30 MARGOT

After one smelly ride from Uncle Bear, two back-to-back red-eyes to L.A., one short stop at home to dump my bags in the foyer, and one bumper-to-bumper crawl to Los Feliz, I’m finally standing on the stoop of a quaint blue-and-white bungalow. My sister’s new home. It’s barely seven in the morning, and the scent of bougainvillea perfuming the balmy air is a sensory shock after living in an icebox for over a month. I should be nervous to be here, and I am, but frankly, I’m also too fucking exhausted to wait another second. I knock on the door.

As with the rest of this journey, I expect a long wait, but I jump when the door opens almost immediately. It’s Cooper, long and lanky in a skintight wet suit. His tan skin, sky-blue eyes, and sun-bleached waves accessorize his SoCal surfer boy look more effectively than any longboard ever could.

“Margot!” he yelps, his eyes going round with fear. Maybe he can tell I haven’t changed my clothes or brushed my teeth in over twenty-four hours. Maybe he can tell that I’ve been subsisting on shrink-wrapped airport salads, with one notable exception of an orgasmically delicious Starbucks cake pop that almost instantly gave me the shits. The point is, he should be afraid. Very afraid.

“Where,” I say, stalking closer to him, “is my sister?”

The door squeaks open a little wider as Cooper backs up, either to escape my poisonous morning breath or to allow me into an admittedly charming front sunroom. I step in, and even out of my periphery, the hanging macramé plant holders and bright yellow throw pillows on rattan chairs feel like an extension of Savannah.

“Babe!” Cooper calls, turning to look at the inner doorway leading to the main house. “You’ve got a visitor!” He turns back to me, and after a second, he blasts me with a bright, lopsided grin that makes me want to hiss like a vampire caught in sunlight. “She’s going to be so fucking happy to see you.”

Before I can protest, he’s wrapping me in a neoprene-and-fermented-ocean-scented hug that lifts my tired feet off the ground and gives my compressed spinal column two satisfying pops.

“Gotta run,” he says when he sets me back down. “Swell’s coming in. Are you staying over with us?” He smiles at my responding “Uhh” like I’ve said, Sure am! I packed my jammies! “Awesome, Van’ll be so happy. Can’t wait to kick your ass in Scrabble tonight.” He clicks his fingers and points at me in a way that’s somehow not douchey. With one last disarming smile, he’s sidling past me toward his surfboard-laden Jeep.

I’m still getting my bearings when I see her materialize, staring at me from the inner sunroom door like I’m a ghost. A ghost with a large balsamic vinaigrette stain on her shirt and an eye twitch.

“Margot,” she says, shock leeching all strength from her voice. She’s always been beautiful, but after being separated from her for so long, I pick up on subtle shifts in her appearance. Her skin is bronzed like she’s been spending most of her time outside. The faint purple smudges that have always lived beneath her eyes are still there, but she’s not leaning on the doorframe like she does during a flare. She looks… strong. It’s clear she’s having one of those blissful stretches of good days we both treasure so much, but my fear that she’ll wither without me almost wants to believe it’s a fluke.

“You’re back early,” she says, and there’s no mistaking the anxiety in her voice.

“Of course I came back,” I say. “Your letter—”

“You shouldn’t have read it early,” she blurts. “I’m going to have a word with Dr. MD. He promised he’d keep the letters locked up somewhere safe!”

Under any other circumstance, I’d probably laugh, but thinking of Forrest—even if it’s just his underwear drawer—feels like a fork twisting up my insides like spaghetti. I can’t bring myself to respond, so I say the only thing I’ve been thinking since I read her letter. “What the fuck, Van?” I mean to say it angrily, but it comes out as a hurt whisper crammed with every Bachelorette binge, overnight hospital stay, delayed publication date, and eight-hour bone broth I’ve lovingly simmered for her over the years.

She shrinks in on herself and suddenly looks younger. “You read the letters,” she says. “You know why I did it.”

“But you can’t do this!” I shout, surprising us both. At the stunned look on her face, I take a deep breath and try to lower my voice; to try for reason. “You know Cooper can’t dedicate enough time to you. I know you love him, but you need to live with someone who can drop everything when you’re in a flare.”

