Page 20 of Based on You

I woke up with my fingers pressing hard into my temples.

The night before had been chaotic, though none of it came from outside. My own restless mind had supplied all the noise. Most of it circled the phone call and the decision that came before it.

When his call rang through right after I sent the text, I'd stared at the glowing screen for a long moment, honestly unsure. Agreeing to the search for Ashby had widened the edges of our working relationship a little, but taking a late-night phone call was a different kind of line. I'd answered half-expecting a misdial.

It wasn't a mistake.

And then we'd talked. The comment threads, Ashby's writing, books we both loved, terrible apartments we'd lived in, disastrous takeout we'd ordered, his niece arguing him to a draw over a novel she'd read on her phone. The conversation moved sideways, drifting without an agenda, following its own current.

The call had lasted ninety-one minutes. I knew that for a fact, because I'd stared at the call timer on my screen long after the line went dead.

I lay in bed and considered the ceiling.

Taking the job to find Ashby was, if I was honest with myself, a little stupid. But I had my reasons. The first was practical. Simon had no way of knowing my assistant's salary only covered half of what I made. My first book had taken off barely three months after I started posting, and the royalties had been climbing for four years since.

From where he stood, I was a twenty-nine-year-old executive assistant on a reasonable salary, probably with a month or two of expenses saved. When he offered a huge bonus, anything I wanted, saying yes made sense. Turning it down would have looked strange. Turning it down right after admitting I was an Ashby fan would have looked stranger. So I'd said yes, and now I had a sturdy financial excuse to stand behind.

The second reason was harder to defend, but smarter. If I ran the search, I controlled what it turned up. I knew which digital trails to follow and which to let go cold. I could run a real search, hand over real progress reports, and make it the slowest possible version of itself. It was dishonest.

But the alternative was walking in and confessing I was Ashby, which meant telling Simon Beckett that the books his grieving niece had been reading were written by his assistant, and that the male lead in the current arc was built from two years of sitting three feet from his office door.

I wasn't ready for that conversation.

Pressing my fingers harder into my temples, I dragged myself out of bed.

It was Saturday. Nothing needed me dressed, fed, or anywhere by a certain time. I padded to the kitchen in my thick socks and put the kettle on the stove. I made my coffee slow, taking my time measuring the grounds and letting them bloom, a small ritual I only had room for on weekends. I stood by the window with the warm ceramic mug cupped in both hands and looked out at the street below, still wrapped in morning quiet.

My phone lit up against the counter. A text from Sloane, asking if I wanted to hang out. I set the mug down and tapped back a yes, told her to give me an hour, before I'd finished thinking through what it meant.

Sloane Ty had been my college roommate, my cover designer, and my best friend for seven years, in roughly that order and zero order of importance. She was the only person alive who knew I was V.M. Ashby. She'd been the one who made me start, the one who read my messy rough drafts without being asked and handed my laptop back with a command: you have to keep going with this. I'd kept going. She'd designed every single cover, and I paid every invoice without a word of negotiation, which was my quiet way of saying thank you.

I got dressed and headed out to find her.

Her shop sat in the East Village, her name etched on the front window in gold leaf. Inside, the air was thick with fresh ink and imported incense. I'd spent enough time on the counter stool to know which one wobbled and to lean my weight left to compensate.

She was working on a client when I walked in. The client lay face-down on the table, Sloane bent over their back with the tattoo machine humming in her gloved hand. She glanced up at the bell over the door.

"You took your sweet time," she said, not lifting the machine from the skin.

I found the good stool and climbed onto it. "Is this you saying you were itching to see me?"

She scoffed. "Seeing as I'm the only person in your life who even wants to see you, don't you think you should get down off your high horse?"

I shook my head, amused. "You'd be surprised how many people want to see me."

"Please. List them."

I shot her a glare and rolled my eyes at the exposed brick wall. She had a point.

"Am I here to tell your client I'm single, or am I here to see my best friend?"

Sloane finally lifted her eyes and fixed me with a stern scowl. "Do not let people think someone as cool as me is friends with such a sorry loser."

My jaw dropped in mock outrage. "What do you think would happen if they found out we aren't just friends?"

She narrowed her eyes, playing along. "So, you want to spill the tea on your lesbian sexual awakening right now?"

"Please." I grinned. "You wish I was attracted to you. You wish I was a lesbian. I know you'd have stretched your clutches out to me years ago."