There were five messages.
I didn’t expect you’d actually write that scene. Is it wrong I feel like an all-powerful puppet master with an author at my disposal to do my bidding?
I’m not responding as a reviewer because I don’t think you want that right now, but this is what I was talking about.
Btw—you slipped into first person for a bit there. Oh, and double-check the names. You mistyped at least once, which made me look them up. All this time, I’ve been calling your characters by the wrong names. No wonder you thought I hadn’t read your book. So sorry.
For the record, I’m in need of a cold shower. Should I be admitting that?
Looking forward to your next book. I’d love to read an ARC.
It made me feel weird that I’d stirred a distant guy at a visceral level, unless he was joking about being turned on by my writing. I’d never written for that purpose, but if he felt powerful for compelling me to write it, I felt like a god for creating something that affected him physically.
I typed a hasty response. I’m blushing, but relieved. Now you owe me something in return. I’d love to see your writing. Maybe you could burn off some of that heat.
I slapped my hand over my mouth as soon as I hit Send. I didn’t know where I’d gotten the courage to solicit what amounted to a literary dick pic. What was I going to do if he sent it? I giggled imagining our email exchange ending up in historical documents about my life—once I’d gotten famous, naturally. Plenty of authors had platonic long-distance correspondences with people who inspired their ideas. Where would this fall exactly?
He was some kind of muse for sure. Silver Fox was going to help me fix my second book, and he’d never know how instrumental he’d been in helping me find my footing.
He responded, You want me to write you a love scene? You’re just teasing, right? Although writing that may be the closest I ever come to ending my frustration.
A bit embarrassed at my own suggestion, I focused on his personal problems. You owe it to yourself to lay your feelings out once and for all.
How do you mean?
You’re obviously getting nowhere with your current efforts. Ask her out. Tell her how you feel, Foxy. Give her the benefit of the doubt. If she rejects you, so be it. At least you’ll know, right?
I waited a beat, then added.
And then send me your titillating fiction.
Was this how people had inadvertent affairs?
Chapter 20
Friday arrived, and I ran out of time to make any more changes to my book. I knew my editor would be sending me a massive edit letter anyway, so I explained to her my vision for a change in direction, praying she’d get excited and give me the freedom to infuse this book with more life.
After attaching the file, I had an urge to reread the entire manuscript. But I’d fixed the problems Silver Fox caught, and Layla had given me good notes. I’d gotten everything structurally in place. Liz had an eagle eye and a great feel for tension. She’d warned me that the middle book of a trilogy would be the hardest, but that twist I’d added at the end with Silver Fox’s prodding was going to surprise her. We’d never talked about Lira carrying Rane’s child in the third installment, and I hoped she’d let me run with that.
I hit send, and the second book was off. Just in time to freak out that my first book would release in a little over a week. My stomach roiled, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my breakfast down.
Liz wrote back a few minutes later.
Maddie,
Thanks for getting your project in on time. I promise I’ll get you an edit letter faster this time around. Congrats on finishing! Go celebrate!
Liz
Now all I had to do was wait. Maybe I could find a way to induce a coma until I got her notes. I was going to need to invest in something to keep me from biting my nails.
The distraction arrived on my doorstep in the form of Dylan as I was closing up for the night. He looked like I’d caught him pacing.
“Maddie, can we talk?”
I shrugged. “Of course.”
“Not here.” He jerked his head toward my apartment. “Wanna go up to your place?”
It wasn’t like I had no self-control around him, but considering what had recently transpired with Max, I could only conclude that lately my body had become a hormone factory with ideas of its own. “Take me to dinner.”
“Aw, Maddie.” His shoulders sagged. “Why’s it gotta be like that?”
“Come on. Let’s go to the Jukebox.”
We got a table for two, and I took a peek around to check if anyone was watching us. Everyone was watching us.
“What did you want to talk about?” I kind of hoped he was going to present me with a royalty check for all the creative input I’d given him on his early music. That might save my bookstore from going under this month.
He put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. “You were always there when I needed you, and I guess I just assumed we could fall into our old relationship.”
“Our old relationship?”
“Everything was so easy between us. Don’t you think? Don’t you miss that?”
“I did miss it. I got over it when you went your own way.”
“I actually have something I want to ask you.”
He took my hands in his and raised both eyebrows hopefully. That wicked smile would be my undoing. “What would it have taken you to get on that bus with me when we were kids?”
Why was he asking me now? “If you’d only once talked about a future together . . .”
“A declaration? If I’d promised you forever? You would’ve come with me?”
“Maybe. But you never committed to anything. You never told me you wanted forever.”
“What do you mean, I never told you? I’ve written songs dedicated to you.”
I wrested my hands free and crossed my arms. “Lovely songs, but they don’t count.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Do you think those songs came easily? That’s my soul, Mads.”
If this was going to be an attempt to whitewash the past, it wasn’t going to work. “If you’d made that promise, I would have definitely wanted to, but I couldn’t anyway. My mom would have killed me if I left school.”
