Chapter 1
“Her blood was like wine. Aged. Rich. Rare. No one else would spill it but me.”
I knew I made a mistake the second I pulled off the interstate and onto a winding road, poorly paved, full of potholes, bordered by dense wood.
Even though I’d only been on the road a handful of minutes, with the open spaces of the interstate still visible in my rear view, the feeling of suffocation was overwhelming. The woods strangled me. Nature smothered me.
I had to clutch the steering wheel to stop myself from slamming on the brakes, turning the car around, and driving all the way back to my apartment in New York. The city had never felt this suffocating, despite the fact it had one of the highest population densities in the country.
In New York, there was no such thing as privacy, people defecated on the streets, fucked in parks, had babies in cabs, and died everywhere—but that was what I’d liked about it. That life was lived in the open. Started in the open. Ended that way. There was an ugly honesty that fed my own ugly soul.
Granted, I had a lavish, spacious apartment overlooking the park and even with the millions it was worth, it wasn’t exactly huge. I had it up until about a week ago, shared with my now ex-fiancé.
I figured if I did turn around right now, swallow all of my pride, abandon my dignity, I could take the ex out of that title.
No, I couldn’t do that. Fail before I’d even truly started. That wasn’t an option anyway. The aforementioned apartment was already in escrow—thank you to the New York property market—and all my stuff that wasn’t in the back of the car—which was a lot despite the car being full to the brim—was in storage.
My friends (people who pretended to like me for their own selfish reasons and that I pretended to like for my own) had thrown the goodbye party, pictures were taken, and farewells were made.
My best friend had considered having me committed against my will as she thought I’d truly gone crazy when I announced I’d be leaving the loud, dirty, noisy city I had once loved to move to a tiny town in Washington State.
I was, of course, crazy. All authors were crazy, weren’t they? If I could still call myself an author. I hadn’t written in months and my overly large advance from my latest book was dwindling—draining, really—in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The kind of city I’d always dreamed about. The kind of life I’d always dreamed about.
I had money. I could pay back the advance and retire, if I wanted to be careful. Quiet. But it wasn’t about the money. It was about the empty page. Despite the materialistic and superficial shrew I’d turned myself into, I’d still trade a full page for an empty bank account.
I’d never had this problem. Not since I started writing. Not since my debut set the world on fire.
But lately, I’d felt lost. Restless, despite my literary success, my bulging bank account, my rabid, if not obsessive, readers. I liked that obsession. I loved it. The darker the better. The mail that bordered on psychotic and maybe should’ve been passed on to a law enforcement professional…yeah, that was my favorite.
I was living a life most true artists never got to live while creating. Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, to name a few. They lived sad, sparse lives, and their books made them millionaires in death.
I had parties thrown for me—despite the fact I despised every guest and the leeches throwing them—I went on talk shows, book tours. Again, I hated those and had significantly cut down on them the past two years, and cancelled all my upcoming ones. My reason for that wasn’t exactly hatred, but it was a lie I told myself to keep it all together.
In my career, despite the dark shadows, I had it “all.”
Personally—surface level, of course—I also had it “all.”
The man who got down on one knee with that deep red box edged with gold and promise. He wore ten thousand-dollar suits. He had been featured as one of the most eligible bachelors in the city. Family was moneyed, snobby, and still had household staff. Everything that was wrong with society and wrong with us as humans, it was still desirable. We all ached to be part of the club that had systematically destroyed empathy, humanity.
Even me. The dark sheep of my family, the literary world. I reveled in being an outcast but basked in the beige, rich, and bigoted world of my fiancé, and the boyfriends that came before him.
Then there were the hotel rooms. The rooms I had once loved for their lack of personality and wealth of possibly only taunted me with my empty page and broken brain. That yawning emptiness that only intensified as I continued not writing.
Not writing turned me into…something.
Someone decidedly more volatile and unhinged than I already was before, which was pretty fucking unhinged.
I became more paranoid, uncomfortable, moody, all-around evil, if I was honest. My vision sharpened as well. I saw too clearly just how much I’d been lying to myself. The horrid and vapid life I’d wrapped myself up in. Starting with the man who gave me the tacky, expensive, and cliché diamond I’d slid off my finger the same morning I’d bought the cabin in Washington.
Yes, bought. Sight unseen. In somewhere as drastically different from New York as I could possibly get. I wasn’t known for doing things by halves, and this was a full overhaul of my life.
The plan was to lock myself away from civilization—if that’s what you could call New York—and write a book I’d promised my publisher. That’s what all the great writers did, didn’t they? Shut out all outside distractions, forced themselves to look forwards for the story, for their madness.
It had seemed so simple, so enticing. It was a Band-Aid over a bullet wound, to be sure, but I thought it would tide me over for this book, at least.
But now, staring at the road, feeling the trees swallowing me up…it was not enticing at all.
I’d made a mistake.
A huge one.
But I had to follow it through.
So, I followed the road.
The feeling of panic and suffocation followed me, just like the memories I was leaving behind.
“You’re not serious,” he said, sneering down at the small picture open on my laptop.
I hadn’t planned on showing him the cabin before I bought it. In fact, I hadn’t intended on telling him I was buying it at all. I was planning to do the evil, selfish, and cowardly act of slipping away in the night, selling the apartment from under him—it was in my name anyway, because despite his trust fund, he was cheap—and blocking his number.
Things didn’t really go to plan when he snuck up behind me, saw the photo on the screen, and demanded answers.
I wasn’t one to give in to the demands of men in general, or this man in particular, but I was meant to love him. Except I had realized I really despised him.
Case in point, the sneering tone. One of many, many things I hated about him.
And the fact he hadn’t noticed I hadn’t been wearing my engagement ring for two days.
I hated him, and definitely didn’t want to explain myself to him, but the only other way to escape the conversation at this point was to hit him in the head with a blunt object. As much as I was obsessed with violence, I wasn’t too keen on wasting a potential felony on this manicured fucker.
So, I told him.
I was buying a cabin in Washington and would be staying there until the book was finished, and who the heck knew how long that would be.