I was convinced, when I woke up in the gilded lily of a hotel room that Damien had been kind enough to arrange for me, that the previous night had been somehow changed in my head in the few short hours I’d been asleep. After all, Sam couldn’t possibly be as attractive as I was remembering him. It was a blip, a glitch in the matrix. I hadn’t been interested in anyone in even the smallest way since Paul, and there was no way some nerd who was obsessed with my books was going to be the one to change that.

Beyond that, he definitely couldn’t have been as charming as I remembered. Surely the running monologue he sustained while I stuffed my mouth full of shrimp couldn’t be as endearing as I thought it was. He spent the entire dinner talking about how my books should get a movie, then going into the nitty gritty details surrounding different “fan casts” for the film and how surprisingly contentious people got over it. He’d rambled on and on about the arguments people made for certain actors over others and how the “fandom” was deeply divided over it. That was, I decided, a ridiculous conversation to have had. It wasn’t charming—it couldn’t possibly have been. It was annoying. I thought it was heartwarming and endearing afterward because the experience was behind me, that was all.

And I definitely hadn’t felt my knees go weak in the hallway when he complimented me before bed. Definitely, definitely not that.

By the time I was walking into the hotel restaurant for breakfast, I’d very nearly convinced myself that I had absolutely no interest in Sam beyond the fact that he liked my books, and I owed whatever success I still had to diehards like him.

I walked in and looked over the hostess’s shoulder to see Sam already sitting at a table. He looked at ease in the sort of way I never was, just completely comfortable with being by himself in a room full of people who wouldn’t have thought twice about judging him the way I judged myself. He had swapped the T-shirt for a very tight, long-sleeved gray shirt that showed every contour of his chest, which seemed much more muscular than I’d assumed. I watched him casually flip through the menu and felt my mouth go dry.

“Sir?”

I turned to the hostess. She was frowning. I found it weirdly comforting; I was a lot more used to people glaring at me lately than I was to hero worship. “Sorry?” I asked stupidly

“I asked if you had a reservation, sir,” she said patiently.

“Right. Sorry. It should be under Epstein. My, um, guest is already here.”

She checked the reservation anyway, clearly trying to make it apparent that she was the kind of woman who not only did her job, but who did it well. “Follow me, Mr. Epstein,” she said, and she led me back to Sam’s table. I found my heart beating more rapidly the closer I got, but I tried to ignore the fluttering feeling.

That became impossible when Sam smiled up at me.

“Hey!” he said. He seemed excited about meeting me all over again. “How did you sleep?”

“Not bad,” I lied. In truth, I’d spent most of the night thinking about the fact that I wasn’t at home in my own bed, nothing around me was familiar, and that there was no warm body beside me to provide any bit of comfort. I’d clung to a pillow and thought about Paul for hours, repeating memorized tics, memories, and forms that had made him real in my life. I found myself disturbed and distracted by Sam’s presence on the other side of the wall more than once. I couldn’t hear anything, but I seemed acutely aware of the fact that he was only a few feet of insulation and wallpaper away.

It didn’t seem that Sam shared my rough night. “This place is amazing,” he told me as I slumped down into my seat and ordered a coffee as soon as I possibly could. “The tub in the bathroom is practically the size of a jacuzzi. It’s crazy. I could fit like ten people in there. The bed, too.”

“It is a pretty nice place,” I conceded. “Apparently the suites at the hotel for Fantasticon are a little nicer, though. I’m glad they’re switching venues for this one. Last year, half the con ended up with bedbugs.”

Whereas anyone else might have been disgusted, Sam just glowed in response. “I’m sure it was worth it,” he said, and he sounded sure. “I’ve always wanted to go, but I never had the chance. Tickets are crazy expensive, even for a day pass, and travelling from New York to Seattle takes way too much time and money. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to come even with the contest, but at least my bosses like me, and I’ve never taken a single sick day, so they gave me the time off. And my loan money just came in, which, you know, I’m not supposed to use for anything that isn’t school-related, but I figure a little extra debt when it comes to paying off my student loans is worth it to spend a little money at a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

I had completely forgotten there were people for whom Fantasticon was a “once in a lifetime” sort of thing. I hadn’t even heard of it before I started going as a speaker, so everything I ever did there was comped. It was a part of my job. I would spend money on merchandise and things like that, but I didn’t have to worry about tickets or hotel rooms.

