Margins of Error: Deadlines Installment #4

Greetings from Texas,

The Secretary Volume II is officially out in the wild. Read it here. 

I’m excited about my new standalone thriller coming in June.

As for Deadlines...

A chance encounter. It was supposed to be a one-off thing.
Instead, she flirted with fire.

In this week’s installment, Mallory meets her match—line for line, cut for cut—and learns what happens when the man across the page knows exactly where to press.

In case you missed the first three, you can catch up here.

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Welcome to Deadlines
A note before we begin

Deadlines follows Mallory Blythe, a writer who doesn’t just revise the endings she hates—she rewrites everything. Fiction. People. Outcomes. It’s satirical. It’s dark. And sometimes it gets a little close to the bone.

These are fictional stories. That part’s not up for interpretation.

Mallory’s opinions and actions are hers—and hers alone.

Each installment stands on its own. But together, they build something messier. More dangerous. And, I hope, fun.

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Margins of Error

Deadlines: Installment Four

I took the book home, obviously.
Poured a drink. Sat down. Started reading.

Not because I cared.
Because I couldn’t not.

The markups were surgical.
Precise. Intimate. Like someone tracing your scars and asking where it still aches.

One of my favorite lines—gone.
Replaced with five words I wish I’d written.

So naturally, I wrote back.

Crossed out his edits in red.
Added a footnote that said: Your version’s cleaner. Mine hurts more.
Signed it with a lipstick print and a line of Latin I knew he’d have to look up.
It translated to: Let the cut bleed.

Three days later, a reply.
The same page. Same paragraph.
Under my line: Pain isn’t the goal. Damage is.
Also in Latin.

I laughed. The kind you don’t plan.

It had been months since the writing surprised me.

Years since a person did.

And just like that, we had a process.

Paragraph by paragraph. Draft by draft.
We rewrote each other like an argument with no agreed-upon ending.

Every reply was deliberate. Easy.
Intimate in the worst way.
He never signed a name.
But I didn’t need one.
I knew it was him—the way you know when a man is watching you before he makes a move.

The edits got bolder. So did I.

One night, I opened the latest file and found nothing changed.
Just a comment on the final page:

Meet me.

No location. No time. Just that.

So I did what any self-respecting masochist with a MacBook and a reputation would do.

I hit reply.

Send coordinates. Come unarmed.

What I got back wasn’t an address.
It was a scene.

A single paragraph. Forty-three words.
It described a bar—lighting, music, the woman at the end of the counter wearing too much eyeliner and a dress with nowhere to go.

The woman was me.

I stared at it for a long time.
Then I opened my closet and picked the dress.

He was already there when I arrived.
Back corner. Booth. Ice water.
He didn’t look up right away, which only confirmed it.
Real men rarely make great entrances. But this one? He was written in.

I slid into the booth across from him.

“You’re late,” he said.

I shrugged. “Your scene could’ve been clearer.”

He passed me a folder.
Another draft. Marked up. Precise.

I didn’t open it.
Just stared at him until the silence folded in on itself.

He wasn’t trying to edit me.

He just read what was already there—and wrote back better.

And just like that?
I was fucked.

New installments post Sundays at 10AM CST. Newsletter subscribers get them Saturdays.

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