Page 287 of Darling Venom
Behind her, Terry pales.
He shoots me a look, waiting for assurance that he’s doing the right thing.
I incline my head slightly, as if to say, go for it.
The speaker talks for another twenty minutes. Charlie grabs my hand and squeezes.
She knows I’m nervous.
I’m sure she’s nervous, too.
And then the woman finally gives Terry the microphone.
He cuts straight to the point, like he told us he would earlier, when he came for a pregame drink at our house.
Coffee, in case you were wondering.
Asshole has been sober for a while now.
He clears his throat.
“Thank you. For the support. For buying Darling Venom. Reading it. Loving it. For telling your friends to buy it. For sending me pictures of it in bookstores. I don’t think you know how much that means to me. How… how fucking freaky it feels. That you pour something that’s in your head onto a page, and that thing that you thought about becomes so popular, everyone wants to hear it and read about it.”
He takes a breath.
Closes his eyes.
His shoulders are shaking, but he doesn’t cry.
“Only I’m afraid I cannot feel any of those things that make a writer proud. See, there’s a reason I declined any public speaking until now. It’s not because I value my privacy—fuck my privacy. It’s not because I have nothing to say. I have too much to say. It’s because saying what I have to say is frightening, yet necessary.”
I have a bad feeling about his next words.
Or a good one, depending on how I look at it.
The event coordinator weaves through the tables, almost plowing herself to the stage. “This is supposed to be about Mr. Marchetti.”
“That’s me,” Terry points out.
The crowd dissolves into laughter.
“The other Marchetti.”
“I’m getting there.”
More laughter.
Charlie and I exchange glances. Neither of us is amused. We’re concerned for Terry.
She gestures for me to grab the car. I move, still paying close attention to Terry’s speech as he returns to the mic and starts up again.
“Where was I? Right. Kellan Marchetti was a lot of things. An author. A prodigy. A brother. A son. And the writer of a book I stole from him and called my own. The Imperfections.”
A collective gasp sucks the air out of the room.
I freeze by the doorway, turning back to face Terry. I expected him to come clean about plagiarism, but I never expected the writer to be Kel.
But it makes sense.
