The ARC reviews went up while she had been sleeping, before the book even climbed the charts to get into new readers' line of sight.
Her readers in her group were all either excited about getting to read after work, or already telling her how good it was, how engrossed they were.
As she took a break to get in the shower, put herself together, she felt a lightness she hadn't felt in a long time. A confidence.
In her humble opinion, nothing in the world could ever touch the high of people loving the one thing you have always wanted to do in your life.
She made her way down to the dining room while her laptop charged, knowing Meggie would let her have some leftovers since she had missed lunch and it was too early for dinner.
"You're in a good mood," Meggie greeted her after she's knocked.
"It's all that Vitamin-D she is getting," Emily's voice said, grin wicked. "Does wonders for the mood, doesn't it?"
"I wouldn't know," Meggie grumbled.
"Oh, you just need to get out of the kitchen, so you can meet a guy," Em insisted, giving her friend a one-arm hug on the way toward the coffee pot. "So how are things with you and Liam?"
"They're good," Riley admitted because it was the truth, watching as Meggie dragged two platters out of the fridge, both still heavily loaded down with what looked like chicken parm sandwiches and French fries.
Her belly let out a loud grumble even as Em passed her a fresh cup of coffee to hold her over through the reheating process.
"Good? That's all you're going to give us, good?" Emily asked, shaking her head. "No one has ever seen this man with a woman before. We would like some details. Does he correct your grammar in bed?"
To that, Riley snorted, shaking her head. "I don't know. He's sweet, believe it or not."
"Mostly not," Emily admitted.
"I think he comes off as someone cold right at first, but he's warm underneath it all. He cooks for me."
"Now that is sexy," Meggie declared, shrugging. "Of course, I am partial."
"No one is sexier than you Megs," Emily declared. "Anyone who can make that triple chocolate mousse you make is a sexy mother."
To that, Meggie blushed, ducking her head to look inside the toaster oven like she needed to check the food she had just stuffed within it.
"So... he cooks. Anything else?"
"He keeps me in coffee at all times."
"Marry him." Em declared, being as diehard a coffee fan as Riley herself was.
"It's going to be hard to leave," Riley admitted, watching the contents of her coffee cup.
"Oh, honey," Meggie said, voice sad, clearly a bit of more emotional than Riley or Emily.
"So don't go," Emily suggested, shrugging.
"It's not that easy. I have... a life in the city."
"You never even look at your phone. No one is texting or calling. Besides, didn't you say you're a bit of a nomad, never staying anywhere for too long?"
That was true.
She was an uprooter.
She liked new places.
Even if she was going to stay in the city, she moved around every few years, checking out new neighborhoods.
She could leave.
That was like her.
But she couldn't move because of a man.
That was decidedly not like her.
First, because it wasn't smart.
Second, it was too much, too soon.
Even if she did decide to move to Stars Landing for the many, various reasons she had come up with, it would look like she was doing it because of Liam.
Worse yet, it would look that way to Liam.
And men didn't like that.
Right?
"I dunno," Riley said, hearing the ding on the toaster oven.
Hell, she still hadn't been honest with Liam.
He didn't know her reasons for being there, what her pen name was.
How would he even respond to something like that? To all the deceptions, the evasions?
She had no idea.
She just knew that her stomach knotted at the very idea, and that was enough reason for her not to want to tell him.
Would he look at her differently?
Not just because of the lie, the fact that she clearly had stalked him, but also because of her body of work that he hated so much?
Would it make him rethink his feelings about her?
No.
That was the wrong way to think.
Things were different.
This book was different.
He was going to love it.
Just like everyone else had so far.
"We seem to have ruined her good mood," Emily observed, clucking her tongue.
"She's just hungry," Meggie insisted, pushing a plate in front of her. "She gets grumpy when she's hungry."
That was true.
But this was one thing that not even Meggie's perfect cooking could cure.
Only honesty could.
And for someone who had prided herself on being truthful in her life, in every aspect of her life, in fact, feeling the weight of her untruths and half-truths was making her feel like she was sinking deeper into the ground.
She ate her lunch, thanking Meggie, taking fresh coffee back up to her room, then getting back to work.
By the time she made her way over to Liam's after dark, there had only been one somewhat critical review, and even that one had been a three-star.
Sales had been great, shooting her to the top in all her categories, promising her a safe few months so she could work on her next one.
So she tried to shake off her gray mood, enjoy Liam's stir-fry, even if the smooth bastard did include carrots. And she didn't exactly hate them anymore.
"You're distracted," he called her on it, like he was prone to doing. He never just let her have a mood. He never pulled his dude-card, noticing it, but not mentioning it because he didn't want to hear about it.
