Then he let go of my hand.
“You’re right,” he said, standing, moving away from me faster and more gracefully than he should have been able to. “We’re not sober enough for this. I’ll get you a blanket.”
“I’ll go,” I said, moving to stand and finding it much,muchharder than it should have been.
Kieran’s hand was on my shoulder, an anchor of hope in a sea of despair.
Ananchor of hope? In asea of despair?
Maybe the secret was I needed to start drinking before I could switch my poetry brain on.
“You’ll stay,” he said. “Right there. And get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll make you breakfast.”
The unspokenand it’ll be like none of this ever happenedhung in the air between us.
I nodded, but not because I agreed with that last part. We’d been socloseto having a talk Kieran desperately needed to have.
I wasn’t giving up on him.
14
Kieran
“You’re still reading?”Felix asked, glancing over at me as I settled in for the long drive to New York.
I’d at least convinced him to take my truck instead of his tiny little rental, and he’d offered to do the driving in exchange.
Considering how little I wanted to drive that far, I’d been happy to hand over the keys.
“Halfway through book four,” I said, grabbing my reading glasses out of the bag I’d packed for the trip. I’d let Felix go through my wardrobe this morning to pick something that wouldn’t embarrass him.
We were apparently pretending last night had never happened. That was fine by me—I didn’t want to fight with him.
“Wow,” Felix said.
“I wanted to be caught up by the time we got there.” I shrugged. “So, y’know. I could talk intelligently about your books.”
“Almost no one there will actually have read them,” Felix explained. “Angelica has, and so has my editor, but that’s… it. Angelica’s in on it, so you don’t have to pretend to her.”
“I just don’t wanna seem like a bad boyfriend,” I said. “Feels like I should at least read your books.”
Felix snorted. “Why? No one else ever has.”
Right, Colin. Felix had sidestepped talking about him before, but it was obvious there was something up there.
I didn’t like the idea that someone hadhurtFelix. I hadn’t been there to stop it, but I was here now.
“Colin?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Felix was silent for a moment, and when I glanced up at him, he was painfully focused on the road and chewing his lip.
“He’ll be there,” Felix said. “At the launch. He works for the publishing company.”
“Hewhat?”
“Not in any kind of position where he has like… any direct say over my contract,” Felix reassured, waving away my concern. “We met at one of these. My, umm. My first one of these. And he was so charming and funny andhandsome, and I was a new baby author who’d been getting by writing marketing copy and eating a lot of ramen.”
“Swept you off your feet?” I asked, uncomfortable with the sudden surge of jealousy welling up in the pit of my stomach.
