Page 36 of The Outpost (Jamison Valley 4)
Since then, he had only come up for brief, once-a-week day trips. He’d leave Prescott in the morning, arriving at the outpost before lunch. We’d share a quiet but polite meal before unpacking whatever supplies he’d brought, then he’d say good-bye, leaving to make the three-hour journey back to town so he could get home before dinner.
The distance was a good thing—my new mantra.
Yes, it had dinged my pride to feel that rejection from Beau but it really had been good for me.
During the first month at the outpost, I had let myself get swept up in all that Beau goodness. His strength. His gentle nature. His calming essence. I had convinced myself that I’d be fine at the outpost as long as he was by my side.
But he’d left and I had found a new determination to make this work on my own. I’d prove to myself that I could stay in this place alone. That I could be content here. I’d take back some of the independence I had lost when I’d been forced to hide in the woods.
Those were my goals.
My plan for achieving them was simple.
Write a book.
Now, a month later, it was almost done.
Forcing my face out of the pillow, I sat on the edge of my cot, swinging the sleep from my legs as I stretched my arms to the ceiling. Boone crawled out from beneath me and rested his chin on my thigh for a good-morning scratch.
“Last chapter today, buddy,” I said. “Let’s get after it.”
Quickly showering and blow-drying my hair, I threw on my freshly hand-washed jeans and a simple white T-shirt. The June weather was cool in the morning, but by mid-afternoon, the outpost would be quite warm and I would drag my chair outside to write in the shade of the trees.
I made myself coffee, savoring its bitter warmth, and settled into the log chair.
My writing chair.
I was already rehearsing my speech to beg Beau to let me take it home to Seattle.
Opening my laptop, I scrolled to the bottom of my novel and started hammering away at the keyboard. My heroine’s ending was perfectly scripted in my mind. Today, she and her hero were finally getting their happily ever after.
Four hours later, I stared at my screen, unblinking.
I’d done it. I’d written a novel.
It was undeniably surreal. Remarkable, really. Pride swelled in my chest as tears of joy flooded my eyes.
I loved my story.
The manuscript needed editing and a thorough proofread, but the story itself was a solid first draft. My characters weren’t perfect, they were real. Fitting one another into their lives took work. They struggled on their journey, dealing with personal battles not easy to fight alone, but they learned how to trust in each other.
I loved my story.
I had loved writing my story.
Giving myself to it completely, I had let this process consume me in a freeing way. There were no rules to my writing. I could dictate everything and anything I wanted for my characters.
There wasn’t a fact-checker questioning everything I had done. My boss wasn’t pressuring me to beat a deadline. The newspaper executives weren’t requiring me to spin the story a certain way. It had been, by far, the most enlightening and rewarding writing experience I’d had since college.
Even if I only sold ten copies, I didn’t care. Writing this novel had been better therapy than paying a trained professional ever could have been.
The main character was the flawed version of myself, struggling to overcome poor decisions. Her biggest regret was mine, having traded her morals to advance her career. Yet the hero loved her anyway. He cherished her imperfections.
Fiction was remarkable. I could give her the man I’d never find, a man that didn’t exist in the real world. Because no decent, honorable, kind man would want anything to do with me.
Anton had called me a whore the night he’d nearly beaten me to death.
It was true.