His expression slowly turned into straight up mischief. “You could now.”
“What are you even talking about?”
He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to me. “I sent over the videos Layla shot last week along with some demos, and they loved the new song.”
I slipped a letter out. The letterhead read Monday Records, his label. I scanned the paragraphs quickly. The big executives wanted him back in the studio soon. He’d go back to traveling, studios, touring, girls, drinking. I pinched the bridge of my nose as the significance of this letter washed over me. When I looked up at Dylan, his expression was a mix of hope and more hope. His eyes moved back and forth between mine, and his lips seemed about to float away if he didn’t keep them under tight control.
“This is incredible news, Dylan.”
“Is that all you’re gonna say?”
“What more is there? If this is what you want, then congratulations.” I folded the letter and put it in the envelope. “I thought you were considering staying here. Living the peaceful life.”
He laughed. “I can always do that. Eventually.”
“So you’re leaving.” I was so glad I’d resisted the urge to hook up with him. If I’d given him that part of me again, this would hurt like ending an addiction. As it was, I already knew I’d always wonder what might have been. Again.
He leaned forward. “I want you to do this with me this time.”
My stomach hurt. I imagined catching him between gigs and wondering about the girls. Too bad Layla hadn’t been in that English class so many years ago. She would’ve eaten up that life. But I couldn’t do that.
I didn’t even have a glass of water to sip on to swallow whatever
pill he was pushing. “Dylan.”
“No, listen. You want a declaration, and I’m going to give you one.” His tight-squeezed fist lay before him. “I need you.”
Three little words that sounded nice to my ears. I rested my elbows on the table eager to hear more about how I was indispensable to Dylan, how he couldn’t live without me. It would be a first.
“I tried to do this once before, on my own, and it ended in disaster. You were always my home and my muse. If you’d gotten on that bus with me the first time, I know you would’ve helped me stay grounded and make solid decisions.”
For a minute, his words filled me with pride. That I could be the one person Dylan needed gave me a frisson of excitement. I sat a little taller and tried to picture what my life might be like with him.
For the first time since Peter left, money would no longer be a concern, but if I was traveling with him, what would happen to my bookstore?
That put me squarely in the same situation I’d found myself with Peter. Would I want to abandon my life for his?
He took my hand. “Maddie, would you at least consider being there for me?”
That’s when an idea crystallized in my mind I couldn’t shake. Dylan had only talked about what I could do for him. What would he do for me?
“Why should I?”
He gave me the cockiest smile he owned, one that should have made me want to punch him right in the kisser, but instead usually made me want to throw my panties at him. “Because I’m the most interesting person you know.”
That was true. He was interesting and beautiful, talented and hot. He made me think dirty thoughts, and I’d always at least partially want to reconnect with him. But he hadn’t changed, and I didn’t know if he would.
Our server arrived, and we ordered as a loud band began to play.
He sucked on his teeth, then suddenly stood and held his hand out. “Dance with me.”
Maybe it was foolish of me to agree to let him lay his hands on me, but I loved to dance. Thankfully the music stayed at a fast enough tempo that we mainly just twisted in our own spaces for a song or two. I kept an eye out for our food to arrive. We held each other by one hand as we pretended to dance a jitterbug.
Then the band played “At Last.” As if he’d been expecting it, Dylan roped me toward him, and I found myself crushed against his body, his hand in mine, his other arm pressed against my back. I breathed him in, and he swayed with me, rocking his hips in a rhythm I could have set a clock to. Dylan felt like a second skin.
As we danced, he leaned in and sang the words, quietly, into my ear, and I melted a little bit. The room fell away, and there was just us. I could picture us so easily alone. I’d drag my lips down his neck. He’d groan my name and lay my hand on the cock that currently pressed into my hip bone.
When the song ended, I started to peel myself from him, but he slid his hand along my spine until he reached my neck and cradled the back of my head. I knew what came next. I hadn’t spent a full year under Dylan’s spell not to recognize his preamble to a kiss, but I couldn’t push him away, magnetized as I was by the sultry magic he was conjuring. Mentally, I knew Dylan’s seduction game was A+ but physically, I wanted him to conquer my will and take away my need to make rational decisions.
He gazed into my eyes as if he were enjoying the utter destruction of my resistance, and it occurred to me he wasn’t Rhett Butler or Rochester. He was Casanova or the Marquis de Valmont, drunk on the power he held over me. Had Valmont loved Tourvel? Or was he a predator to the end?
Dylan’s expression told me everything he expected to happen from this moment on, and still I let him make his move, kissing me soft, then predictably rougher, while I watched the scene play out from a distance. Was he kissing me? Or was he winning a game?
He broke off, unaware I’d been anything but overwhelmed by him, giving me that look that said, We’ll finish this later. But would we?
Our food arrived, and as we settled into our seats, I asked, “So what happens to the bookstore while I’m following you around the country?”
