Grayson: Wordsmith Chronicles Book 3
Page 15
It’s a process. Now it’s time to start down the road to recovery.
Chapter 21
Grayson
I followed Mike’s advice to the letter yesterday. I worked out, hard, and even though I’m sore as hell right now I feel good. I called Cordelia and made an appointment to meet. I worked out. And after I came home and showered I read the first third of the book that Mike wrote. His writing is really sharp right now, I was totally into the story and I actually got a few pages of my own down before going to sleep at a reasonable hour last night. I’ve started the process, just like we discussed, but still nothing from Rowan. I texted her that I was sorry and that I wanted to talk, but she didn’t write me back, which worries me. I hope I didn’t ruin things forever.
I’m on my way to Mike’s place. He wants to finalize some things for the book and the signing. Colton’s going to be there also, and so is Everleigh. When I get there him and Colt are sitting in the living room, and Everleigh is puttering in the kitchen. “Hey there, stranger!” She says, giving me a big hug. “You look good. How are you?”
“I’m doing better, thanks. You look great, too.”
“Hey,” Colton yells. “Stop trying to bang Mike’s fiancé, that’s not cool.”
“Dude, shut the fuck up!” I yell. We all laugh, Everleigh most of all. I leave her in the kitchen to go meet up with the guys.
“I read your part of the story, Mike. It’s fucking great. I loved it.”
“Why, thank you. Colton’s hammering away on his part now.”
“It’s going quickly,” Colt says. “I’ll be done in a few days. Mike gave me some great material to work with.”
“I wrote some ideas down, too. Last night after everything. Colt, I called Cordelia.”
“She’s amazing, man. I was about as anti-therapy as a person can be and she changed my mind in about five minutes. She really forces you to look at yourself honestly and make some changes.”
“That’s what I need. Speaking of making changes, can you guys hold on a second.”
“Sure.”
“You going to try to bang Everleigh again?” Colton asks sarcastically. “Mike, you gonna stand for this shit?”
“Shut up, Colt.” Mike says. “Go ahead, Gray.”
“Thanks.” I know it’s a desperate move, but I don’t have much else right now. I find Everleigh still putting away dishes in the kitchen and go right up to her. “How bad is it?” I ask.
“What?”
“Rowan. How bad is it?”
“Oh. Not great, Gray, I have to be honest.”
Fuck. “I know she told you about. . .”
“You losing your shit when she was only trying to help? Yeah, she told me.”
“Right, that.” God I feel stupid. “I tried to text her to apologize but she didn’t answer. I don’t know what to do but I want to make things right.”
“I’ll talk to her, but it’s going to take more than that, Gray. She feels like she’s more into you than you are into her, and that’s a shitty feeling, for anyone. When you throw in outburst like you had on top of how she was already feeling, it’s not exactly a recipe for a healthy relationship—or any relationship at all.”
“Listen, Ev. I know it’s not your job to talk to her, and Lord knows I don’t deserve much of anything from her, but I just want you to know that how she was feeling isn’t true. I’m just as into her as she is into me. I’m just. . .it’s hard for me to express that. I’m going to therapy starting next week, I know it’s something I need to work on. I get why she feels that way, but it just isn’t true. I promise you.”
“You don’t need to tell me this.” She says.
“I know. She won’t answer, though. I just wanted you to know how I feel, for whatever it’s worth.”
“Noted.” She says. “Now go back to the meeting of the high council in there. I think you guys have a signing to plan.”
“Right.” I get up and go back to the guys. I’m not sure that conversation did anything at all, but at least I spoke the truth to the only person who’ll listen to it. We’ll see if anything comes of it. In the meantime I’ll just keep working on myself. The guys look like they’re deep in conversation, so I jump right in. “What’d I miss?”
They fill me in on what they’ve been discussing. The signing is two months away. Mike arranged a catering hall in a small hotel in the city. The space is large enough for a signing of ours, and it’s the prefect venue for us. To keep that timeframe and have new content we have to follow a very specific timeline. The book we’re working on needs to be finished, edited, and ordered within a month. That gives us enough time to get copies for the signing. Colton says he’ll be done with his part by week’s end, and then he’s going to put the finishing touches on his own book. What sucks about the piracy thing, even more than just the feeling of violation, is that I won’t have anything new for readers except my contribution to this book.
“We were thinking of calling it Graceful Cocky Knockout—a Wordsmith Collaboration. Each word has the first letter of our writing names in it, and it kind of speaks to our personalities also. What do you think?”
“I like it,” I say. “I think the readers will too, which is what matters the most.”
“Oh, shit,” Colton says. “You didn’t see the image, did you?”
“No, show me. I almost forgot.” Colton takes out his phone and shows me the image. It looks amazing. “Is that?”
“Carter? Yeah. G. Said he’s right behind Brody in terms of popularity. But besides that, it’s just a great image.” I’ve met Carter once. He’s a great guy. Like Brody but more of an edge to him. He seems to embody a lot of the characters he plays on covers. Tattoos, sometimes bearded, ripped as hell, and always with a sexy scowl on his face that the female readers really love. “I asked I’m to come to the signing. He’s going to see because he’s traveling a lot for shoots. He said he’d try to make it but he couldn’t promise anything.”
