Page 51 of Red Flags Only

“Two thousand words,” I mutter. “And all she had to do was snore in my vicinity.”

It’s actual magic. Actual, literal, magic.

“I don’t snore,” Lyra groans from my bed. “I’m a lady.”

I straighten, abandoning my author’s hunch so that I can slide my chair over to where she lays, pretty as any lady ever was in a tangle of my blankets, the dark green of them making her clammy skin seem pale, despite the fever.

“You were,” I tell her. “And you are. How are you feeling?”

My hand hits her forehead, and I frown. She feels no cooler than she was an hour and a half ago when I came back with ice and a plate of carrot cake to her snoozing, mouth open and the world’s cutest little sickly honk-shoos pouring forth.

“Like you should shoot me,” she croaks. “In the head, please, so there’s no risk of me surviving.”

“No one is shooting you. Can you sit up?”

She groans, but manages to scoot herself up on mypillows, blinking weakly at me.

“Good job,” I praise. “Now you can have your carrot cake.”

A sparkle, small but true, lights in her eyes. “Carrot cake?”

I grab her plate from my nightstand, offering it to her. “I’ll have to go get your drink. It was getting warm in here.”

She doesn’t appear to hear me, eyes locked on her cake. “Delicious,” she whispers, cutting into it with a vigor. “You’re going to bedelicious.”

My eyes crinkle. She’s not wrong.

I leave her to her deliciousness, fetching her cold soda and a cup of ice before reaching above our fridge and pulling down the basket where we keep medicines and first aid supplies. I grab a bottle of neon orange liquid for her, hoping she doesn’t mind that we don’t have pills. I never could stomach swallowing them whole. Talk about uncomfortable.

“Breaking rule one yet?” Mars walks into the kitchen, approaching the sink with a plate of crumbs as I set the medicine next to Lyra’s drink on the counter.

“Rule one?” I ask.

“Not falling in love,” he reminds me. “You’ve had two dates now. I read a book where it happened in one, and they weren’t even lifelong friends.”

My brows furrow. “They managed to not fall in love in one date?”

“No, theydidfall in love. Breaking rule one is the entire point.”

I wince. “I am not qualified to write our genre at all.”

“You’re qualified to write whatever you want, Jovey. Your stories are beautiful. Funny. They make youfeelsomething, even before I throw in the romance.”

“The romance being the cornerstone of our marketing,” I reply. “And thus the most important part.”

He arches a brow as he pops his dish in the dishwasher. “The most important part is making a product. You do that, then I refine the product to fit the tastes of the people who will buy it. That doesn’t make your work any less amazing. It is, in a very real sense, just business.”

Just the business of me sucking, he means.

“Self-esteem issues aside, how’s rule one holding up? Poorly, I hope. If we’re having a sick day episode, she might fall first if you aren’t careful. And then where will we be? With several hundred fewer Amazon searches a month, that’s where. Think of the visibility you’re squandering.”

Did he just sweep aside my self-loathing and professional doubts as unimportant in the face of the possibility of true love? How very romance-author of him.

I shall follow suit.

“I’m not in love,” I say. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.” And I am, really. Lyra would be an excellent woman to fall in love with. I’m sure some day she’ll find a man capable of romantic thought to woo her into a whirlwind love story. And when that day comes, I will absolutely not kill the undeserving mere mortal pretending to be good enough for my angel Lyra. “You said rule one is always broken?” I ask.

Mars fetches a cube of dishwasher soap from beneath the sink. “Yep.”

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