To decide if I’m brave enough to tell her the truth and become the man my characters are brave enough to be.
It’s not enough time, but it’s what I have.
So I drive back to my sterile condo, patch up my cat wounds, and open my manuscript.
One honest word at a time.
And maybe, if I’m lucky, a few less cat attacks.
FIVE
JESSICA
I’m at the Twin Waves Library, researching how to host a literary reveal night that generates enough revenue and visibility to remind our town why The Fiction Nook matters.
The book club planning meeting is at two. I have three hours to figure out what I’m actually proposing.
I spread my materials across the study table in the back corner—the one with the view of the poetry section, not that I care who might be there on a Tuesday morning.
“Venue capacity,” I mutter, pulling up the library’s event space information. “Catering options. Ticket pricing for similar events.”
I’m fifteen minutes into a spreadsheet that would make Scott Avery proud when movement in my peripheral vision makes me look up.
Someone’s in the poetry section, tall, in an expensive suit, and my heart does a complicated acrobatic routine.
I should absolutely not abandon my research to go spy on my landlord’s reading habits. That would be creepy and counterproductive and exactly the kind of scattered, impractical behavior my ex-husband always criticized.
I’m already standing up.
I creep through the stacks, using the tall shelves as cover. This is reconnaissance. Completely normal behavior for a business owner who’s just...curious about her adversary’s vulnerabilities.
Scott sits in the corner chair with a book of poetry and a coffee cup from Michelle’s shop. He’s not performing for anyone. No sharp businessman mask. Just a man alone with words, one hand absently pressed against his chest like whatever he’s reading physically hurts.
He looks sad, the kind that comes from loneliness and longing and not knowing how to close the distance between who you are and who you want to be.
I know that feeling. I’ve been living it for eight years.
I should absolutely not stand here watching my landlord have feelings about poetry, but I can’t move.
Because this version of Scott—the unguarded one, the one who reads love poems when he thinks no one’s watching—this version makes me wonder if maybe we’re all more complicated than the roles we play.
His coffee cup tips. He catches it, looks up?—
And sees me frozen mid-spy-crouch behind a shelf of Emily Dickinson.
We stare at each other.
“Jessica.”
“Scott.”
Silence.
“Are you...looking for something?” His tone offers me an escape route, which is unexpectedly merciful for a man who recently threatened my livelihood.
“Poetry,” I blurt. “For a customer. Who wants poetry. For...poetry reasons.”
Absolutely brilliant. Totally convincing.
