The elevator doors open, and Sam takes a quick step in front of me, hesitating before he steps out. The lobby is empty, save for the bellman and security guard, and classical music softly floats through the air.

“Looking for monsters?” I tease, a little confused why Sam would block me in the elevator. The doors start to close, and I reach out, letting them hit my hand so they bump back. Sam, who insisted on carrying my bag for me, turns around and smiles.

“You never know,” he says with a tight smile. There’s something off about him again, and I can’t place it. He said he had a rough day at work. Maybe it’s getting to him? I can’t imagine seeing the things he sees on a daily basis.

“Oh, trust me, I do know. Writing about demons, monsters, and curses for the last few years might have made me more than a little paranoid from time to time.”

“I could see that.” Sam takes my hand as we head outside. The nighttime air is chilly, making me instantly regret packing my sweater in my bag instead of wearing it. The weekend forecast should be nice, though in the Midwest you can have snow and a heatwave in the same day.

“I’ll drive,” I offer when we get to Sam’s car. “But I kind of took Benadryl.”

“Kind of? How do you kind of take medicine?” he asks, amusement bringing some of that sparkle back to his eyes.

“I took it. I’m so stuffy and I refuse to have a cold. But then I remembered I said I’d drive. Give me like two hours and I might be falling asleep behind the wheel, driving us off a cliff into the ocean or something.”

“Good thing there aren’t too many cliffs overlooking the ocean on the way to Michigan. And I’ll drive us, it’s not a big deal.”

“But you worked all day.”

“Didn’t you?”

I wrinkle my nose. “Well, technically I got everything done that needed to be done, but I also watched a few hours of TV while lying on the couch.”

“I picked the wrong profession,” he laughs.

“Trust me, I know how lucky I am to have this be my job. I still can’t believe it, really. I get paid to sit home, day drink, and write stories.”

“Fuck, that sounds nice.”

I nod enthusiastically. “It’s not that easy, though. Throw in bouts of crippling self-doubt, staying up all night to reach a deadline I procrastinated reaching weeks ago because I knew I could still meet it with said procrastination.”

“Still sounds like a sweet gig.”

“It is,” I agree. “And let me drive the first half of the way.”

He sets the bags in the backseat and closes the door, stepping back and looking at his car. “I like this car and you’re not used to Chicago traffic.”

“I live in Los Angeles,” I remind him with a laugh. “Traffic there is probably worse than Chicago.”

“LA does have more people than Chicago.”

“See? Let me drive so you can relax. You look stressed.”

He blinks a few times and runs his hand through his hair. “Closing my eyes for a while does sound nice.”

“I know, so get in, Miss Daisy, and let me drive you.”

“You are so lucky you get to rewrite your jokes in your books.”

I let out a snort of laughter. “Trust me, I know. My editor strikes out a lot of them, but I think people have come to expect a certain level of awkward from me. I’m awkward in real life.”

Sam opens the door for me and goes around. “I was worried you wouldn’t be awkward anymore,” he tells me as I start the engine. “I thought maybe the years living in LA and being famous would have changed you.”

“I like to think I’m a bit more poised than I was before. I practice interviews and speaking with my publicist and agent. But there’s no taking the awkward out of me. I hated it when I was younger and always fumbling over words, and not being able to stop rambling when I was nervous made me shy, which is hard when you’re a kid. You were never shy, and I always admired that about you but was also kind of jealous. I wanted to be not shy too.”

“Well, I always liked your awkwardness when we were kids. I thought it was cute. I still do.” Sam turns the navigation on for me to follow. It’s set to his parents’ address, and he saved it as “home.”

“Good, because you’re going to always get a healthy dose of my awkwardness.”

He rests his hand on my thigh. “I’d very much like that.”

“Close your eyes,” I tell him. “I promise I’ll be fine. As long as I stop for coffee first.”

“Funny, Chloe.”

I let out a snort of laughter. “I mean, I wouldn’t turn down a coffee right now.”

He lifts his head off the seat and look at me quizzically. “Let me know if we’re about to drive off that cliff into the ocean.”

“Will do.”

He gives my thigh a squeeze and leans back, letting his eyes fall shut. Stopped at a light, I connect my phone and put on my Nightfall playlist. I do some of my best thinking while driving and listening to music. I let my mind wander—as far as it’s safe while driving—and get hit with inspiration for a scene and start playing it out in my head.

“Who are you talking to?” Sam asks, sounding groggy from just waking up.

“No one.” I glance over at him for a second before looking back at the road.

“It was like you were having a conversation with two people.”

“Oh,” I say with a laugh. “I was, but I wasn’t talking to anyone, per se. I had an idea for a scene in my book and was talking it out through the voices of both characters. I sound like Gollum, I know.”

“That’s pretty fucking adorable too. I caught the tail of that…someone is going to reveal that witches are real?”

I nod. “Vampires are out of the coffin but witches aren’t, in my series. They don’t want the general public to find out, but Kellie has some past family drama—I won’t give you any spoilers since you haven’t seen or read it yet—and these people might just expose her.”

“Who was your conversation with?” He sits up, and the overhead lights along the highway illuminate his handsome face.

“My main character and her sister. I have a really bad habit, if you can call it bad, of talking what I’m writing too. Which is really awkward when I go to Starbucks and write a sex scene. I make faces that my characters make too,” I laugh. “I get really into what I’m writing and don’t even notice it even though I’m aware I do it from time to time.”

“It would be really interesting to be sitting next to you while you write a sex scene.”

I laugh at myself, shaking my head. “I have a funny story about that, actually. I wrote a Christmas novella to put in my newsletter as a holiday treat for my fans. It was supposed to be short, so I went to a local coffee house in my neighborhood. Well, it’s pretty much impossible for me to write anything short or without sex in it. I was there for hours, and when I got to my sex scene, I was in full obsessive-writer mode and wasn’t aware that I was whispering what I was writing out loud and, well, in that scene my vampire bit the main character on the thigh and was licking blood off her you-know-what.”