The moment hangs between them.
Ava Paulson would be lying if she said she hadn’t at least considered it. Hell, she’d considered it back when Eleanor first broached the subject, and if she’d said yes, then this whole horror could have been avoided.
And sure—she doespreferediting, making order out of chaos, wrangling creative energies. Though she could do without the egos, and if the weekend on Skelbrae has taught her anything, it’s that writers are fucking crazy. Every single one of them.
Ava shifts in her seat, wincing as her injured foot knocks against the table.
“I’m still on vacation,” she says. “Paid leave. I think I’ve earned it.”
“I’m sure you have,” says Eleanor. “But somehow, I doubt it’s paidenough.”
Ava sighs.
Even as a senior editor, she doesn’t get paid nearly enough, and Eleanor knows it. Sure, she’s picked up the occasional bonus, but it’s a paltry sum, compared to what Fletch saw each and every time the royalties came in.
A million dollars.
She knows the Petrarch books as well as he did.
A million dollars.
Just to finish what he started.
And she’s earned it, hasn’t she? What was it Eleanor said, that day, back in her office? Thatshewas the reason for Petrarch’s success? And looking back, maybe she was. None of those books would have even gotten done without her. She dragged Fletch across the finish line each and every time. At least this way, she’ll only have to pull her own weight.
“Fuck it,” she says, as Eleanor picks up the bill. “It’s just a book.”
She throws back the last of her wine.
“How hard can it be?”
* * *
HOW HARD CAN IT BE?
She’s back at her apartment, two blocks shy of Prospect Park, and it’s late, but the words are ringing through her head. If she’s going to do this, she might as well get it over with.
She shrugs on a plush robe, lights a few candles, as if to set the mood, thinks briefly back to a conversation in the games room about writing rituals, then puts it from her mind. The last thing she needs to see right now is Millie’s face. Or Jaxon’s. Or fucking Cate’s. She pours another glass of wine to steel herself and sits down at her desk, the unfinished manuscript at her elbow.
She’s just read it again, for the third or fourth time, but it felt like the first, as she watched Fletch set the scene, introducing each and every thread, the story twisting switchback style as it climbed, a magic trick building toward a final flourish. The audience holding its breath.
And despite herself, Ava found herself drawn along, then propelled with such compelling force, as any reader would be, turning pages faster and faster to find out how he’d pull it off. How it all would end.
And then it does.
Halfway down page 293.
It slams to a jarring stop, and so does Ava. For the hundredth time, she finds herself wishing that Fletch had shared what he was thinking. That he had left some clues. But the problem, of course, is that he did—he left a dozen, and there’s no way to know which were meant as red herrings, and which would prove to be true.
Ava wakes the computer, opening a new document, the cursor blinking at the top of the blank page.
She skims the printed manuscript again, looking for the seams, the work behind the work. She can almost see Fletch smirking. She shakes her head.
It doesn’t matter.
She’ll come up with something.
Her hands rest on the keyboard.
