“It doesn’t matter. Just know disgust at your sloppiness isn’t why. Got it?” he burst out.
Then when she went to answer, he tapped the paper he’d written on.
Rule number four: no talking about personal things.
And she obeyed. She fell silent. Even though it only occurred to her, once she had, that it didn’t apply. They’d been talking about her, not him. Her eating habits, her sloppiness. Not him, nothing to do with him.
Why on earth, she thought, as he lifted his paper between them,did he think it was about him?
Nine
He seemed subdued after their conversation in the restaurant. Lost in even deeper thought than he had been over the singing. In fact, he didn’t even say anything about her taking a picture of the sunset lowering over the endless trees they were headed toward. He heard her make a little sound over it, and said nothing. And nothing about the hotel she had chosen for their first overnight stay. No complaining about the bright, modern decor. No rolling his eyes over the chipper person in reception. No grumbling over his too-fancy room.
He just accepted everything, in this silently brooding sort of way.
But she hadn’t the faintest clue why. It almost made her want to poke at him, to get some kind of reaction. Rip off the Band-Aid on his emotional damage before it got any worse. Allow it to continue and eventually he’d explode, and she simply couldn’t afford that.
Tomorrow was the big day.
His first public appearance of the tour.
Things needed to get off on the right foot. And especially with rumors swirling on social media thatshewas going to be there. His mystery woman, his lady love, his special someone.The muse, some of them referred to her as; half of them excited over the idea, half of them skeptical.
I heard it’s just a stunt, she read some variation of, about ten thousand times.
Which wouldn’t have usually worried her, considering even stunts had their value. All you needed to do was seed enough chatter, enough doubt, enough promise of something. But at the same time, it was an awfully large hole he’d dug for himself, telling everyone that he thought love was a joke for babies. And he was never going to be great at selling anything else.
He couldn’t even manage a convincinggoodnightto her.
He stopped just before he went into the room adjacent to hers, a key card poised to swipe, hand about to push, and caught her eye. And just as she was about to say the word he cut in. “Well then,” he said, with one brusque nod. Before he disappeared inside.
He was really something.
And he was even more of that same something, in the morning.
She knocked on his door and he didn’t answer, even though she knew he had to be up. In college he had risen so consistently early people suspected he never slept at all. Yet still, he made her try again, and again. She was honestly starting to wonder if he’d died from being talked to, and even more so when she realized the door wasn’t locked. One last firm rap on the wood and it just swung open a little.
It made her heart stutter in her chest in a way she didn’t like.
She strode into the room just to shut it up. Though it was the sound of the shower and him rattling around in there that really did it, and she knew it. He was alive, and now she was just standing in his room. His still pin-neat room, as if nobody had even been here at all.
The only sign was his laptop, open on the dresser right next to her. Slightly turned her way, too, like it was just waiting for her to look at it. And shedidwant to, if she was being honest. Beck had only texted her the night before asking if there were any signs Miller was writing. Apparently, his boss was deeply concerned that even if they fixed this massive clusterfuck, there were no books on the horizon.
That Miller had given up.
And if what was on the screen was any indication, they were right. The man couldn’t even seem to manage a dedication now. His first, in the bookIf I Was Enough, had contained the wordsI dwell in the dimmest hallways of my haunted soul without her.But this one, whatever it was going to be, just said,I can’t I can’t I can’t, under the heading.
After which she couldn’t help scrolling.
Just a little. Just to see what came beneath chapter one.
And this was what she got:
It was Wednesday. A cold Wednesday. A cold rainy Wednesday. That was when he went grocery shopping. He bought bread. Plain bread. Then he went home. Heate the plain bread. He went for a run. Everything was normal and fine and fuck fuck fuck what the fuck am I doing help me I don’t know how to do this anymore I don’t want to do this anymore.
“Shit,” she whispered under her breath. And it was good she did do it under her breath, too, because that was the moment the shower thunked off. In fact, for a whole and horrible second, she thought he might have heard her anyway. He didn’t make another sound, after killing the water, for what felt like an age. But then, blessedly, there was the rustle of a towel and the slap of skin on tiles, and here was her chance. She fled before he could find her here, unearthing any further evidence of his disenchantment.
Though the evidence was even greater once she found him in the lobby.
