18. Chapter 18

The bed is way too comfortable, and way too empty. After our late night of partying, I was not expecting to wake up alone.

Searching the bed with my hand, I stubbornly keep my eyes closed. The sinking feeling from last night is now so overwhelming that it’s deafening. No! No, no, no!

The sheets are too soft, and the comforter… the comforter! Tears rush down my cheeks before I even manage a peek at the stark white walls of my bedroom. The bedroom in my condo.

I”m reeling from the terrible ache in my chest. Everything in my room looks exactly the way it looked the night weeks ago before I fell asleep and landed in my book. It can’t have been a dream.

Struggling to get my sobbing—when did that happen?—under control, I scramble to get out of bed. There’s only one way to know for sure.

My cuticles pay the price as I wait for my PC to start up. When the home screen pops up, I plop down on the chair and open up the document I was working on.

My eyes roam over the pages, taking in the words over and over again. But no matter how many times I read the last few paragraphs, the words don’t change.

The story ends right before Vixen makes Killer walk the plank.

None of it happened.

I’ve no clue how long I sit in front of my screen just staring at the words. At some point, the tears and sobbing die down and give way to an overwhelming emptiness. My brain understands what happened. Some kind of subconscious plot to figure out what to do with the story resulted in a dream vivid enough to help me through the minor block.

But my heart refuses to believe that everything I just went through was from a dream.

Those men were real. I felt them. They held me, cradled me, fucked me senseless. But more than anything else, my feelings were… no, are real. My heart is broken, empty, and missing them.

How can it only be a dream if I felt that so vividly?

At some point, I give in to my body’s needs and get up. Bypassing the bathroom, because seeing an actual toilet right now might break me, I stumble into the kitchen and dig in the fridge for some yogurt and a bottle of sparkling water.

With my provisions, I sit back down on my chair and look at the blinking cursor.

As if they have a mind of their own, my hands move up to the keyboard and start filling the screen with words.

One page after another, I try to mend my broken heart by telling our story. Oh-so-carefully, I write it out, keeping to the facts as closely to the truth as I can.

If I can’t have this—them—then I’ll have the memory of it. After the struggle of the first few paragraphs, the words flow from me, demanding to be let out. I’ve always looked sideways at the authors in my sprint group who manage over fifteen thousand words a day, but I understand it now.

I write our love story, tearing it from my soul one chapter at a time, until I confront the ending I never wish to pen down.

***

Vixen went to sleep in her men’s arms, safe in the knowledge that they loved her above all else. The following morning they’re woken by the blinding sun coming in through the bedroom curtains they’d forgotten to close the night before.

Pete grumbled as she tickled him to get him up. But because he loved her, and was a sucker when it came to giving her what she wanted, he crawled out of bed and drew the shades shut. He watched over the three sleeping forms, smiling down at them.

Every morning he woke up in bed with them, Pete said his prayers to Poseidon to thank him for the bounty he’d been blessed with. And every night when he crawled between the sheets with Jack, Vixen, and Drake next to him, he offered everything he had to ensure he woke up with them again the following morning.

A debt he’d gladly pay if it ever came to it.

“You planning on standing there staring at us like a sap, or are you going to get back in bed so I can have my wicked way with you?” Jack asked, squinting through one eye.

With the promise of getting that buggering he’d been dying for, Pete jumped on the bed, ignoring the cries of protest from Vixen and the promises of retribution from Drake. He was a man on a mission and nothing was going to stop him. In fact, he kind of hoped the other two would join in.

And join in they did. Always and forever.

The End.

***

My tears have long since dried up, but writing those last two words rips a sob from my throat. I know I’ll regret it later, but now that I’ve purged the words from my system, I need to get rid of them.

Normally, at this point, I will do about fifty rounds of self-edits, but my heart cannot take reading through that all again. I format the document and save it before sending it off to my publishers along with a note that it’s the last historical romance they can expect from me.

I’ll probably be hearing from their lawyers soon, but I don’t fucking care.

A quick look at the clock tells me I’ve been writing for eighteen hours straight. I’ve survived on leftovers, yogurt, and water, but now I need to crash.

I’m finally tired enough to brave the bathroom with all its modern conveniences. As if my body finally realizes it has other needs, too, I go about my business before running the shower and sitting my ass down on the floor to allow the water to run down over me.

Apparently, my tears haven’t dried up yet, but at least now I can pretend that it’s the shower and not my heart ripping apart. Eventually, I find the strength to stand up and crawl into bed, naked, wet, and silently begging to wake up back in my dream world with my men.

It doesn’t happen.

Not that night. Or the one after.