Page 74 of Based on You

"Is it really that easy for you to give me up?" he asked, his voice thick.

The question hit low and stayed there. I let it.

"It was easy enough for you to give me away," I countered. "I know I didn't do right by you. I know I lied. But we could have had a fight. We could have screamed at each other, and slammed doors, and been terrible to each other, and still been standing together afterward. Instead, you sent me away like I was nothing. You said what you said, and you walked out." I was glad my voice didn't break. "That's hard to ever come back from, Simon."

He swallowed again. He looked down at his empty hands. "You're right. I wasn't right to do that."

He'd come all the way here. He'd gotten up, dressed in yesterday's clothes, driven through Midtown traffic, and knocked on a door in a random hotel he'd somehow figured out through Sloane, because he couldn't stop himself from coming. And I was standing here telling him it was over for good, and he was just sitting with it. Not arguing, not pushing back, not storming out. Sitting with the pain of it, the way I'd stood in the guest room and sat with what he'd said to me.

It didn't change anything between us. But I understood it was costing him something enormous to sit there and hear it, and I let myself feel a brief flash of sympathy for that before I put it away.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

"Where are you going right now?" he finally asked, his voice hollow.

"I have a publishing contract to sign. A good company wants to publish my books."

He looked up, his eyes sharpening. "My company wants to publish your books."

"You're the person who said you'd make sure no one in the industry ever signed V.M. Ashby," I reminded him.

"I know. I'm sorry I ever said that." He looked into my eyes. "I want you to sign with Beckett Publishing."

I stared at him a long, surreal moment. There was something almost unbearable about this part, the bizarre fact that we were standing in a sterile hotel room negotiating a corporate publishing contract like we hadn't been tangled in each other's beds two weeks ago. Like we hadn't made each other laugh in dark kitchens. This was the cold paperwork of a thing that had ended. I pressed my palm flat against my thigh and forced my face to stay still.

"Did you come here today as the CEO of Beckett Media?" I asked. "Or did you come here as Simon?"

"As Simon."

"Then I don't know how to believe you."

He said nothing. He just looked at me, hands hanging loose and defeated at his sides.

"What would it take?" I asked. "For me to sign with your company. What would it cost you?"

"What do you want, Violet?"

"I don't want to see you," I said, setting the boundary. "That's the non-negotiable condition. If I come to Beckett Publishing, I don't ever want to see you. You make yourself scarce. We don't have face-to-face meetings. We don't have casual conversations. I deal only with whoever you assign me to, and I never, ever have to be in the same room as you again."

It cost me something to say it. The cost ripped through my chest, specific and sharp, and I said it anyway, because it was the truth and it was the only way this professional arrangement worked. I was done being trapped in situations that were slowly taking me apart.

He stood in stunned silence a long moment.

"Okay," he finally agreed, his voice a ragged whisper. "I'll make myself scarce. But you have to come to Beckett."

"Why is it so important to you?" I asked, confused.

"Because it matters to Olivia," he said. "But it also matters to you. Not just coming out as Ashby. Beckett Publishing will make sure you never regret the decision. We have the reach. We have the platform. You want to be Violet Paige to the world, not just V.M. Ashby hiding on a serialized fiction app. This is how you do that."

I thought about Forsyth. They were small, careful, and had good intentions. They'd do right by me. But they couldn't do what the Beckett conglomerate could.

"Another major company is already offering me this same opportunity today," I bluffed.

"Do you want to take it?" he asked.

I didn't answer right away. I thought about the options with brutal honesty. Forsyth would publish my book, and they'd be proud of it, and that moderate success would be enough for a long time. But it wouldn't be the empire Beckett could build for me. And I'd spent far too many miserable years being small to choose small again now, just because small was safer.

"No," I finally admitted.