Chapter 34
Blair
It started with an email.
Just a plain subject line, “Your Book Release – Final Shipment Confirmation” , but the second I read it, my vision blurred and the mug in my hand clattered to the floor.
I stared at the screen, heart thudding.
It was happening.
My book is being published.
Not just eBooks or preorders. Printed. Shipped. Real.
A real book with my name on the spine, in boxes on their way to Wisteria Creek, to be shelved alongside the paperbacks that had raised me.
I laughed. I cried. Then I bent down, picked up the mug, which had miraculously survived the fall, and set it on the counter with shaking hands.
Then I grabbed my phone.
Me:
It’s happening.
Greyson:
What’s happening?
Me:
THE BOOK. The shipment’s confirmed. I’m getting copies sent to Delilah’s and the house next week.
Greyson:
I’m locking up early. We’re celebrating.
Me:
You’re not serious.
Greyson:
Champagne’s already in the fridge, Bee.
Delilah nearly knocked me over when I showed up at the bookstore with the news.
“Oh, sweet girl,” she said, enveloping me in one of her perfumed, book-dusty hugs. “I’ve got your name written down in the back of that register next to all the authors who started here.”
I blinked at her. “You do?”
“Of course I do. I knew you had it in you since the first time you sat between those shelves and read five chapters aloud to the stuffed dragon in the corner.”
I laughed. “I think that dragon gave me my first bad review.”
Delilah waved me off and wiped her eyes. “You tell your publisher I want fifteen signed copies minimum. Front table display. And I’m putting it under Staff Favorites even if I’m the only staff.”
It was surreal. To stand in the bookstore where I once dreamed of getting published. Where I used to scribble poems on napkins and hide them between the shelves like secrets.
Now my name would be on the shelf.
My story.
My voice.
Greyson didn’t let me get out of the car without blindfolding me.
“I swear Grey, if this is another picnic in the orchard, ”
“Trust me,” he said, helping and guiding me step by step. “It’s not food-related. This time.”
When he took the blindfold off, we were standing in the bar, but the lights were dim, and hanging from the rafters were twenty tiny string lights clipped with Polaroids of me writing, of our dates, of early pages of my manuscript, of that first night I let him read Chapter One.
On the bar itself was a cake.
In icing, it read:
“A Second Chance” – Coming Soon to a Shelf Near You”
I blinked hard.
“You did this?”
He shrugged. “Just a little something for my favorite author.”
“I can’t believe it.”
He stepped in close. “Believe it. This town is about to know what the rest of us already do, that you’re the real damn deal.”
Later that night, I lay beside him in bed, listening to the late October breeze rattle the trees outside the window. I held the proof copy of my book in my hands, still too stunned to flip through it again.
He traced his fingers along my bare arm. “Are you proud of yourself yet?”
I turned toward him. “I think I’m getting there.”
And I was.
Because for the first time in my life, I wasn’t waiting to be chosen. I had chosen myself.
And the world was finally listening.