“Thank you,” she says. “For showing me this.”
“There’s one more thing.” The words come out before I can second-guess them. “If you’re willing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“The rest of me. The part I show the world.” I meet her eyes. “It’s not pretty. But you should see it. If you want to understand.”
Jessica studies me for a long moment, like she’s weighing the options. Should she stay safe and keep the walls up or take one more step into the unknown?
“Okay,” she says finally. “Show me.”
The penthouse iseverything Vera’s cottage isn’t.
Jessica stands in the middle of my living room, turning slowly, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the white walls, the gray furniture, the chrome fixtures. Everything sleek and cold and deliberately impersonal.
“This looks like a hotel,” she says.
“That’s the point.”
“To appear as though no one lives here?”
“More like someone without feelings resides here.” I toss my keys on the counter, the sound too loud in the sterile space. “Someone practical. Professional. Someone my father would approve of.”
She picks up a chrome sculpture from the coffee table—an abstract item I bought because it matched and I couldn’t think of anything I actually wanted.
“This is sad, Scott.”
“I know.”
“You don’t even have books out here.”
“I know.”
She sets down the sculpture and crosses her arms. “So where’s the real stuff?”
I lead her down the hallway, past the guest room no one has ever used, the bathroom that looks like a spa advertisement, and to the door at the end that’s always locked.
“No one’s seen this except Grayson,” I tell her. “And he found it by accident. Walked in when I forgot to lock it and never let me live it down.”
“What’s behind it?”
“Everything I actually am.”
I unlock the door, push it open, and let her see…
The writing office is warm chaos.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with romance novels—hundreds of them, organized by subgenre and author. A leather chair that’s molded itself to my shape over countless late-night sessions sits near my desk.
Stacks of manuscript pages are scattered next to notebooks filled with my handwriting. A cork board covered in plot notes and character sketches and random inspiration hangs on the wall near my desk.
Jessica walks in slowly, like she’s entering a church. Her fingers trail along the book spines, the same way they did at Vera’s.
“This is where you write,” she says.
“This is where I’m real, or at least attempt to be.”
She keeps moving, like she’s taking in the contrast between this room and the rest of the condo. The evidence of a secret life lived in the margins of a public performance.
