Shit. Kate wouldn’t want to date herself at this point. Unless she admitted that Erato was more than an average, overbearing human female, the fact that she was allowing a woman she was no longer even sleeping with to control her made her poor relationship material. Wishing she had the courage to explain why she felt so powerless to defy Erato, and that Olive would listen to that fantastical story with an open mind, she decided to shift gears and focus on what was really important.
“I like you, Olive, very much. I care about you and I desperately, desperately want to get to know you more. It kills me that I hurt you, and I fully acknowledge I don’t really have a good excuse for my lack of communication over the past week—regardless of Erato’s rules and restrictions.” She paused, then decided to lay her heart bare, consequences be damned. “I think we could make each other very happy, if you’ll just give me another chance.”
Olive folded her arms over her chest, still guarded. “I need you to explain this Erato situation to me. Please.” She waited a beat, then said, “Are you still sleeping with her?”
Kate shook her head emphatically. “No, not since that night the three of us were together. She’s been staying in the guest room, and honestly, we’re barely speaking. At this point things are strained, to say the least. I tried to sever our working relationship after she took my cell phone, but she refused. In fact, she says she won’t leave until I finish the book, and it’s easier to just put my head down and do it than try to kick her out at this point.”
Olive’s expression of concern deepened. “So, what, she’s a squatter now?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, I suppose she is.”
“A squatter who has taken away your cell phone, attempted to isolate you from the rest of the world, and sabotaged a potential new relationship.” Olive gave her a pointed look. “Have you thought about contacting the police?”
Well, damn. There it was, exactly the question she hadn’t wanted to field. “It’s…not like that.” Kate struggled for a way to explain everything without trying to convince Olive that Erato was an honest-to-God muse that mere mortals couldn’t stop, but she came up empty. This entire day was really crushing her storytelling self-esteem. Dumbly, she said, “I just think that would be overkill.”
Once again, Olive’s emotional state shifted before her eyes. Concern turned to wariness. “Fair enough.”
Encouraged that Olive hadn’t yet walked away, Kate said, “Look, I’m almost done with this novel. If I know you don’t hate me—that maybe you’re even willing to wait two more weeks and give me one last chance to show you exactly how important you are to me—maybe I’ll be able to wrap it up even faster. Once I’ve submitted a manuscript to my publisher, Erato will leave. Then you and I will be free to get on with our lives…hopefully together, if I’m somehow able to make this up to you.” Her heart threatened to pound out of her chest when she saw how unconvinced Olive remained. “Olive, I promise this isn’t what life with me would be like—full of drama and complication. Usually I’m way more boring than my books, I swear. And fully in charge of my own life and decisions.”
Olive nodded, but she radiated sadness. “I don’t hate you, Kate. I was hurt, and upset, and honestly very angry, but I’m not anymore. Now I’m just disappointed, and that’s on me, not you. I accept your apology and I forgive you. I don’t want to hinder your progress on the book, all right? So don’t let me—we’re fine, you and me, and God knows you don’t owe me anything.”
While she appreciated being let off the hook, that sounded a little too much like a brush-off. Olive hadn’t offered to wait for her. Stomach turning, she searched Olive’s face for a crack in her stoic facade. Didn’t the thought of never seeing each other again hurt her, too? “May I call you?”
“You mean in two weeks?”
Kate hesitated. She couldn’t make any promises that might be broken. “Unless I can figure out a way to do it sooner.”
Olive gave her a humorless smile that contained absolutely none of the warmth Kate was used to seeing. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m sorry.” For an instant, Olive’s composure wavered. Kate could see genuine sorrow in her eyes and, if she squinted, perhaps even a moderate dose of second-guessing. But Olive was clearly committed to her course of action, because she didn’t hesitate to say, “We had a lot of fun together, and nothing can ever change that. More importantly, you single-handedly reintroduced me to the land of the living, for which I will always, always be grateful. As much as I’d love to keep the good times going, I just…can’t do this anymore. There’s too much uncertainty for me, as much as I wish that wasn’t the case.” She paused, then as though anticipating a rebuttal, added, “You say now that she’ll leave in two weeks, but what if she decides to stay? I wish I could trust you—and her—at your word, but I don’t. Unfortunately.”
