Make You Miss Me by B. Celeste
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is usually where I’d put the acknowledgments, but I wanted to do something different for this story.
Make You Miss Me is a journey that I realized halfway into writing was personal to me. I always find ways to incorporate pieces of myself into each of my books. Best known to date would be Underneath the Sycamore Tree and Emery’s struggle with invisible, chronic illness.
But Stevie’s story became therapeutic to write. Sure, I’ve never been married. I can’t even tell you guys that I’ve ever been in love. But I’ve had many manipulative dating experiences in the past where I’d succumb to whatever the man I was seeing wanted without thinking about myself or what I wanted in return. It was about the control they had on my life, on my dreams, aspirations, and goals. I was naïve enough to let them get their way until I sort of lost myself.
It wasn’t until I spent about seven months with a guy who knew exactly what to say and when to say it that I realized we were going nowhere. I was stuck in the fantasy world of what-ifs that he was feeding just enough to keep me holding on. But he wasn’t following through on any of his promises. He was truly a master manipulator. He’d say the prettiest things, make me feel so cared for, so good about myself and my career and my dreams, but when it came down to it, he simply said those things to get what he wanted.
He knew what I’d wanted from our time together—what I wanted for myself and my future. Yet, he strung me along with false hope of being that man for me until I about broke.
And, the thing is, I knew the second I ended it with him that I was better off. I felt relieved to have him out of my life almost instantaneously. I felt more like myself—better than the version he knew. I was ready to take on the world and prove to him that nobody can control my life but me.
In doing so, Stevie came to life. She’s this vulnerable yet strong woman who’s navigating divorced life. A woman who’s trying to find herself, to trust people—men, especially—and to figure out how to love again. She’s buying her first house on her own, just like me, and pushing past all the demons inside her mind that want to hold her back from being happy.
Stevie Foster is flawed. Human. She’s everything I love in fictional characters because she’s so real. She makes choices she’s not proud of out of desperation, but she also moves forward knowing those choices can’t drag her down.
And in the end, she gets Fletcher. She figures out that Hunter was never the love of her life because he could never truly love her the way she deserved to be.
So, I’m not going to thank my “ex” for giving me the inspiration to write this. He doesn’t deserve it. However, I do appreciate how easily he let me go because this story wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
The beautiful house I’m buying all on my own wouldn’t have happened.
And I’d be stuck in a relationship that’d make me miserable instead of thriving.
Until next time,
B. Celeste