“That’s fine,” Mike says. “What about Brody?”
“He’s down,” Colt says. “He’ll be there. And so will G. I told him he could bring his own books also, so he had some incentive to come besides just being a collaborator on the anthology.”
“That’s fine. I have no problem with that. What about North?”
“I’ll text him,” I say. “Last I saw he was leaving with his MC after scaring the shit out of those Brotherhood assholes.”
“God, I wish I was there for that,” Colton says. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“I didn’t feel lucky at the time. Even though I kind of wanted to see where that whole thing was going.”
“Of course you did,” Colt says, getting worked up. “That would have been epic.”
“Would you two calm the fuck down. Forget those guys. I’m sick of talking about them.”
“Well, then,” Everleigh says. “You may not want to hear what I found out.”
“Oh, Jesus, don’t even tell me!” Colton yells. She’s looking at me when she says that, so I shush Colton and ask her to go on.
“What did you find out, Ev?”
“I did some digging, as only I can do. Found out a few things about your book gone missing.”
“Do I want to hear?” I ask. The anxiety starts to rise in my chest, but I take a deep breath.
“Probably not, but I think you need to. Piracy is serious. I reached out to a few people I trust, and it turns out that the woman who sent that file to not only has a history with KL Steiner and the Brotherhood guys, but she also has somewhat of a reputation for this kind of thing.”
“What kind of relationship?” I ask.
“She was hi PA for a year, about three years ago.”
“Is he involved in this?”
“Not from what I can tell, but who the hell knows. I woudn’t put it past him at all.”
“The timing is curious,” Mike says. “That this happens right after this whole North thing, which was probably an embarrassment for them
.”
“Mike’s right,” Colton says. “You know how they are. Never direct. We fuck with them publicly, and they do some shady stuff in the shadows to mess with us. Stealing laptops, filing charges against me, taking those pictures of my arrest for social media. This has their watermark all over it.”
“That might be hard to prove,” Ev says. “No one said anything like that to me, I just know about their relationship going back. For all we know she did it to him also and that’s why they split. Who knows? But what’s certain is that she has done this before in the past to many authors who don’t have the money to take her to court.”
“I’m so dumb.” I say, taking a deep breath.
“No argument here.” Colton says.
“Shut up, Colt. Gray, it happened. It wasn’t even a full book. Focus on making your part of our collaboration great.”
“You’re right, Mike. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Good.”
“And thanks, Everleigh, I appreciate the recon on my behalf.”
“You got it,” she says. “And I’ll work on that other thing, too. She’s out having lunch with Harley as we speak.”
“You’re the best, Ev. Thanks again.”
“Mike, if you don’t stop him from trying to bang her I’m gonna have to step in to save her honor.”
“You’re such a moron, Colt. And anytime you wanna scrap just say the word.”
“Oh, look at you?” He jokes. “A few Jiu Jitsu classes and you’re ready to throw down, huh? I might take you up on that one day.”
“Bring it.” I say sarcastically.”
“Both of you shut up. Gray, what about North? We got sidetracked a little.”
“Oh, I’ll text him right now. If he’s around I’m sure he’ll do it.” I text North and to my surprise he hits me up right away, as though the phone was in his hands.
North: I’d love to. Count me in.
“He’s in.”
“Great, that’ll help a lot.”
The rest of the meeting is all procedural stuff. We discuss cover reveals, pre-orders forms, and everything else that has to do with the signing. By the end we have a plan, and I feel good again about writing. I’m still burned up about my missing WIP, but I follow Mike’s advice and just try to focus on what I’m going to do with this collaboration instead.
I sit here smiling, talking, saying normal things. But inside something else is going on. All I can think of is Rowan. What she’s doing, why she won’t let me explain what happened, and what’s going to happen with this thing we have together. It starts to consume my thoughts. Eventually I excuse myself to go to the gym and write. I say goodbye to Mike and Colton, and on the way out I pass Everleigh again. “I hope she’ll give me another chance.”
Ev looks sympathetic. I know she can’t make anything happen. Rowan’s her own woman, and she’ll make up her own mind, but I hope Ev can help. “I’ll do my best, Gray.”
I know you will, Ev. I know you will.
Chapter 22
Rowan
“So, are you done fucking him, then?”
“Jesus, Harley, people can hear you. You can talk to me like a normal person.”
“What?” She asks. “This is my normal, is it not? Did you just meet me?”
“Fine, you’re right. Then be like, normal-normal, not Harley-normal.”
I knew Grayson was going to up pretty quick. Originally all three of us were going to have a bride and bridesmaid’s lunch together, but when Everleigh said that she was staying home to talk to Grayson about this whole piracy thing, our threesome became a duo. It’s fine with me, I’m not ready to see or speak to Grayson right now, anyhow. Even though I do feel terrible about his WIP getting hacked, I’m still angry about how he treated me, and about how distant he’s been.
