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“Yeah, we could totally could see about that. Totally. So…”
I feel like she's pushing me off, but suddenly I want her to know.
“I mean, I think it's a really good story. A really good story. An amazing story.”
She fondles the stack of papers with her fingertips, swirling in a slow circle, then stops. Her perfect brow wrinkles and the center as she squints up at me.
“What are we talking about?” she asks me slowly.
“The story…” I answer automatically. “This story. My story.”
She smiles again, but not a real smile. A competitive, dangerous smile.
“Your story just got cut, like five minutes ago. By me. Remember?”
I just shrug.
“Bella? Did you write an article about this?”
I shouldn't tell her, I know it. That's really not a good idea. But the look on her face is really getting on my nerves.
“Of course I wrote about it. That's my job. My life.”
She clears her throat. “And what did you… write? An article?”
“About a hundred thousand words, Hannah,” I inform her triumphantly. “I didn't have an ending, but now I do! So thanks!”
She steeples her fingers and leans back in her chair, regarding me shrewdly. All the mirth and bubbly excitement seems to have gone out her, replaced by this sharp shard of woman.
“I look forward to reading it. That’s a lot more than I was asking for. Maybe we can talk about… installments or something. A serial column?”
“No,” I blurt out defiantly. “I don’t want it chopped up into pieces or given to one of the copy guys. I don’t want to have to run it past an editor. And I don’t want to reshape it or cut it for space or any of the other things we do to serials. I think it's a book. That's how I see it. On shelves, in bookstores.”
“A book,” she repeats coldly. “I'm not really sure that we want to publish a book? I think that your column on TurnPost is probably the right place… the only place for that sort of work. If I decide to go with it.”
I just shrug, trying to be as breezy as possible. She stares me down but I hold my ground, keeping Emmet and Dillon in the back of my mind, pretending they are backing me up, standing behind me, thick arms crossed.
“No, I don't think so,” I finally say. “I think I am going to do it my way.”
“You can't.”
I stare at her, noting the squared position of her shoulders, the icy chill of her gaze.
“Excuse me?"
“Any work that you've done while under my employ is work product. It belongs to me. If I say it's not a novel, it is not a novel.”
“I wrote it!” I huff, incredulous. “It's mine.”
“So, I will put it out in hundred word increments… maybe at the top of the home page… maybe at the bottom of the page. Or I might do do nothing with it. That's my option.”
The room sloshes back and forth again, threatening to tip me out the window and down forty storeys into the river.
“You can't have it!”
She opens her palms again as though revealing a chess move. Her voice is slow and calculating.
“Are you seriously saying that?”
