Chapter 33
NORA
Setting a Trap
Work is the only distraction I have these days.
I’m shelving returns in the nonfiction section, my cart half-full, when I pause and just… stand there. One hand on a spine labeled World Myths and Legends, the other resting on my barely-there bump. The silence feels thicker than usual.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I blink and go back to shelving. Keep moving. That’s the trick, right? Stay busy. Stay upright.
There’s a cart to finish, emails to answer, overdue notices to process, a local author event to prep. I’ve got things to do. Tasks to hide inside.
Still, my mind drifts.
To Max.
To Melody, curled at the end of his bed, probably shedding all over his pillow. I wonder if she still naps on that stack of sheet music. I wonder if she ever looks for me.
To DeShawn’s relentless playlist curation. Annie’s Slayer-meets-glitter energy. Lucas’s deadpan sarcasm during 4 a.m. diner stops.
To the feeling of being part of something.
Out there, on tour, everything had rhythm—unpredictable, yes, but electric. Here, the rhythm is slow. Predictable. Safe.
And lonely.
I miss them. I miss him. Even though I shouldn’t.
Even though he made it perfectly clear I don’t belong anymore.
I swallow that thought and move to the next shelf. One book at a time. That’s all I can do.
A child giggles in the story corner. Ms. Clara is reading Where the Wild Things Are, her voice climbing into a growl as she acts out the wild rumpus.
I smile faintly and pretend my throat isn’t tight.
The ache swells, low and constant, like background music I can’t turn off. I don’t even know what I’m grieving—him, us, the version of myself I started to become when I was with him.
Maybe all of it.
I press a palm to my stomach, close my eyes for a beat, and nod to no one in particular.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Keep going.”
At least I have my evening with Emily to look forward to. She’s been my rock through all of this—calling me every day to make sure I’ve eaten, and texting me cat videos to cheer me up.
And so when I’m back at home and I hear a knock at the door, I already know who it is.
The knock is followed by the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock.
“I’m letting myself in,” Emily calls, voice muffled through the door. “And I swear to God, if you’re lying in the dark eating dry cereal again, I’m staging an intervention.”
I don’t answer. Mostly because… well, I am lying in the dark, though it’s leftover pasta this time. Cold. Straight from the container.
She pushes the door open with a grunt and enters, arms full—one paper bag of takeout, one tote bag slung over her shoulder, and the unmistakable scent of garlic naan trailing in her wake.
She stops cold in the entryway, surveying the scene like she’s walked into a crime show.
“Whoa,” she says. “You really let go.”
I groan, sitting up straighter on the couch and brushing off a napkin stuck to my sock. “It’s been a week. And I’ve been busy. Sort of.”
“Uh-huh.” She kicks aside a laundry pile and heads for the kitchen, dumping the bags on the counter. “This doesn’t say busy, Nora. This says post-apocalyptic nesting. Did you bathe this week?”
“Probably.”
Emily doesn’t waste time. She starts cleaning like she’s on a mission—throwing laundry into a basket, stacking mugs, scrubbing a suspicious ring off the coffee table. I try to protest, but she’s already found my sponge and is muttering about antibacterial spray like a woman possessed.
“I was going to do that,” I mumble.
“You were going to ignore it until the dust bunnies formed a militia,” she shoots back. “Sit. Eat. You look like you’ve been living on stress hormones and peppermint tea.”
She brings me a takeout box and chopsticks and finally plops down next to me, grabbing a dumpling for herself like she earned it. Which, honestly, she has.
For a while, we eat in silence. The kind only years of friendship can hold without strain.
Then she speaks.
“So.”
I brace myself.
“So… we finally need to talk about this, Nora. This has gone on long enough. And I can’t pretend my best friend didn’t just come back from an epic road trip with a rockstar, vanish into her own apartment, and resurface looking like a Victorian ghost who misplaced her corset?”
I laugh. Sort of. But it catches in my throat.
“I miss him,” I say finally.
Emily nods like she already knew. “Yeah.”
“I miss Melody. I miss Annie and Lucas and DeShawn. I miss the noise. The bus. The weird little routines.”
“You miss him,” she says gently.
I nod, eyes stinging. “He sent me away. And I still miss him.”
She reaches for my hand, warm and steady. “Did he tell you why?”
“No.” I shake my head, jaw tight. “He just… shut down. Said he doesn’t want to be with me. But he’ll support the baby. That’s it.”
Emily swears under her breath.
