I shouldn’t have expected any less.
“So did you at least ask about Alex and Eliot?” Kieran asked, dodging his way around a group of tourists like he wasn’t one himself.
“I spoke to Riley about it, informally. I’m lucky he’s on the marketing team, really.”
“Because he has a crush on you?” Kieran asked.
“No, because—does he? Have a crush on me?”
Kieran shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but based on the way he was looking at you like every word you said was some kind of divine wisdom? I’d be willing to take the bet that you were in with a shot there.”
Huh. I hadn’t noticed.
Probably because I’d been too busy looking at the way everyone looked atKieran. Those looks ran the gamut from seethingly jealous to indecently turned on.
Riley, I’d thought, fell somewhere in the middle, but I’d assumed the jealousy was over Kieran, not over me.
“Well, no, that’s not why. I was gonna say because he’s gay and he’s actually read the books.”
“Isn’t that… his job?” Kieran asked, genuinely confused.
I snorted. “You have so much optimism that I almost hate to tell you how things really work. I mean, you’d think, right? But that’s really not marketing’s job. Most of them couldnottell you what the plot of the latest James Patterson novel is.”
“That’s incredible,” Kieran said. “Because they’re all exactly the same.”
“That was mean. True, butmean. Besides, that’s what his audience wants. Exactly the same story told slightly differently every time. They like that story. How many superhero comics did you read when we were growing up? They’re all exactly the same, too.”
Kieran opened his mouth—probably to object—but then shut it again.
“I take your point. Still think your books are better.”
“Than the superhero comics?” I asked, surprised. Kieran hadlovedthose, he said they were the only ones that didn’t give him a headache.
I guess they had less words in them, which would explain it.
“I meant than James Patterson, but sure, better than the comics, too. In my defense, Idoknow the author.”
I laughed at that. Kieran was trying to soften the compliment, but I’d heard what he just said and I was planning on locking it away safely in my heart forever.
I’d written these booksfor him. The fact that he liked them was all I’d ever wanted out of my life.
Not that I was planning on telling him that. We weren’t at the I-never-stopped-loving-you stage yet.
I wasn’t sure wewouldbe. Kieran wanted to leave, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think this would last once he got home. He wasn’t ready to be out yet.Thatwas why it’d taken him until we got to New York to make a definitive move, instead of a scared, awkward, impulsive attempt.
But I was falling in love with him all over again. With his smile and his sense of humor and his quiet protectiveness, his confidence in me, all the love and affection we’d had as kids still firmly in place.
“So what did Riley say?” he asked, steering the conversation back to where it’d started.
“That he liked my chances of getting away with it, and the best thing to do was to finish the manuscript and hand it in that way. Beg forgiveness, rather than asking permission.”
“So is that what you’re gonna do?”
“I think so,” I said.
I still hadn’t written the part where Alex and Eliot got together. They could’ve been the best of friends instead, and I could’ve let fanfic do the rest of the work, but…
I was sick of a world where people had to do that just to see themselves in the stories they loved. Not that I wanted them tostop,just that I didn’t want to be one more author who clearly chickened out at the last minute or wouldn’t stick to my principles when it came down to it.
