Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
The crisp evening air bites at my cheeks as I storm down the drive. Betrayal sits heavy in my stomach, twisting and churning like something alive.
“ How did you fare this time on your own, without my genius to fix everything, huh? ” Her exact words. It all suddenly makes sense. All this time, every draft, every late-night call about plot twists and pacing issues. Aoife. His sister. His secret muse.
How could I not see it? The hints were there, scattered like breadcrumbs—his vague answers when I asked where he got his ideas, the way he always changed the subject when I pressed why this book was so different from the others. And Aoife… She slipped into the evening like she belonged there, like she was the missing piece I hadn’t realised I was looking for.
All this time… My throat tightens, and I blink hard against the sting threatening to spill over. No. Not now. Not here. I refuse to let Rory Keane—or anyone, for that matter—see me fall apart like this.
“Dammit, Lara, wait!” Rory’s voice cuts through the quiet night, but I don’t turn.
Of course, he follows me. He always has to have the last word, doesn’t he? I pick up my pace, the gravel path giving way to flagstones. Each step feels like an exclamation point to the thoughts racing through my head: How dare he? How dare he?
“Just—” His footsteps crunch behind me, faster now, closer. “Lara, will you just stop for one second?”
“Why?” I throw the word over my shoulder, not slowing down. My voice is biting, bordering on the hysterical. Good. Let him hear the edge of it. Let him choke on it. “So you can spin another story? Or maybe workshop a new ending, Rory? Something more… satisfying for your audience?”
“Can we just talk about this? Please?”
“Talk?” I whirl around without warning, forcing him to skid to a halt a few feet away. The sudden movement sends my glasses sliding down my nose, and I shove them back into place with more force than necessary. “Talk about what, exactly, Rory? Because I think we’ve already said plenty.”
He looks at me then, really looks at me. There’s something raw in his expression—something almost boyish in the way his dark hair falls messily across his forehead, his breathing uneven from chasing after me. But I’m not falling for it. Not this time.
“Look,” he starts, running a hand through his hair like he’s trying to buy himself time. “I didn’t?—”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare try to explain this away. You don’t get to smooth this over with your charming little speeches or whatever it is you do to make people forget you’re full of?—”
“Stop it,” he snaps, stepping closer. His voice is louder now, angrier, and it startles me enough to cut me off mid-sentence.
For a second, we just stand there, the tension between us crackling in the cold night air. His eyes search mine, desperate, wild, like he’s trying to find something there he knows he’s already lost.
“Please,” he says again, softer this time. His voice cracks on the word, and something inside me twists painfully.
Damn him. Damn his stupid sincerity, his stupid earnestness, his stupid everything.
“Tell me then,” I say, my voice low but lethal. “How does Aoife fit into all this?”
He freezes. Just for a second, but long enough for me to notice. Long enough for the tiny, foolish part of me holding onto hope to shrivel up and die. His mouth opens, but no words come. It’s like watching a learner driver stall out at a green light, and I think: Oh God, this is it, isn’t it?
“Rory.” My voice cracks, but I press on. “You wanted me to believe in you. To trust you. And now you can’t even look me in the eye and tell me the truth?”
He finally meets my gaze. He swallows hard. Hesitates. Again.
My voice rises, fuelled by the sheer audacity of his silence. “Say something! Anything! Or am I just supposed to connect the dots myself? Because let me tell you, Rory, the picture isn’t looking great from where I’m standing.”
Still nothing. His throat works like he’s trying to push the words out, but they’re stuck somewhere between his ego and whatever shred of decency he has left. The longer he stays quiet, the louder everything else becomes—the rustling leaves, the distant hum of traffic, the roaring in my ears.
“Unbelievable,” I say, taking a step back. My chest feels tight, like all the air’s been vacuumed out of the world. “So this is it. This is who you really are.”
“Wait,” he says finally, his voice rough and hesitant, like he knows it’s too little, too late. “Lara, it’s not?—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, shaking my head. My anger starts to falter, cracking at the edges, making room for something deeper. Something heavier. “You don’t even realise what you’ve done, do you?”
And there it is—that flicker of guilt in his expression. A spark of regret that only makes me angrier because it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.
I throw my hands in the air, a sudden gesture that cuts through the charged silence between us. “You know what’s funny, Rory? I was actually starting to believe you.” My voice comes out louder than I meant it to, but I don’t care. The words are trembling on the edge of fury, like they’ve been waiting for this moment to burst free. “All that talk about writer’s block and finding your inspiration again— God, I was such an idiot.”
His eyes widen, his mouth parting as if he’s about to interrupt, but I barrel forward, steamrolling any attempt by him to speak.
“Do you have any idea how humiliating it feels to find out the hard way that I was just… What? A convenient replacement for your sister? A shortcut around your supposed creative dry spell?”
