Page 32 of Red Flags Only

Ah, you’ve moved from the table to the chair with your carvings. I believe that means it’s time to wrap this up.

Please stop ruining my furniture,

Lyra ♥

I finish the letter frowning.

That’s an improvement, I suppose, but I’d love to get us to the point where I am no longer terrifying to her. Top priority, that. Then, we’ll work on how much she apologizes. Sweet, perfect Lyra utteringsorrys, as if she has ever been anything but perfect?

I shake my head as I shove a bite of cake into my mouth.

We’ll work on it. Maybe even while we’re researching. It can be a two birds, one stone kind of situation.

I can get knowledge and inspiration for my book, and Lyra can experience the kind of obsession one of my male leads has – an all-encompassing, intense, burn-down-the-world-for-you sort. As a result, she will see that she is worthy of all love and devotion because she is the best this world has to offer. Birds, meet stone.

Humming my satisfaction at a plan well laid, I deposit my empty plate and cup in the dishwasher, replenish Ginger the hamster’s water, and make my way to my room.

At my desk, words flow like water, flooding the pages of my manuscript with the sort of magic only Lyra can provide. I get lost in them, squeezing every last drop of inspiration out of my evening with Ly until I’m left depleted, empty, dehydrated in the desert.

I check my word count.

Five thousand added. Five thousand in… four hours.

Wild. Absolutely wild.

My arms lift above my head in a stretch, shoulders rolling, and my neck cracks. I should probably take a break from my desk. Get up. Move my body.

My eyes snag on Lyra’s letter, and I know I will not be doing any such thing. Instead, I push my laptop aside, trading it for an assortment of stickers, pens, highlighters, tapes, and papers.

“My darling Lyra,” I murmur, copying the words onto a piece of sage green stationery. “You’re welcome for the one of a kind, exclusive wood carvings…”

Chapter Eighteen

Elodie! We love Elodie!

Lyra

It’s been six days – nearly a full week – since I last saw Jove, and I am… confused. So. Flagging. Confused.

I thought we were doing the fake dating trope? So why does it feel like I’m in a miscommunication trope instead?

Except… he did communicate. Clearly. He showed up to my house, gave me the best letter I have ever received, told me he wants me in his life forever and ever, and asked me to be his fake girlfriend. At no point was he anything but straightforward.

“Do you think he changed his mind?” Elodie asks through the phone, dishes clinking in the background as water runs.

“Maybe?” I reply, speaking loudly for the speakerphone to pick up my voice as I clink my own dishes. “But he seemed sosure, you know?”

She does know, of course, because I have explained it to her. At length. Repeatedly.

“Maybe he’s trying to give you space, then? Or he’s in his writing cave doing writing cave things. Big grumpy men kind of just do whatever they want to, I’m learning. It’s like the height and the shoulders have replaced their brains.”

“Uh.” My clinking stops. “Jove isn’t really all that grumpy, honestly. Just… big. And not very worried about the law.”

“What is it about giant men that think they are above the rest of society’s rules?” she asks as her clinking escalates to more of a clunking.

Um. “El, is there something you’d like to talk about?” I ask, wondering why my happy-go-lucky, carefree cousin is suddenly sounding not so happy-go-lucky or carefree, and doubly wondering why it seems like this shift is because of aman.

Elodie is not a man-hater. Elodie is, in fact, often so loose with her affections as to cause me concern. Not for her, of course, but for the trail of broken hearts she leaves behind her, totally oblivious to the yearning she inspires. With a single look, she can have a boy so wrapped around her finger he won’t know which way is up without her telling him, but she has no clue. She’s sweet, kind, funny, and so bright it’s nearly blinding. A welcome light in a world full of darkness.

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