Her sandy eyebrows pinch together. “So what are you saying, Margot? That I’m never supposed to move out? That I’m not allowed to build a life with someone I love if he doesn’t have a work-from-home job with limitless vacation time?”

“ We built a life together, Van! A home together! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Of course it does! It counts for everything!”

“Then how could you abandon it all without even telling me?” I demand.

Her face scrunches as she squeezes her eyes shut. “Because I never would have had the strength to leave if you were here, and I had to get out of that house, Margot! You were living your whole life for me, and I was suffocating!”

Pain spreads through me, thick and black as an oil spill. For so many years, the story I’ve told myself has had only four words: my sister needs me . It’s only now that she’s run away from home that I realize I’ve had it all wrong. I’m the one who needs my sister. The proof is in her bright eyes and this beautiful new life she’s built for herself. One month of independence has transformed her in a way I hadn’t thought possible, and it cuts deeper than any words ever could.

My voice is shaking when I speak. “So all that about reinventing myself? Sending me to fucking Alaska ? It was all an elaborate bullshit way to get me out from underfoot so you could secretly build your little love nest with Cooper? So you could just leave me, just like everyone you wrote about in your letters?”

Savannah angrily wipes a tear from her face. “You know that’s not true. You know that’s not true, Margot,” she repeats. “I sent you to Alaska and moved out so you can finally have a life that isn’t shackled to my ups and downs. I did it because I need to see if I can live without someone monitoring my every twitch. I did it because, as much as you might want me to be, I’m not your Happily Ever After!”

I recoil like I’ve been slapped. She pauses, gathering herself with a breath. “ Please, ” she says, and she’s asking the impossible. She’s begging me to rise above my own wounded ego to see the bird’s-eye view she so clearly painted for me in her letters.

But the part of me that feels deceived and abandoned doesn’t want to rise above the trees. It wants to thrash around in the mud some more and maybe throw a little of it too. I don’t want to acknowledge that the love and care she put into crafting each one of those letters guided me through every moment of transformation I experienced in Alaska. But even now, there’s no denying that they did. Her words gave me strength and opened my heart enough to allow that brief but incalculably precious time with Forrest.

She’s staring at me with barely concealed panic, and I realize that despite all her careful machinations, she’s as terrified of losing me as I am of losing her. She knows she’s never moving back in with me, that an era has come to a close, but she doesn’t know if I’ll ever forgive her for leaving. I swallow hard as the desperation to keep her all to myself begins to battle a new kind of urgency. It’s the deep-seated need to always reassure her of my love. To comfort her and give her what she needs, no matter what it might cost me. In the end, my selfishness doesn’t stand a chance.

My eyes spill over like a child’s. “B-but how am I supposed to live without you?”

Her eyes widen with unexpected hope. After a moment, she half-laughs through her own tears and says, “Did you really just quote a Michael Bolton song and not sing it?”

I give her a tremulous smile, wiping my eyes. “Believe it or not, quoting Michael Bolton wasn’t intentional.”

All at once she’s setting her coffee mug on the ground, only to immediately knock it over with her foot as she rushes toward me. I’m wrapped in her slender arms, and she’s hugging me harder than she’s ever hugged me before. I feel her strength and know that she’s been okay without me. I close my eyes as relief and gratitude pour through me, washing away petty jealousy and bitterness. I let my tears soak into her honeysuckle-scented hair, and for the first time since setting eyes on her, I let myself feel the sweetness of being home at last.

“I’m sorry I smothered you,” I say, my voice as nasal as a kazoo.

“I never said ‘smothered.’ Maybe just ‘loved to the point of mild asphyxiation.’?”

“I fucking missed you,” I say, crying softly.

“I fucking missed you, too, and I need to hear everything.” She sniffs, pressing her forehead into my neck. Then she lifts it just as quickly, her eyes wide and shining. “But Margot, oh my God,” she says, breathless. “We need to talk about your post . It’s completely blown up.”

I try not to gulp. Ever since I put that letter into the world, I’ve been too afraid and too overwhelmed to look at the response. But I’m back home now, and out of excuses. “What are they saying?”