A beat passes. Then she leans her head against mine. “I hate that you’re hurting.”
“I hate that I still want him. That I keep hoping he’ll knock on the door and say it was all a mistake.”
Emily’s quiet for a moment. Then: “He would be the dumbest man alive to walk away from you. And I’ve met some contenders.”
I laugh again—this time a little more real.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I admit. “I just… I’m scared. And everything feels so heavy. And I hate crying in front of you while you’re eating chow mein.”
She grins. “Babe, I live for dramatic dumpling therapy.”
I lean into her. She wraps an arm around me and doesn’t let go.
Just then my phone starts buzzing on the coffee table.
I glance at it, but I’m too full and too emotionally wrung out to care. “Ignore it.”
Emily picks it up anyway. “Vivienne,” she announces, raising an eyebrow. “Should I answer?”
I shrug from the couch, face smushed into a pillow. “Sure. Can’t get worse.”
Emily swipes to accept. “This is Nora’s emotionally exhausted best friend speaking.”
There’s a pause. Emily’s face shifts from amused to alert in an instant. She sits straighter.
“Wait—slow down,” she says into the phone. “Vivienne, you’re on speaker.”
I sit up quickly, heart thudding. “What’s going on?”
Vivienne’s voice crackles through the line, edged with urgency. “Hey, Nora? You sitting down?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, already uneasy.
“It’s Jake. Jake Armstrong,” she says, her tone turning ice-cold. “He manipulated Max.”
I blink, stunned. “What are you talking about?”
“They had a meeting,” she continues. “Jake showed Max a screen recording from some old fan forum—posts supposedly written by you. Using your name and your library email. They made it look like you planned to meet Max, get pregnant… like it was all some scheme.”
My stomach drops out beneath me.
“What?”
“I’ve been digging,” she says. “And it’s total crap. The timestamps don’t make sense. The recovery email could’ve been spoofed—there’s no real verification. I even checked with a tech friend, and he thinks the whole forum could’ve been faked or scrubbed to plant the ‘evidence.’”
Emily swears under her breath. I can’t even speak.
“Jake used it to turn Max against you,” Vivienne says. “The second I heard about the forum, it felt off. So I started digging.”
Emily’s jaw tightens. “That absolute son of a—”
“But why?” I whisper.
Vivienne exhales. “Maybe it was revenge. His exclusive got tanked when you and Max got photographed in public.”
I close my eyes. My hands are shaking. Max thought I betrayed him—because someone made it look real.
It explains everything.
I’m confused. I’m furious. But more than anything… I’m relieved. Because now I know why he shut me out.
And for the first time, it’s a reason I can understand. One I can forgive.
“I need to see Max,” I say quietly. “He has no idea.”
“No,” Vivienne says firmly. “We need proof first.”
I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and clutch the phone tighter. Emily sits beside me, cross-legged on the couch, glaring into the middle distance like she’s plotting a murder—and honestly, I wouldn’t stop her.
She squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll fix this,” she says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Vivienne’s still on the line. “So. What do we do now?” she asks, her voice sharp with purpose. “Because I swear, if we let Jake get away with this—”
“We’re not,” Emily cuts in. “We’re going full spy movie on this bastard.”
A shaky laugh escapes me, more disbelief than humor. “I still can’t believe this is real. That someone would go that far.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Vivienne says. “Jake’s been shady for years. But this? This is a whole new level of manipulative.”
“So we trap him,” Emily says, eyes alight. “We set him up to admit it. On record.”
Vivienne hums in agreement. “I know where he’ll be. There’s a label networking event on Thursday. He won’t miss it—it’s where he does most of his slithering.”
Emily turns to me. “You’d have to be there.”
“Me?” I blink. “Why?”
“Because you’re the bait, babe. He won’t confess to me or Vivienne. But if you confront him—play dumb, act like you’re just trying to understand what happened—he might gloat. Guys like him can’t resist taking credit when they think they’ve won.”
Vivienne jumps in. “If you wear a wire—okay, not a literal wire, this isn’t the FBI—but something like a voice memo app or a discreet mic in your bag, we can catch him saying something incriminating.”
“He won’t expect me to fight back,” I say slowly. “He thinks I’m just the… the ‘groupie librarian.’”
“Exactly,” Emily says, fire in her voice. “Let him underestimate you.”
Silence falls for a moment. Then Vivienne says, “Can you do it, Nora?”
