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I, on the other hand, have one of those bodies where finding a good pair of jeans that fits me is like finding the golden ticket in a Willy Wonka chocolate bar.
“You know, Brooke, I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for weeks,” Chase admits unabashedly, rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt almost recklessly until both veiny forearms are exposed.
“You have?” I hear my mouth question with an apparent mind of its own.
“Heck yeah. Longstrand wanted me because of the book I hand-picked at my old publishing house landing on the New York Times for twenty-nine weeks. And you’re the reason I wanted Longstrand.”
I can’t be too sure, but I seem to have swallowed my tongue. Seriously, I think I can feel it in my throat.
He chuckles a little, his cheeks heating to the most subtle color of rose. “That sounds pretty creepy the more I think about it. But I’m a fan of your work, and my sister…well, she’s a superfan. I’d have been excommunicated from the family tree if I didn’t jump at a chance to work with you.”
I’m flattered and flabbergasted all at once. I’m flattergasted.
“You’d read my stuff before you came here?”
“Yes. I think I read the first book in your Shadow Brothers Trilogy within the first month of its release, before the presses even heated up too much. I knew instantly it was going to be a hit. You’ve got an ease of prose that lulls the reader into submission. To be honest, being so familiar with your work is what made this one all the more of a surprise.”
A surprise? Surprisingly bad, he means.
And just like that, the whole reason I’m here, sitting across from the most handsome man who has ever lived, hits me like a semitruck careening off the highway.
Today’s conversation is about Garden of Forever. And I know that manuscript isn’t worthy of publication. I knew it when I was writing it. I knew it when I wrote The End. And I definitely knew it when I hit send on the email addressed to Chase Dawson at Longstrand Publishing.
Shit, shit, shit. I knew they’d never let that heaping pile of fly-covered cow manure go to print.
The need for flight pounds in my temples, and I consider just up and darting out of the office like one of those little psychotic birds—barn swallows. My grandparents had a barn swallow problem when I was a kid, and it was fascinating to see the way those feathered lunatics would just recklessly fly all over the place.
“That said,” Chase continues. “I’m seriously impressed by the seamlessness of the transition.”
What? What transition? Transition from being a successful novelist to a rock-bottom hack who can’t write?
“Brooke.” Chase smiles like he’s really proud. “This is good. Really fucking good, if you’ll excuse the language.”
Um…what? “Y-you…you like it?”
“Yes.” He nods. “I have some modest ideas that I think can really turn up the emotional tug to an eleven, but Clive and River’s chemistry is undeniable. Their story is magnetic, Brooke. Truly captivating.”
Did he just say Clive and River? Brain cells wither, and a blinding light cut only by the shadow of a dark man with a scythe paralyzes me. Sweet Lord and the land of Jesus, I know this man did not just say the name of the character I’ve written about him.
Right? Tell me for the love of everything holy that’s not possible. Those words were never meant to see the light of day, let alone land on his desktop. Inside that fangirl fiction book that no one should have ever seen, I wrote some seriously sexy fantasies, described down to the minutest of details. I put my pen to the paper—fingers to the keyboard—in the hope that I’d bleed out any and all feelings for my hot editor from my system. I did not write any of those words with the intention of having them read.
As a matter of fact, if I had, I’m more than certain I would have omitted ninety-nine percent of them. If I’d known Chase, of all people, would see that manuscript, the book would’ve been so fade to black that all that would’ve been left would have been two lines of dialogue that overutilized the word hello.
“Hello, River. I’m Clive.”… “Hello, Clive. I’m River.”… The End.
Chase is still smiling at me, and my heart is taking it personal. Up-up-up the rate of my ventricles pumping blood throughout my body increases. I grip the armrests of the chair, and white dots start to take over my peripheral vision.
“Accidental Attachment is fantastic, Brooke. Clive and River together are fire. Their passion has an intensity you can feel.”
Okay, yeah, I’m no longer on the brink of passing out. It’s coming; I can feel it.
It makes me think of this blooper reel I saw on YouTube where a man passed out live on air while in the middle of a conversation with a news anchor. His face went from red to white, and his final words were “I’m gone” before he fell like a stack of dominoes to the floor.
