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I appreciated what she was saying, but our situations weren’t the same. “I can’t afford not to write for two months. Not only are you depending on me, but I’ve got a freelance project due on Friday.”
“You need to prioritize the freelance project. I’ll be here. I’m not making any speed records myself.”
“Mainly because I’m holding you back with chapter four.”
She exhaled heavily, blowing strands of her dark hair away from her face. “Trust me when I say I need the time to revise three and five. I’m still trying to master the differences between screenwriting and novels.”
We’d discussed that before in great detail. Learning a new style of writing was no small task. Despite the challenges, what she’d written so far had been promising and usually got me pumped up when I read it because I couldn’t believe my luck to be writing with such a pro. “You’ll get it. I don’t have a single doubt.”
“Just like you’ll get the hang of being a dad and fitting in work,” she said, a half smile tugging at her lips.
I leaned forward, weary, the lightness and endorphins from being around Quincy earlier completely gone.
“Hello?” Ava said.
“Hi. Yeah.” I debated mentioning the subject that’d been circling through my head for days, ever since my confrontation with Cash at my father’s house. I decided to air it out. “I know you said Cash will adjust, but I don’t want to be the cause of tension between you two. If you’d rather work on your own projects, I would understand completely.”
She tilted her head and made a face like I’d spoken in Swahili. “I wouldn’t.”
“Seriously, Ava. At least think it over. Between my inability to be productive and your fiancé’s dislike of us working together, is it worth it?”
“Hell yes, it’s worth it. We’re going to be amazing. It’s just going to take a while to get going.”
“We’re not going to finish on time.” With my financial clients, I never missed a deadline. You couldn’t run a freelance business and not be reliable.
“We’ll have to adjust our deadlines,” Ava said, “but so what? We’ll get there. We both have other income to rely on until we can launch the hell out of our cowriting career.” She stared at me, raising her brows as if daring me to disagree. Then her face fell. “Unlessyou’drather call it all off.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’d be crazy to turn away the opportunity to write with famous screenwriter Ava Dean.”
“Please. Screenwriter Ava quit. Novelist Ava is even newer than you.”
“New novel writer, new dad. That’s a lot of news. In all seriousness, fatherhood isn’t going away. Even if my ex showed up tonight and wanted to take Juniper, I wouldn’t let her go. I’ll be preoccupied for the next eighteen years plus. I want you to rethink our deal right now. See if it’s still what you want.”
“It’s still what I want,” she said without hesitation.
“You didn’t think about it.”
“I don’t need to, Knox. We planned out a three-book series with possibilities for another dozen, right?”
A smile tugged at me. Wehadgone overboard, but the creative synergy once we’d started had been incredible. “Right.”
“I’m excited about our potential. Are you?”
I did what she hadn’t done: I paused for a moment and thought about it. Fought through the sleep-deprivation fog in my head. Tried to imagine what the next year would bring, let alone the next five. Then I considered the first few chapters we’d written together. They were still rough, but the story was there, and I couldn’t wait to see how it developed. Though Ava was new to novel writing and struggled with things like introspection and description, she had a way of weaving magic with her words that I could only hope to pick up.
“I am,” I finally said, meaning it. “And I’m going to do better.”
“All we can do is the best we can do, Knox. Juniper comes first.”
“Always. But it turns out Juniper has quite the appetite, and someone needs to pay for her formula, not to mention baby food.”
“She’s gotta keep those darling chubby cheeks chubby,” Ava said with an affectionate grin. “So let’s revise our deadlines. Not a lot. We’ll find a pace that works for both of us.”
I growled. I hated to change our dates, but I knew she was right. We needed to adjust in order to make our goals attainable. “Let’s do it.”
We could give ourselves more time, but I vowed to myself I would not hold us back. I needed to spend less time pretending to have a family with Quincy and more time being productive. It was part of why I’d hired a nanny—so I could still work full-time, still do justice to both of my careers.
Yes, I’d been understandably waylaid by fatherhood, but that wasn’t going away. Quincy was, and I needed to remember that. Pull back. Refocus on my priorities: my daughter and my career.
