I snorted lightly. “But it’s thetruth. I’m a realist.”
“Nope.” Owen fixed his dark eyes on me. “What we tell ourselves forms our reality. You keep saying you’re clumsy and hopeless, and youwillbe—I promise you that. From now on, your new mantra is ‘I’m a work in progress.’”
I smiled at his accidental symmetry. “I’m a WIP, huh? That’s what writers call our unfinished books. I like it.”
He ignored my attempt at levity. Now that he knew I had a goal and a deadline, his entire persona seemed to have shiftedto all business. “I know it’s short notice, but can you meet this Sunday morning?”
“Is that going to count as one of my four actual lessons or...?”
Owen frowned at me. “I told you not to worry about it. If you can be flexible, I’ll slot you in wherever.” He paused. “As long as you’re enjoying the lessons. The second it’s not fun, you need to rethink this whole plan.”
I didn’t let on that our first lesson hadn’t exactly been a party. But there’d been moments when Owen had praised me for managing to get the ball over the net that made me feel a little glowy inside. I’d been frustrated enough to contemplate giving up a couple of times, only to get an obscure Owen compliment for something like my foot placement or ball focus, and it was enough to keep me going.
“I’m in it to win it,” I replied. “We’re going to have a blast.”
Owen watched me for a beat longer like he was a police interrogator waiting for me to crack. I nodded hard, smiling so wide that my cheeks hurt.
It was my most harebrained scheme yet, and he’d been roped in as my unwilling accomplice. He finally nodded back at me.
I was on my way.
Chapter Nine
Piper’s unsmiling face on the Zoom call made me jittery, because I wasn’t great at lying. I felt like she could see my duplicity as I faked enthusiasm for Austin and Abby’s story.
I did love them—I lovedallthe characters in my books—but I still couldn’t connect with them, which meant our sexy little threesome was stuck on the front porch.
Luckily, I was alone in the apartment, so Meredith couldn’t critique my on-screen performance. She was back at Harmony, teaching despite the giant, clunky boot.
“So when do you think you’ll be able to get some pages to me?” Piper asked. She took her black-rimmed glasses off to wipe the lenses, which made her face look like an unfinished painting. The Superman/Clark Kent phenomenon was real, because I could only see Piper as my editor when she had her glasses on. With them off, she looked as kindly as a kindergarten teacher, all swoopy bun and pink cheeks. But once the glasses went back on,business.
“I’m getting there.” I clumsily sidestepped the question.
I’d never missed a deadline or questioned an edit in all my years of working with Liaison, which made me assume that I had a bank of goodwill I could withdraw from when necessary. Piper’s expression suggested otherwise.
“Brooke, I need a firm date,” she said, her clipped accent making it sound like an order. “We can give you a little wiggle room on the first 10K but only if it doesn’t alter your final due date.”
Liaison ran on efficiency. The category romance world was simultaneously ravenous and oversaturated, so in order to capitalize on their readership, Liaison needed to churn out books at a breakneck speed. Missing a writing deadline could push a book’s release date back, and a lapse meant that our readers might wander off to find a horseback HEA from a different publisher and leave us in the dust.
Not only that, but my output directly impacted the rest of the team. Beta readers, line edits, the cover design, foreign translations, social media content—all of it was mapped out nearly to the hour on Pro Depot, our project management platform. I was used to seeing green next to my name, not an angry bloodred.
“I can get something to you by the tenth,” I replied before I could second-guess if it was the truth.
I padded in what I hoped was enough extra time past my actual deadline, banking on the fact that I could muster up a thousand words a day. My eyes landed on the paddle and ball sitting on the edge of the coffee table, where I left them after my lesson.
Piper sighed and leaned slightly off-screen to write something down. “Okay, I suppose we have to make that work.”
“I’m so sorry; I feel terrible about the delay,” I said in a rush. I decided that the best course of action was honesty after never venturing much past the “How was your weekend?” version of small talk. “I’ve just been in a bad place, uh, mentally lately. Writing has been really hard for me.”
We were colleagues a couple of time zones apart, not friends,so exposing myself felt awkward. I braced for her no-nonsense “keep calm and carry on” response.
“Oh, Brooke. I’m very sorry to hear that. Why didn’t youtellme?”
I paused to process, because Piper’s expression had transformed from taskmaster to maternal concern.
“I thought I could power through.” I shrugged. “I’ve never dealt with writer’s block before, and I just assumed that I’d get back to normal once...”
Once my heart healed.
