Charlotte balled her hands up into fists. "That's not true."
"You know it is."
"That's not true!" she yelled. "I never want to be on any cover of any newspaper, which is why I left. And I especially never wanted to be on the cover if it was because you got hurt."
Jordan took a deep breath and stared down at his feet. "And yet that's what happened," he said bitterly.
Charlotte could feel the lump in her throat threatening to break free. "Jordan, I never meant for that to happen to you. To us. I would take it all back if I could."
He scoffed and looked up at her. "Well, you can't really do that now, can you?"
He started walking towards the door, and Charlotte instinctively stepped in front of him to slow his progress.
"Don't leave. We need to talk about this."
"I don't know what else to say, Charlotte." His voice had become so quiet and small and yet was having a huge effect on her heart as it began to crack.
His shoulder brushed against hers as he forced himself past her to get to the door.
"Jordan, maybe we both just need to take a couple days and then we can talk about it."
His hand rested on the handle of the door and he kept his eyes focused on the wall instead of looking back at her. "Maybe," he said quietly.
And then he was gone.
Chapter 11
Six weeks later
The alarm on Charlotte's phone woke her up at 9 a.m. with some atrocious sound that she had purposely chosen to make sure she got up. Unlike some days when she could sit around her apartment in yoga pants without being disturbed, she actually had a conference call today and needed to be ready.
Of course, the call this morning hadn't stopped her from staying up until 3 o'clock in the morning working on her manuscript. Charlotte found that she worked best at night when the world around her was quiet, allowing her to focus on her writing. Even when Jordan was in her bed, she still found comfort at her desk. It also helped that she knew he was only a few feet away and would still be there when she went back.
But her life hadn't been that way for more than a month now. When she last saw Jordan, words had been exchanged between them and the only thing they could agree on was a cooling off period for a few days. But a few days turned into a few weeks and then it just kept going. Charlotte knew that he had some unusually long road trips in there and the start of the playoffs. She also knew she had a deadline she had to stick to for her book. It had just become easy to let the days slide away while letting go of the need to check her phone every hour to see if he had called or texted her. Charlotte had wanted to call him, but every time she talked herself into it, she would talk herself out of it. It was probably for the best for now, she would tell herself.
Charlotte went to throw some water on her face and brush her hair to at least feel a little put together, even if no one was going to see her. Then she walked through her closet and opened the secret door to her office, still getting a little thrill for having a spy door in there. She sat down and opened the files for her sequel toHarper's Fairthat she had sent to her editor Nick last week. Charlotte found his number on her phone and put him on the speaker so she could talk and review her chapters at the same time.
"Charlotte!"
"Morning, Nick," she replied as cheerfully as she could.
"Ah, I hear in your voice that you up last night writing."
Charlotte smiled. "You know me well."
The two of them dug in as Nick began to go over her work, pointing out issues she should fix and things that needed to be cleaned up.
"You missed a lot of commas this time around for some reason," he said, a bit of amusement in his voice coming through the phone.
And so it went for an hour, making changes here and fixes there. It was all fine and good, but Charlotte knew the dirty work was yet to come, and it usually involved Nick digging deep into her brain to reflect back to her what he really saw going on.
"So." He took a deep breath that was so loud Charlotte could clearly hear it through the phone. "Let's talk about the tone of these chapters."
Charlotte knew exactly what he meant. "A little too dark?"
"Not dark, just angsty, which I totally understand," he said. "You're a very emotional writer and sometimes your personal emotion bleeds through the page. What's going on there?"
She shrugged her shoulders, a reflexive move for herself since Nick couldn't actually see her. "Not much."
