He presses the cold glass against his forehead like he needs to cool down—or buy time. “Because you deserved to see it. Regardless of what happens with us.” He looks up. “I wrote it for you. Even before I knew I was writing it for you. And I realized last night that I was still hiding. Still waiting for the perfect moment.” He sets down the glass. “There’s no perfect moment. There’s just the choice to be honest or not.”
“What if I read it and I’m not what you wrote? What if the version of me in your head is better than the real thing?”
“Not possible.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He closes some of the distance between us, not all of it. “The woman in that manuscript is messy and stubborn and scared and brave. She pushes people away because she’s been hurt. She gives two-star reviews because she believes honesty matters more than comfort.” His voice softens. “She’s you, Jessica. As I see you. And what I see is someone worth waiting for.”
I want to kiss him. The urge rises in my chest like a wave. His eyes drop to my mouth. The kitchen is too warm and too quiet and?—
A timer goes off somewhere in the house. We both jump like teenagers caught doing something they shouldn’t.
“Probably the oven,” he manages, his voice rough. “Appetizers.”
“Right. Appetizers.” I step back, pressing my cold glass against my cheek.
This is the moment where I could close the distance. Instead, I retreat. “I should get back to the shop. Peak season.”
When I leave, he walks me to my car. “Read the manuscript. When you’re ready.”
“And if I’m never ready?”
“Then at least you’ll know it exists. That someone saw you that way, even if you never see yourself.”
The shop ischaos when I get back. By closing time, I’m wrung out, but the till is full and the shelves need restocking for the third time this week.
Upstairs, Austen greets me with a meow that translates to “You’re three minutes late with my dinner and I’ve been suffering terribly.”
“Your life is very hard.”
I feed the cat, shower away the day’s sunscreen-scented customers, make a salad because it’s too hot to cook, and pick up three different books without focusing on any of them.
The manuscript waits.
Outside, the sun sets orange and pink over the water. A band plays somewhere down the boardwalk. I can’t fight this anymore.
Between the Linesby V. Langley.
My penpal name… Coincidence? I think not.
The story opens in a book shop on the coast of North Carolina. The heroine is Emma, not Jessica—dark hair instead of red. But she fights for her business like it’s her child, uses humor to hide her wounds, and fell in love with the wrong man once.
She’s me, in all the ways that matter.
The hero is James—a developer who hates what his inheritance made him, a man who writes reviews under a pseudonym because it’s the only way he knows how to be soft. A man who hides behind coldness because the alternative—being seen—feels like a death sentence.
He’s Scott, down to the bones.
They meet as enemies. He threatens her lease. She challenges everything he believes about success. They exchange anonymous messages online, falling for each other’s words while fighting in person.
I read for hours without stopping. The band down the boardwalk goes quiet. The tourists retreat to their rentals. The night settles into that particular stillness that only happens after midnight in a beach town—just waves and the occasional cry of a night heron.
Austen relocates from the couch to my lap to the pillow beside me, tracking my emotions through his position like the empathetic creature he pretends not to be.
There’s a scene where James imagines showing Emma his grandmother’s cottage—a place by the water full of warmth and memories, where he could finally be himself. My breath catches. He wrote this before last night. He imagined bringing me there, letting me see that side of him, before he ever actually did it.
And then there’s James’s apartment in the story—cold and empty, a showroom life he hates—with a locked office where he keeps everything that matters. Including a framed review that changed how he saw himself.
