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There’s no intro or apology or explanation before it starts. Instead, the email dives right into the scene…and so do I.
Monday, June 5th
Brooke
I stumble out of the bathroom, the man of my dreams on my mind.
Last night, Chase and I exchanged I love yous.
Three months ago, I would have never thought an outcome like today would be possible. I was happy, but lonely, and after many discussions with my canine sidekick, had pretty much decided it would stay that way.
None of the men in New York came even close to what I wanted in a life partner, and to be honest, none of the men in Ohio did either. I had started to wonder if I might be the problem or if my standards might be too high or if maybe I’m just supposed to be a one-woman-plus-canine show for the rest of my life.
But enter my new editor Chase Dawson, and my whole world flipped on its head. I know it’s crazy, I know, but I don’t even completely know how it happened other than to say…the day I met Chase Dawson was the day the earth stood still.
There were bright lights and powerful auras, and I’m pretty sure the whole “circle around the sun” thing paused for ten to fifteen solid seconds.
He was everything those men weren’t and then some. He was polite and gracious and charming and sweet, and he had the eyes and body of my fantasies! And I, lucky girl, was going to be working with him on my next book for several weeks at a time.
Add that to the fact that my current work in progress, Garden of Forever, was lacking in just about every lust I’d ever had for writing, and my mind was crying to cling to the creativity of an innocent crush.
Maybe that’s why it was so easy to build a fantasy around Chase after the first time I met him. I don’t know. But writing that book was one of the greatest escapes of my life, and to find out now that everything I wrote, everything I wanted so desperately, could be true?
Well, I think it’s safe to say I’m beside myself.
Playful and prancing, I round the corner from the bathroom into the main room, ready to pick up where we left off only minutes ago and convince Chase that food isn’t that important right now. I can’t get enough of him, and I know it’s more than just the physical. Emotionally, I’m obsessed, and for women, that’s the ultimate turn-on.
But I’m met with a frown, the normally perfect lines of Chase’s friendly face turned down with the kind of hurt I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. He’s holding a sheet of paper, and unfortunately, I know immediately what the lines of it hold.
It’s the only loose-leaf I’ve used the entire trip.
Chase’s List of Flaws. The single-handedly hardest and most awful creative experience of my life.
“What is this, Brooke?” Chase asks, the pain of betrayal raw in his deep voice.
Every part of me aches with the absence of an answer. The truth is, what I’ve done is inexcusable. Because I could argue that the exercise itself wasn’t my choice, or that I was doing it for the good of the book, or that I didn’t mean one bit of it—which I didn’t.
But I’m the one who dragged Chase into an imaginary world he didn’t have any say in. I’m the one who used his likeness to heal something inside myself. I’m the one who couldn’t separate the man from the character at first.
I swallow, cinching the towel at my chest and tucking some hair behind my ear. “I…”
“Speak up,” Chase snaps, and embarrassment permeates my every pore.
I’m so, so embarrassed that I’ve done this to us. That I’ve put us in the position to fail.
“Um…” I clear my throat. “W-when you told me the characters had no flaws, I did an exercise to get myself in the habit of picking out flaws. I was…having a hard time with Clive, and I needed somewhere to start.”
“Why on earth would you start with me?”
It takes everything in me, but Chase deserves to know the truth. The whole, undistorted, ugly truth.
“Because…Clive is you.”
He blinks rapidly, his pretty blue eyes a blur. “What do you mean?”
“Clive Watts is Chase Dawson. And River Rollins is Brooke Baker.” I close my eyes. “With a few improvements. But…I wrote the book about us.”
“I don’t understand.” I know he doesn’t. It hardly even makes sense to me. But God, I would give anything to show him that the way I feel about him and my motives for writing this book are two different topics entirely.
I laugh, but there isn’t any humor. I’m sad. I’m so, so sad that I’m hurting the person I’ve fallen so hard for. “Of course you don’t. Because why would you? It’s an insane thing to do, writing a whole book about someone without their knowledge or permission. But you know what’s even crazier, Chase? Turning that book in to your editor by accident because you were too drunk to distinguish the files the night your manuscript was due. That’s crazy. And then, you don’t tell your editor what you’ve done. Instead, you go along with it, and you let him take that book to his boss and pitch it like it’s the most normal thing in the world to turn in a book the publisher isn’t expecting. And then the crazy finale! They actually decide to publish it!”
