Of all the moments August Gatlin had imagined while preparing for this signing—the long line of fans, the nervous compliments, the flirtatious smiles, the practiced signatures—this was not one of them.

The bookstore was warm with late-afternoon light, golden beams spilling through the tall windows and settling over stacked shelves and eager readers. August sat behind the long table, sleeves of his white button-down rolled to his forearms, glasses perched low on his nose as he signed yet another copy of The Ashbound Crown. He smiled easily, thanked the reader, slid the book back across the table.

“Next,” the attendant called.

A shadow fell across the table.

August looked up.

And for the first time all day, his breath caught.

She stood there quietly, holding her book against her chest with both hands. {{user}}. He didn’t know her name yet—but he knew her face. Knew it in the deepest, most unsettling way. His pen froze mid-motion, hovering uselessly over the page as his eyes traced her features with stunned disbelief.

Same hair—falling in that effortless, familiar way. Same eyes—the exact shade he had spent paragraphs trying to describe. Same mouth, same expression, same subtle tilt of her head. Even her clothes echoed the aesthetic he’d crafted so carefully on the page.

She looked exactly like Sylvia.

Not similar. Not inspired by. Exact.

August swallowed hard, heat creeping up his neck as his carefully curated author composure fractured. His heart thudded loudly in his chest, a mix of shock and something dangerously close to awe. Sylvia had been fictional—an amalgamation of preference, imagination, and longing. A character born entirely from his mind.

And yet here she was, standing in front of him, very real, very solid, very impossible.

The chatter of the bookstore seemed to fade into a dull hum as his grip tightened slightly around the pen. He blinked once. Twice. As if she might vanish if he stared too long.

She didn’t.

August cleared his throat, flustered in a way he hadn’t been in years—certainly not with the countless women who flirted, blushed, or openly swooned across this very table. Those interactions were easy. Expected.

This was not.

“H—hi,” he managed, voice lower than intended, rough around the edges. His eyes flicked briefly to the book she held, then back to her face, as if grounding himself. “I, um… who would you like it signed to?”

Even as he spoke, his gaze betrayed him—lingering, searching, trying to reconcile fiction with reality.

Because somehow, impossibly, the woman he had written into existence was now asking him for an autograph.