See, because Liam liked hearing about it. Maybe because Riley wasn't overly emotional about things, didn't need to talk them to death, bury them, dig them up, then reanimate them again. She generally just wanted to rant for two or three minutes, then let it go.
"Sorry. Just thinking about some stuff," she admitted, not wanting to dig deeper than that. Because if she said it was work, he would want her to elaborate since she had been so evasive about her work with him. If she said she was thinking about what it would be like to move, it would open things up to an even more uncomfortable conversation.
"Why don't you go dive into Red Clocks," he suggested. "Get out of your head. I'll wash tonight."
She found her eyes stinging, something that horrified her to even think, making her need to slow-blink them back until her eyes cleared up.
The second thing that gripped her was this need to jump up and kiss him.
For knowing her.
For understanding her.
For being intuitive enough to realize she needed to let the real world fall away for a while.
That urge she followed, jumping out of her chair so fast it almost overturned, going around the table, pressing a long kiss to his lips as he sat there, a little shellshocked before he started kissing her back.
"Thank you," she told him, pressing her forehead to his for a long moment.
When she pulled away, there was something in his eyes that she didn't quite know how to interpret.
She moved over to the bed, kicking out of her shoes, bundling under the covers, and curling into a book.
The next day was the same.
And the next.
She'd all but forgotten about the seemingly inevitable.
Until she'd refreshed her Goodreads.
And there it was.
She knew the Stars Books logo better than Liam probably did.
She'd stared at it so many times, wishing it was a face so she could know who was behind the reviews.
Now she had a face.
And he had written a new review.
Of her new book.
Two stars.
That was progress, technically.
All the others had been one stars.
But two stars still sucked.
Sucked.
It brought down her overall average. Nominally, but still.
Her stomach churned as her eyes drifted.
She could only read two words of the long review before she slammed her laptop shut.
Try again.
Try again.
She threw herself back in bed, curling on her side, burying her face in the pillows to stifle the sound of pure, undiluted, unfiltered frustration that burst out of her.
Nothing had changed.
He still hated her.
He still thought her work was crap.
He still, by extension, thought her dream was stupid.
And, worse yet, this wasn't just some random reviewer anymore.
This was a man she had shared conversations with, meals with, her body with.
He liked her, sure.
But he didn't think she had any talent.
And that, to her, to any artist really, was the kiss of death.
She felt the tears sting and fall without permission, allowing the hopelessness of the situation overtake her, let herself wallow in it, be baptized in it.
She wasn't sure how long she stayed in that bed, how long she let herself soak through the pillows.
All she knew when she got up was that there was a hammering migraine in her temples, behind her eyes, that her lids felt too swollen to open completely, that the skin on her cheeks felt raw and dry from the saltwater.
She dragged herself out of bed, taking some Tylenol she kept in her purse with the cold coffee leftover from right before she read the review, and threw herself into the shower, trying to wash it all away like her mother used to tell her to do when she got too overwrought about things as a kid or teen. As if she could scrub off all the hurt and anger and disappointment with soap and wash it down the drain.
She certainly tried, raking over her skin until it was red and over-sensitive. Standing under the spray until the water went frigid, forcing her out of the shower.
She dried, dressed, tried to shake some of the tension out of her shoulders.
But as she sat down at the end of the bed, cradling her head in her hands to try to ease the twinges of the headache that hadn't been taken away by the Tylenol, it wasn't the sadness, frustration, or disappointment swirling through her system anymore.
Quick as a wildfire, the anger tore through her body, ravaged any lesser emotion in its path.
Until everything within her was undeniable rage.
And when Riley got angry, she got impulsive.
And when she got impulsive, she didn't think anything through, she didn't consider consequences.
Not even regarding something as important as this. Someone as important as this one was.
"Uh-oh," Dev's voice called as she stormed past the front desk, hands curled into fists, body taut as a bow, jaw clenched so tight that her teeth ached. "What happened?" he asked, but she was already slamming through the front door, nearly falling on her face on an uneven porch board, almost toppling into Alec as she moved past.
"Easy," he cooed in the same tone he used on his horses.
Normally, it would have made her stop, laugh, maybe tease him a little about the differences between horses and humans, but all she could focus on was the anger and - maybe unreasonably - betrayal.
She made her way across the road, tearing down Main Street in a blur.
"Girl, this is not what you are wanting to do," Maude clicked at her as she moved past.
And even if she was maybe, just maybe starting to wonder if the woman was psychic after all, she didn't heed the warning, didn't care about smart ideas, didn't care about consequences.
She just cared about unloading some - or all - of her rage on the person it had been directed toward for a long time.
If she hadn't been so blinded by her attraction to him, she would have remembered how much he had hurt her, how much he had screwed with her life.
The door flew open as she stormed in, being somewhat aware of not being alone, but not caring.
Let everyone know.
