Page 120 of Going Viral for Christmas
You’ve got, what, a thousand women calling you theirbook boyfriend?
Mmmm, more like millions, but they don’t know me. Or my heart.
And I do?
You’re the only one I want to hand it to, bruises and all.
…You’re flirting again.
Yeah, I am. But ONLY with you.
This whole thing is getting confusing.
Let me help un-confuse you. Dinner. A REAL date. Not like that staged, cringy monstrosity in D.C.
Tomorrow night. I’ll fly back to you. Your turf. Just us. Real talk. No fans. No cameras. No pretending. Only you and me.
Why?
Because if we’re going to pretend to love each other in public… we should know what itmightfeel like in private.
Dangerous game, remember?
Still my favorite kind. That will never change.
I set the phone down with trembling fingers.
His words bounce around in my head.Dinner. Just us. No fans. No cameras.
No pretending.
Only you and me.
There’s nothing fake about the way my stomach dropped when I saw he texted me. Nothing staged about the heat spreading under my skin at the thought of him, here, with me. There’s probably flames flickering in those storm cloud eyes of his, smiling. He knows what I’ll say.
My fingers move to type out my response, thenhalt, hovering.
God, what am Idoing?
Soren Pembry is everything I’ve trained myself to avoid. Beautiful, risky in the way a cobra dances—hypnotic to watch, deadly to touch. He’s made for seduction. Built for it. A man who collects hearts just to hear them shatter.
And yet…
There’s a transformation I can’t explain. He’s hiding a quieter Soren underneath the smirks and swagger. Ifeltit in Salem—between the banter and that moment in the Witch House where he looked at me like I wasn’t Ava Bell the Author™, butjust Ava. I haven’t beenjust Avain a very long time.
It’s easier being the brand. The ShelfSpace Queen of Steam. The girl with the romance empire and the tragic backstory. He saw through that. Or around it. Or maybe he didn’t care about the façade I’ve worked so hard to create.
He called me a muse. His current book has a female character inspired by me.
No one’s ever called me that before. Or done that before. Not without wanting pieces of me in return.
What if he’s doing all of this to get close for research? For his façade? Or his character?
What if I’m a sucker and it’s all lies?
Like Jon’s were.
That asshole called me talented, beautiful, special. Right before he destroyed every part of me I’d felt brave enough to share. And right before he turned my body into a stepping stone and my dreams into a joke. The others were no different.