Damien had told me before what a huge deal Fantasticon was, but I hadn’t really understood. “It’s like nerd mecca,” he explained. “People come from all over the country just to sit around at panels and argue about whether one character in one scene was using their longsword or their dagger. It’s insane. Most people buy the weekend passes for ninety bucks, but there are plenty of people who go all out and pay eight hundred dollars for a week’s worth of VIP passes. A lot of kids who come around find ways to game the system, shoving eight people into one hotel room and sharing two or three badges between all of them.”

“Doesn’t that bother the organizers?” I asked.

Damien shook his head. “Nah. The people who run this whole thing actually give a shit about the people who show up. It’s not about money for them. If they cracked down on stuff like that, there would be a lot of people who could never come.”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, unsure. “That just seems a little shady.”

“So was Robin Hood,” Damien reasoned. “Shady isn’t always bad.”

I hadn’t ever really appreciated what Damien meant until that breakfast with Sam. I couldn’t think of a single person who deserved to go more than he did, but I also couldn’t think of anyone who would have a harder time getting the resources together.

“Where do you work?” I asked Sam, flipping through my menu.

“Gap,” he said. “And a grocery store. And I also do tutoring at the university.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Three jobs?”

“They’re mostly just part-time,” he said quickly. “I take the hours I can get, but I can usually only get twenty to thirty from each of them a week.”

“And how many classes are you taking?”

He thought for a moment. “Fifteen credits. I’m trying to do as many as I can so I can get out of there.”

I was baffled. It was one thing to hear that someone is poor and discover the sad story of their lives. It’s another to get into the details and see the actual numbers behind the poverty. “Why are you trying to leave so quick?” I asked, flummoxed. “You made it sound like you really enjoy college.”

“Oh, I do! I mean, I don’t always love my classes, you know, but I really like being in college. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably be homeless.” He wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was focused on a spot on his menu. He started rubbing at it hard with the edge of his sleeve. “But I know my loans are coming from somewhere, and paying them back is going to suck. The less time I spend there, the less money I waste. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a job straight after graduating, so I really have to plan and think about where my money goes.” When the spot was vanquished, he closed his menu, but still only raised his eyes enough to look at my knuckles. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about this. You don’t need to hear the whole ‘woe is me’ story. You already read the essay.”

“No,” I said, a little too quickly. “I mean, yes, I read the essay, but I didn’t know about most of this. I would never be able to do all that.” The very thought of working three jobs made me shudder. And college classes on top of it? I had, essentially, done nothing every single day for the past five years, and I felt like I was edging near a mental breakdown every day.

“Eh.” Sam shrugged. “It’s what I have to do, you know? I don’t have another option. A lot of other people have their parents as a safety net, but my mom is out of work most of the time. She’s gotten a couple jobs in the past, but she’s just not very stable, so I’m the only person who can make sure I’ve got a roof over my head and food in my fridge.” He started fiddling with the edge of the menu, but he was looking me in the eyes again. “I remember what it was like growing up with nothing and not having anything to rely on. I don’t want that in the future, you know?”

“Hence the engineering,” I said.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Hence the engineering.”

My stomach squirmed, and I felt the absurd urge to cry, mostly out of my own guilt and shame. I slept my way through life. I watched the world going on around me and shoved myself into a little hole of self-pity and sadness. It had made me myopic, so attuned to my own misery that I couldn’t focus on anyone or anything else. The idea that someone would have to spend their lives being unhappy just to survive had never occurred to me—maybe because survival had never been what was hard for me.

It seemed to be not surviving that I struggled with.

