Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
Britton
Night has fallen down on me, time moving at a snail’s pace since I drove away from the Kings compound.
As I drive down the lamp lit highway, it’s with tears in my eyes.
For the first time, I regret having to leave a place and people behind.
I could’ve made Canton, Texas home if I hadn’t let my fears override my emotions.
“I could’ve had a home,” I whisper to the empty car. Other than my meager possessions, which fit into two suitcases and one cardboard box, I’m alone.
Depressingly so.
The way I typically like it, so why am I having one helluva time not looking in my rearview mirror? Every underpass I drive over, tears at my heartstrings.
“I can’t go back. Not now. Not ever.” My mind hisses that I can, but I know better after what I’ve done. There’s no turning back, especially since I’m sure that by now, LoneStar has read my letter full of admissions.
Up until now, I’ve kept my radio off, the only sound being the voice in my head full of incrimination. My despair is palpable, I can taste it on my tongue making me want to gag. As much as I wish I could, you can’t change your past. Even if you regret it. A sad fact but a true one.
All you can do is move forward even when you want to go backward.
My vision becomes blinded by the unshed tears so I decide it’s time to pull over and bunker down for the night.
I need to get a grip on myself so that I can finish my trip and figure out where my next destination will be.
I see the illuminated sign for a well-known chain of motels and navigate my car that way.
I know they’re affordable, and since I’m on a budget, I don’t hesitate to take the exit and shortly after, pull into their lot, grab my luggage and purse, and head through the swooshing doors.
Robotically, I check in, head up the elevator to the third floor, tap the keycard to the pad, and enter the room.
It’s musty, humid, and since there’s no way for me to air it out, I walk over to the air conditioner and turn it on.
My nose wrinkles when the odor coming out of it is worse than the room itself so I pull out my bottle of body spray I carry around in my purse and walk around the room, spritzing it.
“I hope this isn’t an omen to how my getaway is going to be,” I mumble to myself.
If I had known it was only going to get worse from there, I would’ve headed back with my tail tucked between my legs, begging for forgiveness.
Each place I stop to bed down in, smells the same.
Every time I stop and pump gas, I hear the sound cha-ching float through my mind as my bank account dwindles due to the rising price per gallon the further south I go.
I end up in West Texas, close to El Paso but not quite inside of the town itself.
As I traverse through this nondescript town, I notice the charm of it.
Leaning over my steering wheel, I take it all in.
I turn down a road and come across a long-term stay group of cabins.
I sigh in relief because here, I can buckle down and get some work done to replenish my funds.
Not many people know this about me outside of Jersey, but I’m an independent author.
I write and distribute my own books to various retailers, penning fictional romances based in fictional towns, the smaller the town, the better.
My books are contemporary based with a flair for the dramatics.
Other woman drama, check.
Bad boys obsessed with the good girls, double check.
I live in a make-believe world where everyone finds peace with their soulmate, even if it’s a struggle in the beginning, they do eventually get there.
As I dove into that career, I developed a pseudonym so my parents didn’t learn of my success—at least that’s the reason for keeping it nowadays as my publishing name.
In the beginning, it was because I didn’t want them to find me.
To learn about what I’m doing with my life.
Refusing to leave any breadcrumbs for them to follow.
Not wanting them involved in any aspect of my life, I kept what I do a secret.
They’re toxic, venomous people who’ve already poisoned me, and I am bearing the mental and emotional scars that prove it.
They’re the reason I’m so guarded and impassionate, unless I’m on my laptop creating scenarios—angsty ones, and love interests.
I live vicariously through my characters.
Give them the life I wish I could have for myself.
Like all girls who’ve had a shit life, I wish I had a fairy godmother that could bibbidi, bobbidi, boo me and abolish all of my childhood traumas.
But this is reality, not a fantastical storyline with a fantastical pixie who’ll wave her wand adding a sprinkle of sparkles around me, magically whisking away my troubles.
But wouldn’t that be awesome if it could happen?
That thought has a story coming to life in my head.
Maybe I need to step out of the small town contemporary genre I’m known for and use my imagination for a more supernatural one.
