Page 117 of Going Viral for Christmas
In that time, I didn’t just fall for him—I built my world around him. I gave him my work, my body, my trust, my first everything. In return, he conditioned me to believe that my worth was tied to his approval, that I was lucky he picked me. That I’d be nothing without him. It wasn’t long before I became chained to the version of myselfhecreated. It wasn’t just a bad relationship. It was an education in how easily love can become a leash and ambition a cage.
Then… My whole life collapsed.
The girl in Miami messaged me first. The one in LA. was next. More girls. Different cities. Different names. Same script. Same lies. Same heartbreak.
Come to find out, he wasn’t even a licensed agent. Never submitted my manuscript anywhere. Had three phones and a sob story for each.
When it all came out, I not only lost a fake agent—I lost the voice inside me that once believed I deserved more. Or anything at all.
My budding career, my fragile confidence, and my bleeding heart all flatlined at the same time. Everything was a fiction better than anything I could’ve written myself—one where he was the hero and I was another gullible girl who got in too deep.
It’s been nearly two years, and since then, I’ve played it safe and guarded my heart. No more letting someone get too far in, or allowing anyone to see the soft places in me.
There have been others, a rebound, a few flings, nothing more, all of them huge mistakes.
A lawyer who quoted romantic poetry until I realized it was all generated by A.I. He was a man who knew the lines of Shakespeare but not the meaning of follow-through, and loved the performance of affection, not the intimacy of it. By the time I realized all this, he had already used those pretty words to fuck me, then dropped me. Completely ghosted.
A barista named Jules. This is the one I took home. He thought “emotionally available” meant crying after sex, but never once asked how my day was. He wore vulnerability as a party trick—loud, temporary. And yes, Wonderwalled the turkey.
Last Valentine’s Day, there was a fellow author. He had some promise. He was talented, charming. Except, he didn’t wantme. Or a partnership. He wanted a co-writer with coattails he could ride. Even tried to steal my current WIP by sharing the Google doc from my computer.
None of them lasted. I should’ve never let them get as far as they did. Each one confirmed what I already suspected—real connection is rare, and I’m better off keeping most of myself tuckedaway.
I write about love. I just don’t believe in it. Not like what my parents have–the messy, stay-through-the-hard-stuff version of love. Definitely not theI choose you over and over againkind.
I do miss being touched, though.And desired.Quite honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever been properly fucked. Not how I write it anyway. Or imagine it.
These days, my sex life is strictly academic—just me, my laptop or phone, one hand scrolling through “research,” and the other collecting empirical data…down there.
My bookmarks folder could make a priest faint. And yeah, I take notes. Angles. Pacing. Language. Emotion. I build sex scenes the way engineers build bridges: one tension wire at a time.
But living that kind of ruin-me-down-to-my-soul fucking? Still theoretical. And when my brain goes there—which it has, at a rate that would make my vibrator blush—I picture Soren.
His hands.
His voice.
His mouth.
The treehouse.
Oh God, the treehouse.
I straddled him without thinking, ground down on his hard cock like some horny YA heroine who mistook nostalgia for permission. He tensed beneath me, one breath away from snapping. And fuck, did I want him to snap. I wanted to feel all that restraint break open and take me right there on the weathered wood.
And when that same hard length was pressed against my backside the next morning, I couldn’t help but wiggle against him, testing the weight of it, the possibility. He wasn’t wrong when he accused me of doing it.
My body hasn’t stopped remembering since. I constantly think about him over me, under me,inme—hips angled, my hands fisting the sheets, that thick, soft steel of him pressing so deep inside me I see stars behind my eyes. I picture the drive of his body against mine, the flex of his muscles, the heat of his skin. How I would gasp into the pillow when he bottomed out, and groaned against my neck and whispered,fuuuck,into my ear.
I shouldn’t be picturing any of that. Except I am. And it’s getting harder to pretend I’m not. Soren said he wanted to show me we could be real. That he wasn’t going anywhere, and whatever this thing is between us—it matters. At least, to him it does.
Except, here’s the thing no one seems to get. I’m broken in places people can’t see. I’ve patched over too many cracks with caution tape and sarcasm. I can’t be what he deserves because I will always be waiting for the catch. For the change in tone. For the warmth to turn cold. For the hand that cups my face one moment to turn into the one that pushes me away the next. It’s a pattern I know too well—the whiplash of being pedestal-high one second and unworthy the next. It’s what always came after.
So I brace. I push. I test. I pretend I don’t care to see if he’ll walk away. I don’t know how to let someone love me without checking for the fine print. Without wondering what it’ll cost me later. And the scariest part is that sometimes, when he looks at me, like I’mworth it, I very much want to believe him, which makes me panic even more.
Why? Because we’re not soulmates. We’re a brand. A viral phenomenon.Bell and the Blade.And if I don’t screw it up, this could mean everything for my career. Renata and Fisher can’t keep up with the fan content. Camille’s videos are now in the millions. There’s even a rumor that ShelfSpace wants to do a holiday spotlight segment with us.
Which brings me to…
