Page 92 of That’s My Orc, Tusk Off

“Willa—”

He stared at the notebook. “I don’t understand.”

“This is for good things,” I said. “Things you want to remember about today.” I met his eyes. “Real things. Not the pretend life we just built for the scribe.”

His throat worked. “Why?”

“Because if we’re going to convince him we’re mated, we need more than my shampoo in your bathroom and your books next to mine.” I gestured around the cottage. “This looks right. But it’s not real. Not yet.”

I took the notebook to the kitchen table and set it down.

“Tonight, after the scribe leaves, we’re both going to write one good thing from today,” I said. “Something that actually happened, not something we staged. And tomorrow night, we’ll do it again.”

Traig followed me to the table, still holding the blank pages. “You want me to keep a tally.”

“I want us to build something real underneath the performance.” I pulled out a chair and sat in it. “Because when he comes back tomorrow morning, I don’t want to be pretending anymore.”

He lowered himself into the other chair slowly. The notebook sat between us.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said quietly.

“Write down one good thing. There’s always at least one.” I picked up my pen and wrote the date at the top of a fresh page. “I’ll start.”

I wrote, Traig remembered what I wore on my second day.

I slid the notebook across to him.

He stared at my entry for a long moment. Then he picked up the pen and wrote beneath it. Willa is letting me write in her notebook. A blank page I can fill myself.

He slid it back.

When I read what he’d written, my eyes burned.

“See?” I said, my voice one big croak. “Real.”

“After the scribe leaves tonight,” he said. “We’ll both write something.”

“Every night,” I said.

“Every night.”

Two people lived here now. Or it looked like they did.

But maybe, underneath the staging and performance and fear, we were building something that could be real.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, not sure if I was talking about the bed or the assessment or the fact that my heart was doing odd things every time he looked at me.

He didn’t answer.

Just glanced down at the notebook between us like it was the most important document he’d ever seen.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TRAIG

The scribe arrived at my cottage at exactly six.

I watched from the window as he emerged from the truck he’d rented to carry him from wherever he was staying to here. He carried his ledger tucked under one arm.