I decided to change the subject. I couldn’t think of anything I could say that wouldn’t be insensitive or stupid, anyway. “So you said you’re a writer?” I asked, flipping through the menu myself. I found it much, much more suitable to my tastes than the place Damien had chosen last night. There was plenty of bland food to choose from.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a writer. That makes it sound like I’m really good, like I’m submitting to literary magazines or something.” He grinned. “I know it sounds dumb, but I actually write fanfiction.”

I frowned. “You write what?”

“Fanfiction.” When I responded with a confused head tilt, Sam’s grin grew. “Wait, you’ve never heard of it?”

“I’ve heard the word, I think. I just never really paid attention to it,” I admitted. “Damien always told me to stay away from it if I could, because it could cause a lot of issues for my career if I went down that rabbit hole.”

“No offense to Damien, but that would be really unlikely,” Sam explained. “There was one time when an author actually got into a situation because they read a fanfic and told the author about it and offered them partial author credit on their next novel, and the fan was a huge dick about it. But that’s not something you would have to worry about, I wouldn’t think.”

“You’re skipping the part where you tell me what we’re actually talking about,” I reminded him, feeling a pang of irritation. I hated being confused; it was beyond embarrassing, especially when I was around a fan, and even more especially when the fan was the one doing the confusing.

“Sorry.” The goofy, apologetic smile he gave me melted any frustration away immediately. “I just get excited. Fanfiction is writing based on an original work. So, for example, I write stories about your books. They involve your characters or your world, but what happens is all stuff that I come up with.”

“And that’s legal?”

“If no one makes money off of it, it is. And no one does. For the most part. I just post them online for people to read and comment on for free. It’s really, really popular. It’s one of the biggest parts of fandom.”

“Which is...?”

“Fandom is basically just a group of fans of something. And yours is massive.” He pulled out a beaten-up, clearly out of date iPhone and scrolled for a minute before handing it to me. “Check it out.”

It was a list of book series, all with numbers next to it. Mine was second in the list: “Books of Veracity (543K).” I noticed that Ben Hayfield’s was next: “Cities of Smoke (402K).”

“What is this?” I asked. I barely kept myself from adding, “And why is Hayfield’s right next to mine?”

“That,” Sam said, pointing at the number beside the title, “is the number of fanfics written about your series.”

I blinked. “543K.” I looked up at him, my eyes widening. “Does that mean five hundred and forty-three thousand?”

“It does. And that’s just on this site. There are a ton of other websites for fanfiction, and that’s not even counting Tumblr blogs or individual fan sites. If I had to guess, the numbers have probably gone into the millions by now.”

“Wow,” I mumbled.

“Are you really that surprised? Your series is massive. Revolutionary, even.”

“I know.” When I realized how self-aggrandizing that sounded, I amended it to, “I mean, I know it’s popular. I just didn’t think it would be so popular that this many people would care this much about it. It’s just kind of wild to imagine.” I handed him his phone back, but with great hesitation. “What kind of stuff do people write about?”

“All sorts of things. There are as many genres in fanfiction as there are in traditional literature. Probably more, even. And there’s tons of tropes and other stuff that’s specific to fanfiction itself. A lot of it is romance, though.”

“Romance?” That surprised me. Even though my characters were teenagers, I’d done my best to stay away from adding romance and relationships into the series. Not only was it something everyone was doing—including Ben Hayfield, by the way—but it just didn’t really fit with my story. Relationships would crop up by the end, but they were far from the focus. In the first four books, the very idea hadn’t even been introduced.

“Oh yeah.”

“About whom?”

“Pretty much every character. There are a lot of ships.” At my look of glazed confusion, he clarified, “Ships are relationships that people write about. So if someone says they ‘ship’ two characters, it means they like them together romantically. There are certain ships that are a lot more popular than others, either because of the characters’ chemistry or the likelihood of them getting together in the canon of the story. Some of it is just based on the prevalence of the characters in the series. One of the biggest ones is actually Elinor and Anna Lee.”

I thought for a second. “I can see that.” I had never considered the possibility before, but it was actually pretty cute when I stopped to appreciate it. I leaned forward. I was excited; it had been a long time since I’d been so invested in my own work. The idea that I was inspiring other people was, I admit, kind of a power trip. “What are the other ones?”

