The Shifter Romances The Writer

He did, staring into the tank like it held the wonders of the universe. She knew the feeling. She sat on the edge of the desk, enjoying his rapt attention and feeling like he’d just become a kindred spirit. “I love fish.”

He nodded slowly. “Me, too.”

“Very peaceful.”

More nodding. He leaned forward in the chair. “Um-hmm.”

She shifted her gaze to the tank then and focused on his handsome reflection. A trick of the water playing behind his image made it seem like gold light gleamed in his eyes. She’d seen that before. In the hot tub. Maybe it wasn’t a trick of the water. She glanced at him. The light was still there.

He caught her looking at him and blinked. The light was gone. He stood up. “That’s some tank. Can’t wait to see it when it’s fully stocked.”

She stared at him. Was it possible that a person’s eyes could reflect light like an animal’s? Sure. If she was hallucinating again, anything was possible. She looked away. Was this what it had been like for her mother when she’d first begun her descent into madness? “I’ll, uh, let you know.”

His butt made a buzzing sound. He reached back and pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen. “I need to take this. I’ll leave you alone so you can write.”

She just nodded.

He walked back to the living room. “What did you find out?”

She closed her office door and wheeled her chair back in front of her desk, then sat down. She’d been stressed before. Like the time the wrong file had gotten uploaded and her readers were almost sent the keynote speech she’d written for a writers’ conference instead of book three in the Blood Moon Brotherhood series. Or the time her first editor had quit the business a week before Roxy had expected her to get edits from the woman.

But she’d never had hallucinations before. Never. And if she was really honest and stopped pretending she didn’t know what she was seeing, well, then, the truth was she felt like her writing world and her real world were melting into each other.

How else could she explain seeing fangs and gills and gleaming eyes on people?

This wasn’t stress. It was stage one of her losing her mind. She’d never considered herself anywhere close to being like any of the great creative geniuses of the world, but it wasn’t unheard of for people in the arts to go mad.

Or people with a history of mental illness in their families.

And Roxy was both.

Her writing career would be over. Medications might take the edge off her storytelling abilities. She could lose her creative edge. Or her drive to write. If there were even drugs that could help. After all, nothing had made her mother better.

What if she lost the ability to write altogether?

She pressed a hand to her head and wondered if maybe the favor she needed to ask of Delaney and her husband was to recommend a really good therapist.

Her laptop was open on her desk. She swiped her finger over the touch pad, bringing the screen to life.

Her Word document appeared before her. There wasn’t much choice now, it seemed, except to finish the book as quickly as she could and wrap up the series so that her fans would have the closure they needed before she got carted off to an institution.

Like mother, like daughter.

Then her gaze moved to the closed office door and her thoughts turned to the man beyond that door. She couldn’t tell him about this, could she?

No, that would be a new level of weird. At least at this stage in their friendship. But she would tell him eventually. As for tonight, maybe…maybe she should forget work for the day and enjoy one last sane evening while that was still possible.

She stood, staring at the closed door, trying to make a decision. Alex or work?

She almost laughed.

That wasn’t really a hard choice to make at all. She needed to live now, before her life was nothing more than four padded walls and a locked door.

Alex looked up from his seat on the couch as Roxy walked out from her office. He’d just hung up with Jenna who’d given him her report and Birdie’s, who’d turned out to be as good a resource as he’d hoped, even if he hadn’t gotten the answer he’d expected. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“You’d be surprised what I’d believe.”

Her response caught him off-guard for a moment, then he shook it off. “The only record your ex has is a couple of tickets. And none of my sources have been able to track him down in town. And they were very thorough.”

She put her hands on the back of the couch and leaned against it as she took the news in. “So what does that mean?”

“It means a few things. He’s either staying here under an assumed name, or staying outside of town. Both are possibilities, so we’re working those angles to see what we come up with. But we also have to consider that he could be paying someone to do his dirty work. Or that it might not be Thomas at all.”

“Who’s we exactly?”

He lifted his phone. “I have some help at the department.”

“That’s very nice of them.” She sighed. “If it’s not Thomas, I don’t know who it is. And if it is Thomas, then he’s probably using a fake name and thinks he’s being all sly and smart.”

“Any idea what that name might be?”

“He’s a big Jets fan. Maybe he’d use the name of one of the players? I don’t know.”

Alex nodded. “That’s a good place to start.” He sent that info in a quick text to Jenna. “Maybe that’ll turn something up.”