When I woke up, I noticed three things in quick succession.

One: I was in my own bed.

Two: It was daytime, the sun streaming through my window.

Three: Logan was nowhere to be seen.

Unexpected panic slammed through me with a force of a ten-ton truck. I jerked up in bed, looking around. Everything was there, everything familiar. Yet for some reason it also looked foreign. As if it belonged to a previous life. A previous me.

I swung my feet around, out of bed. My eyes still searching for something—anything—to prove the night before wasn’t just some dream. Then my eyes locked onto a stack of papers by my computer. A printout. I ran over to it, grabbing it with trembling hands.

It was my manuscript. The pages I’d written while at Logan’s safe house. I nearly collapsed into my chair in relief. It wasn’t a dream.

Though…shouldn’t I have wanted it to have been one? We were running for our lives. Slayer, Inc. hot on our heels. My life was in danger. Was my life still in danger?

Dropping the manuscript, I searched the surface of my desk. Finally, I found what I was looking for—praying for.

A note from Logan.

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I stared at the note, my heart pounding in my chest. My stomach swimming with a mixture of longing and fear. I turned it over, hoping there was more, but knowing there wouldn’t be. There wouldn’t be anything more.

I would never see him again.

It didn’t say that in the note. But it seemed implied. This was a final farewell. A Dear John letter, vampire style. It was easy to read between the lines. I was to go back to my old life. And forget any of the underworld I’d seen existed.

I dropped the letter, tears streaming down my cheeks. I angrily brushed them away. What was wrong with me? I should be thrilled, ecstatic. I had been given a second chance. I no longer had to fear for my life from some rogue Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So why was I so damned sad instead?

I stared down at the letter, reading it again. Trying to picture Logan writing it while I slept. Did he glance over at me once or twice as he wrote? Did anything stir in his heart as he did?

Stupid. I crumbled up the note, tossing it in the trash. Pathetic. What did you expect? A vampire to fall in love with you overnight? He was practically a prince. And you—you are nothing but a pathetic rape victim recluse with self-mutilation issues. What would he possibly want with someone like you?

I found myself diving in the trash to retrieve the letter, smoothing it out on my lap as the tears fell onto the paper, blurring the ink. I set it aside, out of the splash zone, then glanced over at my box. My Carpathian puzzle box. But then I shook my head. I wasn’t going to do that. Hopefully ever again. If anything positive could come from the last nights, it could at least be that.

My cell phone startled me out of my reverie. Loud, piercing—when had I turned up the volume? Usually I kept it on vibrate. I dove for it, heart in my throat, praying it was someone that I knew it wouldn’t be.

Someone I would never hear from again.

Instead it was Darla. A very relieved Darla who had evidently been calling me fifty-thousand times since the party. She told me she’d left her concert early to come find me there, feeling guilty she’d allowed me to attend alone. When no one knew where I was, she’d panicked. She’d come to my house; she’d banged on my door. At one point she’d even called the police to report me missing.

She was talking so fast I barely was able to get a word in. When I did, I simply apologized. Blamed my depression. Told her the party had been too much for me and I had fled it and hid in bed for the last thirty-six hours, having turned off my phone. Sadly, this excuse was so believable, coming from my mouth, that she believed it without much question. Though she did repeat her desire for me to seek help. But then, there was nothing odd about that.

I finally got her off the phone, promising I would answer the door when the car service came to pick me up tonight. In all the craziness, I had forgotten that I was technically still on tour. Still expected to be at a neighboring bookstore to celebrate the Jonathan and Maisie chronicles with adoring fans.

I glanced over to my bookshelf. At all the copies of those books.

I only hope that my real life kind can live up to your beautiful imagination.

Logan’s words echoed through my head, as if he’d whispered them in my ear instead of putting them to paper. I closed my eyes, remembering the feel of his cool hands all over my flushed skin. His hard mouth pressing against my own. What was it he said again in that bookstore? Real men don’t kiss with the gentleness of a butterfly’s wing.

A smile crept over my face. He hadn’t been wrong about that.

But now…now it was over. Cinderella was back from the ball. Back in the rags of her own pathetic existence, created by her own hand. I looked around my apartment, remembering how much I used to love it here. How safe and secure I felt.

Now it resembled a prison.

I rose to my feet. Walked mechanically to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. I grabbed a granola bar and ripped it open. Chewed it while waiting for the coffee to brew. Then I grabbed my BB8 shaped mug and poured my coffee into it before heading over to my computer.

It was what I did every morning. A ritual I quite enjoyed. But today it brought me no happiness. And as I stared at the blank screen, I was given no words. Jonathan was not whispering in my ear anymore.

It was all Logan. But he had nothing left to say.