Page 8 of Ever Mine

I’m accustomed to emotional surges while I’m writing. Feeling through my characters is what I’m good at. In the everyday world, not so much.

I grab one of my monogrammed notes and write something down, then seal it in a matching envelope.

Then I grab a sticky note of my own and write out:

It’s cedar and bergamot.

chapter

five

Addison

By the time Monday rolls around, I’m convinced there is a legitimate wormhole in Saddle Creek, Texas. There is really no other explanation for what happened to my notebook. It had been with all of the rest of my things at the bakery. Kelsie hadn’t found it after I’d left. I’d looked all over my car and house, and still nothing.

It kind of felt like an omen about my potential as a romance novelist. And not a good one.

It felt like meteors screaming across the sky and hell-mouths cracking open in the center of town.

As though trying my hand at writing a romance novel has pushed me to the edge of the map into There-Be-Dragons territory.

By the way, there is a slight chance I’m being overly dramatic.

I had a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, and I know for a fact that all of my professors would be horrified if they knew I was trying my hand at a romance novel. They’d call it a waste of my talent and work ethic.

I should just go back to working on the literary novel I started in school. Did I want to? No, not even a little bit. The entire premise was depressing and boring—sensitive ingenue goes through struggles as her parents divorce and her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer.

I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to read it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to write it. Yes, there was a place for those types of stories in the world. But I just didn’t feel like I was the person to tell them.

Yes, I was young, and sure I’d faced challenges. But much like my inexperience with physical activities of the romantic variety impeded my romance writing, similarly, I didn’t have much in the way of personal angst.

I came from a good family, without much in the drama category. My parents are still married and very much in love. My mom’s tattas are (thankfully) cancer-free. And yes, before I wrote that bit into the outline of the class project novel, I made her send me the results from her latest mammogram. Why yes, I am overly dramatic and prone to anxiety, thank you very much.

My family has oodles of money thanks to the West (my mother’s maiden name) family’s vast properties and mineral rights. I have a good relationship with all of my siblings.

Maybe I’m just not cut out to write anything other than catchy copy for social media.

Or maybe I need to get out in the world and experience some life.

Hadn’t I tried that already when I’d gone to get my master’s? Hell, I’d lived in another state during that experience. None of my siblings could say the same.

I’d lived in a shitty apartment close to campus and worked as a barista at the local coffee shop. I’d lived off ramen and three-day-old takeout. Not because I couldn’t afford better, but because all my classmates were doing the starving artist thing, and it seemed like I should do it with them. Plus, there was no way I was going to admit to getting monthly checks from an oil drilling company. Not when my roommate refused to wear clothes that weren’t thrifted and carried her own cutlery around to decrease her carbon footprint.

All through grad school, I hoped that my years roughing it on the mean streets of Iowa City would forge me into an angsty literary writer. Spoiler alert, they did not.

I came home to Saddle Creek and my beloved collection of paperback romance novels wiser but still just as interested in writing smut.

But if I can’t get some real-life experience under my belt, I may be forced to admit that I’m not qualified even for that.

And by real-life experience, I mean laid. And by under my belt, I mean literally in my pants and hopefully with some fantastic oral sex.

Needless to say, I bury those hopes deep as I drive to my new day job.

As soon as I walked into the lobby of Limestone Brewery, the receptionist smiled broadly and waved.

“Addison, I have a piece of mail here for you,” she says.

“Mail?” I ask, confused. Still, I took the envelope she held out to me.