The answer is a LOT. Checking my email and socials for the first time in days feels like being dropped into a beehive. Except instead of being repeatedly stung, I’m apparently the new queen. Every romance reader who’s ever created an Instagram account in the last decade seems to have something to say about my letter, and the vast majority have welcomed me back with open arms. My DMs are filled with personal messages from fans who tell me how they too have lost their hope in love only to find it again at the least expected moment. There are apologies for mean comments, people professing that they couldn’t bring themselves to throw my books out, and perhaps most of all, demands for the Alaska manuscript.

“I… don’t know how to handle this,” I say to Savannah. I’m curled up on her floral-print IKEA couch, sporting wet hair and borrowed Care Bear pajamas after she forced me to “destink” in the shower. I’m flipping between the endless comments and my email inbox, where a very hopeful but “let’s temper our expectations” email sits from Anjali. As it stands, Barker Books has already begun their apology campaign to get me back, and there’s been interest from a competing publisher who didn’t drop me like a hot potato. One guess who I’ll go with.

“Is that an ‘I don’t know how to handle this because it’s so freaking awesome’ or an ‘I don’t know how to handle this because I’m not sure I even want it anymore’?”

I drag my eyes away from my screen, tossing the phone on the cushion between us. “I think it’s more of an ‘I don’t know how to handle this by myself,’?” I say miserably.

“You’re not by yourself,” Savannah insists. “You’ve got Anjali, your pick of any publisher, and you’ve got me .”

“No, I know,” I say, biting my lip. “I guess that’s not really what I mean.”

Savannah looks at me sharply. “Do you mean Mr. Hot Tub? Because I’m going to be honest, I am dying to talk about this. Frankly, I’m disappointed he didn’t come with you.”

When loss nearly buckles me, the curiosity in Savannah’s face morphs instantly to concern. “Margot, what happened?”

I lift a shoulder, twisting the ties of the lavender pajama bottoms into a single tight rope. After learning about Savannah’s move, I shoved everything that happened with Forrest into a dark box with a rusty padlock for later examination and wallowing. But now it’s seeping through the cracks, and there isn’t really any point in holding it back.

“That post… it was only my half of a promise we made to each other,” I whisper. “Forrest was going to move back to L.A. He’d accepted this huge research grant for work. We were going to try to—” I find that the rest of the words won’t leave my throat. Be together .

“And he broke his promise ?” Savannah asks quietly. Dangerously. I swear her hair begins to rise, like she’s summoning some kind of vengeful power.

“He didn’t have a choice,” I say quickly.

She looks capable of shooting lightning bolts from her nostrils, though, so I explain what happened to Trapper and the whole reason Forrest was in Alaska to begin with. I explain that I couldn’t rightfully expect him to make a choice I wouldn’t have made myself.

Savannah’s hand lightly covers her mouth as I keep going. “I think what feels so fucking heartbreaking about it all is that I’m right back at square one. My readers think I’ve found my HEA, but it’s all over. I’m being welcomed back into this incredible community I’ve missed so much, and all I want to do is give them this book to say thank you. But every single sentence in it is about him.” My voice hitches on the last word, and I steeple my head in my hands. A slow-rolling tear drips off the end of my nose. “I don’t know how I’m going to stomach publishing it, Van. Going on tour, doing interviews, everyone asking me about Mr. Hot Tub. What are they going to say when they learn it didn’t work out? That it’s just another Margot Bradley Happily Never After?”

Savannah scoots close to me on the couch and pulls me into a hug. “You don’t have to tell them anything,” she says, kissing the side of my head. “Or you can tell them everything. But either way, they know who you are now, Margot. You let them see you, and that kind of vulnerability isn’t taken lightly in this space. I think they’ll wait for a different book if you can’t publish this one. I think they’d read anything you decide to write. I know I would.”

I sniff a little. “Even Pokémon fan fiction?”

“As long as you make it spicy enough.”

I give a watery laugh and lean into my sister. There’s a hollow ache in my chest that goes a little too deep to maybe ever fully heal. But the thing I’ve learned about hollowness—the kind that’s carved from pain—is that the deeper it goes, the more room it leaves for love. And when love finally rushes in, it fills every dark and twisty crevice with a light almost too brilliant to bear.

In the dark moments, when all the lights go out, it’s the love from a sister, or a community, or even a romance novel that keeps the empty chambers of your heart from caving in. And right now that’s exactly what I need most.