“I never said ‘smothered.’ Maybe just ‘loved to the point of mild asphyxiation.’?”
“I fucking missed you,” I say, crying softly.
“I fucking missed you, too, and I need to hear everything.” Shesniffs, pressing her forehead into my neck. Then she lifts it just as quickly, her eyes wide and shining. “But Margot, oh my God,” she says, breathless. “We need to talk about yourpost. It’s completely blown up.”
I try not to gulp. Ever since I put that letter into the world, I’ve been too afraid and too overwhelmed to look at the response. But I’m back home now, and out of excuses. “What are they saying?”
The answer is a LOT. Checking my email and socials for the first time in days feels like being dropped into a beehive. Except instead of being repeatedly stung, I’m apparently the new queen. Every romance reader who’s ever created an Instagram account in the last decade seems to have something to say about my letter, and the vast majority have welcomed me back with open arms. My DMs are filled with personal messages from fans who tell me how they too have lost their hope in love only to find it again at the least expected moment. There are apologies for mean comments, people professing that they couldn’t bring themselves to throw my books out, and perhaps most of all, demands for the Alaska manuscript.
“I… don’t know how to handle this,” I say to Savannah. I’m curled up on her floral-print IKEA couch, sporting wet hair and borrowed Care Bear pajamas after she forced me to “destink” in the shower. I’m flipping between the endless comments and my email inbox, where a very hopeful but “let’s temper our expectations” email sits from Anjali. As it stands, Barker Books has already begun their apology campaign to get me back, and there’s been interest from a competing publisher whodidn’tdrop me like a hot potato. One guess who I’ll go with.
“Is that an ‘I don’t know how to handle this because it’s so freaking awesome’ or an ‘I don’t know how to handle this because I’m not sure I even want it anymore’?”
I drag my eyes away from my screen, tossing the phone on thecushion between us. “I think it’s more of an ‘I don’t know how to handle this by myself,’?” I say miserably.
“You’re not by yourself,” Savannah insists. “You’ve got Anjali, your pick of any publisher, and you’ve gotme.”
“No, I know,” I say, biting my lip. “I guess that’s not really what I mean.”
Savannah looks at me sharply. “Do you mean Mr. Hot Tub? Because I’m going to be honest, I amdyingto talk about this. Frankly, I’m disappointed he didn’t come with you.”
When loss nearly buckles me, the curiosity in Savannah’s face morphs instantly to concern. “Margot, what happened?”
I lift a shoulder, twisting the ties of the lavender pajama bottoms into a single tight rope. After learning about Savannah’s move, I shoved everything that happened with Forrest into a dark box with a rusty padlock for later examination and wallowing. But now it’s seeping through the cracks, and there isn’t really any point in holding it back.
“That post… it was only my half of a promise we made to each other,” I whisper. “Forrest was going to move back to L.A. He’d accepted this huge research grant for work. We were going to try to—” I find that the rest of the words won’t leave my throat.Be together.
“And he broke hispromise?” Savannah asks quietly. Dangerously. I swear her hair begins to rise, like she’s summoning some kind of vengeful power.
“He didn’t have a choice,” I say quickly.
She looks capable of shooting lightning bolts from her nostrils, though, so I explain what happened to Trapper and the whole reason Forrest was in Alaska to begin with. I explain that I couldn’t rightfully expect him to make a choice I wouldn’t have made myself.
Savannah’s hand lightly covers her mouth as I keep going. “I think what feels so fucking heartbreaking about it all is that I’mright back at square one. My readers think I’ve found my HEA, but it’s all over. I’m being welcomed back into this incredible community I’ve missedsomuch, and all I want to do is give them this book to say thank you. But every single sentence in it is about him.” My voice hitches on the last word, and I steeple my head in my hands. A slow-rolling tear drips off the end of my nose. “I don’t know how I’m going to stomach publishing it, Van. Going on tour, doing interviews, everyone asking me about Mr. Hot Tub. What are they going to say when they learn it didn’t work out? That it’s just another Margot Bradley Happily Never After?”
Savannah scoots close to me on the couch and pulls me into a hug. “You don’t have to tell them anything,” she says, kissing the side of my head. “Or you can tell them everything. But either way, they know who you are now, Margot. You let themseeyou, and that kind of vulnerability isn’t taken lightly in this space. I think they’ll wait for a different book if you can’t publish this one. I think they’d readanythingyou decide to write. I know I would.”
I sniff a little. “Even Pokémon fan fiction?”
“As long as you make it spicy enough.”
I give a watery laugh and lean into my sister. There’s a hollow ache in my chest that goes a little too deep to maybe ever fully heal. But the thing I’ve learned about hollowness—the kind that’s carved from pain—is that the deeper it goes, the more room it leaves for love. And when love finally rushes in, it fills every dark and twisty crevice with a light almost too brilliant to bear.
In the dark moments, when all the lights go out, it’s the love from a sister, or a community, or even a romance novel that keeps the empty chambers of your heart from caving in. And right now that’s exactly what I need most.
31FORREST
Two Months Later
February in Alaska is about as unpleasant as you’d think, but not for the reasons you might guess. It’s not the marrow-penetrating cold that can freeze a spilled cup of hot coffee before it hits the ground, or the sun’s reluctance to rise above the horizon for more than a few pale hours each day. It’s not the mournful keening of the wind in the pines or the invisible black ice that turns every road into a game of Russian roulette. No, the worst thing about Alaska in February is the loneliness.
In the dead of winter, it’s not just the bears who hibernate. People in the backcountry settle in too. Without new faces to see or stories to hear, conversations with familiar voices become circular, repeating the same worn paths, until eventually, everyone runs out of things to say. So we retreat into books and become isolated even from the people we live with. But in our solitude, the stories we read can miraculously transport us from the cold, deep quiet of the snow and into worlds of spring green, thrumming with life and new growth. Or in my case, right into the heart andmind of a person whose absence I feel every moment of the long days and even longer nights.
I know it isn’t healthy. I know that reading and rereading Margot’s books covers my mind in her fingerprints until I can’t see anything but the lack of her. She’s everywhere and nowhere in the cool, uncreased pillow on the left side of my bed. She’s missing from the lodge’s stiff, neglected office chair tucked beneath the desk. Worst of all, she’s gone in the dark windows of her cabin that watch me like judgmental eyes as I pass by every day.
“Need a little Beethoven with that scowl?”
I look up from the old copy ofScientific AmericanI’ve been pretending to read while I drink my mediocre morning coffee and see my dad smiling at me. Or almost smiling. None of us has been doing much of that lately.
