CHAPTER 1: THE LAST PAGE : EPISODE 2

EPISODE 2.

The Last Sentence

The screen was too bright, a white glare that made her eyes water even when she squeezed them shut. She squinted, trying to bring the words back into focus, but they swam in front of her like fish in murky water, then dissolved entirely. The laptop’s heat was unbearable now, searing into her skin, leaving blisters in the shape of letters she’d typed a hundred times before. C on her wrist, A on her elbow, E on the inside of her arm.

Duke Caelen finally showed her his true face. It was nothing like she imagined.

The words burned themselves into her vision, even when she looked away from the screen. She tried to lean back, to put space between herself and the laptop, but her body wouldn’t move — it was heavy, as if someone had laid a stone slab across her chest, pressing her down into the vinyl cushion. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, each one a struggle, each one leaving a metallic taste in her mouth that she recognized as blood.

She leaned forward again, her forehead hitting the keyboard with a soft thud that echoed in the quiet shop. The keys clicked under her skin, a staccato rhythm that matched the pulse in her head, faster now, more frantic. Caelen Caelen Caelen, the laptop typed automatically, over and over again, the letters piling up on the screen until there was nothing else, just his name stretching to the edge of the page and beyond.

The coffee shop went quiet.

No hissing from the espresso machine. No patter of rain against the window. No sound of the barista’s rag on the counter. Just the sound of her own heart, beating too slow, too hard, a heavy thud-thud-thud that felt like it was trying to break through her ribs and escape into the air.

She closed her eyes. The darkness behind her lids was warm at first, almost gentle, like being wrapped in a blanket after being out in the cold. She thought of her apartment — the tiny studio with the leaky faucet in the bathroom, the stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen table that she’d been avoiding for weeks, the bookshelf full of novels she’d bought and never read. She thought of her mother, who called every Sunday to ask if she was eating enough, if she was seeing anyone, if she’d given up on that “dark book” and started writing something people would actually want to read. She thought of the manuscript saved to the cloud, tucked away in a folder nobody would ever find, five years of work that would disappear when her subscription ran out in three months.

She’d spent all that time building a monster, crafting every scar and every cruelty, and now she was dying before she could decide if he deserved to be one. Before she could decide if she deserved to be his creator.

It doesn’t matter, she thought, and the thought was calm, almost peaceful, floating up from somewhere deep inside her where the panic couldn’t reach. Stories don’t need endings. They just need to be written. They just need to exist.

The darkness pressed in closer, warm now turning to cold, gentle turning to sharp. She felt herself slipping away, not fast but slow, like water draining from a sink. The weight on her chest lifted, and for a second she could breathe again, deep and full, the air tasting like pine and snow and something else — something sharp and clean she couldn’t place.

The laptop screen went black.

The barista finally looked up from the counter, his eyes focusing on her for the first time in hours. He didn’t move. Didn’t call for help. Just stood there, watching, as the rain began to fall again outside, as the espresso machine hissed back to life, as the clock above the counter flickered once and changed from 2:17 to 2:47.

In the silence of the coffee shop, the laptop’s speaker crackled to life, and a voice she’d never heard before — soft, low, and impossibly familiar — spoke one sentence, clear and cold as ice:

“She left me unfinished.”