His Dirty Author: An Age Gap Romance

My heart falls. Whenever he starts talking about my mother it’s a sure sign that his mind has slipped away again. Mom passed when I was in my twenties.

“I’m sure she has a good reason,” I say quietly.

He huffs. “Well, I don’t like chasing them.”

“I’ll come help you next time.”

“You better!” That, at least, is a happy exclamation.

I hear the nurse murmuring outside the phone, and there are sounds as the phone is shuffled between hands. “Mr. Ellis?” It’s the nurse.

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say. “It’s okay. Thank you for letting me talk to him.”

There’s the sound of a door shutting in the background. “Not a problem at all. I hope you’ll have a chance to come see him soon. He always does better after you’ve visited.”

“I will. I promise. Have a good night.”

She says goodnight, and I drop my phone onto the coffee table in front of me. I’m glad that I got to talk to him. But every time he drifts away and the dementia comes back, it hurts.

My phone lights up with a message. In the dark room—sitting in the dark felt emotionally appropriate—it’s bright. My heart stops when I see what it is. It’s an email. From Erin. No subject, no words, just a file.

As soon as I tap on it, I realize what it is. This is her book. And I sure as hell am going to read it right now. I grab my laptop and flip on the lights, opening the file as fast as the machine can load it, and I start to read.

* * *

I read all night. I’m so taken by the book that I can’t stop. At around midnight I realize that I forgot to eat, but I don’t care. I barely stopped to use the bathroom.

Her book is so good.

It’s a romance with edge, just like she described as her favorite. The characters are vibrant, the sex is fucking hot, and the resolution is absolutely perfect. This book is a bestseller without question. And it’s so good that it kicks my own brain into gear.

I haven’t felt energized creatively like this in…more than a year.

Without moving, I open up the file for my book on the laptop. The sky is getting lighter, and this book is going to get finished. The pieces that Erin wrote are still there, and they’re still brilliant. I pick up right where she left off, the words flying under my fingers.

At some point Mrs. Peak comes in, and I think I startle her with my tired gaze and hunchback posture. But I’m an addict. I can’t stop typing. This kind of flow state is incredibly rare, and I’m taking advantage of it.

Erin lives in my mind as I write the sex scenes. They’re edgy and hot, exactly the kind of scenes that we played out in my bedroom upstairs.

“Mr. Ellis, would you like some lunch?”

I look up blearily and try to focus on my housekeeper’s face. But I don’t exactly feel like I’m connected to the earth right now. “What?”

“I asked if you’d like some lunch,” she asks with an amused look on her face. “Or maybe a shower?”

Mrs. Peak has been my housekeeper for years. She’s seen me in the middle of my writing frenzy before and knows that it’s hard to get my attention.

Now that she’s drawn my focus to it, my stomach rebels. It’s starving. “Food,” I say. “Yes, I’ll take some food. Something fast.”

She laughs softly. “Of course.”

After she leaves, I realize she said something about a shower. And she might have a point, but I don’t have time for that right now. The words are still coming, and you don’t mess with that. As long as your muse is speaking, you’re just a messenger. Nothing else matters except for catching everything that it’s throwing at you.

Mrs. Peak comes back with a sandwich and a glass of water. I eat it between paragraphs, and only then because I know that I need the energy to keep going. There’s a terror rippling through me that if I stop, I won’t be able to finish at all, and so I plow forward.

Even when I wasn’t going through terrible life stresses and worried that I might have just shoved the love of my life away, there’s never been a book that’s…ripped itself out of me like this. It’s both painful and beautiful. And when the sun sets, I’m almost done.

By the time it’s nearly three in the morning, I’ve hit ‘The End.’

I blow out a breath of relief. It’s done. Not edited, obviously, but that’s okay. I almost send it to my editor and pause. The new deal we’re striking hasn’t been confirmed yet. I’ll wait until I have confirmation of that before I do. But it’s okay. There’s something else that I need to do, and it can’t wait.