear, the floor creaking beneath every bare step.
There’s a heap of dirty laundry on one side, a litter of highlighters and ripped sticky notes on the other, and in the middle, the hardcover copy of Angel’s Share like a live grenade on my pillow.
Simone is on the line, voice tinny with the long echo of distance, or maybe just the weight of everything I’m about to confess.
“Sim, it’s psycho,” I hiss, eyes fixed on the book. “He wrote the whole damn thing, but with, like, actual depictions of our sex scenes. The names are changed, sure, but it’s me. It’s literally me, down to the crooked tooth and the way I trip on words when I’m nervous.”
There’s a pause as she chews this over, probably with her favorite mechanical pencil wedged between her teeth. “Wait, are you telling me it’s word-for-word your life?”
I flop onto the bed, phone still glued to my cheek, and grab the book one-handed. The weight of it is ridiculous—like a black box for a crashed plane, every secret encoded in dense, perfect ink.
“It’s everything,” I say, throat dry. “Talon’s got the part where I showed up at the cabin, and how we met each other.
But it’s not just that. He’s also got the first role-play, the one where I wore the plaid skirt and pretended to be his student.
It’s on page twenty-six. I nearly swallowed my tongue reading it. ”
Simone giggles. “That’s iconic. OMG, so dirty. Did you say it’s online yet? Can I get a Kindle version?”
I shake my head.
“No, I picked up an actual hardback because it just came out.”
“Okay, okay, read it to me then,” she begs. “This is gonna be good.”
My face goes instantly hot. “No way! Are you kidding?”
“Kat. You can’t call me at ten p.m. on a school night and not give me the filth. Give me the smut or hang up.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, flip to a steamy part, and scan for the most mortifying lines.
“Okay,” I say, deadpan. “He calls her ‘Angel’ instead of Kitten, but otherwise: ‘Angel sat across from him, legs pressed tight, her skirt rucked so high he could see the blue stripe of her panties. He made her confess to every dirty thought, every time she touched herself thinking about him. Then he made her kneel, and she did, trembling, waiting for permission to touch him.’”
There’s a silence. I can hear Simone’s breath, a little shallow.
She recovers first. “Wow. You guys did this stuff? Hot damn.”
I skip ahead, scanning for the next scene.
“In this version, he’s dominant, bordering on cruel.
He tells her, ‘You think you’re special, but I could break you with one hand.
Is that what you want, Angel? To see what I do to good girls who can’t obey simple rules? ’ Then he puts her over his knee and…”
I break off, suddenly unable to say it out loud.
“Is this, like, sexy to you?” Simone asks hesitantly. “Or do you want to throw the book in a river?”
“Both,” I admit, slumping back onto the pillow. “I hate that he gets it so right. Yet it’s so wrong that he knows me this well! I want to set the book on fire, but also I want to crawl inside and live there for a while.”
I can hear my buddy scribbling. “Kat, babe, you know I love you, but take this in the nicest way possible when I say that we, as women, aren’t always so unique.
Men write about women all the time. You probably just had a super-typical reaction to the alpha-male thing, and now you’re embarrassed he noticed. It’s normal.”
“Yes,” I say, voice cracking. “Talon noticed everything about me. Stuff I never said out loud. Stuff I didn’t even know I wanted.”
“Like what?” Simone asks, softer now.
I crack open the book again. My hands shake.
“In the stepdad role-play, he writes about her wanting to be owned,” I say, words rushing now. “Not just her innocence taken, but claimed, ruined, like she’d never be clean again unless he decided she was. It’s so wrong, Sim, but reading it is like—”
“Like he’s in the room with you,” she says. “Like he’s making you say it, even now.”
I laugh, but it comes out as a shudder. “Yeah.”
The silence stretches. I picture Simone, pen behind her ear, hunched over her laptop in her tiny, cramped apartment, the window open to the neon-lit night.
“You said there was a happy ending,” my buddy prompts. “What does he do in the book that he didn’t do in real life?”
I open to the last chapter, lips moving as I read.
“He comes after her at the end,” I whisper. “He runs out in the rain, and he apologizes, like, three times. He begs her to come back, tells her he’ll never write again if she won’t forgive him. He says, ‘I was lost until you let me ruin you, Angel. Please let me ruin you again.’”
