Page 15 of Romantic Hero
And then, with a snarl of pure unfettered frustration, River snatches up the whisky bottle and stomps over to my bathroom, slamming the door behind him with an almighty bang.
I hear the click of the lock.
Wonderful.
CHAPTER TEN
After ten minutes of waiting for River to emerge, in which I take my temperature twice more and google ‘symptoms of stroke for fiction writers?’ I knock gently on the bathroom door. While this is obviously insane for me – my own fictional character showing up at my apartment for some unknown reason – it must be even more bewildering for him. And, frankly, fucking terrifying. Suddenly waking up in an unknown country and being met by a glum, sloppy-looking woman who is denying his entire reality? His entireexistence? No wonder he’s having trouble computing. I would be too.
‘River?’ I try in my most soothing voice. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘I don’t drink tea,’ he replies gruffly. ‘And I’m not some character in a book.’
Okay, so I just have to prove it to him. The sooner I prove it to him, the sooner we can move forward and figure out where to go from here. I take a deep breath. I can handle this. Icanhandle this.
How the fuck do I handle this?
With a heavy sigh, I plop down and lay my head against the bathroom door.
‘I have evidence, River,’ I say eventually. ‘That you are a character in my book. That I did, in fact, write you. That scar on your cheek. Shaped like the letter S? You got that scar when you were eight years old. You were thrown off your first horse – Sundancer – and your dad got really mad at you. Said that if you didn’t quit your crying and remount right away, he wouldn’t let you ride again for six whole weeks. How would I know that if we’ve never met? The fact that I do is surely evidence that I’m right about this.’
Silence.
‘You, uh. Your mother was, um, an alcoholic who died of liver failure when you were nineteen. And before she passed away, she told you that the only way to get any respect in this life was to be unrelentingly tough. To learn from her mistakes and never let your heart be available for breaking. There were only the two of you in the hospital room when she said that to you, right? So how could I possibly know her exact words?’
No response.
‘Um … Okay then … At Oakley Ranch, there’s a wooden hut in a hidden patch of trees right by the San Gabriel river. Inside there’s this blue vintage record player and a small fire stove. You like to burrow away in that hut and make evil plans to keep poor Cassidy away from the business, plot your revenge on her for being the result of your father’s affair. See? Evidence.’
‘That ain’t true,’ River shoots back.
Huh, he sounds like he’s close to the door. I put my eye to the keyhole and see those sulky lips a few centimetresaway. He’s speaking through the keyhole too, just like Mrs Casablancas does. Is this a common thing people do?
‘Look,’ I sigh. ‘I know this is weird. Earth-shatteringly weird, and I don’t blame you for thinking I’m crazy. Maybe I am. But ifyouare swearing that you are River Oakley from a Texan town called Bedlam Creek and that you woke up here with no knowledge of how that came to be; andIam showing you that I’m the author of a book series about acompletely made-uptown in Texas called Bedlam Creek with a thirty-year-old cowboy character called River Oakley who owns a ranch and has a half-sister called Cassidy, then, surely you are my fictional character come to life. There is no other explanation.’
The door unlocks with a snap. I scramble to my feet.
River stands in the doorway, his frame filling the space almost completely. ‘Give me your cell phone.’
I instinctively clutch my phone to my chest.
A flash of worry softens his eyes a touch. ‘Please. I need to look at a map.’
I open up the map app and hand over the phone, watching as River taps on the screen, zooming in over a map of Texas, down onto Burnet County, his eyes widening as he searches and searches, skimming his fingers over the screen to no avail.
‘What the hell?’ he mutters. ‘Where is it? Where’s Bedlam? Where’s my ranch?’ He looks up at me, face now fully panicked. ‘Where’s your search engine?’
‘It’s just Google. Right there.’ I point at the app.
‘Google?’ River says, wrapping his tongue around theword as if he’s never heard it before. ‘What the hell is Google? Where’s Skangle?’
‘Skangle?What’s that?’
‘The biggest tech company in the world? You don’t skangle things in England?’
‘I have never heard of Skangle.’And I certainly never wrote it in my books.
He waves me away then types in ‘Bedlam Creek’. Immediately, images of my grinning ‘professional author’ face and the covers of the Bedlam Creek books pop up. He scrolls down and down and down, shaking his head as every single Bedlam Creek-related result on there is about me or my books.