She was a lunatic.
And he had driven her to it.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" she demanded, words she had asked the emptiness of her apartment regarding him for more months than she cared to think about.
Liam's brows went down over his light eyes, taking her in, trying to weigh and measure her anger. "What do you want, Riley?" he asked oddly, making her spine stiffen.
What did she want?
She wanted back what he had taken from her.
Her confidence.
Her security in her talent, her profession, her future.
She wanted back all the time spent feeling unsure of herself.
She picked up books off the shelves, beloved, blameless books, books she revered, was sad when the spines went loose or a cover got warped.
Books she would never harm - save for maybe Atonement since she'd tossed her copy against a wall hard enough to bust the spine.
But she picked these innocent books up and started tossing them toward a startled, confused Liam.
"I. Should. Have. Known. Better!" she shrieked, enunciating each word with the toss of a book.
"What are you talking about?" Liam asked, brows drawing together.
"I'm leaving," she shot back, the meaning clear. Not the store. Not just him. The town. She was going. "And there is nothing fucking romantic about Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester you pretentious snob!" she added, somehow needing to say that after hearing him call it a romance a time or two. She slammed the door behind her just as loud as she pleased, storming back out, fighting off tears once again.
She flew across the street without looking - as if she could with the tears streaming down her face.
"Ry," Dane's voice called as she moved past the bar. "Hey," he called again, grabbing her arm, stopping her. "What happened?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. And for a man she didn't think had many strong feelings aside from the need to have sex, that was saying something.
"Something happen with Liam?" another voice asked, a voice she had heard a few times since she and Liam had started things up, a voice that belonged to a face she didn't want to see right then, a face that was too much like its brother's.
"Nothing. I'm fine," she insisted, but was undermined by the loud sniffling noise she made as she reached up to scrub at her cheeks. "But I'm leaving. So... it was nice to meet you both," she told them, ripping her arm out of Dane's grip, and all but running away, getting to the inn in a blur.
"Shit," Dev hissed, jumping off the desk to try to follow her.
"I just want to be alone for a bit," she called back at him, not looking, knowing that the patheticness on her face would make him try to good-guy her into changing her mind, letting him console her.
She had never really been in the position to need consoling, never usually crying over things. But she had a feeling it would be embarrassing. Humiliating, even, to blubber all over someone.
So she rushed up, slamming and locking her door, sinking down to her knees, cradling her face in her hands, letting it out.
But only for a few moments more before rising to her feet, washing the evidence of the breakdown away.
Then taking herself back into her room, throwing her luggage on the bed, going around the room to start tossing her various items in, wondering how far she could get before nightfall, if there was somewhere on the way to grab about two dozen donuts to fill the hole she felt inside, stretching wider by the moment.
"Riley," Meggie's tentative voice called, making it clear Devon had been spreading the word about her breakdown already. "Honey, can I get you something?"
"Coffee to go?" she asked, her heart breaking a bit more.
She wasn't just leaving Stars Landing, a place. She was leaving all these people
as well. The ones she had grown to adore so much.
There would be no more late-night snacking with Meggie and Emily in the kitchen. No more coffee talks with Devon. No more teasing Dane.
And, worse yet, eventually, they would forget her entirely. No one remembered the chick who was just passing through.
But, for her, she would cherish this time she spent in Stars Landing, looking on it like the gift it was. She'd known connection there. Happiness. Friendship.
And it hurt a little to realize the truth of the matter. That they meant more to her than she would mean to them in the long run.
"Okay. It will be waiting for you at the desk," she said, voice hesitant, sad.
But she shuffled away.
She didn't insist on trying to come in, talk to her, talk her out of it.
She appreciated it, knowing that it would only make it worse for her.
A clean break.
That was the only way to do this.
It would heal better.
Maybe it wouldn't even leave her with an ache when it rained.
That was the hope at least as she slipped her laptop into a bag, zipping them all closed, reaching for the oversized Stars Landing tote she had managed to buy since they didn't have any tees in her size, and shoving all her new books into it, finding barely enough room to stuff the last one in.
She took a deep, steadying breath, reminding herself that leaving was the smart thing, swallowed back the giant lump in her throat, found the car keys she hadn't needed since the morning after the peach picking festival when she had gone back to drive it back to the inn.
And she turned toward the door, ready physically, if not emotionally, to go.
Grabbing her bags, she went to the door, opening to squeal, falling back a step.
"What is going on?"
Liam was at her door.
And he wanted answers.
It was time to give him her truth.
TWELVE
Liam
He'd been standing there wondering about a new way to get some vegetables in her system since he had learned that steamed was a pretty big no-go for her, if maybe he could do something like parents did for picky-eating kids. Make something fun, but sneak good stuff in it.
What The Heart Learns Page 16