Table of Contents
Titlepage
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Epilogue
Books by Chelsea M. Cameron
Acknowledgements
About the Author
UnWritten
Copyright © 2014 Chelsea M. Cameron
www.chelseamcameron.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. All rights reserved.
Cover Copyright © Chelsea M. Cameron
Edited by JenHendricks.com
Cover Design by OkayCreations.com
Interior Design by NovelNinjutsu.com
“What’s another word for ‘pussy’?” Raine asked, squinting at me over her laptop. I looked up from mine and thought for a moment.
“What’s the context?”
Her not-quite-blue-not-quite-grey eyes went back to her screen.
“He’s licking it.”
“Her pussy?”
“Yeah, but I’ve already used that word, like, a million times.” I sighed and saved the chapter I was currently working on.
“Send it to me.”
Her fingers clacked on her keyboard and then my email dinged. I ignored the massive amounts of unread mail in my inbox, including several fan letters (which I felt horrible about not answering) and opened the document.
My eyes did a quick scan as Raine stared at her computer, a frown on her face. I deleted a few of her uses of the word and tweaked the phrasing.
“Okay, sending back.”
I reached for my coffee cup, tried to take a sip and found it empty.
“Damn. I’m out. Want a refill?” Raine handed me her cup without taking her eyes off the screen. It was nearly one in the morning, but we had a deadline soon. We hadn’t missed one yet and had no intention to start.
I tried to remember the last time I’d made a pot of coffee, and couldn’t, so I tossed whatever was in the coffeepot and started making a fresh one.
“We really should get one of those Keurigs. You know it would be a tax write-off. And it’s not like we can’t afford it.”
Raine just made a non-committal sound.
I was always the one who had to make the first move. When the two of us had met as TAs in the English department at college, I’d been the one who’d had the crazy idea of writing a romance together under a pen name and trying to get it published.
The two of us had spent the hours we were supposed to be doing keg stands and getting STDs typing away. It took us two years to write our first book, and most of it was spent trying to figure out how to combine our brains into one story. And then, by some miracle, we’d actually gotten an agent to take us seriously, and then a publisher. Here we were, three years after getting our first book deal, with five books under our collective belt, three of them bestsellers under the name Scarlet Rose (Scarlet for my middle name, Rose for Raine’s mother).
“Ugh, I can’t look at this anymore or I'm going to set it on fire,” Raine said, rubbing her eyes and getting to her feet and stretching her back.
“I know the feeling,” I said, hoping that by staring at the coffeemaker, it would somehow brew faster.
“We are never going to make this deadline, Walt.” (Yes, I know my name is Blair Walton, as in a name that is very close to Blair Waldorf, one of the characters from Gossip Girl. No, I was not named after the show, seeing as how it didn’t come on until 2007.) Raine had been calling me Walt for years, and I was so used to it that sometimes I got confused when older gentlemen named Walt had appointments at the same doctor’s office as I did.
I turned and gave her a look.
“You always say that and we always meet them. Look, let’s take a half-hour break to recharge and then we can marathon until four. Okay?” That would only give me a few hours of sleep, but I’d functioned on much less.
That was the price you paid for being a secret writer.
Raine came over and put her chin on my shoulder.
“Why did we sign this contract again?” she asked. I sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day.
“Because the money was good and we can’t say no to Marilyn.”
“I’m still terrified of her.”
“You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t,” I said as the coffee finally started to pour into the pot. Marilyn, our editor, was one of the scariest women I’d ever met. Initially, she seemed sweet and nice. But she was deadly with a red pen and she had an uncanny ability to read people. Her hair was always curled, her shoes were always spiked heels and her lipstick was always cherry red. She was beautiful in the way that a sharpened blade was beautiful.
I poured coffee into both our cups, adding lots of sugar to mine, and lots of powdered creamer to Raine’s.
“I’m calling out tomorrow. There’s just no way I can put up with morons after all this,” she said.
“I wish I could. Sabrina’s on vacation, so I’m shit out of luck.” I worked in the children’s department of our small local library and Raine was a bank teller. Totally glamorous jobs they were not.
Raine kissed one of the tattoos on my shoulder and picked up her coffee cup. My arms were both covered in ink and I had several others on my chest, back, legs and feet. My mother was convinced I got them to spite her, but really none of them had anything to do with her.
“Blaiiirrrrrr,” she whined, shuffling back to the desk. “I don’t wanna write any more.”
“Too bad, kiddo. We have a deadline.” They say you never really know the measure of a person until you live with them, but I think you never really know it until you try to write a book with them.
