CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The reading is well underway when I drag myself into Bramble Books and slump into one of the last available seats.
I can barely see Anna from where I sit and can’t bring myself to listen to her words, which is just as well.
It’s surreal enough just to be in the same room with her after all this time.
The crowd bursts into applause, and I sit in numb silence while everyone files up to get their books signed.
But the longer I sit, the more I feel myself breaking.
Like something frozen inside me is splintering and cracking into a choppy sea of emotion.
Heartache. Helplessness. Exhaustion.
And as she bids the last of her fans farewell and I finally see her face-to-face, anger boils to the top.
She doesn’t notice me at first. She seems contented, this little redheaded woman who ruined my life.
Smiling serenely, gathering up copies of her romance novels as if she hasn’t been quietly dragging Grant and me through hell for the past month.
It fills me with a bitterness that finally propels me from my seat.
“Hey,” I bark at her, barreling down the aisle to where she sits at her table. She looks up in surprise.
“I’m Roxie Mitchell,” I bite out, “and I’d like a word.”
She stares at me in silent shock, probably assessing the quickest way to alert security about the deluded stalker fan standing before her.
“Fuuuuuck me,” she finally breathes. Then, without so much as blinking, she says, “Yes, you are. And I expect you would.”
· · ·
I’M AS SHOCKED as she is now, and she’s still waiting for me to speak, so we’re locked in a stupefied stare-down across the table.
“What?” I manage. “You … know who I am?”
“Well, I should hope so,” she says. “I wrote you. I’d know you anywhere. My question is, how are you standing in front of me in a real-life bookshop right now?”
How indeed. “You’re not going to believe me,” I say. “It … involves magic.” Even now, weeks into this impossible, supernatural experience, that feels ludicrous to say.
She arches a brow. “I’m a romance author. If anyone believes in magic, it’s me.”
So, with a bracing breath, I tell her how it happened. I tell her how I’ve always loved her books and secretly wished I could live in them. How I met the Gifter and how that wish became not so secret and a little too come-true.
“Oh, dear,” she says, her bangles clinking together as she leans back and crosses her arms. “So when you first met Jack …”
“I thought it was a meet-cute,” I say, smarting at the memory. “In a rom-com.”
She grimaces. “Ouch. I’m sorry.”
It’s genuine, the way she says it. Suddenly, I see her for what she really is: not a sadist but a dreamer with a big imagination. A storyteller. And as much as it hurts—or maybe because it hurts so much—I have to admit she told a good one.
All at once, my remaining hostility fizzles out.
“Look,” I sigh. “I really only came here to ask you one thing. I need you to not write about me anymore. It’s been …” I fight to keep my voice even, struggling against the knot in my throat. “It’s been really hard. And I need to go back to my own life. My real life.”
She nods at me, her mouth lifting in a compassionate smile.
“Consider it done.” She leans in conspiratorially and adds, “I’m actually planning on scrapping the whole thing.
I got a bit ahead of myself in terms of publicity, but in the end, the book wasn’t really me.
Just needed to get it out of my system, I think. ”
I blink at her, not sure how to feel. Just like that, our story will never be told. I’ll never get to read it.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I already know it by heart.
“Well … good, then,” I say. “I’m glad you got it out.”
She gives me a deep nod, almost a bow. I feel hollow. I have nothing more to say, and I’m very ready to not have Anna Matthews looming over my life anymore. So I turn to leave, hoping that someday I’ll be able to get the story and all its painful details out of my system just like she did.
And simultaneously dreading the day I no longer feel its hold on me, when it fades away like the memory of a dream.
With a knife twist in my heart, I remember something and stop.
“Grant says thank you, by the way,” I say over my shoulder.
I make it to the door, about to step back into my actual life, when I hear her voice.
“Who’s Grant?”