“Uh.” Sam chewed at his lip. Maybe it was the talk of relationships and romance, but I was a little distracted by how soft and pink his lips looked. “A lot of people ship Eli with the Guardian, which I always liked, given his obsessions with the books. I mean, Eli hooking up with the embodiment of truth always made sense.”

“Really?” I frowned. “I never would have thought of that. I always thought of Eli as asexual.”

Sam’s eyes lit up and a massive grin split his face. My heart plummeted a little.

I’d gotten comfortable talking to Sam, which was odd, given I tended to be uncomfortable with pretty much everyone, so I’d forgotten I was talking to a fan, not a friend. I had just revealed information that fans would apparently react to very strongly, and I’d given this random man the exclusive.

I was worried until Sam said, “Wow. You know, I never thought of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense! I’m excited to see how it comes into the story.”

No questions. No demands. No quiet tweeting under the table. Nothing.

Sam, I was starting to realize, wasn’t like the many, many other fans I’d met.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I told him.

“I’m not really disappointed. It doesn’t need to officially happen for me to be happy. I’ve got my fanfiction. That’s what it’s there for.” He thought for a second, then added, “I do hope Anna Lee and Elinor get together though. It’s not even like they’re my favorite characters and I don’t ship them especially hard, but it seems to make sense. I keep feeling like that’ll happen when Anna comes back.”

It was my turn to be stunned. “Anna...coming back?” I asked, trying to play stupid.

“Well, yeah.” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “We never saw her body. She was kidnapped, so it was assumed that she’d be killed, but there were a lot of reasons for the Chancellors to keep her alive. And you never said she died or that she was killed. The twins think she is, but they don’t know everything. It’s a third-person perspective, and the narrator has never confirmed Anna Lee’s death.” He looked immensely proud of himself. “So that’s just what I figured.”

“Wow,” I muttered. That wasn’t going to be released for a couple more books, and yet he’d seen straight into the future of the series. It was uncanny. Not only were his ideas good, but his guesses were phenomenal. I found myself weirdly attracted to his obsession with my work. “If you were right—which I’m not saying you are, mind you—you wouldn’t, like, brag that up online or anything, would you?”

“Oh, hell no,” he said instantly. “Spoiling anything like that for people is horrible. It completely ruins their ability to appreciate it later on. And I’m sure that Anna Lee coming back is going to be a huge shock to most people. It’s a pretty fringe theory.” He gave me a wicked grin. “It’s good to know I’m right, though. I’ll be able to hold that over people for forever.”

I snorted. I liked to pretend my fans weren’t as petty as other people’s, but I knew they argued and bitched just as much as anyone else on the internet, which was to say, everyone on the internet. But if they were going to fight over something, at least they were fighting over something I’d created. It was a definite ego boost.

We ordered and ate, talking congenially the whole time, not out of a need to fill the space, but because it was interesting. Mostly, he told me about different fan theories. I avoided message boards and fan sites like the plague—I didn’t want to see all the people reminding me I should have had the fifth book done and out years ago—but Sam was making me regret that. My fans were way more creative than I ever would have guessed. They’d created family trees, conspiracy theories, and themes I never would have considered in my wildest dreams. It was sort of insane, but also nice. People missed me. They still cared about my books.

That was more than I could have hoped for, and way more than I would have expected.

As the waitress cleared our pancake and bacon detritus strewn plates, I had to bring up the elephant that had been looming over my shoulder in every room thus far. “You know,” I said delicately, trying not to sound accusatory or suspicious, “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me anything about book five.”

Sam’s head tilted slightly to the side. “Why?” he asked.

“Because it’s, you know, the next book.” I couldn’t tell what was more surprising—that he hadn’t asked me anything, or that he couldn’t understand why I thought he might. “It’s sort of a big deal. Not to me or whatever, like, it’s not like I don’t care at all, but it’s...” I shrugged. “No one knows what’s going on with it. They don’t know what’ll happen. They don’t know why it hasn’t come out. The whole thing is a mystery to fans. I just felt like you might be, I don’t know, curious about it.”