He took a sip of his beer and licked his lips, and I was 99 percent sure he meant that as a distraction. “Can’t Max run it for you? Or you could close it while you’re gone.” My face must have clued him into how stupid those suggestions were, so he amended, “Or you could sell it to Gentry, then you wouldn’t have to worry about it at all.”
“Do your ears work? Or can you not hear yourself talking?”
“What? Wouldn’t you like to take a break? I know it’s been a struggle to keep the thing afloat.”
I reached across the table and stage-smacked his ear. “Dylan Ramirez, do you have the faintest reason why Peter and I split?”
He winced, like he no longer answered to his real name. “Sure. He didn’t like that you had strong influences in your life.”
My head was starting to throb. “That’s not how I would describe it.”
“What did you think? He had an aversion to the buildings?”
“You think he split because of the company I keep?”
“You tell me. Would you find it weird that he told me and Max to back off from you?”
“You? Maybe not.” I laughed. “But Max?”
He grimaced as if he’d smelled something foul. “He threatened to forbid you to talk to us anymore, unless we made ourselves scarce.”
“What?” My mouth went dry.
Dylan’s fist tightened. “I should’ve pushed the issue and made him try. But I wasn’t around here much anyway, so it was easier to ignore him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He laughed bitterly. “What would you have done? You haven’t exactly kept in touch.”
I gripped my fork with a pile of rice clinging to it, my hand shaking, precariously hanging on to anything solid. “When was this?”
“October.”
“So you did nothing?”
“I gather Max did try to talk to you, but you weren’t inclined to listen to him. You never would have listened to me.”
My dinner threatened to come back up. “That was it?”
He ran his tongue across his lip, hesitating, before he confessed, “We decided someone should talk to Peter.”
“Who talked to him? Please don’t say it was—”
“Me.”
“Shit.”
No fucking wonder Peter up and fled. He’d probably gritted his teeth through this entire ordeal and hoped he could at least count on me to stay at his side. When I didn’t pick him over my town, my bookstore, my friends, he balked.
“I wish I’d known all of this.”
“Would you have done anything differently?”
It was impossible to answer that question. I would have been angry at everyone for butting in. I would have been angry at Peter for antagonizing everyone in the first place. Would I have changed course in time? Or would I have slammed into the iceberg anyway?
“I might’ve eloped.”
He shook his head. “The Maddie I know wouldn’t have gotten married if she couldn’t be surrounded by her friends.”
“What did you want me to do, then?”
“I wanted you to see the world as it is instead of what you expect to see, without all the filters you add to make everyone more interesting than they are. I wanted you to see that Peter, for all his shine and perfection, might not be the right guy for you.”
“But you are.”
“I could be.” He sipped his beer. “I know I’m not a romance hero, and I’m certainly far from perfect, but dammit, we fit together so well.”
“You’re wrong about one thing: You are the quintessential romance hero.” He really was, too. Charming, sexy, artistic, and full of passion. We had the friendship. We had the chemistry. That should have been enough. Why wasn’t that enough?
His eyes twinkled, but he didn’t smile. “Will you at least consider my proposal? Live a little, Maddie.”
My breath caught at the phrase. But that was the exa
ct advice that had gotten me into this mess, and it wouldn’t get me out. I considered his offer, but it wasn’t what I wanted. “You know I love you, right?”
He frowned like he saw where this was going. “I love you, too.”
It was maybe the first time he’d said that when we weren’t mid-coitus. It was nice to hear, but he should have led with that. A tear rolled over my lower lid and fell heavily onto the back of my hand. I dragged my thumb across my cheek and took a deep breath.
“I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think about what it might be like to get back together with you.” Total honesty. A part of me would always regret what I was about to say to him, and I hesitated long enough that a shadow of his cocky grin reached his lips. I had to make a hard choice, now or never. “But my life is here, Dylan.”
He hung his head. Then his eyes rose, and he produced a smile like it was his only armor. “Promise me that when we’re forty, if we’re both still single, we’ll end up together.”
I sob-laughed at that. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter 21
Saturday morning, I was getting out of the shower, when my phone rang. I expected to see spam from an unknown number in Colorado and was surprised the screen said Peter.
I nearly dropped the phone as I answered. My stomach fluttered, and I realized I was chewing on my lower lip.
“Hey, Maddie. I’m, uh . . . I’ve got business out your way and was hoping to stop in and talk.”
Speechless. I swallowed anger and tears I thought I’d buried.
“You there?” His voice caressed me like a worn pair of jeans. Familiar and comforting, although I hadn’t heard it in months.
“Yes.”
“Will you be around?”
“I’m in the bookstore all day.”
“Noon okay?”
“Works for me.”
“Thanks, Maddie. And . . .”
His pause hung there like an invitation for my imagination to fill in the words that would make Peter the hero I needed him to be. If he’d followed that and with I made a mistake, it would have gone a long way to heal something broken in me. He also owed me an apology for abandoning me. But if Dylan was right, if he’d chased Peter away, I owed Peter an apology, too. Maybe that’s all he’d needed in the first place.
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