Page 68 of The Sun & Her Burn

Ididn’t sleep for three days.

That wouldn’t have been unusual when I was a teen, fevered with stories that would not release me to peace until I’d purged myself of every last word.

But I hadn’t felt so consumed by writing sinceBlood Oath,and quite frankly, I never expected to feel that way again.

I thought my ability to tell stories had atrophied right alongside my ability to fall in love.

Apparently, I had been wrong on both counts.

BecauseThe Dream & The Dreamerpoured out of me almost brutally, my lifeblood splattering against the keys, seeping into the characters like some kind of black magic.

And I knew what had awoken this slumbering part of me.

True love’s kiss.

After a decade of estrangement, Adam Meyers was back in my life.

After years of long-distance friendship, Linnea Kai was gorgeous, grown, and so suddenly an integral part of my dailylife that I wasn’t sure what I would do when I had to go back to my home in New York.

I’d given the woman I wanted to the man I’d used to love because it would save them both from suffering.

Like the ultimate martyr, I hadn’t realized how much suffering it would cause me.

I ignored my phone for all seventy-two hours I worked bent over my computer, and when I emerged on the third day, the printer whirring beside me as it spat out the first screenplay I had written in a decade, the second in my life, I rubbed my eyes with one hand and picked up my cell with the other.

Forty-three notifications.

Texts and calls from my mother and sisters, a few new messages in the Lombardi Men group chat, which I had with their husbands, where we mostly conspired to surprise the women in our lives for their birthdays and anniversaries, a couple from my agent, Mali, and one from Chaucer.

There were three texts from Linnea.

Even one from Adam.

But the top notification had my heart dropping into my stomach and then soaring into my throat, where it choked me with its heavy beat.

Savannah: You missed the last three Sunday dinners, Sebastian. We are away this weekend, but I expect you to be here for the next. The Critics Choice Awards are that Saturday. We can debrief.

Savannah: I want to see you as much as I can before you go back to New York.

I blinked.

Had it really been three weeks since I last saw her?

I couldn’t remember the last time I had missed the opportunity to be with Savannah.

She and Tate lived bi-coastal like me, New York and Los Angeles, which meant we crossed paths frequently. It still hurt to watch them together, to see how much Tate loved her and how placidly content Savvy seemed to be with him.

I took solace whenever I needed it by knowing that she shared none of her basest self with him. I knew because I had once made a bawdy joke after too much wine about the beauty of Domination and submission. Tate had roared with laughter at the idea of those “silly sex games.” And Savannah?

She had pinned me with those iced-over blue eyes, and I had felt, for the first time, why people in the industry were so afraid of her.

Later, she had cornered me like a hissing cat, nails unsheathed and latched into my forearm as she whispered never to bring up her sexual proclivities again.

A thing of the past, she had said.

I never made such a joke again.

It hurt to imagine that she was living inauthentically, to know that something she hadneededso much had been banished to the past because it didn’t suit her ambition. But it also made sense, because she made sense to me.