Sam’s lips twitched like he wanted to laugh. He seemed to realize how serious I was about this, though, so he swallowed it and said, “Yeah, it’s a big deal, Lance. And when the book comes out, I’m going to be in full costume at the front of the line, just the way I was for the last four. But you know, you don’t owe me any kind of explanation or anything. What you’ve said in the press is enough. I have a lot of things I’d like to know about, but I can wait to read it for myself. I don’t need you to justify anything. No one needs you to. It’s your business and your life.”

Dumb as it might sound, I’d never thought of it that way.

“So...you’re not angry with me?” I asked, voice timid. “For taking so long?”

“No one worth your time is going to be angry at you over something like that,” he assured me. “Without you, I wouldn’t have this series or these characters at all. I owe you everything.” He smiled gently and put his hand on top of mine. “And besides, that’s what fanfiction is for. It fills the gap between book releases.”

I had to blink away the foggy mist growing in my eyes. I hoped he didn’t notice. When he pulled his hand away, I felt a pang of loss. It had been five years since I’d received consistent love and affection, or even just the physical sensation of someone touching me with any sense of kindness. It was a good thing we were probably never going to see each other again after we made it to the airport; I might’ve started getting used to someone being nice to me and wanting to spend time with me.

We paid, got our things from our rooms, and left. The old loneliness was starting to return in the form of a hard lump in my stomach. I hated the idea of leaving Sam behind. Even more, I hated the idea of him leaving me behind.

We met up at the airport. Someone Damien had paid came and picked up Sam’s car. No one came for mine, but I was sure there would be some sort of plan in place. If something happened, that would be more money Damien owed me for something nice I was supposed to be doing for a fan.

I couldn’t help but become more and more cynical the closer we got to the gate where our tickets were being held. I had been hoping for the experience to go poorly, in a way, because I didn’t want to like Sam. Liking people was the first step toward disappointment, sadness, rejection, resentment, and every other shitty emotion I had just about enough of for the past five years. Better to just skip all of it and start off by not caring in the first place.

The problem was that I did like Sam. I was already starting to feel the loss of his presence. I didn’t know him well, but I knew he was honest and kind, and above all else, I knew he actually cared about me beyond what I could do for him. He didn’t want or need me to do anything. It was enough that I was just there. It was nice to have a conversation with someone who seemed to genuinely like me without having any kind of expectations.

I was gearing myself up for the goodbye when I asked the attendant behind the counter for our tickets.

He stared at me blankly. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Tickets for Lance Epstein and Sam Lawrence. My agent, Damien Cooper, said they’d be held here.”

The man rifled through everything on his desk. He checked his computer. He genuinely seemed to be doing his job thoroughly, something I hadn’t seen much at airports lately. I normally would have appreciated it, but it was just making me antsier.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, “I have no ticket information for any of those names. Maybe your agent sent you a digital copy or receipt?”

I frowned. It wouldn’t be like Damien to do anything digitally, but maybe his secretary had finally broken down and just done it, probably behind his back. I certainly wouldn’t blame her for it; I knew what a nightmare Damien could be about all that crap and his five thousand neuroses.

I checked my phone. Nothing. I went into my email and refreshed it at least five times. Still nothing. Sam did the same, and he had no better luck than me.

Which meant that we were stuck at an airport and standing at the gate of a plane that was about to leave for Seattle without us.

I dialed Damien so furiously I nearly cracked the screen on my phone. I started talking before he could even say hello. “Where are my tickets?!” I hissed, keeping my voice down, trying not to sound or look panicked in front of Sam.

“What?” He sounded harried and scattered. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that I can’t get on the fucking plane, Damien! My tickets aren’t at the gate or in my email or anywhere else, and the flight’s going to leave in like five minutes!”

“What about the kid from the contest?” he asked. He sounded almost winded. I’d heard that voice before. He wasn’t exhausted; he was overwhelmed. It was extraordinarily rare for him to show that kind of weakness in front of anyone, even a close friend and even if he could easily disguise it as something else.

