Cruel Fortune (Cruel #2)(10)

The car pulled away from the sidewalk, and I leaned back in confusion. Lewis wasn’t what I’d been expecting either.





Natalie





4





“Natalie!” Amy yelled as she entered the hotel room that Warren had put us up in.

“In here,” I called back.

My fingers were flying across my keyboard. They were hardly keeping up with my brain, which was spitting ideas at me faster than I’d seen in a year. Everything was coming together. The entire year of a dry spell had ended.

Words.

Beautiful words.

They had finally returned to me.

I almost wanted to cry with relief.

I’d thought I was broken. For so long, I’d believed that I didn’t have it in me anymore to write a novel. My whole life, I’d wanted to be a writer. And, now that I was finally being published, I couldn’t write a damn thing. How cruel!

And yet, here they were again.

Bright, shiny, glorious words, sentences, paragraphs, even pages.

“I had the most incredible day,” Amy said. She twirled around in a circle with shopping bags dangling from her arms. She honestly looked like a cartoon character with her excitement and many expensive purchases.

“Me too.”

Amy dumped all the bags on the floor. “Enzo was…as sexy as I remembered. Luckily, no whiskey dick this time. And he made up for all that lost time in Paris. And, dear Lord, I swear, he is a god.” Her head popped up. “Wait…what are you doing?”

“Writing.”

Amy squealed. “Writing? Really? Your day must have been amazing. Since when do you have a muse?”

“Since today.”

“Oh my god, we both had sex.”

I snorted. “Not quite.”

“Oh please, we both know writing is like sex for you.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“What brought this on?” she asked, looking over my shoulder. “Wow, this is really good, Nat.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure what it was. Maybe it’s this city.”

“Maybe…but you didn’t write yesterday.”

I finished the sentence I’d been working on and turned to face my best friend. “I saw Lewis today.”

“What?” she gasped. “Where?”

I quickly filled her in on everything that had happened this afternoon.

“Holy shit. That’s crazy. And now, you’ve written five thousand words in a matter of hours? Natalie, that’s huge!”

“I know.” I nodded and leaned back in the chair. “I don’t know if it’s him or my rising anger through the entire interaction. Or if it was just bringing back all those memories of last year, which helped me write Bet on It to begin with.”

“You wrote the last one in a couple of weeks after leaving all of them behind,” Amy said with raised eyebrows.

I huffed. “I know.”

“Hey, when you have a muse, you have a muse.”

“But does it have to be him?”

“Lewis or Penn?”

“Yes?” I asked with a wince.

“Look,” Amy said, sinking into a seat next to me, “the crew, as horrible as they were to you, gave you something. Inspiration and passion and drive. They took what you fantasized about and gave you the ability to put it on paper. They’re larger than life, and there’s a reason people want to read about them. It’s not surprising that you’re reacting to that same feeling again.”

I hated it though. I didn’t want the crew to be my muse. In any way.

“I guess this is what people mean when they say writing is easy. Just open up a vein and bleed.”

Amy snorted. “Well, either way, you’re writing. Who cares why?”

“Maybe,” I said unconvincingly. “Of course, I’m not writing the book I should be writing. This is that literary novel I’ve always wanted to write. This isn’t even in the same realm as my Olivia book.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers,” Amy said.

“Yeah, but what do I tell them? I want to publish this one under my name.”

“Then do it.”

“I guess I’ll ask my agent tomorrow.”

“I can’t see her saying no to you since this one is going to be a smash success.”

“Maybe.” I chewed on my bottom lip.

“Why so glum?” Amy asked, stroking my hair.

“What if the words go away again?” I asked morosely.

“If you were able to write after seeing Lewis, whether or not he was the reason, what does that tell you?”

“That I’m an idiot?”

She laughed and nudged me. “No, silly. It means you see him again.”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I don’t want to see him again. He’s complicated. And he reminds me of Penn.”

“He is Penn’s best friend. That’s true. But what is the worst thing that could happen?”

“Oh god, don’t ask that again.” I stood and paced away from her.

I slung open the curtain and looked down at Central Park below us. It was a beautiful day. I should be out there. We both should. But I couldn’t stop the flow of the words even if I wanted to, and I definitely didn’t.