Yours in stubborn hope,
Between the Lines
She’s talking about V. Langley, but she doesn’t know she’s talking directly to him.
And that line—even the ones he kicked off his ARC team—I can hear the hurt underneath her stubborn hope. Six months later, and she’s still wounded by the rejection.
I hurt her because I was too much of a coward to face honest criticism. Too afraid of being seen.
And now she’s writing to me, offering hope and second chances, not knowing I’m the person who needs to hear it most.
The irony is so thick I could choke on it.
I pull out the notebook I keep in my glove compartment—physical writing for moments when typing feels too distant—and start composing a response.
When I’ve finished a few minutes later, I stare at what I’ve written.
I’m asking the woman I love to teach me how to tell her I love her while hiding behind a pen name and a PO box.
This is either poetic or pathetic. I address the envelope anyway.
Tomorrow I’ll drop it in The Fiction Nook’s brass mailbox. She’ll read my words and not know they’re mine. Tomorrow we’ll continue this dance where I can only be honest with her when I’m lying about who I am.
I’m a romance author who writes love stories for a living.
I should be better at this.
I drive homeas the sun sets over Twin Waves, painting the harbor in shades of orange and pink that would look beautiful on the page if I could figure out how to write beauty without it feeling false.
Back in my writing office, I pull up the manuscript. The one that’s supposed to be honest. The one where I’m trying to find my way back.
I need to write the next scene: the hero confessing his feelings to the heroine who thinks he’s her enemy and doesn’tknow he’s been writing her love letters for months, who has no idea that every harsh word is armor against the terrifying vulnerability of actually being seen.
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
In the manuscript, the hero is braver and smarter than I am. A man capable of closing the distance between who he is and who he needs to be.
In real life, I’m just a guy who threatened to evict the woman he loves this morning and is now writing her anonymous love letters this evening.
I’m a romance author who can’t figure out his own love story, who forgot how to write the truth and is slowly, painfully, trying to remember.
I start typing.
Outside my window, Twin Waves settles into evening. Somewhere out there, Jessica is probably closing The Fiction Nook. Feeding Austen, who inexplicably likes me. Reading the letter I wrote as Coastal Quill.
Not knowing the man who gave her an ultimatum this morning is the same man asking her for hope tonight.
Not knowing that I’d give up every property in my portfolio, every dollar in my account, every carefully constructed piece of my public persona, if it meant she’d look at me the way she looks at the books she loves.
With the kind of stubborn faith that says second chances are real and walls can come down and even authors who lose their way can find it again.
If they’re brave enough, and I’m not there yet.
But I’m writing my way there.
One honest word at a time.
How hard can that be?
