Chapter 6
SIX
LEVI
I’m staring at my notebook on the couch in my rental when my phone rings.
Not the blank page this time—the page I wrote after Delilah left the coffee shop. The page that has actual words on it. Words I’ve read approximately multiple times trying to figure out if they’re any good.
She crashed into me like she always does—
The phone keeps ringing.
I don’t recognize the number, which usually means spam or a journalist who somehow got my personal cell. Either way, not great. But I answer anyway because staring at my own handwriting is making me spiral.
“Hello?”
“Levi? It’s Scott Avery.”
I blink. “Scott?”
“Jessica’s fiancé. We met briefly at—”
“I know who you are.” Everyone in Twin Waves knows who Scott Avery is. Real estate developer turned bestselling romance author. The guy whose secret pen name turned into the most dramatic reveal in this town’s recent history. “I just didn’t expect you to be calling me.”
“Yeah, well.” There’s a pause. “Full disclosure: Jessica put me up to this.”
“Put you up to what?”
“Calling you. Checking in. Doing the whole...” Another pause, longer this time. “Mentorship thing, I guess? She said Michelle mentioned you’re going through some stuff. Creatively.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Did everyone in book club discuss my creative problems last night?”
“Probably. They discuss everything.” He sounds almost sympathetic. “Look, I know this is weird. But I’ve been where you are. The block thing. And it’s...” He trails off. “It sucks. It really sucks. So if you want to talk, I’m around.”
“You want to talk about feelings?”
“Definitely not. But Jessica will ask if I offered, and I’d like to not lie to her, so. I’m offering.”
Despite myself, I almost smile. “That’s very romantic of you.”
“I’m a romance author. It’s contractually obligated.” He clears his throat. “Anyway. I’m just around the corner. I could swing by if you want. Or not. No pressure. Jessica just thought—”
“Sure.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.” I look down at my notebook. At the words that came out of nowhere after Delilah walked away. “Why not.”
“Great. Text me your address. I’ll bring coffee.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m engaged to Michelle’s best friend. If I show up without coffee, they’ll both know, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
He hangs up before I can argue.
I text him the address and spend the next twenty minutes trying to figure out if I should clean up or if that would make this weirder than it already is.
I settle for shoving the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and hoping he doesn’t look too closely at anything.
Scott Avery looks exactly like what you’d expect a real estate developer slash secret romance novelist to look like: expensive shoes, nice watch, and an expression that suggests he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Nice place,” he says, handing me a coffee cup. “Very...beachy.”
“It’s a rental.”
“I figured.” He steps inside, scanning the room with the practiced eye of someone who’s evaluated thousands of properties. “Good bones. Terrible art.”
I glance at the generic seascape above the couch. “Came with the house.”
“I assumed.” He settles onto the couch like he’s conducting a business meeting. “So. Writer’s block.”
“Straight to it, huh?”
“I’m not great at small talk.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Jessica says it’s one of my many character flaws.”
I sit in the chair across from him, cradling my own cup. The coffee is perfect—because of course it is. Michelle’s probably trained him.
“I don’t really know what you expect me to say,” I admit. “I’ve been blocked for months. Nothing works. I’ve tried everything.”
“What’s everything?”
“New locations. Different instruments. Writing prompts. Meditation. That app where you write three pages every morning. A very expensive songwriting retreat in LA where a woman named Starlight told me to ‘release my resistance to the flow.’”
Scott’s mouth twitches. “How’d that work out?”
“I resisted.”
“Sounds about right.” He sets down his coffee. “Can I ask you something?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“What did you write about? Before the block?”
The question catches me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Your songs. The ones that made you famous. What were they about?”
I stare at my coffee. “Love, mostly. Loss. The usual.”
“Anyone specific?”
The silence stretches long enough to become an answer.
“That’s what I thought.” Scott leans back. “When I was blocked, I told myself it was about craft. Technique. I’d lost my edge, or the industry had changed, or I just needed the right inspiration.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t any of that.”
“What was it?”
“Fear.” He says the word simply, like it’s obvious. “I’d spent years writing about emotions I wasn’t actually letting myself feel. I built walls so thick I couldn’t access anything real anymore. The words stopped coming because I’d stopped letting anything in.”
