Page 128 of The Story Between Us

The words hung in the air.

You’re fired.

Livvie waited for the devastation to hit. The panic. The desperate urge to apologize, to explain, to beg for another chance.

It didn’t come.

Instead, something else rose in its place. Something quiet and fierce and tired of being invisible.

You’ve spent your whole life trying to be useful, Aunt Lila had said. Trying to earn your place. But what if you just…let someone love you for who you are? Without fixing anything.

She couldn’t fix this. Richard had made up his mind long before she’d walked through that door. The Nora Whitcomb situation was an excuse—a convenient weapon to eliminate someone who’d embarrassed him, who’d challenged him, who’d dared to speak up in a meeting and suggest she might know something he didn’t.

She couldn’t save her job.

But she could say the truth.

Livvie squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin. Looked Richard Ames directly in the eye. “Before I go,” she said, “I want to say something.”

His expression flickered—surprise, annoyance, the beginning of a dismissal. “This isn’t a negotiation⁠—”

“I’m not negotiating. I’m documenting the record.”

She took a breath. Steadied herself. And began.

“The Hartley debut. I found that manuscript in the slush pile two years ago. I wrote the reader report, I championed it through three rounds of rejection, I’m the reason it got a second look. Derek got the acquisition credit. It sold 200,000 copies.”

Richard’s mouth opened. She didn’t let him speak.

“The Morrison literary fiction. I developed that author for six months—calls every week, three rounds of editorial notes, hand-holding through two complete rewrites. The week before the deal closed, you reassigned her to a senior agent. Someone else got the commission. I got a form email thanking me for my ‘support.’”

The room was very quiet.

Livvie became aware that the door wasn’t fully closed. That people in the hallway could probably hear. She didn’t care.

“The Winters thriller series. I’m the one who suggested the rebranding. The Patterson acquisition. I identified that author at a conference when no one else was paying attention. The entire YA romance initiative⁠—”

“That’s enough.” Richard’s voice was strangled. His face had gone an interesting shade of red.

“You’re right.” Livvie nodded. “It’s more than enough. Six years of enough. Six years of being invisible. Six years of watching other people take credit for my work, my ideas, my instincts.” She paused. Let the silence stretch. “I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m not asking for anything. I’m just documenting the record. Because someone should know what invisible people accomplish.”

Richard stared at her. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. For once in his life, he seemed to have no cutting response, no power play, no way to diminish her.

Livvie turned toward the door.

“Oh, and Richard?” She paused, hand on the frame. “Nora Whitcomb chose to work with me because I was kind to her when no one else was. That’s not theft. That’s just what happens when you treat people like they matter.”

She walked out.

The bullpen was silent.

Everyone had heard. Of course they had—glass walls, thin doors, the acoustics of an open office designed for collaboration and perfect for eavesdropping. Faces turned toward her as she passed—shock, admiration, fear, something that might have been hope.

Priya stood by Livvie’s desk, eyes wide.

Livvie didn’t stop to explain. She grabbed her laptop bag, her sad plant—the half-dead fiddle-leaf fig she’d somehow kept alive for six years through sheer stubbornness—and the single photo on her desk: her and Aunt Lila at the lake house, taken years ago, both of them laughing at something she couldn’t remember.

That was it. That was her entire professional life, reduced to what she could carry in two hands.