Epilogue
If you love me for me.
Liam
I do.
Smiling, I look at my beautiful, adorable wife, who just planted a Mild sauce on my desk. Chin raised, arms folded, she offers an indignant sniff and challenges me to say anything about it.
“Romance is alive and well with us,” I offer.
“Truly,” she states.
I tap the packet with a finger. “I’m framing this.”
“I figured you would. Put it next to your Marry Me packet. Will be cute.”
“Bambi?”
She shivers, and her folded arms loosen. “Yeah?”
“Valentine’s Day is tomorrow.”
Her lips part in a perfect circle. “You don’t say. You know, I do think Brian sent an email to everyone with urgent in the subject line, delivering that very same information. There’s a party of some kind, I’m told. I might skip it in favor of writing.”
I hum. “Speaking of writing, how are your ARC applications doing?”
She stiffens.
My brow furrows.
Her throat clears.
“Bambi.” I cross my arms. “You haven’t checked?”
“Not even once…” A becoming slash of on-brand for the upcoming holiday heat crawls up her neck. “It’s just an awful lot of disappointment or perception, you know?”
I sigh, sidle around my desk, and take my dear wife’s hand, to—literally—drag her through this process. “Love,” I murmur lowly in her ear as we approach her desk, “disappointment isn’t a concern, and perception is kind of the point.”
“Don’t tell me that. Please.”
I sit her down, scoot her in, open her laptop, and remove the packing material resting atop her keys. “The people who fear perception are the same who relish being seen. Why do you think that is?”
She’s silent, and still, so I reach over her to input her eight-digit pin of eights. As her screen comes alive, she mutters, “I don’t know.”
“Branding.”
“You have got to be joking.”
“It all comes down to branding. People who don’t want to be perceived do want to feel seen, so the disconnect happens whenever they are watched and not accurately beheld. You’re branded correctly now, Bambi.” I open her Google forms, feel her intake of breath upon viewing the little number highlighted in the response tab. “And people? People love to see the truth. Because it resonates inside them, too.”
“Two…hundred…” She swallows. “Eighteen.”
I kiss her temple. “I think you’ve got a lot of sorting through applications to do.”
“Two hundred and eighteen people want to read my book? That can’t be right. They have to all be scams. Bots?”
“Or real people. Your audience has found you, because you made it easy for them.”
“I-I haven’t checked anything else, either.”
“Anything else?”
Wetting her lips, she reaches for the touch pad and opens the newsletter provider I made her set up. Currently, she’s offering her first chapter free with subscription on a select few builder sites.
Her beautiful brown eyes bug when the page loads, presenting over four hundred people on her list. She exits immediately out of the page, breaths short and frail. Her terrified eyes hit mine. “Liam, is it too late to say I don’t wanna be an author anymore? Can I just be your sugar baby, maybe? I’ll make your schedules cute and lounge about. The pool! I haven’t cried nearly enough in your nice big indoor pool. Not even once !”
Hooking a finger beneath her chin, I murmur, “Will you write books, just for me?”
She nods, enthusiastically and cutely, on the crook of my finger. “I will! Promise.”
“Tempting.” I kiss her forehead. “But don’t you think you deserve to be seen?”
“Hypocrite,” she whispers.
“I’m not in an emotional business, Bambi. I don’t get to lay myself bare quite the same for the general public. I’m not searching for other hearts like mine. I’m just selling the ability to look professional without sacrificing oneself entirely.”
“By sacrificing yourself entirely.”
“By—” I touch a kiss to her lips. “—relying on the evil side of my character description. Big businesses love corruption. I love a good manipulation tactic. My therapist really was trying so hard to curb that. Bless.”
Hesitant, she turns her attention back to her computer, to the tab she didn’t close, to the two hundred eighteen people interested in the closest slice of her she has ever shared with the world. She swallows, and I watch the action move her slender throat. “What if they like your branding magic, but they hate my book?”
“If that happens, Bambi, I’ve not branded you correctly. Branding for an author is all about setting reader expectations from the first glance. They are meant to be an accurate representation of you and your work, which I have studied, in detail.”
“I feel sick.”
Chuckling, I hold her. “My research suggests that’s normal. This is the first time you’re sharing a sincere part of you. Fearing rejection makes sense. But the people who reject you aren’t your readers, and the people who accept you will make all the difference in the world. Sometimes, when you interact with those people, you’ll remember why you bothered doing any of this at all.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Sometimes,” I say, “before I got you back, I’d feel it with Will and Brian. I’m so grateful my grand scheme to be of worth to you led me to people who care about me, in spite of all my evil edges.”
“Wait.” She blinks. “ What? Whirlwind Branding was not just a scheme to be of worth to me. Surely not.”
I coil one of her curls around my finger. “If I recall, my part of the Taco Bell napkin contract involved becoming a millionaire. Obviously all of this came about to meet that end. That’s why it’s themed after you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Tempest, whirlwind, storm.”
She balks. “ Nu-uh. ”
I snuggle my adorable wife. “You’re cute when you’re in denial.”
“I’m always cute. That’s the problem. And why you like me so much.”
“Once again, Bambi, I, actually, very deeply, like you because you’re you , but, you know, whatever helps you sleep at night, in my arms, while I obsess over the sound of your breaths and the heat of your skin.”
“Liam.”
“Yes, my love?”
“I, actually, very deeply, think you need to go back to therapy.”
I laugh. “Only if you come with me. I think you need to work on how your anxiety creates a mental block that keeps you from attaining your dreams without severe, literal hand holding.”
“I never asked you to hold my hand,” she snaps.
I nod, complacent. “You’re right. The compulsion overcame me, and I couldn’t deny it. All the more reason why couple’s therapy suits us.”
Her shoulders droop as she gives up the anger. It’s so beautiful to see her learning to choose her battles.
I seize the moment of calm to murmur, “Bambi?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something I wanted to ask you, before you distracted me by telling me you hadn’t checked your scary business things.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and I see forever in them. My past, my present, my future.
She is the security and kindness and acceptance I have longed for my entire life.
With her, I’m fully seen. With her, I am loved just the way that I am.
“Yes?” she asks, so simply, like her existence doesn’t change my whole world for the better.
I smile. “Will you be my Valentine and my date to tomorrow’s party?”
A bright smile softens her already round features as she giggles. “Do I have to wear pink ?”
“Not unless you want to.”
She reaches for my tie and pulls me in. “In that case, how could I refuse ?”
Ah. A Preminger quote. Classic.
Man.
I love this woman.