“Drink your coffee, babe. It will make you feel better.” She did as I asked, and sat on the couch. I turned on the television and went through our saved shows. We had the latest episode of New Girl on there, which would be perfect for a half-hour of wasting time before we had to go back to work.
I snuggled next to Raine and before I knew it, my eyes were closing.
“Blair!” A voice pierced my eardrums and then something smacked my arm. My eyes flew open to realize that the living room was filling with the weak light of predawn.
“We both fell asleep,” Raine said, yawning and stretching. I’d fallen asleep tucked into her side.
“Shit, what time is it?”
“Ne
arly six.”
“Shit, shit, shit.” I stumbled to my feet and grabbed my coffee cup, intending to throw it in the microwave.
“Words. We have to make words,” I said, but Raine’s eyes had closed again.
“No words. Sleep.”
I had two options. I could go back to sleep for a little while, or I could force myself to stay awake.
Normally I would do the second, but I was so beyond tired that I knew if I didn’t get at least a little more sleep, I was going to pass out on the copier at the library. Again.
“Bed. Going to bed.” Raine didn’t answer.
I stumbled toward my bed and fell face first on it, and was out until my alarm rang again at seven thirty.
“And they lived happily ever after,” I said for what felt like the ten thousandth time in my life. I closed the book and looked out at the faces that stared at me with rapt attention. I had a good turnout for the toddler story hour, and everyone had been on their best behavior. I stifled a yawn behind the book and got up from my rocking chair.
“Thank you everyone for coming. We’ll see you next week.” Then we sang “The Goodbye Song” and each kid gave me a hug. More often than not, at least one little bugger would wipe their nose on my shoulder. I must have an immune system of steel because I rarely got sick.
As the tots were collected by their frazzled parents and taken off for naps or snacks, I went to re-shelve the books I’d used.
The children’s room at the Sullivan Library was decorated to look like the pages of Where The Wild Things Are, complete with the monsters and Max in his costume. There was even a little jungle nook with plastic vines hanging down. I loved it here and I couldn’t believe I’d managed to get this job right out of college.
I’d worried that my appearance would hinder my chances, and undo the good of getting my Master’s in Library Science and my summer internship with the Library of Congress.
But Madeline, the head librarian, had taken one look at my resumé, then me, smiled, and said I was hired. I’d been working here ever since.
They had no idea about what I did at night with Raine. I gave no explanation for the fact that I often appeared weary, and constantly covered up my dark circles with makeup.
The most ironic part was that the library carried my books. Mine and Raine’s. Sometimes the other librarians would ask me if I’d read them and I always said no.
I did various chores around the room, picking up some of the toys, re-shelving books that had been scattered around by little fingers, and checking them to make sure none had snot on them. Anti-bacterial wipes were my friend.
Focused on my tasks, I almost didn’t hear the tiny voice, humming in a corner. I peered between the shelves and found a little boy wearing an outfit nice enough for family pictures. His hair was so blond it was almost white, and gelled back from his face to show his bright blue eyes. A quick glance around revealed that he was sans parent.
“Hey there,” I said, using my soft library voice. I’d honed it over the past few years of working with kids.
“Shhh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. He looked about three or four, I’d guess. I got closer and I saw that he even had little dress shoes on. Poor kid.
“Okay, I can be quiet,” I said, sitting down next to him, folding my dress under me. “I’m Blair, what’s your name?”
“I, Drake,” he said in a whisper that wasn’t a whisper. This kid was adorable.
“Hi, Drake. It’s so nice to meet you. Are you here all by yourself?” We’d had more than one child go missing, hidden in between the stacks. I kept expecting his frazzled mother to come around the corner and sigh in relief before yelling at him not to run off.
“Yup. I big boy.”
“You are a big boy. You’ve even got your big boy clothes on. Did you pick those out yourself?” He was about to answer when I heard footsteps and a woman, looking frantic, emerged around the corner.
“Drake!” she said, nearly falling over in relief. I wondered if this woman was his mother, because where he was fair as could be, she had silky black hair, dark eyes and gorgeous tan skin. Drake didn’t look pleased to be found.
“Thank you for finding him,” the woman said as I stood up to let her collect him.
“No, I don’t wanna!” Drake said.
“But we’re going to meet your daddy. Don’t you want to see Daddy?” At the mention of seeing his father, Drake’s eyes lit up and he grinned.
“Daddy!”
“That’s right, we’re going to see him.” She leaned down and picked him up. She was tiny, but had the body of a woman who had probably run a marathon or two. She was also dressed just as well as Drake, with a black skirt, white ruffled top and gorgeous heels. I looked down at my cute-but-sensible red ballet flats and sighed. I never got to wear sexy shoes like that at work.
