Page 41 of Score Her Heart

I set down my purse and my cup of coffee at the table. I glared at my agent. “You suck, you know that?” I asked.

Brad stuck out his tongue, ever the professional, but also why I was so glad he was my agent. He wore his thick dark hair in twists again. His dark brown, almost black eyes drifted down to the ring on my finger, and he looked pointedly at it. “Okay, you have to explain everything to me,” he urged.

I sighed and twisted the simple band around my finger. Katie had picked out some pretty simple wedding bands, which was perfectly okay with me. I had examined the simple band with the mil-grain detail and knew it felt like the right ring for me.

“Um…so I got married?”

“Yes, I gathered that, but someone told me not to your partner of five years!” he exclaimed and waved his hand around, all flustered. Someone named Katie probably.

I sighed and put my head in my hands. “Yeah…Eric didn’t bother to show up. You remember my friend Riley, right?”

“The hockey player? The hot one with the muscles as big as my head?”

“His muscles aren’t that big,” I muttered, but Brad laughed.

It was so a lie; he did have really big muscles. Shit, now I was thinking about those muscles lifting me up and fucking me against the wall. Hello, hormones. Why did my best friend/husband have to be so hot? And why hadn’t we had sex since our honeymoon?

“Okay, let me get this straight. The guy you were dating for five years left, you hanging, and you married someone else instead?” he asked.

“I know, it’s wild! I asked for a divorce, but he wants to stick it out. He thinks we could be happy together,” I explained.

“Oh, honey,” Brad lamented. “I think you married the right man.”

I took a drink of my black coffee so I didn’t have to respond. “Can we please stop talking about this and focus on this book that I still don’t know how to finish?”

Brad shook his head. “Um, no, I need more details. Like first, what did he do to convince you? Also, are you still living with your ex?”

I sighed and ran a shaky hand through my hair. I thought this was going to be a meeting to focus on my writing, not about my very weird marriage to my best friend. “He asked me to give him a couple months to prove it. And no, I ended up moving in with Riley. Mostly because I found a pair of underwear that weren’t mine under my bed!”

Brad scrunched up his face. “Ew!”

“Right? Eric’s sister found out he had been cheating on me.”

A scowl appeared across Brad’s face. Brad was in his mid-forties and had been in this business for a while. He was also so totally a dad. He was Papa Bear to all his clients, which was one of the things I loved about him. “What an asshole!”

I laughed and nodded.

“So, I want to talk about your book...but are you okay?”

“Riley’s been on the road this week, so I’ve had some time to think, and I think it’s a blessing I didn’t marry Eric. I think our relationship was over a long time ago, and maybe we were just holding on. But enough about that. Can we please talk about my writing?”

“Okay, fine. Where are you at?”

“I need to proofread, but almost done.”

His eyes cut across to me suspiciously. “Okay, but what’s the problem?”

I took another gulp of my drink and put a hand to my chin.

What was the problem?

That I thought it was hot garbage and everyone would want to dump the book right in the trash. That I wasn’t actually as skilled as I thought at stringing words into complete sentences. I thought that I was a fraud, and my publisher was going to figure that out when they read the stinking pile of crap that flew into their inbox.

“I think it’s bad,” I admitted.

Brad drummed his hands on the table in front of me. “Why?”

I shrugged. “Everything I do is awful. It feels like I have the thoughts inside my brain, but my hands turn them into ash on the keyboard.”