AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Because there was a teeny, tiny, stupid, teen girl-ish part of me that had hoped he’d say that we wouldn’t be friends.
That we’d be more.
Hope was a silly thing, especially where matters of the heart were concerned. I wasn’t immune to that any more than anyone else, but there’d been a dull ache deep within me ever since we’d spoken last night.
It hadn’t mattered that we’d finished the night watching a movie and arguing over the storyline and how much sense it did or didn’t make to us. We’d ended on good terms, and he’d walked me back to Greygarth Lodge because it was dark, then he’d kissed me goodnight and left.
It was the kind of thing I swooned over.
Yet I didn’t want to write that kind of romance right now.
I ached a little too much for it.
I wanted to go in on my characters for one last emotional ripping, so that’s what I did. I cracked my knuckles and went in, then slowly and systematically ripped my heroine’s heart into a million little shreds.
I tore it up, bit by bit. Bit by endless bloody bit. I put her through the ringer for a reason I wasn’t sure I understood but somewhat made sense given the rest of the story. It didn’t seem out of place, almost as if this had been brewing in the background for the past forty thousand words.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I started the next chapter, skipping the usual heading so I could get on with the story. I wasn’t even sure I knew what was going on—just that I was tearing apart everything I’d built until this point and dragging the story out longer than I’d intended.
Whatever.
It was working.
It was almost therapeutic, writing this scene. My heroine packed her bags and threw them in her car, gathered up her ornery cat that may or may not have been based on Winston, and got in her car to drive away.
It was a gut-wrenching scene to write, and I felt every emotion so acutely that there was no way I was leaving this building. I hoped like hell that nobody stopped by, because if they did, they were going to stumble upon a hot mess of a woman.
Mind you, that wasn’t much different from me usually.
Ahem.
A hot mess of acryingwoman.
There. That distinction would make all the difference, I was sure.
Ugh.
Why was I crying so hard? I could barely see the screen through my tears, yet my fingers were typing at speed I wasn’t quite used to. They slid across the laptop keyboard and tapped at the keys like it was second nature, and I supposed it kind of was. I could touch-type, after all, but there was sure to be no end of typos in this stream of words.
Well. I did have an editor for a reason.
As long as it didn’t read about a banana riding a tricycle, it would be fine.
I, uh, may have written that in a half-asleep state before. To this day, I still have no idea what I was talking about.
I paused for a moment and checked the time.
Shoot. I’d been writing for two straight hours and missed dinner. But there was so much mojo here for this unexpected turn of events, but I also needed to eat.
I could eat later.
For now, I needed to make my characters hurt the way I was.
•••
“You owe Grandma a new pool noodle.”
I looked up from my laptop to see Max approaching with Winston cradled in his arms. “I’m sorry, what?”
