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“I knew you had it in you, kid. I’m glad I gave you the reins.”
My God, talk about a kick in the balls. It’s the confirmation I was craving, the ending I knew was possible with a book as good as this one—and yet, I can barely even swallow my saliva when I think about it.
A book about us—Brooke and me—just doesn’t sound as sweet when the ending in real life is in the shitter.
Truthfully, it took everything inside me to be able to send it to him. I didn’t want to. It felt wrong in all the ways it possibly could. But when I think about what it would’ve done to Brooke’s career had I not turned it in, I didn’t have any other option but to send it off.
At this point, I don’t know if I even give a shit about my own career. The simple act of forcing myself out of bed each morning is enough of a task for my mind to focus on.
I brush past Dawn and into my office, and when I spot the well-used, gently worn paper manuscript for Accidental Attachment that I’ve been carrying around with me for weeks on end, I shove it off my desk and toward the garbage can in an uncontrolled moment.
Tears prick at my eyes, and I sink down into my chair and drop my head into my hands.
Fuck. The pain I feel is a deep, gnawing, ache that spreads from the center of my chest to the pit of my stomach. It is ever-present and there is absolutely nothing that provides relief.
I think about Brooke, but I’m always thinking about Brooke. The terrible thing about love is that once you fall in love with someone, you can’t force yourself to fall out of love with them.
Once your heart is in it, it’s ride or die, no matter the consequences.
Hell, even though I left her in that hotel room in Nashville with no intention of looking back, I still made sure to call Wilson Phillips with enough of an explanation to get him to hire a nice man by the name of Mark to drive her and the motor home back to New York, just to make sure she was safe.
Every instinct inside me still wants to protect her. Still wants to be the man standing by her side.
A timid knock sounds from the glass wall next to my door, and I look up to see Dawn stepping inside my office.
“Sir? Are you…are you…” She clears her throat, reconsidering calling me out on the tears directly. “I, um…is there anything I can maybe help you with?”
I smear the moisture from my eyes down across my nose and then swipe at my mouth when a smidge of the salt hits my tongue.
God, I’m a mess. One little book and the woman who wrote it have turned my life upside down.
I’ve been from one extreme to the other and back again in the last month, and I hardly even know who I am anymore.
I just want to feel normal. I want to feel happy. I want to go back to before I knew all the shit I know now.
With a heavy sigh, I swing my chair around to my computer and click haphazardly until my email is open.
Without looking at her directly, I dismiss Dawn as politely as I can manage. “No…thanks. I’m all right.”
I can practically feel her pause before she turns to leave, and on a last-minute shout, I order, “Shut the door on your way out.”
I wait until it closes all the way to take another full breath. I knew, without question, that when I let it out, it would be shaky.
I scroll through my email, dragging the ones I know are junk to the trash and starring the ones I know I’m in no way ready to face right now—other authors, potential manuscripts, correspondence about the editors’ meeting. I can’t concentrate on any of it at the moment.
Once all the emails are cleared, I lean back in my chair and unfurl the knot in my tie, hoping it’ll make it easier to breathe. It doesn’t alleviate the choke hold on my throat completely, of course, but it’s better than nothing at all.
Shoving my chair back on a roll, I start to stand up to go for a walk or leave for the day or anything other than sitting here, but the population of an email at the top of my inbox stops me.
The sender? Brooke Baker.
My heart stops. My lungs tighten. And I rub my fingers on my palm for five seconds, considering what to do before I find myself clicking it open with a quick tap of my mouse.
The contents, I find pretty quickly, are our breakup scene. Ours. Not Clive and River’s. Chase and Brooke’s…from her point of view.
