Page 65 of Postmarked December

He leaned in. “Don’t go spending your time and money on a lawyer. This will all be over on New Year’s Eve.”

“What?” She had to force herself to breathe. “What do you mean it’ll all be over?”

He gently took her shoulders, those green eyes pleading. “The book will be in print on New Year’s Eve.”

“How? Aren’t you writing it?”

“I finished writing it six months ago—we rushed it. The edits are in and everything. And once you see it⁠—”

“I don’t want any part of it!” She worked to keep herself from breaking down right there in his living room. “If you supposedly care for me, tell me everything right now. And help me stop this.”

“I promise I’ll tell you everything on December 31st.”

She clenched her jaw, trying not to scream at him. His loyalty was to this book over her, and the fake worry in his green eyes couldn’t change that.

“I’m leaving, and if I see you again, it’ll be in court.”

“Heather—”

He reached for her arm, but she jerked it away. She ran outside and over to her car while he chased her. She shut the door in his face and started the engine.

“Heather, I adore you!” he called from the other side of the car’s window.

She cut her eyes at him and put the car in reverse. He wasn’t going to use that charm on her anymore. How self-absorbed was he to think that a counterfeit profession of love could change how she felt right now? He’d not shied away from lying before, so why would she believe him anyway?

He stared at her through the window, and he was so convincing she had to look away. As she backed out, he called, “At least unblock me!”

Little chance of that.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Overwhelmed when she got home, Heather had gone straight to her room and lain in bed, her mind overloaded, and eventually fell asleep. The next morning, she still hadn’t moved, her busy thoughts picking right back up where they’d left off the minute she’d fallen unconscious.

She reached over and checked her phone. Two missed calls from Marion. She texted that she was up and would call her soon, and then pushed the phone away from her on the nightstand.

Then she went right back to ruminating. Nick had said he could tell her everything on December 31st. That meant she probably had today and tomorrow to figure out how to stop the publication of a book. Surely they were already printed and shipped to stores, probably sitting in the back rooms, waiting to be stocked on shelves for the New Year. How could she get them pulled?

Dragging her heavy body out of bed, she got up, grabbed her phone, and went into the living room. At the back of the room, on her little desk, sat her laptop and the journal Marion had gotten her. The journal sat there as if mocking her, whispering, How could you have been so stupid to believe the lies? She swallowed the lump in her throat.

With a few taps on her computer, she searched: How can you stop the publication of a book? But the answer she got didn’t offer a lot of help. Basically, like Anthony had said, she had to prove defamation. That or copyright infringement. Neither of which she could verify. With a loud exhale, she continued to scroll, searching for any loophole she could find, but there didn’t seem to be one. She had nothing to take Nick to court for. She couldn’t sue him for being a terrible person.

She laid her hand on the journal and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, Toby, I’m so sorry,” she said out loud, hopelessness lingering in her chest.

With a sigh, she called Marion and filled her in on her altercation with Nick, and how she realized she’d blocked his number, but now she was glad she had.

“Toby would hate to have a book about his life for everyone to weigh in on, not to mention there’s the issue of whether the facts are even remotely correct,” she told Marion.

“I know. You two never shared anything. So how does he even know what to write?”

“I don’t have a clue.” With the phone on speaker, she went into the kitchen and mindlessly poured water into the coffeemaker, more so to have some semblance of normalcy. But she didn’t even really want a cup. “What’s killing me the most is that Toby didn’t send those notes. Nick admitted to doing it.” Her voice broke and she bit her lip to keep it from wobbling.

“What a terrible thing to do to someone,” Marion said.

Heather got a mug from the cabinet. “And the scary thing is those notes were so personal that I thought they were actually from Toby. How did Nick know those things?”

“No idea. What was his purpose in writing them?” Marion asked.

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing. Why did he bother to even talk to me on the plane if the book was finished? At least whatever I said to him won’t be printed. But it doesn’t make any sense.” She loaded the grounds into the basket of the coffeemaker. “And I have this sinking anxiety that I’ve let Toby down.”