I had to push down the sympathy starting to creep into the back of my brain. I could figure out what was wrong with him later. “He’s less of a kid and more of a fully-grown man who is also curious as to why we don’t have our stuff,” I said, trying to relax and telling myself that he would know what was going on and be able to fix it. “Damien, we really, really need our tickets. Like, now. Or another flight.”

I heard him yelling something to his secretary about checking on new flights. “I’m so sorry, Lance,” he said, and he sounded it. “I kind of screwed up.”

“Screwed up? Screwed up how?”

“Screwed up like I have nothing done!” he snapped. “The other guys’ flights are all screwed up too. Everyone is in economy, and December is in a center seat, which means he’s going to have a fucking panic attack, and I don’t even have hotel rooms for anyone other than Ben and Soren, who—lucky me—have been calling me freaking the fuck out because they’re stuck in a one-bed hotel room two miles away from the convention center.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I made a concerted effort not to laugh at the idea of Ben and Soren stuck together in a single bed for a full week. Instead, I focused on the situation at hand, which I was realizing, with a dawning sense of dread, was far more dire than I could have imagined. “So you’re saying we don’t have tickets?”

“No,” he admitted. “I’m so sorry, man. I got the other guys their tickets months ago, but I wasn’t sure until a couple weeks ago that you were actually going to cooperate, so I made a note to get yours after you left me that message, but I must have left it on my desk and, well, it got lost in the shuffle.”

“Lost. In. The. Shuffle.” I repeated the words through gritted teeth. “Are you kidding me right now?!”

“Please,” he begged, “please don’t freak out. All right? Everyone else is already super pissed off at me over this whole thing.”

“Wow, what a shock!” I growled sarcastically. “I can’t imagine why anyone could possibly be upset with you right now! It’s not like you’re our agent or like we were relying on you to take care of stuff for us. It’s not like it’s your job or whatever. Why would we be angry?!”

“Please.” His voice was soft. “Look, I can handle everybody else being pissed off, but I can’t deal with it coming from you, man. I’m not saying you don’t have the right, and in a couple weeks, you can have one free punch to whatever part of my body you want, but I cannot deal with you being mad. You’re my best friend, Lance, even though neither of us always act like it. And right now I really need you to help me out by just not giving me shit. All right?”

I took a deep breath or twenty before I could finally respond. “Damien,” I said, my voice steady, “I’m going to do you the courtesy of not screaming, arguing, or bitching, even though this is quite possibly the most massive fuck-up in the history of agent/writer relations, and I’ve been right for years and years when I’ve told you to just start using a computer like a human being instead of living like an Amish man in a perpetual state of semi-Rumspringa. I am going to speak to you as kindly as possible.”

Damien gave a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” I said, my jaw starting to ache from the way I was grinding my teeth. I still wanted to kill him, best friend or not. It was almost nice to be on the other side of the massive mistake, but it probably would have been a lot nicer if I wasn’t stranded on the opposite side of the country from where I was supposed to be. “Now, I’d really appreciate it if you could get your shit together for a few minutes and tell me what I’m supposed to be doing right now.”

“I don’t know, man...”

“Damien!” My voice was so sharp it sounded almost hysterical. It was embarrassing. “This might be Sam’s only opportunity to attend Fantasticon. Plus, you were the one bitching to me for weeks about making sure that I went and that I put my best foot forward or whatever. You are supposed to be the boss, remember? I need you to act like it and tell me what to do!”

I had never referred to Damien as my boss before. I never wanted to, and certainly never felt like I needed to. I was more than happy to call him my agent, but anything beyond that just embarrassed me.

But that was the kick Damien needed. A little bit of an ego boost and he was off and running. I may have wanted to kill him at the moment, but at least he was a simple man of simple needs.

