Page 7 of Playing With Fire

Reading glasses. Check. Check.

I send myself a voice note to place an order for more pink composition books once I get settled. And maybe some new bras and panties. Just in case I circle back to the whole getting laid thing.

By the time both my suitcases are full and barely zipped, and book fifty is wedged into the final box, it’s dinner time.

“Forty-seven felt like such an odd number.” I defend myself to Darcy as he saunters out of the room in search of his own dinner.

Tomorrow morning, I can pack my toiletries, record player, Darcy’s supplies, and the handful of other things I’ll inevitably remember five minutes before we leave.

I look around my room once more; the blush-colored walls are like a scrapbook of every version of me I’ve ever been. Which just leaves one thing.

The photographs.

I stand in front of the collage covering the corkboard beside my desk.

Twenty-three years of my life stare back at me.

My first book fair. Fireworks over Cinderella’s Castle. Birthday parties. Me dressed up as Elizabeth Bennet for Halloween. Christmas morning pancakes. Declan smiling with a missing tooth. Darcy as a kitten. Ice skating on Morgan’s Pond. My first author signing. North Pines hockey games. My trip to Forks. The tulip festival. Me reading on the beach. The Bridgerton Ball. Me, Mom, and Dad at my graduation… all three of them.

My fingers move from one picture to the next until one from the lake falls from the board and uncovers a forgotten photo.

North Pines Winter Formal.

I’m eighteen, my brown hair piled up in curls, wearing an icy blue dress. Smiling up at Bishop like he hung the moon. He’s looking down at me with one hand resting at my waist. His blond hair is a little too long, his bow tie slightly crooked, and there’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth that the camera caught before either of us realized someone was taking our picture.

For one stupid second, I can almost hear the music again. Remember what it felt like to…

I pull the photo from the cork and throw it face down in the top drawer of my desk before it can burn me the way the memory does.

The rest of the board comes with me. But not that one; that one stays.

Some things are better left in Evergreen.

CHAPTER TWO

DELANEY

I’ve imagined this moment hundreds of times, but none of them included me standing on a Chicago sidewalk trying not to lose my breakfast.

I tip my head back and stare up at the unassuming building in front of me.

Wilder House Publishing

The name is spelled out in bold black letters on weathered brick above a pair of tall glass doors. The wide, dark windows reflect pieces of the city behind me. It’s not some massive glass skyscraper like the publishing houses in movies. It’s an old brick warehouse tucked in a row of restaurants, coffee shops, and buildings that are the perfect marriage of industrial and chic.

A meow from the carrier in my hand reminds me that I need to go in before we arrive unfashionably late.

After circling the block a few times, I finally snagged a metered spot a block and a half away. I deserve a cookie—or a brown sugar shaken oat milk espresso—for squeezing my baby SUV between a catering van and a taco truck.

I’d better get used to it. I live here now. Well, technically, I live about six blocks from here in an apartment I’ve never seen, but details…

A nervous laugh slips out as I tighten my grip on Darcy’s carrier. Evergreen, Michigan, has been the only home I’ve ever known. Going to college in my hometown didn’t really give me the same fresh-start experience I might’ve had if I had packed my bags for NYU.

But two degrees, approximately five million pages read, edited, analyzed, and occasionally cried over, all led me here.

My stomach flips again, only this time I can’t tell if it’s nerves or excitement.

“You ready?” I whisper more to myself than to my judgmental, emotional support animal.