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ONE
—
R I L E Y
“Holy shit,”I say aloud to no one but my empty office and the computer in front of me. Sitting back in my rickety old desk chair, I fan myself with my hand. “There’s that contract finished.”
I peruse over the final chapter I just finished writing for my client, checking for spelling errors and the occasional word mix-up. The completed manuscript looks good, especially with the explosive ending scene. Hot enough to literally set fire to the rain. It’s definitely spicy enough to set me on fire, and I wrote the damn thing. Her readers will be needing a change of panties. I know I do.
Every time I have to ghostwrite romance, I get all squirmy and hot writing the sex scenes.
Of course, squirmy and hot is a better alternative to the dark loneliness I feel when I write out the romantic scenes, the ones with the epic love confessions and handsome Alphas and Betas doing anything for their Omegas. Those just hurt. I wince, but not even the reminder of what I can’t ever have douses the flames still lingering in my core from writing that spicy group scene.
Did I touch the thermostat?
God, it’s hot in my office.
Almost as if I’m…
Shit.
I jump out of my desk chair so fast it topples over onto the carpet with a muted thud. I dash toward the bathroom, only to trip over the bedroom slippers I left scattered in my front hallway. I catch myself with one hand on the wall before I hit the floor completely and cuss out my past self.
When I work, I get into this perfect headspace where I can tune out the outside world and just write and write andwrite. The downside? I forget to take care of myself and end up forgetting things like tidying up after myself, eating three meals a day… or taking my goddamned heat suppressants.
I hurtle myself into the bathroom and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. I’m an absolute mess, but that’s nothing new when I’ve been working. My straight dark hair actually has some volume to it, not because of any miracle product, but because I’ve been running my hands through it roughly every time I blank out on a scene or can’t remember the perfect word to use. Now my hair is in this messy “I survived a hurricane” hairstyle. The shadows under my eyes nearly match the violet shade of my irises.
But it’s the flush in my cheeks and slightly enlarged pupils in my eyes that startle me most. I know what they mean.
Normally, after I finish a manuscript, I send it off to the client and then fall into bed, waking up sixteen hours later hungry and ready to work all over again.
Not this time.
A jab of anxiety pierces my gut as I rip open the cabinet, already having a pretty good idea of what I’ll find. Or more accurately, what Iwon’tfind.
“Please,” I whine to myself, digging past the empty bottle in the front labeled falsely as aspirin to the many others behind it. “Please, please,please.”
I shake bottle after bottle, hoping for that familiar rattle of pills, but there’s no sound at all. I’m out of heat suppressants.
“Fuck!”
How could I let this happen?
I pinch the bridge of my nose and slam the cabinet shut so hard that the lock doesn’t engage and the door bounces back toward me. Frustrated at my own irresponsibility, I lean in closer to the mirror, checking for the unmistakable signs of impending heat. My cheeks have a slight pink flush, but it’s faint enough that I would probably be the only one to notice it.
The dilation in my pupils isn’t too bad yet, either, and while I feel that familiar thrum ofneedlike a distant drumbeat echo in my core, I don’t have the crazed, fidgety feeling that normally goes along with it. Which means there’s still time to fix this. But when I inhale deeply to calm my nervous system I can already smell my Omega pheromones mixing with the cool but stale air of my apartment.
“Think, Rile,” I demand to myself. When did I take my last pill?
There was that chapter I wrote, the one with all the groveling. I’d gotten up to make a sandwich and had taken one then. But that was what? Two days ago?
I shake my head at my own idiocy.
Panic starts to bubble in my chest like a broken fountain.
I’m never this irresponsible, not even when I was juggling my former job at the bookstore with my current ghostwriting work. I strip out of my ratty sweatpants and thin T-shirt, push open the shower curtain, and step into the small but clean shower, turning on the hot water. ‘Small but clean’ describes everything about my efficient apartment.
It isn’t a dump by any means, but there’s nothing about it that whisperswelcome home. Nothing about it that shows any emotion or sentiment other than ‘this is a place to live, and nothing more’, aside from the small nest I’ve made for myself in my bedroom.
