Rachel doesn’t break her stare. It’s as if we’ve entered some kind of elementary school staring competition. I try to focus on not blinking, but my eyes are beginning to water. She’s ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Why am I participating in this?
She opens her mouth to say something but then presses her lips back together tightly.
“Do you have something to say?” I ask, choosing to break the silence and the staring contest as I blink and feel the sweet relief of my eyelids closing over what I can only imagine are my bloodshot eyeballs. This woman is making me crazy. I’m thirty-four, not thirteen.
“Do you really hate my writing that much?” she questions honestly.
She’s sucking her cheeks in again, and I can tell she’s biting down slightly on the inner flesh of her mouth as her lips smoosh together in a pout.
I’m usually an honest person, but everything in me wants to be dishonest right now because I don’t really hate her writing. I hate her fanfiction. Her actual writing, what I was just reading not even an hour ago, is incredible.
But Barrett is mine, and I do hate that she has turned him into someone he was never meant to be.
I pull my elbows up on my desk, wrapping my right hand over my left fist so I can rest my chin on them. “I hate that you take what is mine and make it yours.”
It’s the best I can do. The most honest I can be at this moment.
She nods her head slowly, processing. She’s pretty and clever, and I’m keenly aware of how much of an intriguing addition she’s going to be to this upcoming book tour, which is why Melanie is excited about the entire ordeal. The last two book tours were okay. Less fans showed up. The forums had been formal. No one seemed to want to stick around afterward. But books were still sold.
This is a marketing move, and Melanie is just doing her job, even if I don’t like it.
“But you understand that what I write doesn’t benefit me in any way?” she finally asks.
“It seems like it’s benefiting you pretty well right now,” I grumble. “Fifty grand isn’t a small amount of money.”
She tilts her head, and I can feel her gaze sweep over me—sharp and heated, like a rash blooming across my skin—as she sizes me up. She stands up from the couch, crossing the room to throw her empty coffee cup in the trash can beside my desk. Her yellow dress sways around her legs as if there is some kind of invisible breeze making it swirl softly around her calves. I force myself to look away.
“Maybe,” she says. “But I’m under the impression that this partnership is also going to benefit you.”
“How so?” I question.
She slides into the wooden chair across from me, pulling her elbows up onto my desk, mimicking me with precision. Her green eyes are clear, and I find myself staring at her freckles that are delicately splattered across her nose and cheeks. I've never before noticed how simple and beautiful freckles can be, like intentional paint splatters on a canvas. I blink and refocus on the fact that this woman has created a viral mob of readers who hate me and prefer her.
“You need me to sell books,” she answers plainly, as if I haven’t been selling books just fine without her.
“Is that so?” I try to make the question sound fierce, but her scent of gardenias and sunshine infiltrates my senses.
I don’t know how someone can smell like sunshine, but she does.
“It is so. I’m good for business,” she says softly with a bright smile.
I know Melanie has huge plans for marketing this book tour where, I, Evan Michaels, broody murder mystery author, partner up with the mysterious fanfiction writer that ends up being a happy-go-lucky woman. We are midnight and daybreak, pain and hope, facts and feelings. At least, according to Melanie that’s what we are, and it’s the perfect contrast to create a buzzy-worthy sensation to promote my next book.
The book that is supposed to be another bestseller.
If I can finish writing it, that is.
“You know, you’re actually keeping me from what is my business. I need to work on my manuscript so you can benefit from my book tour,” I say.
“Need some tips?” She smirks.
Her question makes me think about the comments on her fanfiction. The comments like, “I’m begging the real author to take notes from this fanfic”and“I wish the real author would step aside and let BarrettBeyondTheBadge ghostwrite the next book.”
But instead, I growl, “No. I’m the published author here.”
She leans back in the chair, shrugging her shoulders. “As long as you don’t do what you did in the last book.”
Did she just say?
