Page 66 of Based on You

"These past weeks," I said, "I spent with a stranger."

I turned around and walked out of the room.

NINETEEN

VIOLET

The heavy door clicked shut behind him, leaving me paralyzed in the center of the guest room.

I'd done this. I'd built every single piece of this disaster. The lie had started as a small, private thing, a harmless fantasy I'd promised myself I'd correct before it ever mattered. But then it did matter, and I hadn't corrected a thing. Instead, I'd added to it, building an entire fragile life on top of a hollow foundation.

I spent these past weeks with a stranger.

He was right. I'd made sure of it. The hiding was the entire point. I'd hidden from my critical parents, from my oblivious colleagues, from my millions of readers, and worst of all, from Simon and Olivia. I hid from every person who'd ever gotten close enough to see something real. Running, folding inward, disappearing, that was my one true area of expertise. I'd been doing it so long I'd mistaken isolation for safety.

My hands shook as I packed. I couldn't focus enough to organize anything, just shoving my work bag, laptop, leather notebook, and three days' worth of clothes into my suitcase.

In the back of a taxi, the window gave me back nothing but my own reflection, and my face went flat. That particular, anesthetized absence that arrives only when you've run out of things to feel and are just waiting for the next blow to land.

Sloane yanked her door open before I'd finished knocking.

One look at my wrecked face, and she didn't say a word. She stepped back, pulled my bag from my shoulder, and dropped it against the wall. Then she wrapped both arms around me right there in the entryway. Surrounded by the familiar warmth of her apartment, I finally stopped trying to hold myself together.

She brought me inside, brewed a strong pot of coffee, and deposited me onto her velvet couch. She sat across from me and waited.

"You were right," I rasped.

Sloane kept her chin level, her hands wrapped around her mug. "That's not what matters right now, Vi. What happened?"

I told her everything. How Simon had found out, how Olivia had been the one to crack it open. How he'd confronted me in the guest room, his voice never once rising, which somehow made it worse. He'd fired me on the spot. He'd ordered me out of his house by tonight. He'd looked me dead in the eye and said he'd spent the best weeks of his life with a total stranger.

And then he'd walked out.

Sloane abandoned her coffee, crossed the rug, and sank onto the cushion beside me, pulling me into her side.

"I'm so sorry," she said into my hair. "I'm so sorry you're going through this."

I pressed the heels of my hands into my burning eyes. "I didn't want any of this, Sloane. I didn't want to hurt him, and I didn't want to hurt Olivia." My voice scraped thin and broken. "I didn't even have the courage to knock on her bedroom door to say goodbye. I just ran. Again. That's all I ever do."

"Vi, don't⁠—"

"I hid from my parents, I hid from him, I hid from her. And the second it all blew up, I ran straight to you. It's all I know how to do." Fresh tears spilled over my cheeks, and I let them fall. "I'm so exhausted from being this person."

Sloane just held on tighter. She didn't offer platitudes or try to fix the unfixable. She stayed.

A sharp buzz from my phone on the cushion broke the quiet.

I stared at the screen a moment, then picked it up. Two unread emails sat in my inbox. The first was from Forsyth and Webb, a prestigious publisher that had been circling the Ashby account for months. They were ready to offer a big deal to bring The Quiet Hour to print, letting me put either V.M. Ashby or my real legal name on the cover, my choice. They needed an answer within the week.

The second was from Aldwyn House, a far larger conglomerate than Forsyth. Their offer was staggering, but their terms were ironclad: V.M. Ashby stays on the cover, no real name, no author photo, no public appearances. Total anonymity, indefinitely.

I passed the screen to Sloane. She skimmed it, her eyebrows rising, then handed it back. "So? What do you want to do?"

"I want to lie in a dark bed and not think about any of this," I said.

She studied my exhausted face. "Okay. For how long?"

"Sloane, please."