Something I’ll contemplate later after I wrap up my current manuscript that’s nearing the end. But that won’t happen unless I get my reluctant ass out of this car, rent a cabin for the unforeseeable future, and whip out my laptop.
Pulling down my visor, I wrinkle my nose and scold my mirror image, “Don’t put this off, Britton. You’ve made your bed and it’s high time you laid in it.”
I don’t remember a single word I just wrote.
All I know is that I unpacked my belongings into the closet and dresser, tugged my laptop bag out on the back porch and began typing.
My mind is a boggled mess, but the fact that the words ‘the end’ are staring back at me, I decide to go ahead and submit it to my editor and let her call me out if it’s shit.
And she will, I have no doubts about that.
Carolina is not one to hold back, which is why I think we work well together and get along as good as we do.
Neither one of us is capable of holding our tongues when it comes to a topic we’re passionate about.
We argue like an old married couple when we go over her edits.
She’s a third person lover, and I’m not. I don’t like stories narrated to me, I want to be in the moment with the hero or heroine. I want to feel what they are, experience the things they are right alongside of them.
She argues that certain things need to be memories while I don’t.
She likes everything tied up in the same book with a shiny bow, I don’t—I like things to be drawn out.
Carolina thinks things need to be addressed in that person’s story, I’m not a fan of that theory.
If one of my women had horrid childhoods, escaping those things that’ve held a chokehold over her, such as physically attacking or confronting her tormenters, I don’t follow through with that. It’s damn tacky.
Why can’t her success be the fact that she’s living the high life while they’re still stuck in their hovel?
Why can’t her happiness be her revenge?
After all, that’s what those individuals were trying to prevent, right?
If I want my character’s happiness to be the ‘fuck you’ to those people, then that’s what I’m going to do.
She can hold both middle fingers up at the jackasses with her head held high while they drown in poverty.
If one of my readers thinks they can do better, then I encourage them to start their own journey and do things their way.
That’s the best retribution one can have, at least, that’s my personal opinion and considering I’m the one that spends hours a day on my laptop, it should be my decision.
Not that I really have one considering the characters often take over and go against the grain of what I had planned.
That’s why I’m what they call a panster. I don’t plot shit because it never goes the way I saw it in my head before I opened up a blank document on my screen. What I want shifts into what they want—it’s a real problem for creative authors.
Before shutting down after sending off the email to Carolina, I open up a tab and stare at my blank screen. “Should I?” I ask myself, as the thread of thought I had in my car begins to play out in my head.
I stare at my laptop for longer than I’m comfortable with until a title comes to me. A twisted take on one of the most famous, animated fairy tales ever shown on the big screen. Should I take the leap?
“It’s a risk. A big one, but so is every word you’ve ever scripted.”
Pieces of the night with LoneStar flash through my mind. The way he encouraged me to take a leap of faith. To believe in myself. To take a chance.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I say, making the title page, using bold letters before setting up the template I’ll use to work the story.
I use my usual front matter, copyright, dedication, acknowledgments, and start a character bible—which is what we call a list with all of the character names that’ll be used in our book.
When I get to the prologue, everything begins to flow out of me, starting with ‘Once upon a time’.
Before I know it, it’s four in the morning and my eyes are droopy, dry, and crossing.
I’ve gotten a damn good start, five chapters’ worth.
I have a knight in shining armor which LoneStar is the imaginary muse for.
My blustering hero in this lore. My heroine’s salvation.
The only man I know who could pull off what my champion will be faced with.
The hard nosed heroine, which of course is fabricated around me, and the villains, fictionalized versions of my parents.
As always, I’ll envision them when my protagonist gets his pound of flesh.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ‘unalived’ my parents in one of my novels.
They have to be fictitiously conquered since I can't do it in real life.
At least not unless I want to live out the rest of my life behind bars and dressed in an orange jumpsuit.
And with my skin tone, that would be a disaster.
I shut things down and head indoors, using the facilities, and falling face first into my pillow. I wish I could remember my dream because if I had, it would’ve prepared me for what was coming after me.