"It's rough. Like, first-draft rough. Like, some of the scenes are just brackets that say INSERT EMOTION HERE."
"I don't mind brackets."
"Tucker, the hero is—" I catch myself. Can't say it. Won't say it. "It's personal."
"I know that too."
Of course he does. He reads Ishiguro. He understands subtext.
My heart is a metronome set to panic. Showing him the manuscript means showing him the character I've built from stolen details—the way he scans a room, the way his voice drops when he's being honest, the scar on his wrist. It means admitting that the romance I'm writing isn't just fiction. It's a confession.
"Okay," I hear myself say. "You can read it."
The word okay hangs in the air, and the room feels different now—charged with the weight of what I've just handed him. My whole messy, unfinished heart, disguised as fiction.
He sits down. Opens the laptop. Starts reading.
I pick up the Ishiguro he left on the armchair and pretend my hands aren't shaking.
Chapter 8
Tucker
The hero's name is Ethan.
He's former Army—not Navy, close enough to be deliberate, different enough to be deniable. Tall, dark-haired, quiet. Works a security job after leaving active duty. Reads literary fiction. Has a scar on his left wrist.
I'm reading about myself on Kassidy Monroe's laptop, and she's sitting across the room pretending not to watch every movement of my eyes.
We're in the library again—it's become our place, somehow, in the geography of this temporary life. Afternoon light filters through the rain-streaked windows, and Kassidy has positioned herself in the armchair farthest from mine with a cup of tea she hasn't touched, a book open on her lap she hasn't read, and an expression of carefully constructed indifference that cracks every time I turn a page.
The manuscript is good. Not perfect—she said it was rough, and it is. Brackets where scenes should be. Notes in the margins like make this sadder and he wouldn't say it like that and FIX FIX FIX. But underneath the scaffolding, the writing is alive. Her heroine—Sophie, a photographer rebuilding her life after a failed relationship—is smart and guarded and funny in ways thatfeel effortless, like Kassidy stopped performing and just wrote what was real.
And then there's Ethan.
He enters on page fifteen. Security detail for a VIP at a coastal event. He notices Sophie immediately—the way she holds her camera like a weapon, the way she talks to herself while framing shots. He's drawn to her before he understands why, and the realization creeps through the narrative in physical details: her laugh registered in his peripheral vision. The shape of her hands around the camera strap. A strand of hair she keeps pushing back.
It's me. Not a caricature. Not a fantasy. Me—the version she sees, which is somehow more accurate than any self-assessment I've ever managed.
The scene I'm reading now is the first real conversation between Sophie and Ethan. They're on a beach. She's working through a creative block. He asks about her work, and she opens up in a way that surprises both of them. The dialogue is sharp, layered with subtext, and I can hear our conversation—our actual conversation—woven through it like a melody through harmony.
"You don't strike me as the kind of person who gives up," Ethan says.
Sophie turns, and the sunset paints her face in amber. "I don't give up. I spiral downward while maintaining excellent posture."
I nearly laugh. That's Kassidy—pitch-perfect, the joke as a shield, the vulnerability underneath visible only if you know where to look.
The manuscript breaks off at chapter twelve. Sophie and Ethan are in a room together—forced there by a storm, of course, because Kassidy is writing the reality she's living—and the tension has built to a point where the air between them feelssolid. They're standing close. Too close. He reaches for her face, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and?—
Nothing. The page ends with a bracket: [SCENE CONTINUES — figure out what happens next.]
I close the laptop.
Kassidy's entire body stiffens. She's been pretending to read, but the book in her lap is open to the same page it was thirty minutes ago. Her eyes are on me, wide and wary, braced for impact.
"So?" The word is barely audible.
I take a beat. Not to torture her—though the flush climbing her neck suggests she's torturing herself plenty—but because I need to find the right words. She's a writer. Words matter to her more than they matter to most people, and whatever I say next will echo.