Simone lets out a low whistle. “And in real life…?”
I picture the day I left. The silence, the set jaw, the way Talon let me go without a word.
“He just watched me leave,” I say. “Didn’t even call a cab. Didn’t speak a word. It was like I never existed, and that he didn’t care.”
There’s a moment where neither of us says anything. The book is heavy in my lap, but lighter than the ache in my chest.
“Simone, I think he wrote this whole thing just to toy with me,” I say, voice wobbling. “Like, as revenge for not being what he wanted.”
“No, that’s not true,” she says, but there’s no meanness. “It’s the opposite, babe. Talon McKnight wrote it because he couldn’t not. The man’s obsessed with you.”
“That’s not healthy,” I say, but even I can hear the hope hiding under my sarcasm.
“Kat, you’re never going to be normal. None of us are. But if a man writes you as the main character in his bestselling romance novel, the least you can do is go to his reading and see what he has to say.”
I snort. “Or I could egg his car.”
“Or you could wear the plaid skirt again and see if he combusts on sight.”
I flush. “It doesn’t even fit me, not really. It never did.”
“Liar. Put it on right now.”
“I’m not putting it on at midnight,” I say, but my hand is already digging through the closet, searching for the tartan fabric. I find it, a little wrinkled, and immediately put it down again, my heart pounding with sexy memories.
“Simone. He’s coming here. To Century Pages. That’s two blocks away.”
“So go,” she urges, like it’s obvious. “Go and confront him. Worst case, you get closure. Best case, you reconcile and have a sweet story to share with your future grandkids.”
I laugh, but the noise comes out raw and wanting. “I don’t think I could even face Talon at this point.”
“You survived the woods. You can survive a book signing.”
I hesitate, fingers worrying the hem of the skirt. The idea of seeing him again is like an electrical current up my spine.
“Sim, what if it’s a trap? What if he’s just there to gloat and make fun of me”
“Then you tell him to suck your clit and walk away like a legend,” she says in a smart tone.
I giggle and picture it. I like the image, a lot.
“Fine,” I say, finally. “I’ll go.”
“That’s my girl,” Simone says. “And Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“If you want me to come with, I will. Just say the word.”
I smile, real this time. “I’m okay, but thanks, girlfriend. You’re the best.”
“Damn right,” she says. “Now put on the skirt. Sleep in it. Let it soak up all your sexy energy, and then go see him next week!”
“Will do!”
I giggle with the goodbye, hang up, and collapse backwards, the book pressed to my heart, the plaid skirt bunched under my knees. I stare at the ceiling, listening to my heartbeat, wondering if next Tuesday will bring the end of the story, or just another chapter.
Either way, I’m going to write my own lines from now on.
The next morning, I wake with the book pressed against my sternum like a loaded weapon.
My phone is underneath it, lighting up my clavicle with a series of pings from Simone: YOU DREAM OF THE PLAID?
and then, in quick succession, DON’T FORGET TO brING PROTECTION (FOR YOUR HEART), followed by the more on-brand, IF HE DOESN’T GROVEL I WILL FIGHT HIM IN THE PARKING LOT.
I text back a line of laugh-cry emojis, then sit up, rubbing sleep out of my eyes.
Sunlight cuts a hard angle through my curtains, highlighting the dirty tea mug and last night’s stress-chewed pen caps.
I don’t want to look at my own reflection, but I do anyway, bracing myself for the ghost of the girl who left the cabin months ago.
She’s still here, blonde hair messy, eyes bloodshot but sharper than ever. I smile at her, or maybe snarl, and she stares back like she’s been waiting for this showdown.
I thumb the book open to the first page, reread the dedication that’s been gnawing at the inside of my head:
For the muse who showed me what real passion feels like.
There’s no name. Not even an initial. It could be for anyone, or it could be for me, but the word “muse” punches right through my ribcage and grabs my heart and squeezes it.
It was the word he used the first week, when I recited his own lines back at him during dinner.
