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I live in perpetual fear that my fans will somehow learn the truth about me. That beneath all the romance tropes and triple-orgasm sex scenes I peddle like snake oil, I’m more jaded about love than a former Bachelorette star, mid-divorce.
How can she write romance novels if she believes love is Satan’s pyramid scheme?
I learned the hard way that in this bleak swipe-left world, romance novels give hope to the hopeless. They make you believe that a sensitive, multilingual, insanely jacked doctor named Hunter is just waiting in the wings of your life, ready to laugh with you about all the toads you dated while cuddling after your nightly synchronized orgasms.
I’ve grown accustomed to it the way anyone becomes used to something unbearable. By sheer necessity.
“So you were knocked on your ass. So what? Do you think Taylor Swift gave up after her recording company screwed her over? No. She started rerecording her own albums and emerged as a new woman. A better woman. And when people still tried to dim her shine? Do you think she threw in the towel? No. She slapped the world back with her Eras Tour.”
Is wood chopping an Olympic sport? If not, it should be. I’ve never felt more patriotic in my life.
Of course, he’s wearing a white Henley beneath it—the standard-issue uniform of all romance heroes—and in accordance with Romance Law, he has the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
On top of his romance hero good looks, his woodchopping habits, and the perfect meet-cute I accidentally had with him, the revelation that he’s also a doctor is one trope too far.
Stay safe, but not too safe, Savannah
“Well, I know you’ve probably never read a romance novel,” she says while I repress the urge to start whistling innocently. “But they employ a lot of well-worn tropes, and ‘doctor for a worthy cause’ is one of them.” “So you’re reducing my entire career down to a romance-novel trope?”
“Margot,” I say, tightening my grip on her hands. She opens her eyes. “Listen to me. It’s getting late, and we have to start moving. I’m going to have to carry you.” Her wide, glistening eyes go round. “What? No. No way.” “Do you have a better suggestion?” “Flying by eagle? They looked fucking big enough.” I shake my head. “They only work weekdays,” I say. “Union thing.”
“But I can’t be in another trope with you,”
If I can recognize the trope, it means I can be aware enough not to fall for it.
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who isn’t ‘invested in the situation,’ ” I air-quote him from the beginning of our hike. Slowly, almost casually, he rests his forearms on the table and draws in closer, caging his drink behind his large hands. He raises his eyes to mine right as his now-familiar scent wallops me in the face like a dictionary of romance hero smells. Cedar, whiskey, and bad decisions. “I guess that was until I had to carry the ‘situation’ down a mountain,” he says, and his gaze feels like a towrope dragging me in. My pulse is the whole percussion section of an orchestra.
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“I wouldn’t mind seeing how you handle me,” I say, the words striking the empty inches between us like a match.
From quietly leaving fire starters to keep me warm, to gently touching my face to test me for carbon monoxide poisoning when I nearly burned down my cabin with them, each moment with Forrest has been another falling domino leading to last night. I’ve never really been on the receiving end of all this concern, and unfortunately for me, it’s everything I never knew I wanted.
I’m no match for the powerful chemical cocktail of testosterone and dopamine that my brain pumps out whenever I think of her.
For the first time in a very long time, I remember why I became a romance writer in the first place. It’s not about my beliefs on love. It’s about giving people hope when they need it most.
“Oh, please. The PhD for a worthy cause? The muscles for days? The genetically inherited carpentry skills? The rolled shirtsleeves?” She points her wineglass toward my bare forearms as if they, above all else, prove her point. “Everything about… this,” she says, waving her hands and wineglass up and down to indicate my entire being, “is straight out of an overserved romance novel. And I would know!” she cries. “I write them!”
“I can’t believe you read romance novels. You seem more like a Scientific American kind of guy.”
“I am a Scientific American kind of guy,” he confirms before his smile fades slightly. “But I guess I’m a Margot Bradley kind of guy now too.”
“You really think ‘happy for right now’ will be enough? Three weeks of this and then nothing?”
I went on an unsuspecting pilgrimage to the Alaskan bush and somehow found the holy grail of hot, considerate men.
She’s all the warmth and light I’ve needed in this cold, dark place, though I can hardly bear to witness it.
I wouldn’t have admitted it yesterday—or hell, a few hours ago—but after she let me hold all her trust in my hands tonight, there’s no denying the way I want her goes far beyond “happy for right now,” even if that’s all we’ll ever have.
Despite all logic, I look at her and feel the shape of my future, the same way I know the warm taste of her skin without touching her.
Because the future is a slippery thing. And even when your plans are cast in stone, and every piece of data points to one bleak conclusion, reckless hope is the last ember to fade into darkness.
For the first time since I stopped believing in Happily Ever Afters, I’m secretly hoping my readers are right, and I’ve been wrong all along.
“You’re not a guest. You stopped being a guest the second you ran away from Bullwinkle and jumped into my arms,”
“Then what am I, Forrest?” Mine.
“He’s not what, sweetheart?” Her eyes are dark and sweet as maple syrup when she looks up at me. “He’s not you.”
He’s my match—the other bookend to my story—and
“You launched yourself at me the first time we met, and it was like the whole fucking sun fell right into my arms. So warm, so gorgeous, I thought I was hallucinating.”
“Of course I resisted. You’ve had my heart in your teeth from day one, Margot.”
My world tips over, the same old pieces I’ve always known rearranging themselves into a kaleidoscope of possibilities. I feel the spaciousness of being with him without a clock counting down until my departure flight. I imagine visiting his lab and discovering yet another side of him to admire and pine over. I imagine introducing him to Savannah, and I’m filled to overflowing with a rightness I’ve never felt before.
“I don’t want to go home without you.”
“I came here to write a murder mystery, and I didn’t, Forrest. After you dragged me through every trope under the sun, how could I write anything but a romance novel?”
Every single touch, every faint suggestion of her dimples, every needy gaze she sends my way has me by the throat, dragging me deeper into something I spent my whole adult life carefully avoiding. I’ve seen what losing someone precious can do to a man. Felt the cold shadow of it as a bystander when my mother passed away in my father’s arms. I know better than anyone that all good things—even the greatest things of all—eventually come to an end. But when Margot confessed tonight that she didn’t want to go home without me, it tipped the scales just enough. Just enough for me to make what was
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She’s the end of me but also the beginning. The liability I never wanted but always craved. And when she pulls my shaking body down to hers, kissing my face, she’s all the comfort I never knew I needed.
I think he knows. I think he sees every hidden part of me, and for the first time ever, being known doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like coming home.
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.
“what I didn’t understand about Happily Ever After is that there are some people who come into your life—even for just a moment—who have the power to fundamentally change you forever. They’re the people who see right through all your masks, and all your bullshit, and love you anyway. And not just despite all your wounds but because of them too. You’re safe in their hands for as long as you can hold on to each other, but even when it’s time to part ways, you leave knowing you’ve been truly seen.”
He slides his hand to the back of my neck, pulling me close and kissing me like he’s spent his whole life searching for this love and plans to spend the rest of it holding on to me.
This may not be our first kiss, and it’s certainly not our last, but it is the first kiss of something I never imagined for myself. Happily Ever After.
