Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I sighed. “Well, that won’t be happening.”
“What?! Yes, it will!” she shot back.
I’d already made this decision. For many reasons. One being that if I failed, I didn’t want the world that knew Noa Raines, the loser nerd, had taken a chance and crashed.
“I’m using a pen name.”
There was a pause, then, “NOA! No! Please don’t! They all need to have it shoved in their faces! Like when I loudly mentioned, in Ella’s earshot, that Pike asked you out after he broke up with her, I want to continue to shove your success in her face. She was horrid to you freshman year. HORRID!”
I grinned and sat down on the sofa in the living room I shared with my three roommates. None of whom I had grown close to the way I had with Jellie.
“What Ella thinks of me or feels about me is of no importance to me. That’s the past. We grew up.”
“You might have, but Ella absolutely has not. She’s still as vile as she was in college. I follow her Instagram just to know what hex to put on the voodoo doll I had made of her.”
Rolling my eyes, I laughed. “You’re still using that doll?”
“I sure as shit am! I will do so until the day I die! Then I am taking it to the grave with me so I can haunt her ass. That is, if she doesn’t bite it before me. Which, if the universe is fair and just in the slightest, she will go years before I do.”
“We might need to get you a therapist for this,” I told her.
“Someone has to hate for you since you seem to forgive all those who have caused you pain. I took that position at nineteen years old, and I will be doing it at ninety.”
I’d once thought that I wasn’t missing out on anything by not having a friend. I had been very wrong. The day that Jellie had walked into my life was fate’s way of apologizing to me for the isolation that high school had been.
“I love you,” I told her, feeling my throat tighten up with a lump.
“You’d better, ho, because you’re stuck with me for life. Now, since I know already that I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this pen-name bullshit, what name are you going to use?”
I had thought about it for months. Even before the deal was finalized. And the name I’d come up with meant something. But only I would ever understand its meaning. There had been many different names I could have used; however, this one held significance. Jellie might have become my very best friend in the world, but there was someone before her who had changed me. Given me a confidence I hadn’t even realized at the time.
He had made me feel seen. Smart. Witty. Worth the effort. Even if it was never romantic. Ransom Carver had shown an interest in my mind. And that was where it all changed for me. I’d wanted to be the girl he thought I was. The one behind the words I texted.
“Juliette Romeo,” I told her.
“Huh, I like it. You’re giving a nod to your favorite Shakespeare work.”
No … I was giving a nod to the boy who had called me Shakespeare and the man who still did.
Noa
Age Twenty-Six
Ransom: I’m starting to get a complex.
I looked down at my phone and read his text, then bit back a laugh. There were still three more hours left on my flight to London. I’d thought about texting him, but I hadn’t. Lately, there had been an annoying guilt about texting with Ransom. The moment I’d said, “Yes,” and Arden slid the diamond onto my finger, I’d begun to feel as if I was lying to him. But this wasn’t cheating. It was … it was pen-pal stuff. It had been almost ten years since we’d seen each other in person. The texting we did was just friendly. Never had Ransom flirted with me. He never said inappropriate things to me. But if I was going to marry Arden, then shouldn’t my future husband know that I regularly texted another man? Even if it was completely platonic.
Me: And why is that?
Ransom’s texts were a major part of my life. Stopping them … it was literally painful to think about.
Ransom: You haven’t texted me in almost a week. What’s happening in life, Shakespeare? Something must be keeping you busy.
My current book tour. That was keeping me busy. But my career as a romance novelist wasn’t something I’d shared with him. He’d want to know the name of the book, see my pen name, read the first book I had published … about a librarian and a very dark, elusive stranger who snuck into her apartment at night and watched her. My hero became obsessed, and his physical description was Ransom Carver in every way, right down to the cleft in his chin. No way in hell was Ransom Carver ever going to know he was the hero in the first three books I’d published. All of which had shot to the top of the bestsellers list and then been published internationally. I’d been translated into twenty-four different languages so far. It was all surreal. Turned out that Arden had been right about that.