“That’s not?—”
I cut him off with a laugh that tastes bitter in my throat.
“Don’t even try it, Rory. Don’t.” I jab a finger at him, my hand shaking slightly, though I hope he can’t see it. “You sat there, day after day, feeding me line after line about how stuck you were. How much you needed me. And the whole time, Aoife—” her name burns like acid on my tongue “—was doing what, exactly? Filling in the blanks for you while you played tortured genius?”
He steps closer, his hands raised as though he’s warding off a blow. “Lara, stop. Just—just let me explain.”
“Oh, please do,” I snap, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’d love to hear the explanation for why you lied to me. Why you used me.”
“I wasn’t using you!” He runs a hand through his hair, the gesture so frantic it almost looks like he’s trying to rip it out. “I swear, Lara, it wasn’t like that. I just—Aoife wasn’t involved in this book at all. On my mother’s life, not one word of it.”
“That seems unlikely, given her little admission in there.”
“She went travelling before I came up with the premise of Fully, Forever . She was supposed to be gone for a month, but ended up falling for someone out there and told me she wasn’t coming back and that I was on my own for this one.”
“Oh, come on. There’s email and video chat and?—”
“I wrote the first draft entirely myself. I had to. She was on the other side of the world, and wanted no part of it.”
He takes a step closer and I match it with a step back.
“Once I realised she was serious, I started writing. I wanted to prove I could do it myself.”
“Well, congratulations,” I say, throwing my arms wide in mock celebration. “You proved something, all right. You proved you’re a liar.”
His face crumples slightly, and for half a second, I think I might’ve hit some kind of nerve. But then he speaks, and the words tumble out in a rush, each one more desperate than the last.
“I wasn’t lying. Not about the block, not about… not about needing you. God, Lara, you have to understand.” His voice cracks, and he presses his palms together, like he’s praying for me to believe him. “The pressure—the expectations—it’s like this weight crushing me every second. Everyone expects me to be brilliant, to deliver another bestseller, and I just— I couldn’t do it on my own. I froze.”
“So you thought, ‘Hey, I’ll just drag Lara into the mess,’” I shoot back. “Because clearly, she has nothing better to do than rescue Rory Keane from himself.”
“No!” he says quickly, too quickly. “I didn’t plan for this to happen. I just… I thought maybe if I had someone who understood, someone who believed in the work itself—” His voice falters, and he lets out a frustrated breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I stare at him, my arms still crossed, my nails digging into my forearms.
“Well, congratulations again, because you managed to do it anyway.”
He flinches, and for a brief moment, I see it—his mask slipping. The charming, confident Rory Keane is falling away to reveal something raw and unpolished beneath. Something that almost—almost—makes me want to soften. But then I remember the silence earlier, the hesitation that screamed louder than any apology ever could, and the flicker of sympathy snuffs out.
“You don’t get it,” I say quietly, my voice dangerously calm now. “You didn’t just lie to me. You made me believe in something. In you.” My chest tightens, and I hate the wobble I feel threatening to creep into my voice. “And then you ripped it away like it meant nothing.”
“It meant everything ,” he says, his voice breaking on the word. “You mean everything, Lara. I just… I fucked up, okay? I made a mistake.”
I shake my head slowly, my jaw tightening as I force down the lump in my throat. Mistake . The word feels so small compared to the gaping hole he’s left in my heart. “A mistake is forgetting someone’s coffee order, Rory. What you did? That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice.”
“Lara, please?—”
“No.” The word slices out of me before I can stop it, like one of my editorial redlines. “No more excuses. No more half-truths. Just answer me this…” My voice shakes, not with weakness but with a fury so potent it feels like it might burn me alive. “Was any of it real? Or was I just another plot device to you?”
He flinches, like the question physically knocks the air out of him.
Good. Let him squirm.
“That’s not fair,” he says, his voice low and strained. “You know it was real.”
“Do I?” My laugh is hollow, bitter, and so unlike me, I barely recognise it. “Because right now, it kind of looks like all of this”—I gesture between us, my hand trembling despite myself—“was just a convenient way for you to play tortured artist while I cleaned up your messes. Did you need me , Rory? Or did you need a co-writer who made good coffee and didn’t charge overtime?”
“Stop it,” he pleads, his eyes searching mine desperately, like he thinks he can find the right lever to pull to undo everything collapsing between us. “You’re twisting this into something it wasn’t. You think I planned this? That I sat down and thought, ‘Oh, you know what would really help with my writer’s block? I’ll find a replacement for Aoife.’ You think I could’ve orchestrated this ?”
“Why not?” I counter, my words quick and biting. “You managed to fool everyone else. The publishers. The readers. Hell, you even had me convinced. So tell me why I shouldn’t believe you were just using me to write your book for you.”
