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I set my jaw and ignored the slow ticking of my curiosity level. It was a sick urge for every writer—tell me what you think, but OMG, don’t tell me if you hate it, but what do you think?
The words crawled up my throat like little ants, the pressure to escape building and building and building. I rolled my lips shut and breezed through the family room. “I’m going to get my laptop and work at the table.”
“Sounds great. I’ll be right here.”
My chin edged up an inch, and I didn’t ask anything while I walked upstairs.
See? Didn’t bother me in the slightest.
The Sin Watcher was my fourth book and definitely my most successful. It won a few awards, had my best critical reviews, including a write-up in the NY Post, and earned me my first spot on a bestseller list. By that point, my writing wasn’t quite as clunky as my debut but not as strong as it was by the time my last few books came out.
That was the thing about writing, though—also known as the weirdest job in the world. Your best works didn’t always hit the most successfully. It was a job where success was never predictable, always precarious, and always some elusive amalgamation of timing and luck and the right hook. And no matter how hard you tried, attempting to replicate any of those things was a bit like playing the lottery.
While he read quietly on the couch, I set up my computer and popped my earbuds in because honestly, I couldn’t handle the sound of him turning pages or making noises because I’d end up clutching his shirt and begging him for validation.
Mentally, I slapped the shit out of myself. I didn’t need his validation, thank you very much.
What I needed was a reminder that I could do this, and even if I couldn’t jump right back in any saddles or on any metaphorical horses, I’d be able to do it again someday.
I flipped through emails and answered a few of the quick ones, then hopped onto my social media and cleared out notifications. A few reader messages, reiterating their excitement about my next release, whatever that might be, helped bolster my motivation to keep trying, even if trying looked a little different.
After about twenty minutes, my eyes wandered over the edge of my laptop like he was a living, breathing man-magnet. His focus on the book was completely fixed, the hard line of his profile impossibly handsome as he flipped another page, unaware of my scrutiny. For a moment, I wondered what part he was at.
My teeth dug into my bottom lip to keep myself from asking. Instead, my gaze tracked lightly over the way he held the book. It occurred to me, as I stared like a fricken creeper, that I’d never actually seen Ian read a book for fun before. We read in school, of course, but he’d never wanted to sit still long enough to read, not like I had.
He was always doing something, working on something, the constant, restless movement something I associated with him so strongly that I couldn’t help but marvel at the stillness I saw in him now.
His hand was so big where he held the book, like it would be affixed in a dictionary somewhere along with a definition of hot-man-hand. Veins roped over the back of his hand, stretching along his forearm where the muscles flexed as he turned another page. His shirt—a somewhat shocking shade of pale blue cotton—was short-sleeved, so I could study the impressive curve of his biceps too, where they stretched against the edge of the sleeve.
“Can I help you?” he asked, eyes never moving off the page.
I blinked, shifting in my chair and clearing my throat. “Nope.”
“Am I bothering you by reading in here?”
I scoffed. “Of course not. Read wherever you want.”
“So if I wanted to sit next to you at the table, that wouldn’t mess with your head?”
My eye twitched. “Nope.”
Finally, Ian’s gaze cut to mine, and when I saw the bright gleam of amusement buried in the depths of his face, I glared.
Ian snapped the book shut and tossed it onto the couch. His attention was unrelenting, and I sighed, turning away from my laptop to face him more fully. “What?”
“Why Hollis King?” he asked. “Why not put your name on the cover?”
The directness of the question knocked the breath from my lungs, and I exhaled in a short gust. No one had ever asked that question before. Not my agent, not my editor, and definitely not my parents.
Discomfort bloomed in my chest, and I fought the urge to move away from it, do something to distract myself from the overwhelming sensation.
No. I wouldn’t hide from this. Not with him.
“Privacy was one reason,” I answered truthfully. “I liked the thought of having an androgynous pen name. Male readers don’t always gravitate toward female writers, even if they like the genre.”
“Assholes.” He settled his hands over his stomach and kept his eyes on me, intense and searching, and it went on long enough that I wanted to squirm away from that too. “Why else?”
I pinched my eyes shut because I couldn’t handle the way he was looking at me.