“Bye, Drake. Come and see me again and I’ll help you choose a book,” I said, waving at him as the woman carried him to the door.
“Bye-bye, Blair!” he called in his sweet little voice.
“And how are we on this lovely evening?” I said when I got back to the apartment after stopping to get some provisions after work. Raine squinted at me from her computer. I wondered how long she’d been sitting at it. Judging by the fact that her blonde hair was still un-brushed and she wore the same ratty shirt and yoga pants as she’d had on last night, it had been a while.
“Did you bring the Oreos?”
“Of course I did.” She made grabby hands and I shoved the package at her, ignoring the disaster that was our apartment when we were on deadline.
“I keep telling you we need to hire someone to clean this place. Or at least hire an assistant to deal with our emails. They could work remotely and then they wouldn’t even know we’re Scarlet Rose,” I said, pulling a container of vanilla ice cream out of the grocery bags and leaving it on the counter to soften. For me, diet was a four-letter word. And even if I did diet, I wasn’t ever going to be a size two. It just wasn’t how I was built. I’d spent a lot of time hating my body when I was younger, but then I decided in a fit of independence that I was going to love myself. That was the day I got my first bit of ink, an illustration from The Little Prince, on my foot.
Raine was tiny, but not because she didn’t eat. She just had the metabolism of a long-distance runner without actually running. We were only a few inches apart in height, but our sizes differed quite a bit.
“Couldn’t we make them sign something? Like one of those contract things.”
“Non-disclosure agreements,” I supplied. Raine was never very specific in her language, but I always knew what she was talking about.
“Yeah. I guess we could do that.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded and twisted an Oreo apart, popping half into her mouth. “Yeah, why not? We both hate answering emails. And maybe they’d get answered if we paid someone.”
This was a revelation. I’d been BEGGING for this to happen for weeks and she’d finally caved.
“Okay, awesome. I’ll go ahead and see if Marilyn knows anyone. Or maybe we should ask Hugh?” Hugh was our intrepid literary agent who put up with our crazy and somehow loved us anyway.
“Good idea. Then we won’t get some weirdo who steals all our information and sells it to hackers.” Leave it to Raine to go worst-case scenario.
I put away the rest of the groceries and grabbed a few snacks. Raine and I rarely ate meals when we were on deadline, choosing instead to snack constantly to fuel our bodies. And then of course there was coffee. Always coffee. If both of us could have, I was sure we would make a lifelong commitment to coffee.
I got another pot going and went to change out of the dress I’d worn to work and into my writing attire: a baggy t-shirt, no bra, and yoga pants.
“You know these yoga pants have never seen the inside of a yoga studio?” I said when I emerged, my wavy brown hair tossed on top of my head in a bun that matched Raine’s.
“Neither have mi
ne. Okay, so I worked on that section where they’re at the bar, and I still think something is off. It’s just not flowing. Here.” I went to her side of the desk and read over her shoulder. She held up an Oreo for me to munch as I scanned the words on the screen. Someday, somebody was going to figure out that too much screen time made you go blind and then we were going to be in big trouble.
“Yeah, I see what you mean. Go ahead and send it over and I’ll see what I can do after I’m done with the stuff I was supposed to do last night. Oh, and we have that blurb due in two days, Raine. Two days. We can’t put it off any more,” I said.
She groaned.
“Why is so impossible to describe a book in a few words?”
“That is one of the mysteries of writing. Legend has it that the secret to blurb writing was buried alongside Jesus, but pirates stole it after his resurrection.”
Raine snorted into her coffee cup.
“Your grandmother would have your hide if she heard you say that.”
I laughed, imagining her face.
“Yeah, she would.” My grandmother, known to everyone as Fanny (no one dared ever make a joke) Walton. She was everything you’d think of when you thought of a classy Southern woman. Pearls, impeccable wardrobe, skilled conversationalist, charity work, the whole shebang. She was a transplant from South Carolina to just outside Boston. As they say, you could take the lady out of the South, but you couldn’t take the South out of the lady. Visits to her house were always accompanied by sweet tea and unsolicited advice. But I didn’t dare mess with her.
The woman was eighty-four and every bit as active as someone a third of her age.
I always had to wear a cardigan to my weekly Sunday visits to hide my tattoos. If the tattoos didn’t kill her, the fact that I wrote dirty books would. Even my mother didn’t know about the books. No one did, apart from the two of us, our agent, editor and a few other people involved in publishing. It was much easier that way. I couldn’t imagine us being the kind of authors who were forced on cross-country book tours, meeting hundreds of fans a day and signing books until our hands cramped up and fell off. Still, it might be kind of exciting.