CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – SECOND CHANCES
Kat
The night air bites at my skin as soon as I burst from the bookstore.
I should feel free, heroic, leaving Talon behind like the closing shot of a movie.
Instead, I stagger around the corner, then plant my hands on my knees and try to breathe deeply.
The sidewalk is slick with rain, every lamp-lit puddle reflecting the universe back at me with a shudder.
My heart doesn’t slow; if anything, it ratchets up, like a squirrel loose in my ribcage.
I press a fist to my mouth and walk. Just walk, fast, like someone might be chasing me even though the only person who ever truly chased me is still in Century Pages, probably charming the staff with his devastating smile and dark good looks.
I want to turn around and run back to him.
I want to throw myself in Talon’s arms and cry, granting him my forgiveness.
But I’m still conflicted because of all the revelations, and instead, I power-walk home, blowing past the circle of vape kids on the corner, the Uber Eats bikes, the drunk girls on the curb applying emergency mascara.
I close my eyes and replay every moment of the conversation.
The way Talon never blinked when he told me I was one of many women.
The way he admitted that he’s roleplayed our scenes with other women before.
The way he handed me a royalty contract with a hesitant look on his face.
The incredible fifty percent split, which is bound to amount to millions.
I should feel nothing but disgust. Instead, the back of my neck burns with the memory of his mouth, his hands, the way he could wreck me with his words and a look.
This is the problem with men like Talon: even when you hate them, they live in your blood.
I want to scrub him out, but I know it won’t work.
I stay up until three, just pacing the perimeter of my tiny studio, occasionally pausing to grab a handful of trail mix or scroll through months of texts from Simone.
She’s the only one who knows even a fraction of what I’ve been through, but I can’t tell her about what happened tonight.
She’d either murder Talon or try to set me up with a rebound date within the hour. Neither is what I need.
What I need is someone who understands how this stuff works. Someone who knows the difference between real pain and performance, between confession and manipulation. Someone who won’t pat my head and say “it’ll be okay,” but will actually tell me what I should do.
By four a.m., the answer is obvious. I stare up at the cracked ceiling, feeling it loom closer every minute, and wait for daylight.
Professor Malcolm Avery’s office is on the third floor of the old humanities building—a place that smells like dust and pipe tobacco and faint, irrepressible mildew.
The hallway is a maze, walls papered with flyers for dead authors and lost cats, and by the time I reach his door, my pulse is up again.
There’s a sign taped crookedly to the wood: OFFICE HOURS, KNOCK LOUD, I’M PROBABLY INSIDE.
I rap once, twice, then push in.
Inside is a planet with its own gravity: every inch of space crammed with books, stacked on shelves and chairs and in weird, unstable towers on the floor.
There’s a grandfather clock in the corner, a dead orchid on the sill, a taxidermied owl perched on a reading lamp.
Professor Avery sits behind a desk that looks like it’s losing the battle, with one leg propped up on a box and a mug of black coffee wedged between two printouts.
He’s wearing a faded sweater and jeans, the professor look dialed down to “retired lighthouse keeper.”
He peers over his wire-rimmed glasses, blinks, and then—surprisingly—smiles. “Katherine Vreeland. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I try to smile back, but it feels more like a grimace. “Hi, Dr. Avery. I hope it’s okay to drop in. I know you’re slammed.”
“Nonsense,” he says, gesturing to the only open chair, which is covered in a sheepskin and two library books. He sweeps them to the floor without looking. “You’re a welcome distraction from grant applications and the tyranny of social media. Sit. Please.”
I sit, fold my hands in my lap to hide the tremor. “I, um, have something personal I need to talk about. Not for a grade or anything. Just advice, I guess.”
The old man leans back, steepling his hands in the universal sign of contemplation. “All the best conversations begin with ‘not for a grade,’” he says, then waits.
I take a breath. “It’s about a relationship. Not a normal one. There was a lot of deception. I got tricked into something I thought was real, but it turns out it was all an act. Worse, the guy wrote a whole book about it and made it look like a love story. Except it wasn’t. Not for me, at least.”
Avery doesn’t flinch. If anything, he blinks owlishly.
“An act,” he says in a slow tone. “So, you’re the character. He’s the author. What’s your role now?”