She didn’t drop onto her knees and beg Olive to reconsider because doing so would almost certainly make her look stupider than she already felt. Which was pretty goddamn stupid. Why had she let Erato bully her into submission? Now that she wasn’t trapped in her apartment, it was easy to chide herself for not fighting back harder—physically, if necessary. By falling in line with Erato’s totalitarian coaching style, she’d thrown away what might very well have been her only opportunity to experience the kind of love and desire that had until now been reserved only for her characters.
Even if Erato was supernaturally endowed with the ability to charm, persuade, and manipulate nearly everyone she met, Kate had fallen out from under her spell days ago. Sure, obstacles had littered her path, but surely she could have done more to reach Olive, and faster. And Olive had a point: if Erato refused to leave after her deadline had passed, Kate could have real trouble delivering on her promise of a more simplified life. What if Erato was lying about leaving?
Grief swelled deep inside her aching chest, followed by a breathless wave of regret. It was over. But didn’t that mean she had nothing left to lose? Maybe she should just confess Erato’s true nature, to explain how she’d gotten herself into this predicament and why it was so difficult to get out. Olive might believe her. But she rejected the desperate notion almost as soon as it crossed her mind. Olive already thought she was weak and easily manipulated; she didn’t need to add mentally unstable to the list. At this point, her perceived sanity was one of the only things she still had going for her.
“I’ve got to get back to work. You should, too.” Olive had gentled her voice, and from the tenderness in her eyes, it was clear she recognized the devastation she’d just wrought. Her full lower lip quivered briefly before she managed a weak smile. “Go home, Kate. Finish your book. I look forward to buying a copy.”
Gutted by the new formality between them, Kate met Olive’s pained gaze with tears in her eyes. “I’m happy to send you a free copy. You were my inspiration, after all. And I owe you for the muffin.”
Olive closed her eyes briefly, then scrubbed her face with her hand and turned away. “Thank you, and good luck. I’ve really got to go now.” She’d finally lost the battle with her own tears, evidence that she wasn’t as unmoved as she clearly wanted to seem. Kate wished she could draw more hope from that than she did. Olive obviously cared about her—something real was there, for both of them—but without trust, they had nothing. No foundation to build on, no basis for a lasting relationship. Even if Olive were willing to give her another chance, she wouldn’t be able to start earning her trust back until Erato had disappeared from her life, and by then it would be far too late.
It was probably already too late.
Utterly defeated, Kate said, “I apologize for ambushing you. Tell your father I’m sorry, too, for the scene.” She paused, wishing she could conjure up a magical turn of phrase that would fix everything. Unfortunately, she wasn’t nearly that clever with words. At a loss, she opened her mouth and spoke from her heart without trying to find the right thing to say. “I wish things had turned out differently. For a while I actually though
t you might be my happily-ever-after. At least I really hoped you would be.”
Olive’s shoulders hitched. Still facing away from Kate, she said, “Me, too.” Then she made good on her promise to return to work, hurrying away toward the market without looking back.
As Kate trudged back to the parking lot to meet Chad, weighed down by regret and self-recrimination and soul-draining sadness, she realized that writing was literally the last thing she wanted to do—yet it was exactly what she must do, if she ever wanted to be rid of Erato. Necessary or not, she couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the day at her laptop, engineering a happy ending for her characters when she’d just ruined her own. Erato might have taught her to write through adversity, but this was a whole different kind of obstacle. It seemed almost cruel to expect her to write a love story with a freshly broken heart.
How the hell am I supposed to finish this book now?
