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Lucas tsked. “That’s definitelynotthe version I’ve been hearing about every single Christmas since she met you.”
Every single Christmas?
Lucas had been hearing about it—about me—every single Christmas?
“Sorry to disappoint you.” I picked my fork back up, loading it with rice. “I’m no guardian angel. Or heroine. Just your run-of-the-mill engineer turned romance writer.” I tilted my head. “Oh. That’s the first time I said that out loud.”
His smile turned warmer. “And how did it feel?”
I thought about my answer. “Good. It was good to say it. To hear it.”
I just wished Ifeltconfident in these new shoes I had slipped on. But I didn’t, not right now. Mostly because… could someone who had written one single book be considered a writer? How could someone who had hardly made it past the first chapter of her second onefeellike a writer?
My stomach dropped at the thought.
I didn’t know if Lucas missed that or not, but he said, “Can I ask you something else? It’s a little personal.”
“Of course,” I answered with a sigh, remnants of self-doubt still stirring in my gut.
“You never told me how you felt about giving up your engineering job. You told me how those around you might feel about you writing, and how you expected your dad to feel about you quitting. But you never said howyoufelt.”
And that was… a question I hadn’t expected him to ask. A question no one—from the people who knew—had thought to ask.
How did I feel, though? I knew why I had resigned. But had that been the right thing to do? Did a part of me regret it? Was the fact that I hadn’t been able to write a single freaking word since then a sign of how big a mistake I had made?
“It’s none of my business, I know,” he said after a long silence on my part. His smile was lopsided, almost self-conscious. “It’s okay.”
“I…” I trailed off.
He watched me for a few seconds, and when I still gave him nothing, he resumed eating, acting like it wasn’t a big deal. Probably because he really thought it wasn’t.
“I wasn’t unhappy,” I finally managed to say, and he glanced up at me very slowly, as if a sudden movement would somehowscare me away. “I think I would still be happy working for InTech if I hadn’t found something that I… finallyloved. Something that made me understand what really loving what you do is. Something that completed me in a way engineering never did, even if I didn’t yet know and was never unhappy.” I released all the air in my lungs, feeling like a pricked balloon, deflating. “That’s probably why it’s so hard for me to talk about it. Because this new thing, this new dream, seems so fragile. Like, I’m holding it in my hands, but the feel of it is so… new, so unfamiliar, that I’m terrified I might drop and shatter it, so I just… stand there and look at it in silence.”
And because every day that I inched closer to that deadline—now eight weeks away—every day that passed without me writing a single word or being able to access whatever had been inside of me not so long ago, I felt like it was falling. Like I was failing.
“Hey.” Lucas’s voice registered, making me realize I had been staring into empty space. “You’re ballsy, Rosie.” The right side of his mouth tipped up. “That’s something you should never forget. And something you should be proud of.”
Ballsy. I’d never been called that. Not even once. Cautious, responsible, driven, but never ballsy.
“Thank you,” I said, so quietly I wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. “But enough about me.” I straightened on my stool. “What, aside from food, makes you feel better when you’re feeling off?”
Lucas thought about my question for just an instant. Then, he leaned on his elbows. Slowly. His voice dropped down, as if he was letting me into a secret and I felt myself lean forward, too. “It’s something almost as fun as eating, but it involves far less clothing.”
My breath stuck in my throat, not caring that I had been in the process of swallowing. Consequently, a runaway rice grain went down the wrong pipe, making me break into a fit of coughing.
“Por Dios,”I heard him say between my shallow puffs of air. “Rosie, are you okay?”
Nope. I wasn’t. Clearly. Because the mental image of Lucas—infar less clothingthan he was now, doingfunthings—had sent my most basic body function into shock.
When I didn’t answer and only kept coughing, a curse in what must have been Spanish left him. He stood up and shot in my direction.
Before he’d think of wrapping his arms around me and Heimliching me, I took matters into my own hands and reached across the table for a glass of water.
“Hold on, Rosie,” Lucas warned just as I tipped the glass up. “Not so fast! That’s—Oh. Okay.”
I downed the contents of it and placed it back on the table. “Wine,” I said a little breathlessly. “That was white wine.” Which I hadn’t even noticed on the table. Because, well. Because I’d been busy noticing Lucas.
“Yeah,” he admitted, and I could hear the amusement dancing in his words. “Well, it did the trick.”
