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“You’re good enough, just as you are, Sloane,” he whispered into her hair, and she shook her head against the tearstained cotton of his T-shirt.
“I’m not. I’m—”
“Stop.” Without letting go of her, Gavin slipped one finger to her lips. “I don’t care what you’ve been told or what you’ve got planted in your head. You’re good enough. Christ, you’re beyond good enough.”
Habit, ingrained and merciless, reminded her he couldn’t be right. As pure and good as the words felt when he said them, Gavin simply didn’t know the whole story. Except she’d just told him, and he was holding her anyway.
And with his arms wrapped around her as he held her tight and told her she was deserving in her own right, for the first time in her life, Sloane let go and believed it.
22
“Iam the world’s biggest idiot.” Sloane threw herself against the pillowy couch cushions in her bungalow. As hard as she tried, she was unable to bite back the smile that poked the corners of her mouth upward. God, even her idiocy was tinged with bliss.
Spending the last two weeks having fantastic sex and better-than-fantastic conversations with Gavin had put a huge damper on her ability to be cynical about anything. How could the world be anything less than stellar when she felt so warm and happy and downright good?
Ugh, now she was a sapandan idiot. Fabulous.
“If having mutually exclusive, mind-blowing sex with someone who actually happens to like you for who you are makes you an idiot, I don’t even want toknowwhat that makes me,” Carly said with a laugh. She placed a huge bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, but not even the delectable smell of double-butter and sea salt could keep Sloane’s reply from barging out.
“I haven’t told him about Greece.”
Carly froze with her hand halfway over the bowl. “Are you still going?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”Way to be decisive there, sweetheart. She raked a hand through her tangled hair. “I mean, Gavin only needs me to watch Bree for a couple more weeks, so no matter what’s going on between us, I’m still out of a job. I’ve tried countless times to write this book here, only the exact opposite of what my editor wants keeps popping out. If I stay in Pine Mountain, I’m afraid it’ll only get worse, and I wrote my other three books on location. So, nothing has really changed. If I want to save my career, I have to go. I’ve tried everything else.”
Carly hesitated. “What about the book that keeps popping out?”
“What about it?” Sloane buried her fingers in the bowl of papery kernels even though her appetite was nonexistent. Despite her efforts to focus on mapping out a usable outline for the Greece book, the other story kept muscling its way into her brain, demanding airtime until she had no choice but to surrender in the hopes that it would clear out space for other ideas.
The space-clearing exercise had turned into a mind-blowing eleven chapters in just two weeks. Not even on her best days in Europe had she ever produced so much.
“Has Belinda read any of it? I mean, you said it’s good, right? Maybe she’ll like it even better than the Greece book.” Carly’s expression was loaded with optimism, but Sloane’s frown watered it down a few degrees.
“She asked for something very specific, and she’s been in the business for freaking ever. If there’s anything I trust her on, it’s what sells. And if she says Greece sells, I can’t very well give her anything else,especiallysomething she’s already rejected. No matter how good it is, I’d be committing career suicide.”
Carly slanted a glance at Sloane as if weighing her words, then broke into a shrug and eye roll combination that signaled her decision to ditch caution altogether. “Okay, but you said that it’s better than anything you’ve ever come up with. Don’t you think that makes it worth taking the chance? What’s the worst-case scenario if you just run it by her?”
Sloane’s thoughts hitched, causing her to open her mouth even though nothing came out. She’d toyed with the idea no less than a million times over the past week. She was becoming utterly captivated by the unexpected book spilling out of her, and she knew in her heart that even though it was different from anything she’d ever written, it was also better. Something about the words on the page simply spoke to her in quiet voices, weaving together in ways that felt effortless and right. The more she explored those words and ideas, the more layered they became, and with every chapter she clacked out, the book just became richer, more vibrant. As if it was growing from the inside out.
“I don’t know,” Sloane finally admitted. “It’s one thing for me to think this other book is good, but let’s face it. I wrote it. I’m not exactly unbiased here. It’s a huge risk, and I’d have to really, really trust myself before I did something as dicey as give Belinda something so far from what we discussed.” Although technically, theyhaddiscussed it back in New York. And Belinda had given Sloane a resoundingno. God, this was a recipe for disaster.
But every time she went to put the kibosh on the new book completely, she heard Gavin’s voice, sure and strong in her head.
You’re good enough. Just as you are.
Just like that, she surpassed sappy and dove headfirst into total lunacy.
Carly bit her lip over a sigh, knocking Sloane’s thoughts back down to Earth. “Either way, maybe you should at least tell Gavin what’s going on.”
And to think, Sloane had been certain she couldn’t fit any more unease into her chest. “Nothing’s going on. Plus, I can’t really tell him what I don’t even know,” she hedged, and the dark seed of doubt looming in her mind squashed the purity of Gavin’s words right out of her memory.
She couldn’t take the risk, only to find out he was wrong.
“I guess,” Carly said, although the look on her face outlined her doubt. “But if you guys are serious, then—”
“I’m not cut out for serious,cucciola.” Sloane’s words felt like rocks as they thudded past her lips. “And Gavin’s not cut out for anything else. Especially since he has Bree to think about. So, as much fun as I’m having with him in the here and now, blowing it up into something it’s not will only confuse things.”
“And you don’t think keeping the truth from him will confuse things more?” Carly’s question came out without a hint of accusation, but it stung nonetheless. Sloane rubbed a palm absently over her breastbone, but sat up tall as she sealed a lid on the topic.