I let the words settle, trying to pick them apart. “I don’t know. I think that’s the problem.”
He drums his fingers on the desk, then takes a deliberate sip of coffee. “Let me hazard a guess. Your main character did something inexcusable, but has since presented a dramatic confession, complete with remorse and perhaps an offer of restitution?”
My mouth drops open. “How did you know?”
“Because, Ms. Vreeland, I have been teaching undergrads for thirty years. Also, I read books for a living. The only thing rarer than an original sin is an original apology.”
That lands harder than I expect. I glance at the dead orchid, then back at him. “Yes, but how do you know if the remorse is real? Or if it’s just another performance?”
Avery’s lips quirk, just a hint. “Ah. Now we’re talking narrative theory.” He stands, shuffles over to a shelf, and pulls down a battered volume. “Do you know what distinguishes a confessional narrator from a manipulator?”
I shake my head, but he keeps going.
“A confessor is transformed by their admission. A manipulator uses the confession itself as the next move in the game.”
He sits back down, sliding the book between us like a chess piece. “So. Has he changed? Or is he just escalating the stakes?”
I want to say I don’t know. But I do. The problem is that, even in his honesty, Talon was still running the show. “He said he wrote the book for me. That he wanted to make it right. But I don’t know if he can change, or even if he wants to. That’s how confused I am.”
Avery shrugs, not unkindly. “Few people change all the way. Most of us just learn to hide our worst impulses better. Or to redirect them into something productive, if we’re lucky.”
The old man leans in, voice quieter now. “But the question isn’t whether your protagonist can change. It’s whether you can trust yourself not to be changed by him.”
My brain shorts out for a second, and I just stare at the mug. The world seems to slow, the silence thickening.
Avery stands again, takes a lap around the desk, and sits on the edge, close enough that I can see the stain on his sweater from what was probably a disastrous soup incident.
“Katherine. You are not the first student to be caught in someone else’s story. I doubt you’ll be the last. But what you get to decide is whether you want to keep living in his version of the tale, or if you’re ready to start drafting your own. Even if it means writing him out of it.”
I nod, once, then again, harder this time. “Thank you. That helps. I mean, it doesn’t help, but it does sort of.”
Avery grins, full-on this time. “That’s the paradox of wisdom. It rarely provides comfort, or even clarity because human nature isn’t straightforward. We’re all complex, tangled people.”
We’re quiet for a minute. I think he’s about to go back to his emails, but then he surprises me.
“Do you want to borrow this?” he asks, nudging a battered volume toward me. “It’s all about self-invention. You might find some kinship there.”
I take the book, the spine warm from his hands. I read the title: The Ethics of the Self.
“Thanks,” I say. “Seriously. This means a lot.”
He nods, and in that moment he looks less like a philosopher and more like a regular old human, tired and soft and just doing his best.
As I stand to leave, he adds, “Ms. Vreeland?”
I pause, book clutched to my chest.
“If the protagonist really is transformed, he’ll be willing to walk away, too. Even if it hurts.”
I nod, throat tight, and slip out the door.
Was Talon ready to walk away? It seems like it.
He gave me the profit share papers, and then watched as I took off.
He didn’t try to stop me. But what if he’s just putting on an act?
What if this was all a means to an end? What end does he want, anyways?
He says he wants to be with me, but how do I know he’s being genuine and honest?
The hallway feels different on the way out—still a maze, but now it’s one I can navigate.
I step out into the spring air, blinking hard. I don’t have answers. But for the first time in months, I have better questions.
And that feels like a start.
My apartment is a disaster zone of ambition: three legal pads of half-baked notes on the coffee table, a mug with a film of curdled almond milk, pens leaking blue ink onto the futon, and, dead center, the copy of Angel’s Share with its jacket already coming apart at the corners.
I eye it the way you’d eye a box of old love letters from an ex—the kind you want to burn, but can’t stop reading.
Tonight’s plan is self-torture as self-care: I will read the book again, this time as a scholar, not a protagonist. I have my highlighters—yellow for “wow, that hurts,” blue for “wait, is this real?”—and a bag of off-brand Oreos from the bodega.
I slide into my fluffiest socks and tangle up in a thrift store afghan.
My laptop is closed, email notifications off, only the gentle buzz of my phone on silent.