Page 22 of Based on You

Five million people knew the name and had no idea who was attached to it. Which meant five million people could love the books without measuring them against the flawed person who wrote them. I wasn't ready to find out what happened to the books when they stopped being just the books. Simon was only a fraction of the problem.

"I'm hungry," Sloane announced, tapping my knee to break the tension. "Let's go get food, but I want to stop at the bookstore first. I need fresh reference material for your next cover."

We bundled up and set out into the crisp afternoon.

The bookstore was three blocks away. Sloane worked the shelves, pulling titles, turning them over, holding covers at arm's length, sliding them back or tucking them under her arm.

I trailed behind her, browsing the stacks.

"I'm going home in a few days," she mentioned, not looking up from a dark, brooding cover she was turning in the light. "My grandmother isn't doing well. I'll be unreachable for long stretches."

"For how long?"

"I don't know yet." She slid the book back into its slot. "Just don't do anything overly dramatic while I'm gone."

I picked up a blank journal from a nearby display. "Your grandmother is the only person in your family who really loves you, you know."

Sloane glanced up, her face softening. "At least I have a family member who loves me. You can't exactly say the same."

"My brother loves me," I countered. She paused, giving me one long, pointed look, and said, "Xavier would choose your mother over you. And you know it." I closed my mouth, the fight draining out of me. I didn't argue, because there was nothing to say. Or there was, and I'd just never been brave enough to test it: to call him without our mother on the line and find out.

I put the journal back on the display.

Sloane turned back to the romance covers.

I drifted a few steps down the aisle and picked up a different title. I wasn't reading the synopsis. I was just holding it, needing something for my restless hands to do. There was an elaborate display at the end of the fiction section, a rotating stand of popular romance paperbacks. I turned toward it, my gaze sliding to the far end of the store.

There was a young girl standing near the back.

Thirteen, maybe. Dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders, a worn sketchbook tucked under one arm. She stood quiet in front of a shelf, her back mostly to me.

I'd seen her before. At the funeral, months ago. She'd been dressed in stark black, crying so hard her whole body shook with it. I'd spotted her from across the room and looked away fast, because raw grief at that range wasn't something I knew how to stand near. But I'd learned her face by heart.

"Sloane," I whispered.

Sloane looked up from the paperback she was studying.

I tipped my head toward the back of the store.

She followed my gaze, studied the girl a second, then looked back at me, confused. "Who is that?"

"Simon's niece," I breathed.

"Olivia?"

"Yes."

Sloane looked back toward the rear of the store. Her gaze drifted past Olivia and locked onto something further into the shadows. "Is that—" She stopped. "Wow. He's very tall."

"Sloane—" Panic climbed up my throat. "We should go. We should just go right now."

"Absolutely not." She hadn't moved an inch. She watched the far end of the store with the focused, hungry stillness she brought to things she'd decided were worth watching. "I want to see what happens to you when he's standing next to you in real life, outside the office."

"Nothing happens to me⁠—"

"Why? Is it not a chemical reaction worth seeing? Are you really that boring?"

"I'm not⁠—"