Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover

I forgot she used to keep them in the floor.
I rush up the stairs. And even though I know she’s dead and isn’t in there,
I’m still terrified as I walk down the hallway to her room. My eyes fall to the
floor, to a piece of wood Crew failed to put back in place after he took out his
pictures. I kneel down and pick up the loose piece of flooring.
There’s a hole in the floor.
It’s dark, so I reach my hand inside and feel around. I pull out something
small. A picture of the girls. I pull out something cold. The knife. I reach in again
and feel around until I find an envelope. I open it and pull out a letter, then drop
the empty envelope to the floor next to me.
The first page is blank. I blow out a steady breath and lift it, revealing the
second page.
It’s a handwritten letter to Jeremy. Fearfully, I begin to read.

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Dear Jeremy,
I hope it’s you who finds this letter. If it isn’t you, I hope it will get to you
somehow because I have a lot to say.
I want to start off with an apology. I’m sure by the time you read this, I’ll
have left in the middle of the night with Crew. The thought of leaving you alone
in the home where we shared so many memories together makes me ache for
you. We had such a good life with our children. With each other. But we’re
Chronics. We should have known our heartache wouldn’t end with Harper’s
death.
After years of being the perfect wife to you, I never expected this career that
I love and devote most of my time to would ultimately be what ended us.
Our lives were perfect until we somehow flipped into an alternate dimension
the day Chastin died. As much as I try to forget where it all started to go wrong,
I was cursed with this mind that never forgets a single thing.
We were in Manhattan having dinner with my editor Amanda. You were
wearing that thin grey sweater I loved—the one your mother bought you for
Christmas. My first novel had just released and I signed the new two-book deal
with Pantem, which is why we were at that dinner. I was discussing my next
novel with Amanda. I don’t know if you tuned this part of the conversation out,
but I’m guessing you did because writer talk always bored you.
I was expressing my concerns to Amanda because I wasn’t sure which angle
to take with the new book. Should I write something completely different? Or
should I stick to the same formula of writing from the villain’s point of view that
made my first novel so successful?
She suggested I stick to the same formula, but she also wanted me to take
even more risks with the second book. I told her it was difficult for me to make a
voice in my novel sound authentic when it wasn’t at all how I think in my
everyday life. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to improve my craft with the next
book.
That’s when she told me to try an exercise she learned in grad school called
antagonistic journaling.
This would have been a great time for you to be paying attention at that
dinner, but you were on your phone, probably reading an eBook that wasn’t
mine. You caught me staring and you looked up at me, but I just smiled at you. I
wasn’t mad. I was happy you were there with me and being patient while I
received advice from my new editor. You squeezed my leg under the table, and I
directed my attention back to Amanda, but my focus was on your hand as it

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trailed circles around my knee. I couldn’t wait to get back to our place that night
because it was our first night away from the girls together, but I was also very
interested in the advice Amanda was giving me.
She said antagonistic journaling was the best way to improve my craft. She
said I needed to get into the mind of an evil character by writing journal entries
from my own life. . . things that really happened. . . but to make my inner
dialogue in the journal entry be the opposite from what I was actually thinking at
the time. She told me to start by writing about the day you and I met. She said I
should write down what I was wearing, where we met and what our conversation
was that night, but to make my inner dialogue more sinister than it actually was.
It sounded simple. Harmless.
I’ll give you an example from a paragraph I just wrote above.