Chapter 9
Noah
I had a secret.
It wasn't a secret because I was ashamed of it—technically.
It was a secret because there is a specific and well-documented phenomenon in the publishing industry in which literary fiction authors who write romance are not taken seriously, which is fundamentally unfair given that romance arguably requires more craft than literary fiction because you actually have to deliver the emotional payoff rather than merely suggest it.
But this was my industry.
And I had made a pragmatic decision.
So:
Pen name.
J.D. Mercer.
Three novels.
All in Kindle Unlimited.
All clean romance—which was important to me, a conscious choice. I wanted these books to be readable by anyone without caveat.
Combined reviews: 4.6 stars.
Combined readership: approximately two hundred thousand readers.
Dana knew.
My agent knew.
Nobody else did.
I hadn't actively thought about it in Wren Falls because—honestly—I had assumed it was irrelevant.
Small town.
Bookshop.
People read literary fiction or cozy mysteries or—
Then book club happened this Tuesday.
An hour earlier, I had decided I wasn't going.
It was a reasonable decision.
I was working.
Twenty-two thousand words now.
And a few days ago Dana had replied to my email with a single line:
22,000 real words is a miracle. Whatever is happening there, don't stop.
And there was momentum.
Momentum is fragile.
Interrupting it is risky.
Then I heard the sounds downstairs.
Setup sounds.
Chairs being arranged.
Jo laughing.
Priya enthusiastically greeting someone.
And I realized that my character was in a scene I couldn't write because I didn't know what actually happened inside a group of readers discussing a book they genuinely liked.
Research, I thought.
Legitimate research.
So I went downstairs.
Today's book:
The Longest Winter by J.D. Mercer.
I stopped in the doorway.
The Longest Winter had been written on my laptop two years ago.
In four months.
It was set in Vermont—which felt like a strange coincidence now—and followed a hockey player returning home after a career-ending injury, where he met a local teacher who happened to be his sister's best friend.
Slow burn.
Dual POV.
Clean romance.
It was my favorite thing I'd ever written.
I stood there processing that fact.
"Noah."
Priya spotted me.
"Come in. We're about to start."
Margaret was already in her chair.
Dennis was making tea.
Jo was arranging an extra chair—not my corner chair, one beside it, farther from Ellie's direct line of sight.
Ellie stood near the counter.
Ellie was holding a copy of The Longest Winter.
Her copy.
Obviously hers.
The spine was cracked.
The cover slightly worn at the edges.
That specific kind of wear that comes from traveling around inside a bag.
She had read it more than once.
I walked in and sat down.
"So," Ellie said in facilitator mode, "this month we're discussing J.D. Mercer's The Longest Winter, which—Margaret, this was your recommendation, so why don't you start?"
"I recommended it," Margaret confirmed, "because I thought we all needed a book that actually felt something. Last month's book was intelligent but cold. This one..."
She paused.
"This one is different."
"How?" Priya asked.
"Every scene feels like it has something at stake."
Margaret settled back in her chair.
"I'll be direct. I came dangerously close to crying during chapter nineteen, and I know I wasn't alone because Deborah texted me—Deborah is my sister, she's not in this club but she was reading it too—and we were both simultaneously texting each other no he is going to be okay and this—"
She paused again.
"This is what a book is supposed to do. Make strangers share an experience."
Quiet.
I looked down at my hands.
"Chapter nineteen," Dennis said carefully, "that's the scene where—"
"When she finally says it," Priya interrupted.
"Yeah. That got me too."
I looked up.
Ellie wasn't looking at me.
She was looking at her copy.
A specific page.
I knew which one because I had noticed her finger resting on the chapter number earlier.
Page 247.
And she wore that expression people have when they are re-experiencing something rather than simply remembering it.
"Ellie," Jo said softly.
"You felt most strongly about this book the first time you read it. Say something."
There was a pause.
"I've been reading this author for years," Ellie said carefully.
"Since the first book."
"And the thing that consistently surprises me—the thing I think I've figured out and then realize I haven't—is that these books feel like someone genuinely thought about what the reader wanted to take away from them."
She glanced down at her copy.
"In chapter nineteen..."
She paused.
"That scene works because the writer actually lets the character break apart. There's no safety net. No qualification. She's simply in the moment, and so is the reader."
"That's rare in literary fiction," Jo said quietly.
"It's rare in romance too," Ellie replied.
"Real vulnerability on the page is rare anywhere. Most authors—I understand why—protect their characters. Maintain a little distance."
Pause.
"But this author doesn't."
Another pause.
"He trusts the reader."
She looked down at the book.
"I liked that from the very beginning."
The room was quiet.
I breathed carefully.
He trusts the reader.
That had been deliberate.
That exact approach.