“Okay. Let me try again, okay?”
“Go for it.”
“Rowan—I was wondering if you’re no longer engaged in a physical relationship with a Mr. Grayson Blackman, romance author extraordinaire? Can you edify me on this point?”
“Are you speaking in a British accent?” I start laughing hysterically. “I said be normal, not strange and fake English. And the answer to any questions that relate to Grayson is a resounding ‘I don’t know.’”
“Still pissed, huh?”
“Still pissed. But it’s not just that. I can get over being yelled at.”
“What then?”
“The yelling was just the icing on the cake. But the cake was all the times that I tried to support him and he didn’t return the sentiment. He took but never gave.”
“Can I ask you a question? A serious one?”
“Yeah, of course you can.”
“What did you want him to give, exactly? I know it’s not exactly fair, per say, but you chose to go with someone who was showing that he was messed up. He clearly had some emotional issues going on. That’s an equal situation. You have your shit together and he didn’t. . .or doesn’t, I’m not sure which. What did you want him to give?”
“I can accept the uneven thing, I get that. It’s not that I needed him to help me like I was trying to help him, I just needed something from him. Something to let me know that he was having the same experience that I was having—even if it was in his own way.”
“I get that,” Harley says. “That’s not too much to ask.”
“Let’s change the subject, shall we?”
“Fine with me.”
We finish out lunch and go our separate ways. As I’m driving I get a text from Everleigh that I can’t check right away. I pull over for a second and look down at my phone.
Everleigh: Can you come over? Need to talk to you. Grayson’s gone.
Me: Sure. Gimme like twenty minutes
Everleigh: Ok. See you soon.
I wonder what she wants to talk about?
<><><>
When I get there I don’t see any cars except Eva’s and Knight’s. Whatever Wordsmith meeting they were having is clearly over. I feel better knowing that Grayson isn’t here. For some reason seeing him right now would be uncomfortable. Inside I give Ev a big hug. Mike is on his way out to a meeting with his agent, and we say a quick hi/bye. Everleigh looks like she’s in nesting mode. There are cleaning products everywhere. I forgot what a neat freak she is.
“So are you living here all the time now?”
“Kind of,” she says, reaching for the bottle of Clorox with bleach and a sponge. “Most nights, but once we’re married I’m gonna move out of my place. I want to introduce Michael to my neat freak mode early on, so it’s not such a shock when this becomes our house and not just his house.
“Good idea. Show him a little crazy now so he gets used to it. I like it.”
“Exactly.”
“So what’s going on?”
“Grayson was here before to discuss this book they’re working on together and the signing they’re doing in a few months.”
“Uh-huh.” I’m already tensing up. I don’t feel like discussing Grayson with all of my friends, but I’m a guest right now, so I’m going to be polite.
“You sound thrilled that I’m talking about this.” She smiles but I don’t.
“It’s not you, Ev. I just had this talk with Harley. I’m just getting a little fatigued discussing this with everyone. I need some time to just process where I am with our relationship.”
“I don’t mean to get into your business or to force a conversation. In fact, we don’t have to talk about any of this, but I’d be breaking a promise if I didn’t at least deliver a message that Grayson gave me.”
“He asked you to talk to me?”
“He did, yeah. He’s a mess, Ro.”
“Well that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? He always seems to be a mess.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” she says. “I meant that he’s a mess over you. He was really upset that he can’t tell you this personally, but he’s taken a bunch of steps to get his life together.”
“Michael spoke to him. Gave him some brotherly tough love. He got him set up with a therapist. He’s really trying.”
“That’s all good, but. . .”
“Don’t get me wrong,” she says, cutting me off before I go on a rant. “I’m not telling you what to do. What you do from here is up to you, and you’re my best friend. I support you no matter what. I’m on your side, not Grayson’s. But I wouldn’t be a good friend to either you or him if I didn’t give you all of the information you’d need to make that decision. That’s the last I’ll talk to you about it, okay? I just wanted to tell you.”
Everleigh really is the best. I’m so lucky to have a friend like her in my life. “Thank you. I appreciate everything that you just said. And thanks for the information.”
“You got it. What are you doing the rest of the day?”
“I think I’m going to go get my nails done. A little R & R, then maybe go home and read a little. Living that wild life, you know?”
“You deserve some R & R. Enjoy that, okay. Text me later.”
“You know I will.”
I leave what will be their house and get in my car. Before I head off to the salon I grab my phone. I don’t want to have a long conversation right now, but I also don’t want Grayson to think that I’m ignoring him. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I decide to text him.
Me: Hey. Listen, I don’t want to go back and forth, but I wanted to reach out. I need some time. I talked to Ev and I’m glad you’re getting your life together. But I need some time to think about things. Can you please respect me and give me that time. I promise there’s no one else. I just need time, and we’ll talk as soon as I’m ready. Okay?
I wait a minute. Grayson writes back only two sentences.
Grayson: Whatever you need. I’ll be here.
Chapter 23
Grayson
Two Months Later—The Second Wordsmith Signing
“De ja vu all over again, motherfuckers!”