“Because I—” he stumbles, visibly choking on whatever excuse he wants to spit out. If this were one of his books, this would be the part where the hero makes some grand declaration, something sweeping and poetic that fixes everything in a neat bow. But without Aoife’s guiding hand to write that scene for him, he just looks… lost.
“Because I wouldn’t do that to you,” he finally says, his voice cracking under the weight of it. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” I press, leaning into the silence that follows. “Big difference, Rory.”
His hands drop helplessly to his sides, fingers twitching like they want to reach for me but don’t dare.
“It was real,” he says, and there’s something raw in his voice now as he gulps for breath. “All of it. Every single moment. You have to believe me, Lara.”
“Do I?” I whisper, hating the tremor in my voice, hating the tears pricking at the edges of my eyes.
“Yes!” He takes another step forward, almost close enough to touch, but he stops himself—and somehow that restraint hurts worse than if he’d grabbed me. “You weren’t just someone I leaned on when things got hard. You are the thing, Lara. The only thing that made any of it worth it.” His words rush out, desperate and unpolished, each one like a plea. “You made me want to be better. For you. For us.”
“Us,” I echo bitterly, the word foreign and jagged on my tongue. “That’s rich coming from someone who spent weeks lying to my face.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he says, his voice breaking again. “I swear, I thought—I thought if I could just finish the book by listening to your guidance, then maybe I’d be… enough.”
“Enough for who?” I demand, anger flaring hot again. “For me? Because news flash, Rory—I never asked you to prove anything. I never needed you to be perfect. I just needed you to be honest.”
“Well, I failed at that, didn’t I?” he replies bitterly, “but don’t you dare stand there and act like what we had wasn’t real. I know you felt it, too. Tell me I’m wrong, Lara. Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t feel it.”
I meet his gaze, the weight of his words settling heavily in the pit of my stomach. But then I remember the lies, the betrayal, and I force myself to hold steady.
“Maybe I did,” I say quietly, my voice cold and clipped. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you ruined it.”
I shake my head, the motion clear and final, like a door slamming shut. My arms cross over my chest, as if that can somehow hold me together, keep the fractures from spreading any further.
“God, you really don’t get it, do you? You didn’t just lie to me, Rory. You used me. Like one of your damn outlines or character sketches—just another tool to get your story where you wanted it.”
“Lara—”
“Don’t,” I snap, holding up a hand to stop him in his tracks. “Don’t stand there and try to rewrite this, Rory. I’m an editor, remember? I know a plot device when I see one.”
He flinches, and for a fleeting second, I almost feel bad. Almost. But then I remember the weeks I spent poring over his manuscript, improving it, believing that every word, every moment we shared, was building toward something real. Not this. Not… nothing.
“Do you have any idea how humiliating this is?” I continue, my voice rising despite the lump forming in my throat. “To think that while I was falling for you, you were just—” I gesture vaguely, angrily, as if the words might appear in the air between us. “ What? Taking notes? Gathering material?”
“I care about you—I love you. This wasn’t some game to me. I screwed up, okay? I made mistakes, but everything I felt for you—that was real. It still is.”
“Well, good for you,” I say, the sarcasm dripping from my words like venom. “But here’s the thing, Rory: love isn’t enough. Not without trust. And you? You’ve obliterated that. I’m done, Rory.”
I walk away from him and I don’t look back. If I do, I might crumble entirely—and I can’t afford that. Not now. Not ever again.
I yank my phone out of my bag, my fingers trembling as I unlock the screen. The cool night air bites at my skin, but it’s nothing compared to the frost spreading in my chest. My thumb hovers over the Uber app for a split second before I press it, because God forbid I hesitate long enough for Rory to think I’m reconsidering.
“Let me drive you home,” he says from behind me, his voice low, ragged, desperate.
“Not a chance,” I snap, not even bothering to look back at him. If I do, I’ll see that face—those stupidly earnest eyes, that unshaven jawline that somehow makes him more irritatingly attractive—and I might… no. No. I’m not doing this. Not again.
The app loads slowly, mocking me, and I tighten my grip on the phone like I could physically will it to move faster. A message pops up: “Searching for drivers in your area.” Great. Just great. I tap my foot, each beat against the ground a reminder to keep it together. Left foot, right foot. Breathe in, out. Stop crying. Not here. Not in front of him.
“Lara…” His voice cracks.
“Go back inside, Rory. Your sister’s back, go finish your book. Should be easy now.”
Finally, a driver accepts the request, and I exhale shakily, relief and dread tangling in my throat. Seven minutes. I can survive seven more minutes of this.
“Goodbye, Rory,” I manage, the words catching slightly in my throat. I don’t wait for his response. I don’t even know if he has one. Instead, I cross the road and wait at the edge of the curb, staring down the empty street like it holds some kind of salvation.