His expression hardens. “Do you really want to do this now?”
“Should we wait another decade, you think?”
“I was trying not to makeyourday about me andmyfucking insecurities.”
“And look how well that turned out.”
A storm burns in his eyes. “Itried, Mars. I screwed it up, clearly, but I was in love with you! I would have done anything.”
“Except tell me the truth!” It’s a physical pain to hear him say that word for the first time in ten years. I went to Rishi’s party that night thinking he didn’t.
“I wanted to. I realized almost immediately that I screwed up. Ten minutes after you kicked me out, I came back to wait for you. Islept in your bedwhile you were—” He grits his teeth, the absence of the words almost more painful than hearing him say it.
I tortured myself for years, wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed home. Had nothing to drink. Kidnapped West and made him come to New York with me anyway.
“You lied when we had drinks with Danielle in New York, didn’t you? About not looking for an agent yet?”
He tips his chin in silent acknowledgment.
“Why?”
He scrubs his hands over his face. “I needed to succeed on my own, and I knew you would try to help me—”
“Because Ilovedyou!”
He lifts his hands, exasperated. “I know! I know I should have been honest. But I was twenty-two and a fucking idiot!”
“It would have changed everything, West.” My voice cracks. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and blink like my life depends on it. “Everything could be different between us right now.”
His face softens, his eyes lighting with something that looks deceptively like hope. “Do you want everything to be different between us?”
Sometimes I think I do. Hating West is exhausting. Nothing about it comes naturally. Sometimes, when the fire burns away, it leaves a dull ache that I’ve never been able to fill. Not with other men. Not with bestselling books. Not by throwing darts at West’s picture or pretending that when I’m near him, I don’t feel a chain connecting us, handcuffing our fates until we’re both miserable.
For a minute last night, I wanted things to be different, and then I got slapped in the face with a harsh reminder of why they can’t be.
I close my eyes, fighting memories of months spent in bed, death threats in my inbox, a career on fire. It’s enough to make me nauseous with anxiety, even now. And none of it would have happened if it weren’t for him.
If I’m being honest, though, I could get overthat. But mypride won’t ever let me be with someone who humiliated me the way he did.
I shake my head in answer to his question. “No. You’ll do your interview, I’ll leave, and with any luck, we’ll never have to speak to each other again.”
22
9 Years Ago
Leave it toAmber to be the first person from our old friend group to get married. If living alone in New York hadn’t shoved me headfirst into adulthood, receiving her wedding invitation would have done the trick. And even though the idea of getting married at twenty-three feels impossible and foreign, like something that only happens in the stories I write, I can’t pretend to be surprised. Amber and Patrick are good for each other. I’m unbelievably happy for them.
The fact thatIhaven’t managed to cobble together anything resembling stability says more about me than it does about their relationship. I threw myself into the deep end when I moved to the city more than a year ago, and every day since has been an exercise in not drowning. In loneliness. In insecurity. In the fear that I’ve tricked people into believing I’m capable of something that I’m not, and that when they figure me out, it’ll all be taken away.
Their wedding venue is close to Patrick’s family and nestled in Redwood National Park in California.
When my flight lands, I tuck my laptop and my notebook into my carry-on bag, not sure why I bothered to pretend to work. I’m barely writing under the best of circumstances, let alone at thirty thousand feet in the air, hurtling toward a collision with my past. The sequel toTorchedis due to my editor, Whitney, next month, and every morning when I open my laptop, I stare at a blank page and relearn the meaning of the phraseexistential dread.
What if I can’t do it?
What ifTorchedwas a fluke and I’m a fraud?
What if I only ever had one good book in me?
