You've Got This

A romance author discovers her muse

Prompt for 2/10
Write a story that includes the words: blink, net, stick
w/c 300/300
Have fun!
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"You've Got This"

From across the room he caught her batting her luscious eyelashes.
There’s nothing that could keep me from you, he thought.


“Except for me,” Colleen mused.

She’d written seventeen of these. Meet-cutes, grand gestures, and happily-ever-afters pulled from thin air like a magician who’d forgotten how the trick worked.

CHAPTER TWELVE sprawled across the top of the page, the blinking cursor mocking.

He crossed the room in three strides -

Of course he did, they always crossed the room in three.

- and caught her wrist.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Her eyes drifted to the too-dusty picture frame with a note from her ex-wife, “you’ve got this!” with a crudely drawn smiley face.

“Don’t walk away from me,” he breathed.

Cliche.

She typed it anyway, knowing why readers wanted them - the promise that someone would cross the room for you, would notice you across the noise, would stick around for you.

She blinked a tear back. The mantra that inspired her now felt like a net she couldn’t escape.

The cursor mocked. Her fingers moved before she could stop them.

She caught his wrist. “Don’t.”

He froze. “What?”

“I said don’t. I’m tired of being caught.”

Colleen stared at the words. They weren’t what readers wanted, what sold.

Her hand moved to close the document. Hesitated. The dusty frame watched her with that stupid smiley face promise.

“You’ve got this.”

She didn’t. She never had it. Seventeen manuscripts of crossing rooms and catching wrists and she’d never once written what happened after - when the grip got too tight, when sticking around meant losing yourself.

Colleen opened a new document.

CHAPTER ONE

The day I stopped believing in love stories was the day I finally started living.

The cursor blinked. Her fingers didn’t move.

Then they did.