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“What do you mean?”

“The dating podcaster who hasn’t had an even halfway decent date in months… and the romance novelist who hasn’t found real love yet.”

“Oh, boo hoo,” Margo called from the backseat. “You’re both beautiful, smart, and talented. And you’re sitting up there whining about men. Men! They’re the cherry on top, but you’re the whole ice cream sundae. Including the whipped cream.”

Tess shot me a look, and I gave her a shrug. Because Margo wasn’t wrong.

We needed to stop wallowing.

Me more than anyone.

It was my own damn fault I was in this mess to begin with. Once we were back in Seattle, I was going to fess up, clear my conscience, deal with whatever consequences were going to come my way, and finally move on.

From the Madison persona.

From the lies.

And, yes, from Silas.

I spent the rest of the drive to L.A. trying to come up with a script for what I was going to say to Silas when I got up the guts to confess, then talking to Tess about what we were going to do after the con before we headed home because, apparently, one simply didn’t visit L.A. for work and not have some fun too.

Was I up for that?

Not really.

But I also knew the distraction would probably be good for me.

“You sure you don’t want to room with us?” Tess asked when we’d all dragged our road-weary bodies into the hotel. “It’s two queens. We can share one.”

“Rooming with you two will almost guarantee that I won’t get any sleep.”

“Hey, I object to—” Tess started, but I shot her a look. It practically said: Remember what happened in Vegas? Which was basically a rockstar after-party crashing into the room while I was sleeping. “Okay. You’re probably right. Well, get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a lot.”

She had no idea.

The merch table was its own thing.

But having to find somewhere to hide and then do the call with Silas after everything that had happened was going to be hard. Especially given that I was feeling pretty cynical about relationships myself.

But it was one more day.

Then it was all over.

My hotel room was a floor below Tess and Margo, so I stopped off first, said my goodbyes, then locked myself in my room where I showered off the road, ate some of the snacks I’d picked up at a gas station, then dropped into the bed and stared at the wall until my eyes got too tired to stay awake anymore.

—

It was the pounding that woke me up from the kind of deep sleep that left me disoriented and detached, part of me still stuck in a dream where I was having a talk with a unicorn shifter (that I was reasonably sure didn’t exist) about, of all things, the best ways to eat various kinds of cheese.

I figured it was my brain’s way of trying to offset the dark cloud hanging over me when I was awake.

“I don’t want to do whatever scheme you guys have planned,” I called. Flipping onto my back, I rubbed at my sleepy eyes. The knocking continued. With a sigh, I rolled off the bed and stumbled to the door. “Keep your panties on, Tess,” I said as I slid the locks.

The second I turned the knob, I realized my mistake.

It wasn’t Tess or Margo.

It was Silas.