Page 14 of Based on You

That was the truth as my mother told it, the one she believed in and liked to repeat. But here's mine: I wasn't a renovation project. I wasn't a defective product she could return for a newer model. I wasn't makeup she could blend into a more flattering version of herself. I was her daughter, and I had my own life, my own dreams, and a clear idea of what I wanted to do with the time I'd been given.

What I wanted didn't look impressive on a Christmas card, didn't come with an elite title at the end of my name, and broke the rigid vocabulary she'd built for what a daughter of hers was supposed to be. I wasn't unable to be like her. I'd chosen not to be. But in her language, that choice and a flat inability were the same sentence.

I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to scream it into the receiver: Mom, I have five million loyal readers. I make more in book royalties than Xavier makes cutting people open at the hospital. I'm one of the biggest, most sought-after writers in my genre in the country, and you don't even know my pen name.

My GPA was a 3.6. That's not low. It's just a hair under Xavier's, and Xavier set the impossible floor for what gets called real in this family. I've spent ten years pretending that ridiculous floor is where the ground is. The strange part was that Xavier had never once held that floor over me himself. He'd just stood on it, quiet, while our mother did the measuring. I'd never figured out whether his silence was a kindness or a different kind of distance, and I'd stopped trying to tell the difference years ago.

I wanted to tell her, calmly and plainly, that the job at Beckett Media wasn't a pathetic stepping stone or a failure. It paid well, and the secret writing paid more. Together they'd funded my apartment, my independence, and four years of building something five million people showed up to read.

I'd never once touched the emergency money my parents kept pushing at me because they assumed I had to be struggling. The only reason she stayed in the dark was that telling her meant explaining what I'd been doing, and explaining it meant saying the dirty words romance novelist in front of my father. I hadn't yet found a version of myself brave enough to take that hit.

I wanted to let all of it out.

I said none of it.

"Mom, my meeting's starting. I have to go." The lie came smooth. "Happy birthday. I love you. I'll call you on Sunday."

"I love you too, sweetheart. Please, just think about the paralegal program."

I hung up.

I stood frozen inside the stall, my phone gripped tight, staring at the white tile grout in front of me.

I let myself think about the paralegal program for one second, and then I started to cry. Not a loud, dramatic breakdown. I'd never cried loud. I wept in silence, my free hand pressed hard against my mouth to muffle it, refusing to take up any space.

I didn't know how long I stood there shivering. Not long. I had a demanding job to get back to.

I pulled myself together and fixed my face. I ran cold water over my pulse points, dodging my puffy eyes, blotted my skin with paper towels, and studied my reflection in the mirror. I'd gotten terrifyingly good at hiding this over the years.

When I walked back to my desk, the leather notebook wasn't there.

I knew it was gone before my panicked brain caught up. The empty space where it should have been was a shape my eye read in an instant. My hands went to the top drawer before I'd decided to move—and tore through it. Not there. Under my leather tote. Not there. The rolling chair, under the desk, the stacked files on the side table. Gone.

I froze. My stomach pitched, like missing the last stair in the dark.

That notebook held the raw, unedited drafts of The Assistant. Scenes I was mapping out, emotional beats I'd roughed in, embarrassing fragments of chapters that didn't exist yet. Sure, the characters used fake names, Sandra and Nicholas, but I'd drawn Nicholas in such intimate detail on those pages that he was unmistakable. I hadn't written Simon's name anywhere in the notebook.

I hadn't needed to. I'd caught the stubborn set of his jaw, the tight pull of it during hard conversations. I'd written down how he gripped a silver pen through brutal board meetings, and his watch, not the brand, just the face and the way he ran his thumb over the crystal when he was deep in thought. Anyone who'd spent more than a week on this floor would know whose wrist I'd been studying.

Those drafts had existed for weeks. They held intimate scenes I hadn't uploaded to the platform, chapters still taking shape, and the messy, undeniable arc of where the romance was heading.

I needed it back.

A coworker from marketing passed my desk, and I flagged her down.

"Hey, quick question." I fought to keep my voice light. "Did you see where my boss went this morning? Was he looking for me?"

She tapped her chin, thinking. "He came in early today. He was looking for you over at your desk."

I swallowed a sharp spike of panic. "Thanks." I let it out as she kept walking.

I all but fled to the kitchenette. I made Simon's morning coffee on muscle alone, pitch black, single shot of espresso, while my brain chewed on the one detail that mattered.

The male lead in The Assistant looked like Simon Beckett. That was the disaster. I'd swapped the name and moved his corporate job to a different industry, but none of that mattered next to the likeness itself.

The physical description I'd sketched in that stolen notebook was detailed enough that anyone who knew Simon would place him on the spot. His sharp jaw. His gray eyes. The watch, drawn so close it might as well have been a photograph.

I'd written those passages during the first week of Book Three, back when I was still telling myself the detail was strictly needed for the prose. It wasn't needed for the prose. It was there because I'd been sitting three feet from his office door for two years, and I'd learned his face by heart, without ever meaning to, in the corner of every working day. When I finally sat down to write a male lead worth wanting, his was the only face my imagination could reach for.