BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (58)
  1. Full Page Image
  2. Contents
  3. Copyright
  4. Important Note:
  5. ~ Ground Zero ~
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. ~ Absolutely ~
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. ~ Someone To Feed It ~
  17. Chapter Ten
  18. Chapter Eleven
  19. Chapter Twelve
  20. Chapter Thirteen
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. ~ I’ve Got You Now ~
  24. Chapter Sixteen
  25. Chapter Seventeen
  26. Chapter Eighteen
  27. Chapter Nineteen
  28. Chapter Twenty
  29. Chapter Twenty-One
  30. Chapter Twenty-Two
  31. ~ Him ~
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  38. ~ As I Fall ~
  39. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  40. Chapter Thirty
  41. Chapter Thirty-One
  42. Chapter Thirty-Two
  43. Chapter Thirty-Three
  44. Chapter Thirty-Four
  45. Chapter Thirty-Five
  46. Chapter Thirty-Six
  47. ~ The Luckiest Girl In The World ~
  48. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  49. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  50. Two Months Later
  51. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  52. Chapter Forty
  53. Chapter Forty-One
  54. Chapter Forty-Two
  55. Six Months Later
  56. Chapter Forty-Three
  57. Acknowledgments
  58. Also by WS Greer

I pull the chair in front of the laptop back and take a seat, my palms sweaty from the nerves. As I place my hand on the computer, everything in me hopes that it’s locked by a password. That would mean Heather was wrong about all of this, and I could leave without feeling guilty about not going through with it. However, when I open the laptop, light shines in my face as the screen comes on and I’m given access to Nas’s Google Drive account. Heather was right. Nas’s laptop was only in sleep mode, and I don’t need a password to access anything in front of me.

There’s not much to the drive. Nas is particularly neat, so I’m not surprised that even his Google Drive is tidy, with only a handful of folders lined in a row. Each folder has a book title underneath, and I recognize them to be Nas’s books in chronological order.

Left of the Slash. The Darkest Kink. Obsessed with Us. The Patient. A Lesson in Ruin. The Therapist.

A furrow burrows itself deep into my brow as I stare at the folders. I’ve read the first four, and I know Nas plans on naming his next book The Therapist, so A Lesson in Ruin must be the book he scrapped recently—the one he didn’t want to talk to me about. I suddenly realize that I already know more about Nas’s plans and excitement for The Therapist than I do about A Lesson in Ruin. In fact, he told me the scrapped book didn’t have a title at all. He lied to me, and a feeling of dread works its way up my back and takes hold in my head. Why would he lie to me about this book? Why couldn’t he tell me what the title is? What’s the big deal?

I double click the folder, and it opens to a page with only three items: a Google Doc titled A Lesson in Ruin Manuscript, another titled Outline, and an image. My breath catches in my throat as I look at the thumbnail of the image and read the name underneath. My name. The image is a picture of me as I was sitting in the VIP section at Barnes and Noble, waiting for Nas to come down the escalator at his book signing. I’m seated next to Juliana, Shay, and DeShaun, waiting impatiently for him to arrive. At the time, we didn’t know he was upstairs looking down on us, and I certainly didn’t know he was up there taking pictures of me.

“What the hell?” I whisper to myself, just before I push my growing fury to the side and double-click the manuscript document.