‘Chloe,’ she replied, snapping back to her senses. ‘Chloe Khan. ChloeKhanReadsItAll on TikTok, add me. And thank you so much!’
She took off down the hill, running so fast I couldn’t have caught up with her if I’d tried, vanishing into the distance almost as quickly as she’d appeared.
‘OK that was mad even from my perspective,’ Joe said, watching as I slid off the trunk and deposited myself onto the ground, pressing my palms flat against the cool grass on either side of me. ‘What was it like for you?’
My fingers curled around the long blades of grass and yanked them out of the ground.
‘It was very, very weird.’
‘Good weird?’
‘Weird weird.’
I rubbed the grass between my palms, bringing my hands up to my face so I could breathe in the fresh scent, something natural and grounding to calm me down but it didn’t work. I was too high on sugar, sun and Chloe Khan to know how I felt about anything.
‘But she loves the book,’ Joe pointed out, joining me on the ground. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of Chloe Khans out there, hanging on your every word. How are you not screaming from the rooftops and celebrating every second of the day? I would be.’
‘Because for every one of her, there’s ten Joe Walshes,’ I replied, dumping the grass and wiping my palms against my already mucky jeans ‘Someone who thinks romance novels are unrealistic and stupid and wants all the Chloe Khans to justify why they read them in the first place.’
‘You don’t listen to them, do you?’ he asked with afaint laugh. ‘What do the Joe Walshes of this world know?’
I gazed out across the rolling fields and tried to count all the different shades of green. It was impossible. There were so many and every single one was beautiful. So Joe had been right about one thing at least. Also the sheep. There really were a lot of sheep.
‘The truth is, I could read a thousand positive reviews about my book and I would only remember the one negative one,’ I admitted. ‘The bad stuff is so much easier to believe than the good. I want to be proud of it but deep down, if I’m totally honest, I think the people who say it’s bad and worthless might be right.’
Joe didn’t answer right away, instead he sat with my words, thinking them through, and I let him, resisting my perma-urge to fill the empty space with a joke or a change of subject. Eventually, his forehead creased in a troubled frown, dark eyebrows drawing together over his blue eyes.
‘Before we were interrupted, I was about to make a confession,’ he said, nudging me softly. ‘When I said all those stupid things yesterday that you very clearly and understandably took to heart, I hadn’t readButterflies.’
‘You hadn’t read it?’ I replied, not even slightly able to conceal my surprise. ‘But you’re king of the brand team? You’re in charge of the message of the book, isn’t that what you said?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I only skimmed it.’
‘You mean you read the dirty bits?’
‘I read the whole first chapter!’ He paused for a moment. ‘Then the dirty bits. Someone else on my teamread it and gave me the overall gist. I suppose I thought I didn’t need to read it to understand it.’
A self-deprecating laugh forced its way out of my throat.
‘Wow. Thanks for proving my point.’
‘Actually, I proved myself wrong. And when I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.’
‘Thanks, Dr Houseman,’ I mumbled, furious at the tears I felt burning the backs of my eyes. There was no need to be upset, it was hardly a shock. Plenty of people made assumptions about my book, about all romance novels, without reading them. My parents. My head teacher. Half the internet. Every single media outlet that chose to act as though the entire genre didn’t exist.
‘But,’ Joe continued. ‘I stayed up half the night reading it and I loved it.’
‘Course you did,’ I told him, one treacherous tear clinging to my lower lashes. ‘You don’t have to lie, Joe. I meant what I said before, I really don’t care what you think.’
‘Then you won’t care that I thought it was funny, sexy, emotionally intelligent and that I shouted at Jenna when she refused to admit how she really felt when Eric asked her.’
‘Liar.’
‘One hundred percent the god’s honest truth,’ he declared. ‘She might have questionable taste in running gear but Chloe was right about your book. The whole time I was reading, everything else just went away. When I got to the end, I was in pieces. It felt so real.’
‘Well, bugger me,’ I muttered, flicking away the solitary tear when no others came to join it. ‘Joe Walsh embraces a happily ever after.’
‘Something like that,’ he said with a crooked smile. ‘She was right about the rest of it too. You put something into words I didn’t know how to express. I want what Jenna and Eric have.’
