Collapse: Book Two (bxb) ✔️

6. Will you get on your knees while you do it?

"Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock. Jingle bells swing—ah! Hey!"

Raven slid his empty cup across the table, glaring at me. Again. Surprise. Shocker. "Can you pipe down? I'm trying to think, and your off-key singing is doing nothing for me."

I shut the lid of my laptop, folding my hands under my chin with my elbows resting on the table. "Sorry, Bird. I didn't realize I was looking for your opinion. I'll let you know when I can spare a fuck to give, and I'll send it your way."

He ignored me. "Okay, we have them all made up. What's next?"

"It's your chapter. What's next? Don't ask me. I did the heavy lifting, now you need to do something."

He stared at his laptop screen with his fingers carefully sliding over the keys in thought. "Snowstorm? I saw on the weather this morning there was a small chance of development for one for here. Maybe that could be our moment to have Kaiser talk about his feelings."

I blinked. "Who's writing the kiss? I kinda wanna see you take a shot at it."

"Stay on track, Salem. What do you want to do with this snowstorm idea? Yay or nay?"

"Yay." I pointed at him with a wink. "Alright, let's do a little power outage type deal. Gives to the atmosphere. But don't make it the first chapter of the snowstorm. Have Kaiser start hinting. I kinda want Hayes to start piecing it together."

"Deal. How many chapters do you want for the snowstorm?"

"Three maybe four. No, yeah. Four. Two for you, two for me. You get the first serious scene that builds, I'll continue the build to start the conversation, and I'll do a cliffhanger ending line, and you can work off it. Then I want you to write the chapter for the backstory. I'll write the kiss."

He arched a brow. "Who starts the kiss?"

"Kaiser. It has to be. Don't reveal the love during that conversation into his past. I'm gonna use the kiss as a plotting device for it. Kaiser is going to be scared to say the words aloud, right? Kinda saw that in the inner monologue you wrote."

Raven dropped his gaze to his screen. "Yes."

I hummed as I drummed my fingers over my chin. "Okay, we can figure out a moment for that later. We don't need Kaiser to say the words right away. Maybe an alternative phrase? Or would that still fuck with Kaiser, you think?"

He cleared his throat, still not looking at me. "No, I think that would be fine."

I bounced in my seat, looking at the words on my screen. "I like Kaiser. You write him so well, Rave. Like, I admire the type of strength Kaiser has."

As I started scanning over the document, Raven responded. "Doesn't it make him cowardly, though?"

I snorted a laugh. "No. So much... death at such a young age? I understand Kaiser now that I read about him. I also have a feeling he didn't come up with that nickname of the Grim Reaper by himself. Someone called him that. Which is bullshit. How are you going to blame a young child? Kaiser couldn't control what happened—he still can't. I'm really starting to understand that life for some others just isn't shiny. And with the way you write Kaiser, it provides me insight. Why did he have to go through so much? That's not fair."

"Why do you assume someone gave him the nickname?"

"Nature. We learn. We adapt. Am I right? Someone called him the Grim Reaper?"

"Yes."

I popped my head up with a frown. "Who would call him that?"

Raven stared at his screen with a mask of indifference. "His foster mother, but luckily, Kaiser wasn't adopted by her. The people he was adopted by, well, Kaiser understands they care about him, but they don't love him."