Is she?
“Are you questioning my last bestseller?” I ask.
“I mean, the ending was lazy,” she says as if throwing insults is as easy as tossing popcorn at a bad movie. Except her puffy kernels feel like sharpened darts.
“Lazy?” My tone is on edge.
“You killed off the woman so Barrett didn’t have to figure out his feelings. She challenged your little detective and was beginning to take up too much space on your pages,” she explains.
I bristle, jaw clenching. “You think I couldn’t write her, so I killed her off?”
She leans back in, her red curls falling out of her updo and landing around her face. “I’m not saying you couldn’t write her. I’m saying you didn’t want to because it would mean letting Barrett lose control for once. And you can’t stand the idea of your perfect, precise detective getting knocked off balance…especially for a woman.”
My laugh is dry, humorless. “So now you’re psychoanalyzing me?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” I huff. “That character’s death was pivotal.”
This time she laughs, but hers isn’t dry or humorless. It’s lively and full. “That character’s death was convenient. You gave him a get-out-of-emotional-growth-free card.”
I rub my temples, biting back a snarky retort. I do have to spend six weeks with this absolutely maddening woman. “You write fanfiction. You don’t understand the structure, the…”
“Oh, no,” she interrupts. “I understand character arcs.” She leans toward me even more, and I see that her chair is tipped forward on the front legs. Her voice is low now. “And I understand when someone’s afraid of writing something messy and real.”
I blink, trying not to flinch at her words. Her words that pierce deeper than she knows, deeper than I think I even know.
“I thought you were a fan,” I repeat, unable to find something else to say.
She stands from her chair. “Again,was. Until next week, Evan.”
She exaggerates my name, which is a feat to do with only two syllables to work with, but she’s managed to do so with impeccable sarcasm.
I watch as she walks toward the door, a sureness in her steps that was missing when I first saw her sitting in the waiting area at Ellsworth & Carter Publishing. I’d kept my eyes forward, but there was nonotseeing her.
She seemed vibrant and yet small sitting on that white leather couch surrounded by white marble—a bright star in a colorless sky. But the way she slouched made me believe she didn't quite know how bright she was.
Under different circumstances…
No, I wouldn’t have said or done anything differently. Letting people in, even just a little, never ends well. Not for me.
I pull the manuscript back up on my computer, the one that’s supposed to be done. The one that should feel effortless by now.
But it doesn’t.
What Rachel doesn’t understand is, it’s not brave to write something real. It’s reckless. It’s giving the world too much access, leaving yourself exposed and vulnerable.
I’ve lived exposed before.
It’s why I only trust myself…and Lily. Mostly.
So, no, I’m not about to let this fan-turned-critic that feels and smells like sunshine change the way I write or change the way I live.
I may not have control over what Melanie and Lily have devised in this little book tour fiasco, but I can control my writing, and Barrett’s fate is in my hands, not Rachel’s.
Chapter 8
Rachel
