“I know you were, and I don’t mean to nag, but you know Bill has been waiting for you to send that first one hundred pages. He called again last night. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to put him off, darling. The publishers want their book, and if you’re not going to deliver, you need to let them know.”

“Bloody hell, Sutton. I am trying to be caring and show you how much I love you, and all you can do is throw this in my face? The chapters will happen when I’m damn good and ready for them to, and not a minute before.” He stood and stormed out of her office. After a moment’s hesitation, she used her foot to shut the door behind him.

You are a devious bitch, Sutton Montclair.

She reread the paragraph she’d been into before he interrupted her. An antelope? Where the hell had that come from? It was crap. Stupid, ridiculous crap. She cut it, took a sip of the delicious tea. Felt the anger start.

It was their ongoing battle. Ethan had an unerring ability to interrupt her just as she was at the most crucial moments in her work. She understood exactly what was going on. It was his own resistance to writing his new book. She’d always been understanding and forgiving, even going so far as to follow him back to his own office off the cavernous kitchen and help him get started. He liked for her to start his sentences. It helped him work.

After Dashiell died, none of that mattered. She didn’t want to help him anymore. The bastard had tricked her into getting pregnant, and instead of hating the situation, she’d fallen head over heels with the small, bald, smelly, diaper-clad result of his deviousness, and karma had ripped the child away from them both, as they so justly deserved.

The thought of Dashiell sent a stake through her, and she shut the laptop. There would be no more work today.

Connect with Ethan, Sutton. Save your marriage. Do something. You can’t continue to live like this.

The voice in her head had been worse, lately. Whispering, sometimes, things she couldn’t quite catch, couldn’t exactly understand. She needed to up her meds, she knew she did, but she also needed the lack of control that the hypomania brought to her work. If she upped her meds now, she might shut that edge down, and she just needed to get the damn thing done and then she could anesthetize the voice until she needed it again.

It was exhausting, the delicate knife blade of her life. Too many pills and the voices disappeared, too few and she couldn’t make heads or tails of things.