Because I believed that what literary fiction often lacked was a willingness to surrender fully to the emotional moment.
I thought I had hidden that inside J.D. Mercer.
I thought a pen name created distance.
Ellie, out of two hundred thousand readers, had identified exactly what I had actually been trying to say.
"Have you ever talked to the author?" Priya asked.
"The author is anonymous," Ellie said.
"No public presence. No author photos. No interviews."
She shrugged slightly.
"Honestly, I like that. Some books should stand on their own. They don't need the author standing beside them."
"Is J.D. Mercer a man or a woman?" Dennis asked.
"No idea."
Ellie looked at her copy.
"The name is intentionally ambiguous."
Pause.
"I don't care. When I read these books, I only hear the voice. Whoever it belongs to."
Margaret nodded.
"Whoever wrote them has experienced grief."
"The first book had it too. That character talking about their mother—that felt real."
She pointed at the book.
"Real grief feels real. Fake grief doesn't. This felt real."
"Yeah," Ellie said quietly.
Then she turned toward me.
"Noah."
The neutral, professional tone.
The one she specifically used when she was consciously treating me as simply another member of book club.
"Did you read it?"
I looked at my copy.
The copy I had purchased because I obviously couldn't admit I already owned one.
Brand-new.
Uncracked spine.
"Yeah," I said.
"Thoughts?"
I took a second.
"I think," I said slowly, "it's rare to find a writer who understands that emotional nakedness requires more courage than technical skill."
The room went still.
"A lot of people know how to write."
I paused.
"Fewer people know what to write."
Silence.
Jo was looking at me.
I didn't look back.
"Chapter nineteen," Priya said, "that moment when she says—"
"'I love you, and I didn't want to,'" Margaret finished simply.
"That line."
"That line," Priya agreed.
"That line," Ellie echoed quietly.
I love you, and I didn't want to.
I had written that sentence at two in the morning.
I had thought it was too simple.
Too direct.
I had almost replaced it with something more literary.
I hadn't.
Something had stopped me.
Now I knew why.
After the session—
Tea.
Margaret offering commentary on every romantic decision the characters made.
("Realistic. All of it. Love makes you stupid in exactly this way.")
People began leaving.
Jo exited first with pointed casualness alongside Priya and Dennis.
I noticed.
I stayed.
Not because I had planned to.
I just... stayed.
Ellie was stacking chairs.
I started helping without asking.
"You didn't have to do that," she said.
"I know."
We kept stacking.
One chair.
Then another.
Then a third.
"You've read all three books?" I asked.
She paused briefly.
"Yeah."
"Since the first one?"
"Since release day."
She carefully positioned another chair.
"I pre-ordered it."
Pause.
"He's one of my favorite authors."
Another pause.
"Which I don't usually say because..."
She stopped.
"Because?"
"Because when an author becomes your favorite, you're vulnerable to their work."
She looked at the chairs.
"If the next book disappoints you. Or the author does something you don't agree with. It becomes personal."
A small shrug.
"It shouldn't. But it does."
I placed the final chair onto the stack.
"And if you met the author?" I asked.
"J.D. Mercer."
"If they walked into this bookshop right now, what would you say?"
She looked at me.
A long moment.
Finally:
"I'd ask when chapter nineteen was written."
I waited.
"That scene."
She folded her arms.
"And whether they knew beforehand they were going there."
Pause.
"Or whether it was an accident."
I considered my answer carefully.
"Accident," I said.
"Almost always."
I glanced toward the bookshelves.
"The best scenes. You plan one thing, and then a character says something you never intended, and suddenly you realize that's what the scene wanted all along."
Ellie looked at me.
"You talk very specifically," she said, "about something that isn't your job."
"I've read romance."
"For research."
"Since when?"
"For a while."
She stared at me for a second.
That look.
The calculating one.
And I did exactly what I had learned to do over the past three weeks whenever she used it.
Stayed steady.
Didn't reveal anything.
Didn't hide anything either.
"Okay," she finally said.
"Okay."
She walked back toward the counter.
I went upstairs.
Third step.
Creak.
And when I sat at my desk and opened my laptop, I noticed my hands were shaking slightly.
She had been reading The Longest Winter since release day.
She knew chapter nineteen word for word.
He trusts the reader.
She had said that about me without knowing she was talking about me.
I started a new chapter.
The novel I was actually writing.
The Noah Calloway novel.
The real-name novel.
The serious literary novel.
And for the first time in fourteen months—maybe longer—I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Not only because I was writing.
Because there was someone listening.
Really listening.
To whatever it was I had actually been trying to say.
Without knowing it.
Which, I thought, fingers resting on the keys, screen glowing in the darkness of the apartment—
was possibly the worst complication.
Or the best one.
I couldn't decide yet.
So I wrote.