“You have a compulsive disorder, don’t you?” he said gently. “Your compulsions stave off panic. Or you think they do.”
The assertion took her breath away.
“The part I don’t know is why.”
Blair suddenly found her voice. And some defenses. “What do you meanwhy? Why does anyone have anything wrong with them? Why is Cal allergic to shellfish?”
“That’s not the same thing, and you know it. Whatever is happening to you is bigger than that. It’s holding you back. You barely leave the house except to go to work.”
“You should talk.” She was trying to find her way back to anger. Anger was armor. “What else doyoudo besides work?”
He stepped out from behind the kitchen island. “We’re talking about you.” He was still speaking with wildly uncharacteristic gentleness. “You’re not like me. You’re ambitious and vibrant and I think, at your core, an extrovert.”
Tears gathered, suddenly, hovering just behind her eyeballs. Why had she thought Jack Branksome, with his unrelenting eye, wouldn’t notice what was happening to her?
“And it’s not just that,” he went on. “It’sGreen Light. You’ve produced dozens of movies. You’ve read hundreds of scripts, I’d imagine. You’ve read hundreds, if not thousands, of novels. You know books, and you know movies. You’re the perfect person to write the script forGreen Light. But you won’t. Why not?”
“Because I am not a writer.” She had told him thisso many times. She was reaching toward anger again, striving for a way to deflect his blows.
“That isn’t true. Or at least you won’t know if it’s true until you try.” He took a step toward her, his hands raised as if in surrender.She wanted to take a step back to compensate, but she was leaning against the door.
“You think you know me so well, don’t you?” She could hear how much she sounded like her mother, and though she had beentryingto get mad, she didn’t love that version of mad.
He remained calm. Took another step. “Yes. In fact, I believe I’m the only one who knows you—right now, anyway.”
“What?”
“I did it backwards. I think that’s how it happened. Most people see the version of you that you decide to show them, with your armor up.”
“That’s—”
“I slid in the back door.” He pointed over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Literally. For some reason you showed me the real you, not just the version of you that most people see. I don’t know why, but you did. So yes, I know you.”
“Wow, self-impressed much?” she tried, but the tears were really threatening now.
He smiled, which felt like more of a blow than the outrageous things he was saying. “I am self-impressed, generally. But in this case, it’s just a fact.”
“No, it’s your opinion, and you can keep it to yourself.” The anger had melted away again, leaving this linefeelinglike a line, like something she was saying that was part of a script she was reading from and not something she actually meant.
“The truth hurts sometimes, Blair.”
God, he was so relentless. Even when he was being “nice.” He was also still advancing on her. It wasn’t lost on her that her back was literally against the wall.
“You’re stuck in your house, and you won’t let anyone help you. I think maybe you’re stuck in your mind, too.” He gestured back toward the broken glass.
The tears started, but it didn’t stop him. He kept talking, even as his hands, his always-warm hands, came to rest on her cheeks. He used his thumbs to wipe her tears away. “You say you’re in a new era, and maybe you are in terms of the external stuff—this house, the divorce, the empty nest, stopping the Botox. Butyou. Therealyou”—he took one hand from her cheek and tapped it gently where her heart would be—“hasn’t made the leap yet. You’re still standing on the precipice, and you’re afraid.”
She started crying in earnest then. “Imagineyougiving advice on how to be human,” she choked out through her tears. “Imagineyoutelling me that it’s a bad idea to be too influenced by your parents.” She was still reading lines from a script, her delivery completely off from the stage directions, which would have readin an angry tone. “You’rethe one who can’t write his book because he’s afraid of what his dad is going to think of it.”
It was a low blow and she knew it, but it didn’t faze him. He just smiled and kept brushing away the tears that were now running down her face like someone had turned on tiny taps in her eyeballs.
And then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. Jack Branksome kissed her forehead.
It made the tears recede. It made everything recede. Everything except one thought: that there was one logical next step here.
All she had to do, given that he had his hands on her cheeks and his lips on her forehead, was tilt her head back.
So she did.
