7
Frankie
The video ended,and I closed the laptop carefully before slowly spinning to face Harrison. I’d set Collette up with a movie, something I only allowed in the most rare and desperate times of uninterrupted focus. George had moved to the living room to watch with her as I played this in his office. I sat rigid the whole time he watched, waiting for any sign of what was coming.
Maybe it was a mistake to trust him. My past certainly told me that trusting anybody was always a way to get screwed over, but he seemed to genuinely love George. George loved him too. That much was clear. Maybe that alone would have been enough, except that George was so open with his home and heart, my sister and I included, that it made me wary of anybody I didn’t know personally. Harrison’s career did little to help invoke trust.
Harrison’s only focus was on the older man as George spoke from the screen. With every bit of news about his health and the book, Harrison curled in on himself like a sheet of paper in a fire.
“So …” I sat in the chair across from him, waiting patiently for a reaction.
“Right.” He closed his mouth and leaned back, running his hand over his mouth and turning to look at me.
He studied me with those strange, wounded eyes as though he’d never seen me before. It shouldn’t hurt. We were essentially strangers, after all. It was as though the distance between us grew with every second when there had already been an ocean between us.
I feel like I’ve known you.
“I apologize for questioning what is obviously already a well-established plan for this novel, but how and I meanhowdid this happen?” he eventually asked.
I stood, unable to keep still any longer. Now that the truth was out, the weight of it was no longer chains around my shoulders, and I moved freely.
“It was one of those things that happened gradually,” I began. “I never in a million years would have ever thought I would be in this position.” I almost said how badly I didn’t want to be here, how it was a thousand ways to disappoint millions of fans. And more importantly, George. But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, not when he’d done so much for me. Wouldn’t people love to be in this position? Didn’t people dream of this? Maybe even me, on a good day when I thought there was a chance I could pull this off.
“Are you a writer?” he asked, those eyes so hopeful.
I shook my head. “Not exactly.”
His shoulders slumped more. “I’m trying to make any sense of this.”
“Me too,” I said quietly.
He stood and paced, which caused me to sit back down, tucking my hands under my legs as though there could only be so much movement in a room at one time.
“He said in the video that you had co-written the last two books, and that was one of the reasons he asked you to do this.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Christ, Emma and Charlie aren’t going to believe this. Those last two books were huge. They loved them. Kate, Charlie’s girlfriend,”—he explained as an aside, forgetting that I had briefly met her— “specifically said they were his best books yet.”
A soft groan escaped me, and I fought the urge to dig a hole and bury myself in it. Instead, I defaulted to frozen protective mode, arms pulled in tight, emotions safely tucked away.
“I’m trying to keep my temper. I’m trying to understand this, but I have to say you seem awfully cavalier about all this,” he said.
This wasn’t the first time somebody had gotten me all wrong. I was not easy to read. I kept my emotions locked deep down inside, and my face rarely gave anything away. My heavy eyelids always had an air of being disinterested, and my lips naturally turned down. That was a distinct advantage when you had no idea what life would throw at you next. It felt like a shield.
On the other hand, he couldn’t be less self-contained as he paced in front of me, the quick back and forth causing secondhand motion sickness.
“I’m very worried,” I said flatly.
“Well, clearly. Calm down.”
“Not everybody wears their hearts on their sleeves, Harrison,” I said. Or, in his case, those dark, wounded eyes that seemed to telegraph every passing thought and emotion.
“I’ve barely even heard of you, and somehow, you’re now the person who is responsible for his crowning book in the series?”
“It wasn’t intentional. None of this was. My place here was meant to be temporary. I’m sure George spoke of me. I was hired to help archive everything related toTerraformative.”
“Everything?”
“Book notes, fan letters, old screenplays, journals, photos, and videos from the set. His hand-typed manuscripts. Boxes and boxes of memorabilia. You’ve seen it around here. A long life makes for a lot of work. I’m sure he mentioned me.”
Harrison frowned in a broodingly handsome way that made his lips pout. He really was distractingly good-looking. His jawline alone was meant to be documented. How I hadn’t suspected he was an actor from the get-go was a glaring oversight on my end. It must have been the beard. And the thievery.
