Page 68 of Going Viral for Christmas
“Pembry. He mentioned he didn’t have plans.” He shrugs, no big deal. “Could be good for PR.”
A dry laugh escapes me. “It’s enough that I have to maintain this charade in my daily life—I’m not dragging it into my family’s home.”
The thought hovers in the air.
Soren. Alone.
Nobody should be alone.
I recall the lull between panels, when I asked what he was doing for the holiday. He gave a half-shrug and said, “I don’t do Thanksgiving,” then promptly redirected his attention to the sad little bowl of unwrapped caramels on the refreshments table.
That was the safer conversation. It wasn’t nothing. And I felt it.
Fisher disappears down the hall, now mumbling about immunity boosters and burnout, and I find myself rising from the couch.
I tug down my leggings from where they’ve ridden up on my calves, rub a hand over my face, and suddenly I’m standing outsidehisdoor, with fuzzy socks heating my feet.
One hand raises, then hesitates.
This is dumb. I should go to bed.
I knock anyway.
The door creaks open a few seconds later.
Soren stands there shirtless. Again. Apparently, half-naked is his normal state of being while in the confines of a private space.
I take him in. The muscles of his chest are carved,lightly flushed from the warmth of the room, a faint sheen glistening along his collarbone—as if he’s been pacing. Or maybe just existing too hard.
Ink sprawls across him, a mix of calculated and cluttered—snatches of script, bold strokes, and fragments of poetry etched into skin. But it’s the runes that catch me, hidden messages along his ribs, curling down the slope of muscle. Old shapes, honed edges, ancient and private, as though the man himself is written in a language nobody else gets to read.
I caught glimpses of them that first night at theGreat Booksgiving, when neither of us could sleep. Shadows of ink beneath dim light, not enough to see their weight or meaning. But here, in full view, they’re impossible to ignore—impossible not to wonder about.
Every mark tells a story. Why do I suddenly want all of them?
A pair of reading glasses sits low on his nose, and he’s holding a pen in one hand, a stack of pages clutched in the other.
Soren glares at me from behind the lenses. “Hey.”
“I—uh…” I clear my throat. “Sorry to bother you.”
He opens the door wider. “You’re not. Come in.”
I stumble at the threshold and try to play off the embarrassment by blaming my fuzzy socks for slipping on the floor.
Soren chuckles.
His now familiar scent of pine trees and magic fills the room, mixed with a new one–old paper and lukewarm coffee. I inhale as if I’ll never get another chance to breathe it all in while surveying his room.
His bed is unmade. The desk is tidy, covered in color-coded sticky tabs, a coffee mug full of pens, and a printed manuscript thick with handwritten notes.
Soren sets his pages down carefully. “Working through my latest draft.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I know, wild Saturday night.”
Curiosity tugs at me. I move closer to where the manuscript sits, highlighted in blue and green ink, with some lines circled with arrows and others marked with blunt comments:cut thisornot relatable.
I trail a finger along the edge. “Let me guess…you are your own worst enemy.” Catching a line, I read it out loud. “When Daxion kissed Elira, the moan that escaped her was etched into his memory by moonlight—sacred, trembling—and now he’s retracing it with reverent hands, the rhythm of her body a sacred text written in heat and breath, and worshiped in silence.”
“Bit much?” he asks, nervous.