*
Erato was waiting for her in the window of her office when she and Chad returned to the apartment roughly forty minutes after Kate’s not-so-great escape. If her muse was angry she hid it well, flashing Chad a radiant smile as she leaned over the ledge and proudly displayed her cleavage. “Well hello, you two. I was just wondering where my sweet Kate had disappeared to…”
Chad beamed up at her, then at Kate, wholly unconcerned that they’d been caught. “Busted.”
Erato shifted her gaze to regard Kate with a bemused expression. Though her muse’s cheerful facade never wavered, Kate sensed that she was in for a world of trouble once they were alone. In full flirtation mode, Erato said, “Should I be jealous?”
Kate was too mortified to answer, but Chad eagerly played along. “Are you kidding me? I can’t possibly compete with what Kate has waiting for her at home.” He winked. Erato giggled.
Kate barely suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.
Now entirely focused on Chad, Erato touched her collarbone in a way that seemed absentminded but no doubt wasn’t, not-so-subtly ensuring that he couldn’t possibly focus anywhere but in the vicinity of her infuriatingly amazing tits. “How are you, Chad? Making any headway on your first novel?”
He brightened, clearly excited that she’d recalled a key detail from their previous interactions. “A little, actually, thanks. The advice you gave me really helped.”
Kate had heard enough. After having her heart ripped out and stomped on by a woman she’d fantasized about growing old with, she had absolutely no patience for watching Erato and Chad eye-fuck each other while chatting about craft issues. “On that note, I should really get back to work.”
Erato gave her an approving, condescending nod. “Agreed.”
Not eager to be left alone with an angry muse, Kate said, “But please feel free to continue your conversation. Maybe you two should go get coffee somewhere and talk about character development or plotting or whatever.”
Erato gave Chad an apologetic smile. “Rain check, maybe? I really need to give Kate my undivided attention until she wraps her book up. Can’t take our eyes off the prize now that we’re in the home stretch, you know?”
Kate couldn’t believe the litany of clichés that poured from Erato’s full, pink lips. Her editor would slather her in red ink if she wrote dialogue like that. The small, silly observation helped dispel the notion that Erato was some infallible pinnacle of creation and served as a boon to her sanity.
“I get it.” Chad bent to whisper to Kate, “Probably for the best, anyway. Didn’t you have something you wanted to give her?”
With no idea what he was talking about, she nodded anyway. No point in resisting the inevitable now that Olive was lost. Two more weeks in her office prison—consisting of nearly fourteen full days of misery-fueled writing—and she would hopefully be done with Erato for good. Then she could move on and maybe even learn something from this experience. As long as the moral of this story wasn’t “you had one shot at happiness and a crazy ancient Greek muse ruined it,” that would at least be something. Looking up at Erato, she said, “Will you unlock the front door for me?”
She almost lost it when Erato shook her head and smirked. “No way. You managed to get out through this window. I refuse to miss the opportunity to watch you climb back in.”
Kate had never wanted to slap someone across the face so badly. She gave Chad a helpless look, which he answered with a boyishly enthusiastic nod. “No problem.” With a gentlemanly tip of an imaginary hat, he scrambled up the side of the building like the parkour artist he apparently was. Erato giggled in pure delight, which naturally inflated him even more. She moved aside coyly, allowing him entry into the office. Taking his place at the window next to her, he literally flicked his nose with his finger and said, “Beg pardon, ma’am.”
Kate covered her face with her hand. She just couldn’t. Could not possibly stand to witness the two of them in close proximity. Without looking, she called out, “Ready?”
After a slight hesitation, Chad announced, “Ready.”
She removed her fingers from over her eyes and assessed the situation. Chad had ninja-warriored himself halfway out the window, anchoring himself to who knew what, one long, muscled arm extended far enough that she didn’t even have to tiptoe to reach him. Unfortunately, she still didn’t know how to avoid the carnivorous bush. Approaching it with exaggerated caution, she leaned against the sharp, wickedly uncomfortable branches and reached out for Chad’s strong hand. He caught her around the wrist just as she lost her balance, once again crashing into the foliage with an ungraceful grunt. For a moment she considered just surrendering and staying where she lay, because really, how would she ever come back from today?