“You’re a natural, Kat. A born muse, whether you want to be or not. ”
I can almost hear Simone’s voice of reason: “Think about it, Kat. This guy writes books for a living. Maybe putting feelings into words face-to-face isn’t his strong suit. Maybe he had to write a book to speak the truth.”
It would be easy to dismiss this as more of Simone’s relentless optimism, her refusal to believe anyone could be as cold as I made Talon sound.
But now, tracing my finger along the words, I realize I’ve never met a man less capable of a normal, healthy apology.
Not even “Sorry” in a text, not even a “My bad” in passing.
Talon once told me the only time his father ever said he was proud of him was when he won an award for a short story contest in middle school—and the old man ruined the moment by saying, “Imagine if you put this effort into something that matters.”
So, what if this—this book, this raw, beautiful monument to our relationship—was the only way Talon could apologize for what he’d done?
My brain does a weird, backward somersault through every line he wrote.
The romantic intimacy. The steamy sex. The way he let the heroine run away.
The way, in the end, his stand-in character chases her down, begs her forgiveness, and finally says the words I never got in person.
Was it a fantasy, or was it a practice run for something real?
I text Simone:
What if you’re right?
She fires back instantly: Ofc I am. Remember, you should dress in the plaid skirt for the reading. Show him what he’s missing girlfriend!
I giggle, sliding off the bed and hunting through my closet for anything that doesn’t scream “moony woman wearing her heart on her sleeve.” Simone’s pep talk has had a dangerous effect—suddenly, I want to see Talon.
Not to forgive, maybe not even to confront, but to look into those blue eyes and see if there’s anything left of the man who made me believe I could be worth obsessing over.
Halfway through brushing my teeth, I remember how odd it is that Talon’s book tour would stop at Century College of all places.
We’re not exactly Palo Alto or Cambridge, and the local bookstore is known more for hosting burgeoning poets and writers who have yet to get their careers off the ground, and not blockbuster authors with bestsellers on their resumes.
Surely, with his sales, Talon could fill a real auditorium in New York, or San Francisco, or anywhere there’s a thriving literary scene.
So why this small campus? Why now?
Maybe the answer is in the dedication, or maybe it’s in the way his main character never quite gives up on “Angel,” even after she leaves.
Maybe it’s just another trick, another plot device to put me off guard.
I can’t tell. But the more I think about it, the more I want to believe this is the alpha male’s way of reaching for something better than an ending where I disappear and he just keeps writing murder mysteries.
My stomach knots at the thought. I run my finger over the raised gold of his name on the dust jacket and feel my thighs clench, heat sparking from the memory of his hands, his teeth, the hungry way he used to say “Kitten” as if it meant more than any real name could.
I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready. But I’m going.
I text Simone: Next Tuesday. I’ll be there.
She sends back a GIF of Buffy arming herself for battle, then a string of heart emojis.
By the time I leave for class, I have the book in my bag and a plan in my head: go to the reading, sit in the back, and watch Talon try to charm a room full of strangers.
I’ll keep my coat on, keep my hands in my lap, and if he even thinks about acting like the Talon from the cabin, I’ll walk out and never look back.
Unless, of course, he looks at me and says something real.
I laugh at myself, but it’s the kind of laugh that tastes like hope.
It’s stupid. It’s dangerous. But for the first time in months, it feels like my story isn’t over.
The week passes in a haze of assignments, coffee, and obsessive re-reading.
I highlight passages. I scribble in the margins.
I write my own lines—rebuttals, retorts, the things I wish I’d said when we were together.
I even dream about Talon, some nights: sometimes he’s chasing me, sometimes he’s waiting for me, but always, always, he calls me “Kitten.”
The night of the reading, I dress in black tights and a clingy top, hair up in a messy bun. I wear the skirt. Fuck it. I look like the version of me he wrote, except stronger, sharper, as if I’m the one who gets to author the ending this time.
I pause at the entrance to the bookstore, heart hammering. I’m a little late, but it’s okay. I walk into the store, book clutched tight, heart banging around my ribs like a caged thing, and scan the crowd for Talon’s face.
I don’t see him yet.
But I know he’ll see me.
And when he does, maybe—just maybe—he’ll finally know how the real story is supposed to end.