Page 9 of Falling Into Forever
“Kate’s right. You’re already going viral, and it’s not good. People are calling for you to be canceled, and those are the nice ones.”
“But I—I…”
This empty store is my place to hide. A place to belong. A place that reminds me of those I’ve lost without suffocating in the sadness of it.
Owning a bookstore was always my dream. I drag the pendant around my neck along its chain as other dreams, broken long ago, try to enter my headspace.
Writing allows me to have the one dream that wasn’t shattered.
“I know you’re struggling, Sass, but you can only live on your savings for so long. Maybe it’s time to consider renting your room upstairs. That should help offset at least some of your expenses until the words flow again or you finally receive your frozen royalties.” She speaks to me like she’d speak to one of her patients about to get a death sentence.
Because opening my space to a stranger is exactly that—a death sentence.
I can taste blood at the back of my throat. My body reacts to stress viscerally, and today it acts like I just ran thirty miles without my inhaler and my lungs are collapsing.
The royalties from the books still on theNew York Timeslist should be coming in every six months, but Malimar is using my broken contract to seize them. It’s not legal, but it’s also not stopping him.
Ainsley’s right. Even existing on ramen, I can’t survive on my savings forever.
“Sassy. This is killing me because I still believe Kate’s a bulldozer, but I think you should trust her with this. And renting out your extra room will give you a financial buffer. It won’t be that bad.”
“That bad? Are you out of your mind? It would be horrible. It’s not even a bedroom. It’s half a room I use as an office. Plus I’d end up renting it to some stalker or ax murderer, because that is the kind of luck I have, admit it.”
“That’s true.” She chuckles. “But you forget that I’m your mirror. I know what you need and what you can handle, just like you know me when you allow yourself to feel it. I’ll help you get it rented. Let Kate handle the mob, and who knows, maybe having a roommate will help get you out of the writing funk you’ve been in. Maybe it’s your next great love story waiting to be written.”
My “funk” is a choice—it’s being intentionally lonely while creating happily ever afters I don’t believe in anymore. But I’ll never admit that to anyone—not even my twin.
“But it means I’d have to wear a bra in the morning and remember to brush my teeth before anything else. What if they mess with my coffee or play loud music?”
“You have noise-canceling headphones for a reason.” Ainsley turns the sign on the door to ‘closed,’ and my heart spasms with the motion.
What if it never opens again? The thought sours my stomach.
“If I get murdered in my sleep, will you make sure they play ocean sounds at my funeral? It’s peaceful, and shouldn’t a funeral be peaceful? I mean, there won’t be a ton of mourners, but you and Grady will be there. Maybe we should cancel the funeral altogether, and the two of you could go on a cruise or something. I don’t want—”
“Now, Sass,” she says. “I thought you saved the drama for your stories?”
Ainsley is the levelheaded one. I’m not sure when I started noticing our differences more than our similarities, but they’re all I see now.
She hooks her arm through mine and rests her temple on my shoulder as we walk toward the back stairs. I fight the urge to flick her cheek off me. Skin-to-skin contact makes it harder to keep my walls up.
“Shan would have been proud of you. You know that, right?” she says.
My stomach hollows out. The pain of missing someone who was your whole world never gets easier. We don’t talk about our sister very often because she’s one of two people who threaten my ability to control my emotions.
It’s not fair that her life ended when she’d never really lived. She spent her life taking care of us.
“Do you ever wonder if she thought we were a burden?” I ask.
Ainsley stops at the back stairs that lead to my apartment. “You mean because she took over mothering after Mom died?”
I shrug. “She was only thirteen. Grumpy took us in, but she raised us. And when he died, she was only twenty. She never even got to have a normal college experience.”
Our father took off when he found out we were twins, and our mother passed away when we were seven. As far as I’m concerned, we buried him with our mother. But our sister was our last connection to our history—and now she’s gone too.
“She loved us, Sass. It was hard for her, yes, but I don’t think she ever regretted it. And now, we owe it to her to make the most of the lives she sacrificed for.”
I nod because the lump in my throat is the sadness that still fights to take my whole world away from me. If only I’d been able to get to her. If only I’d been able to open her door. If I hadn’t been with Dante…