But Chad didn’t give her a choice. In a feat of what seemed like impossible strength, he lifted her dead weight out of the clutches of the shrubbery and hauled her upright. His other hand beckoned for hers. “Grab on, Kate. We’re almost there.”
He really was a sweetheart. Without a trace of laughter in his eyes, he pulled her inside, handling her in a remarkably gentle manner considering the difficulty of the task. Not so for Erato. Although she allowed only a bare smile to show, her eyes danced with barely suppressed mirth. “Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed when Chad finally set her down on blessedly solid ground. Erato stepped forward quickly, plucking a leaf from her hair while tugging up the side of her pajama bottoms that had ridden too low during her bushwhacking adventure. “Here, let me help you.”
It was official. She wanted to die.
Stepping away from Erato, Kate resisted the urge to simply flee the room. A glance at the door confirmed that it was closed, so it might be locked and she couldn’t, anyway. Even if she could, the only way to preserve any remaining dignity was to bid Chad a polite thank you and farewell. After all, it wasn’t his fault that her grand plan had gone to shit. Or that a supernatural sociopath had hijacked her life. Or that she’d face-planted into the same bush twice in one day. Mustering up the very best smile she could manage—not as good as one of Erato’s fake smiles, but it would do—she turned to address her savior cum co-conspirator in humiliation. “Thank you for everything.” She intentionally kept her gratitude vague, because even if Erato would eventually drag the truth of what they’d been doing out of her, she refused to initiate that talk in front of their guest. “Sorry for derailing your day.”
“Not at all. This was fun.” Indeed, Chad was glowing. The guy nearly vibrated with happiness. And why not? He’d gotten to play hero more than once without having to risk life or arguably limb, had earned the gratitude and attention of two women whom he’d apparently enjoyed hearing fuck each other, and had borne witness to some of the greatest physical comedy performed since Lucille Ball was in her prime. Not bad for a Saturday afternoon. “Should I let myself out the window, or…”
Erato laughed and looped her arm in his. “How about I walk you out?” She led him to the office door and opened it, glancing back over her shoulder at Kate. “You should go shower. Lunch will be ready soon.”
The savory aroma of baking lasagna filled the air. Why had she ever imagined that something as mundane as entirely homemade, from-scratch roasted vegetable lasagna would ever challenge Erato? She nodded, not wanting to say anything too revealing in front of Chad. “Fine.”
She went into her bedroom while Erato showed Chad to the front door. She might never have a better opportunity to look for her cell phone than right now, even if she only had a minute or two before Erato returned, but her appetite for subterfuge had disappeared. She had nobody to call. Although things with Olive hadn’t ended as acrimoniously as they could have, even a text message wouldn’t exactly be welcome at this point. A fresh wave of pain rolled over her at the memory of how excited she’d been to receive that first text from Olive after they’d reconnected at the farmers’ market. Back when everything had seemed so full of possibility…She stopped near the foot of her bed, awash in so much sadness she literally couldn’t take another step forward. She just wanted to crawl under her covers and go to sleep and not wake up until Erato had vanished from her life forever and she’d forgotten how safe the world had felt in Olive’s embrace.
“Care to explain?”
Startled, Kate turned to the half-open door of her bedroom to find Erato staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. She seemed almost playful, entirely devoid of anger or disapproval over Kate’s afternoon excursion. For some reason, the apparent lack of concern over her whereabouts offended her more than any lecture or spanking. Fed up and full of self-loathing for letting this asshole ruin her life—this asshole who happened to look no less beautiful than ever, and into whose comforting arms she still longed to collapse—Kate couldn’t stop the day’s emotions from spilling over. “Just leave me alone. Please.”
Erato took a tentative step into the room, her good humor fading away. “What happened?”
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