I don’t say anything.
“The block wasn’t a craft problem,” he continues. “It was a protection problem. I’d gotten so good at keeping myself safe that I’d shut down completely. You can’t write about feelings you won’t let yourself have.”
“So what broke it?”
His expression shifts. Softens. “Someone who saw through the walls. Someone who made it scarier to stay closed off than to let her in.”
“Jessica.”
“Jessica.” He almost smiles. “She didn’t fix me. That’s not how it works. But she made me want to try. To stop hiding. To write something true instead of something safe.”
I think about Delilah in the coffee shop. The way she looked at me after she spilled her drink. The concern in her voice when she asked if I was still blocked.
“What if the person who makes you feel things is also the person who destroyed you the last time you let them in?”
Scott doesn’t flinch. “Then you have to decide what scares you more—getting hurt again, or spending the rest of your life wondering what if.”
We sit in silence for a minute. Outside, the ocean crashes. Steady and relentless, the way it’s always been.
“She left me twice,” I finally say. “Delilah. The first time we were kids. The second time—” I shake my head. “I thought it was real. I thought she was staying. And then she just...wasn’t.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. That’s the thing. She just left. No explanation.
No goodbye. Just gone.” I stare at the ceiling.
“I poured all of it into my music. Every song on my first three albums is about her. The critics called it ‘raw’ and ‘authentic.’ They had no idea I was just bleeding onto the page because I didn’t know what else to do with it. ”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve been writing about losing her for ten years, and I’ve got nothing left.” I look at him. “The wound isn’t fresh anymore. It’s just...scar tissue. I can’t access it. I can’t feel it. I spent so long protecting myself from that kind of pain that I think I forgot how to feel anything at all.”
Scott nods slowly. “That’s the trap. You build walls to survive, and then the walls become the problem.”
“So what’s the solution? Tear them down? Let her hurt me again?”
“The solution is to stop writing around her and start writing to her.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“You’ve been processing your feelings about Delilah through your music for a decade.
But you’ve never actually talked to her.
Never asked why she left. Never told her what it did to you.
” He leans forward. “The block isn’t because you’ve run out of things to say.
It’s because you’ve been saying them to the wrong audience. ”
“I can’t just—”
“I’m not saying pour your heart out tomorrow.
I’m saying stop avoiding her. Stop treating every interaction like a threat.
You’re here for two months, and she’s doing the wedding flowers.
You’re going to see her constantly.” He shrugs.
“So see her. Talk to her. Let yourself feel something instead of running from it.”
“What if she runs again?”
“Then at least you’ll know. And you can finally write the ending instead of being stuck in the middle of a story that never got finished.”
I think about the page in my notebook. She crashed into me like she always does—
It’s not good. It’s not even close to good.
But it came out of seeing her. Feeling something. Being present instead of hiding.
“This is terrifying advice,” I tell him.
“Most good advice is.” He stands, grabbing his coffee.
“Look, I’m not saying it’s going to work.
I’m not saying you won’t get hurt. But you’ve been playing it safe for ten years, and where has that gotten you?
Stuck. Blocked. Miserable.” He heads for the door.
“At some point, the risk of staying closed off becomes bigger than the risk of opening up.”
“When did you become a philosopher?”
“Around the same time I started writing romance novels under a pen name.” He pauses at the door. “Jessica wants to have you and Delilah over for dinner sometime. I told her that was a terrible idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea.”
“I know. But she’s going to ask anyway, and I’ve learned not to fight her on these things.” He almost smiles. “She’s usually right. Annoyingly.”
“Thanks for coming by. And for the...whatever this was.”
“Unsolicited life advice from a stranger?”
“That.”
“Anytime.” He opens the door, then looks back. “For what it’s worth, the first thing I wrote after I started letting Jessica in was garbage. Absolute garbage. Didn’t matter. The point wasn’t that it was good. The point was that it was real.”
He leaves.
I stand in my living room, coffee cooling in my hands, and think about walls and wounds and a woman who left me twice.
My phone buzzes.
Dean: Lunch? Salty Pearl. Bringing Rex.
I glance at the notebook. At the words I’ve been avoiding all morning.
Maybe a break isn’t the worst idea.
Me: Be there in 20.