I stare down at my lap and I think of Max—his face when I told him I was pregnant, the way his eyes shuttered, the way his voice turned to ice. I think of everything Jake stole from us. And I square my shoulders.
“I can do it,” I say. “I will do it.”
Emily whoops beside me. Vivienne exhales, relieved. “I’ll text you the time and place. And I’ll have someone there in case things go sideways.”
“Thank you,” I murmur.
Emily grabs her phone. “I’m researching recording apps. Let’s ruin this asshole.”
And just like that, the grief inside me hardens into purpose.
***
The rooftop is a glittering blur of fairy lights, rooftop heaters, and too-slick smiles. Manhattan hums below us, but all I hear is the rush of blood in my ears.
Emily’s voice echoes in my memory: “Let him underestimate you.”
I’m wearing a dark green slip dress—chic but unthreatening. Hair down, makeup soft, a single gold pendant catching the light at my collarbone. The voice memo app on my phone is recording, tucked safely into the zipped inner pocket of my bag.
The Manhattan skyline glitters behind Jake Armstrong’s head like a crown he doesn’t deserve. He’s leaning against the rooftop bar, drink in hand, dressed like the smirking devil on the shoulder of every aspiring artist here.
He sees me before I’m ready.
“Well, well,” he says, lips curling around the rim of his glass. “Storm & Silence’s librarian mascot.”
I school my expression into something soft. Open. Vulnerable. “I was hoping we could talk.”
He chuckles, a sharp-edged sound that makes my skin crawl. “Let me guess. Max isn’t returning your calls, and you’re starting to panic?”
I force a small, anxious laugh. “I just want to understand. Something’s changed. He won’t tell me why.”
Jake drains the rest of his drink, sets the glass down with an exaggerated clink, and gestures for me to follow. We move to a quiet corner near the terrace wall, the city humming beneath us.
He doesn’t waste time.
“You’re being cut loose, sweetheart,” he says. “You never belonged in his world.”
My nails dig into my clutch. “I want to understand what happened.”
“Well, I suppose I can tell you,” he says, all fake camaraderie, like we’re co-conspirators.
“There were some very strategic posts on a little-known fan forum—posted under your name, of course. Someone showed them to your favorite rockstar. And who could be so clever and cruel to pull that off, you ask?” He taps a finger to his temple, mock-thinking. “Oh right. That was me.”
My throat tightens.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” Jake adds with a low chuckle. “It’s strictly business. Nothing personal. I actually like you. You seem sweet. Wholesome.”His gaze drags over me, slow and dismissive. “But I used what I had. Had to get back at your precious Max Donovan somehow.”
“So you faked the posts?” I whisper.
“I engineered them,” he corrects smoothly.
“Mocked up a few throwback posts, gave them a timestamp makeover, linked an old fan account to your precious little library email. It’s laughably easy if you know what to fake and who to leak it to.
People believe what confirms their worst instincts.
Especially when the guy’s already halfway convinced he’s being played. ”
I stare. “You wanted him to think I planned this?”
“Oh, I didn’t just want it,” he says, voice low and laced with smug pride.
“I made sure he believed it. His father saw you buying that pregnancy test and reached out—apparently, he’s got his own axe to grind.
The plan to fake the posts? All his idea.
Who knew Lawrence Westwood had such a nasty streak?
Not me. But that was my golden ticket. All I had to do was spin the story. And Max? He bought every word.”
He leans in, breath heavy with whiskey. “And now he thinks you’re just another schemer trying to trap him with a baby.”
I can barely speak. “You destroyed everything.”
He shrugs, utterly unbothered. “Maybe for you. But someone always has to suffer. You were collateral damage. Better you than me.”
I say nothing.
He mistakes my silence for defeat.
Jake straightens, brushing invisible lint from his lapel. “No one’s going to believe you, Nora. You’re a nobody. And trust me—Max is done with you.”
I tilt my head.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I say softly.
And then I reach into my bag, press stop on the voice memo app.
Jake freezes.
“What the hell was that?”
I let him see the screen. Red recording bar. Time stamp ticking.
“That,” I say, tucking my phone away, “was you confessing to everything.”
His face shifts—from smug to stunned to venomous.
“You bitch,” he hisses. “You set me up.”
“No,” I say evenly. “I gave you rope. You tied your own noose.”
And with that, I walk away.
My spine is steel, my pulse thunder, and in my pocket?
I’m holding the key to getting everything back.
Max. My reputation. My life.
Because the real story’s about to begin.
And this time, I’m the one writing it.