“Okay. Okay.” Damien’s voice started to return to a normal pitch; he no longer sounded like he was hiding under his desk. “Now, the hotel hosting Fantasticon and all the ones close nearby are going to be completely booked up, but I can get you guys a room or two just a little out of the city limits. The drive in will take a while, which might be a pain in the ass, but you’ll get high-quality rooms and less of the con chatter going on. Staying in the hosting hotel is always a disaster anyway, with all the drunk idiots running through the halls all night.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. When nerds decided to party, they really went for it, and they went for it all day and all night.

“I know that I can get you guys rooms,” he continued. “And I can even get you reliable transportation between the hotel and the con. None of that will be an issue. It’s actually getting you across the country that’s going to be a problem.”

“Yeah, Damien, that does present some challenges.”

“At least wait until we’re done here to get snarky and shitty with me,” he snapped. He thought for a second. “I have an idea,” he said slowly.

“But I’m not going to like it?” I guessed.

“You’re going to fucking hate it,” he agreed, “but it’s the only way. You need to get to Fantasticon by Friday, and we need to make sure that Sam at least experiences part of the convention, right?”

“Right.”

“And what better way for him to truly experience the wonders of the unique experience we’re offering him than for him to take a road trip with his favorite author?”

My first gut reaction was to laugh at the very notion and end the call right there. My second gut reaction was to tell Damien that he could very well go fuck himself if he thought I was going to be traipsing across country in my own car with a total stranger.

But my third gut reaction was that this was the only way. If I didn’t do it, I would be destroying the dream Sam had worked so hard for. The poor guy worked three jobs and took no sick days, all while taking classes at the same time, and he still managed to be a decent person. Frankly, there was very little I wouldn’t do for someone with those credentials.

No matter how much I didn’t want to.

“Fine,” I muttered. “But you’ll pay me for the gas?”

“Buddy, I will pay you whatever you want. Just get here by Friday. Got it?”

It was almost funny how the phone call started with me rightfully chewing him out and had ended with him chastising and ordering me around. Again, though, I couldn’t argue. Besides, this was such a key part of my relationship with Damien that anything else would have felt unnatural.

“Just know I hate this idea,” I said firmly.

“Noted. Now get driving. You’re like five days away.”

I hung up the phone with a heavy sigh and rubbed at my temple.

Five days. Five days of having to talk, sustain regular human interaction, and let another human being touch my stuff. Five days of sitting next to someone in a car for hours and hours at a time.

Five days of being around Sam.

I couldn’t tell if I liked the idea or not. The butterflies in my stomach seemed to have something to say about it, but my brain was doing its best to remind them a road trip was not only something I never wanted to do, but something I had actively avoided, even with Paul. The few prolonged car trips we’d taken had been miserable, and they always ended in an argument.

If even Paul couldn’t stand being near me in a car for that long, then I seriously doubted Sam could.

I turned back to Sam and cleared my throat. “So, I have some, uh, news,” I told him.

“Find out where our tickets went to?” Sam asked. He was smiling, the perpetual optimist.

“We don’t have any tickets.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “My agent screwed it up. He ordered our tickets separately from the other guys’, and he forgot to get ours altogether.”

“Oh.” Sam’s frown was only slight. How he wasn’t completely melting down was beyond me. Damien’s agitation had managed to keep me anchored, but I didn’t know how long that would last. I only seemed to be good at keeping my shit together if the other person involved was losing theirs. The second there was anyone in a given situation with a better grasp on it than me, I tended to give into the madness. And with Sam acting so unshakeable, I was already preparing to let myself slip.

“Well,” Sam continued, brow furrowed in thought, “that isn’t great. How are we getting to the convention? Or are we cancelling?”

If he hadn’t told me how desperately he wanted to go to Fantasticon, I never would have guessed it from the way he was talking. He sounded so rational, but I had to think that inside he was absolutely destroyed. This thing he’d always wanted and that he’d waited and worked so hard for was ready to slip out of his grasp, and it was all because of Damien. But he didn’t know Damien, which meant it was all because of me.

And there was no way I was going to disappoint him. I wasn’t going to join the lineup of lies and false promises in his life. So I did what I had to do.

I looked Sam square in the eyes, my jaw set. “How do you feel about going on a road trip?”