Chapter Twenty-One

~ FREYA ~

“I’ll text you when I get there,” he had said so causally it made me want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

And when he kissed me goodbye, I knew instinctively it would be the last time we kissed like that, with a passion that would quickly be replaced by a tepid peck on the cheek when we next met.

It’s for the best, I keep telling myself as the seconds tick away on the bookstore’s clock. I can’t deny that I got exactly what I wanted from Mason. That first night together, I’d been curious. And that second night, I’d just wanted to explore the connection between us, and take advantage of our last night breaking from reality.

And take advantage, I did.

I hear my phone chirp in my purse below the counter. After ringing up a customer, I reach for it, hoping it’s not another text from my mom. Without Mason here to translate for me, I had to call her for an explanation of her text this morning, which led to a lengthy conversation about how I shouldn’t get too serious about any men at my age (even though she was married with a kid at twenty-three.)

I’m not sure how she senses when there’s someone I find worthy of sex in my life. But I did take an hour to search—futilely, thank God—for a nannycam in my apartment.

A smile warms me when I see the text is from Mason, and somehow hearing from him sets things a little more to rights in my world, as though everything had been askew since he walked out my door.

“Place looks empty,” he’s written attaching a photo of his new apartment.

“Place looks CLEAN!” I tap in.

I can imagine him grinning as he reads it, and things slowly seem to be going back to normal. I want to be able to visit him, and when he comes up here, I don’t want things awkward between us.

I should get right back on that horse, I tell myself. I should text Harris and have that coffee with him, move on just like I know Mason will when he settles in Little Creek. And he will find someone else. He always does. He’ll probably find several someones before he even thinks about coming up here to do that crabbing he promised me.

Plucking my phone again from under the counter, I scroll through my texts looking for the one from Harris. Coffee, it is, I decide.

But my finger swipes the wrong way and brings up the rejection email that I must have left open from that agent who wanted Zander to be morphed into a shifter.

Damn her. If she hadn’t sent that email, I probably wouldn’t have gone a little bit crazy and launched myself at Mason like some kind of jet-propelled sex addict. Things wouldn’t have shifted between the two of us, leaving me to feel so empty without him here.

Or maybe I should be thanking her for that. Even if I never feel this depth of love for anyone else in my life, maybe I’m still better off for having experienced it first-hand.

Each thought of him, so far from her side, was like a tiny fissure in her heart, making her more vulnerable, until she knew one day she’d shatter to pieces, overcome by the loss of Zander’s love.

I should tap that into my notes, but I don’t. Because Zander loved Genevieve, a feeling that Mason never expressed for me—except through his tender touch last night, or the softness of his gaze as he claimed me, or the way he’s always been there for me, no matter what time of day or night for the past two years of my life.

But without the words, it can’t be love, can it?

I frown at the idea of it. Words are my life, standing here, surrounded by books, creating characters in my mind brought to life only through the words I assign to them.

Words are what turned a book I loved—a book I created with Mason—into an eye-rolling amalgam of every agent’s fancy.

Tie me up, SEAL-shifter-billionaire, I think as my lip curls. Now, there’s a note worth jotting down, a new line for Genevieve to cry out with passion.

That’s not the classic romance that I had wanted to write.

Barely even thinking, I close the one email, and open another one on impulse, this time staring at the words of the agent who had somehow inspired me to have Genevieve tied up to a bed.

Grimly, I reread the email.

Dear Ms. Hansen,

Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript to me. I enjoyed reading about your characters, and your plotline held my interest.

It did not, however, have as much ‘heat’ as I would have expected from a military romance. Today’s trend is to include more explicit sex, harsher language, and often BDSM scenes. However, you have captured my attention with your style of writing, your setting, and your military details. If you would be interested in editing your work to make it more in line with what our agency is pursuing now, I would reconsider it. Please be advised that resubmitting your work does not guarantee an offer for representation by our agency. If you are interested, please reply with your revised manuscript in docx format.

Smiling, I remember Mason reading it with indignation, sitting at The Buzz a handful of days ago. I can see him tossing my phone down on the table in front of us, the same stubborn look that he had when he plunked that newspaper article in front of me yesterday.

“Look, Freya, you wrote a great book,” he had said. “You can hold your head up high about it. Publish that one. The one you believed in.”

His words echo in my head so clearly that I actually turn around just to make sure he isn’t there. And they warm my heart completely.

Yes, Mason is my Zander. And I won’t morph him into some caricature of what a romantic hero is supposed to be. My skin heats, remembering the feel of him with his arms wrapped around me, with our bodies joined. No, I won’t change my hero just so I might have the chance of getting published one day.

I hit the reply button.

Thank you very much for your interest in my revised manuscript. However, I have decided to self-publish my book. I wish you all the best.

Freya Hansen