“Be what? Professional? Willing to do her job to the very last letter? I told her one hug in the greenroom, let you and me lead the conversation while she looks at you adoringly, and then you introduce her onstage and embrace again. All of which she has so far done perfectly. I don’t know what more you could want.”
“You to admit you’re mocking me.”
“Mocking youhow?”
He went to speak. She could see he did. His chest rose, his lips parted—but in the end, something seemed to stop him. Her expression, she thought it was, because he ransacked it about a second before he fell silent. Then finally, he looked away. He let out a frustrated breath.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving,” he said.
And he did it so firmly she couldn’t keep down the panic in her voice.
Not even just panic now. Something weak, and wretched. “But there are thousands of people waiting for you,” she pretty much pleaded with him. As if he was ever going to be moved by that. As if he was ever going to be moved by anything.
And sure enough, he made a sound of derision.
“I don’t care. I don’t care. None of them mean a fucking damn to me.”
Though it wasn’t the confirmation that got her. It was the way he put it.
It was that one word:damn. Like a coffin lid, closing on the crowd’s excitement to see him. Even after he had hurt them, even after he had pissed their love up a wall, even after they’d had so much faith in him and he had crushed them, they were still excited. And he was still anass.
He was so much of one she couldn’t stop herself.
“Nobodymeans a fucking damn to you, Miller. Those people love you, and they love your books, and you treat them like shit. Like they’re a hindrance, a bunch of fools to be tricked. Dangling the promise of someone who understands them right in their faces, and then laughing when they reach for it. Smashing them when they reach for it. Crushing them down with your contempt, until they’re certain nothing they do is cool enough, practical enough, clever enough. You made sincerity and emotion and love seem like things they should be embarrassed about, and I willneverforgive you for doing that to them,” she snarled, so full of fury that the words tumbled out before she could think a single one of them through.
But she thought about them in the ringing silence that followed.
Oh yeah, she thought about them then. Of course she did.
Because she hadn’t saidthem.
She had saidme.
She had saidshewas the one crushed, not that crowd out there.Shewas the one who couldn’t forgive, notthem. And so clearly that he couldn’t even pretend. He heard the word and jerked as if she’d slapped him. Then suddenly he seemed to be breathing very hard. More than very hard. His chest was practically heaving. As if she’d just made him run up an emotional cliff face, and now he was exhausted, ripped raw, afraid of falling back down to the bottom again.
But completely unable to do anything about it.
He went to say something; no words came.
And his eyes—god, she’d never seen them look like that. Not flat and dull but struck through with a strange, brittle light. Then, just as she was thinking this was too much, he stepped forward. He moved right into her space, so close she couldn’t help it. She put up her hands.
Just to block whatever he was doing, she thought.
But then somehow she ended up with her palms pressed to his chest. Like he wasn’t trying to do something bad, and she wasn’t really trying to stop him anyway. And now they were just like this—her face turned up to his, his face looking down at hers, her hands on him.
Worse than that, in fact.
She felt as if he went to step back, yet somehow when he did she found herself bunching her fists around the lapels of his jacket. And just as she was realizing how weird that was, and tried to end it, he grabbed her by her wrists. Like he actually had no problems at all with making bodily contact.
Then he did something even stranger.
He went to say something, an angry something, she thought.
But when it came out it was just her name. “Emmett,” he said, “Emmett.” And finally, finally, another thing. One that definitely started with aD, but felt like it couldn’t possibly be.Don’t you dare say Daisy, she thought at him, and he didn’t.
But she kind of suspected that was just because of the gasp.
The big collective gasp coming from the crowd of people the curtains had drawn back to reveal. There they all were suddenly, gawping at her with her hands on him and his hands on her. Not just gawping, in fact. Most of them had their phones up, already capturing this moment for posterity.
