Chapter 1 #3
“You believe in that? That God intervenes like that?”
She pauses. It’s a heavy silence, and I can’t help but wonder if I’ve touched a sensitive topic. “I believe in good stories. And a good story always puts two people exactly where they need to be.”
Something about the way she says it—I believe in good stories—makes my throat tight. I believe in good stories too. In fact, so much that I did something colossally stupid.
Or at least it felt stupid at the time. But we’re not here to talk about that.
“Okay…well,” I hear myself say. “If we’re entertaining the idea that God locked us up in here so I could talk out my problems…”
“I’m listening.”
“I made a mistake when I was a kid. A big one. And I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to prove I’m not that person anymore.
And I thought I was doing okay. But then someone accused me of the same thing—even though I didn’t do it this time—and suddenly, none of the years matter.
Everyone just sees the version of me they want to see. ”
Silence again. Long enough that I know I’ve said too much. Good grief, Beckett. Give a guy a cold, dark elevator and he pours out his soul.
“That’s not fair,” she says quietly. “Everyone deserves a second chance. A real one. Not the kind where people say they forgive you but hold it over your head forever.”
Everyone deserves a second chance. Coach Hart said that to me once, when I was nineteen and sorry and scared. I wouldn’t mind if the rest of the world got that memo. “You might be the first person who’s said that to me in a very long time.”
“Then you’ve been talking to the wrong people.”
Now I wish I could see her face. A beat passes, and the space between us recalibrates, sends us back to reality: two strangers in a dark elevator. “So, are you here for the gala?”
“I guess you could say that. Tonight’s sort of a work thing for me too.”
I raise a curious brow. “Investor?”
She laughs. “No.”
My pulse ticks up. “You work for that author?”
She hesitates. “You caught me.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m”—impressed? intrigued?—“making conversation in an elevator.”
The truth is, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Maybe God really does have a hand in this—trapping me in the dark with an author’s assistant, of all people, to talk to. Appropriate.
She laughs, and something loosens behind my ribs.
“What’s she write? That author.”
She shifts beside me. “Thrillers, mostly. Crime fiction.”
“That’s actually really cool.”
“You don’t have to sound surprised about that either.”
“What? This isn’t my surprised voice. I think you’ll know when I use my surprised voice.” Maybe the dark’s making me see things, but I can’t help but imagine her casting a skeptical look my direction. “Don’t believe me, that’s fine.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…you don’t strike me as a huge reader.”
“Oof, that hurts.” I slap a hand over my chest. “I’ll have you know, I graduated all the way up to eighth grade.”
She laughs.
“Seriously though, I love reading.” Understatement of my life.
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, then.”
“You should be.” The energy between us is almost electric. The darkness gives me that familiar feeling of anonymity, makes me bold. The words slip out before I can stop them. “Does she ever get letters?”
“Hmm?”
“The author you work for—from readers, I mean.”
“Oh, yeah, all the time.” She pauses. “Why? Have you ever written one?”
“No.” The lie burns my chest. Seriously, Beckett? Why lie? “Okay. Maybe. Is that weird?”
Her reply is fast. Sure. “No.”
Something in my chest loosens.
“That’s not weird at all. That’s—honestly, that’s probably the best thing an author can hear.
That their words mattered enough to make someone reach out.
” She pauses. “For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I think the author would love to get a letter from a person who really appreciates their work. I think they’d consider it a sort of gift. ”
Ten full seconds of nothing, but suddenly, the elevator isn’t cold at all. And the silence isn’t sharp.
She can’t see my face. She can’t see that her words just landed somewhere I didn’t know was still soft.
She pulls my jacket tighter—I hear the fabric shift—and something about that smallness, her wrapped in something of mine, makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of a line I don’t know how to uncross.
Don’t. You don’t even know her name.
“You’re dangerously easy to talk to,” I manage. “You know that?”
“You know, I’ve been told.”
More quiet. I can hear her breathing. Steady. Close. The elevator feels smaller than it did thirty minutes ago, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.
“Have you ever done something—” I start, then stop. Regroup. “—something that, if anyone knew, it would completely change how they see you?”
She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her voice is different. Softer. Like I just stepped on something she didn’t expect.
“Yes.”
One word. But the weight of it fills the dark.
“Me too,” I say. And then, because the dark makes me stupid and honest and, apparently, incapable of self-preservation: “I read romance novels.”
A beat. “Oh. And that’s bad because…?”
“Not just read them. There’s this author—Sutton Blake.
She writes hockey romances and they’re—” I stop.
Swallow. Start again. “Everyone else—movies, books, whatever—shows hockey players like machines. Stats and slap shots and two-dimensional tough guys. She writes us like people. Like men who are a little messed up and maybe don’t have it together on the inside and… okay, that sounded ridiculous.”
“But true?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s delete.”
“No. Let’s not. Why do you like her?”
She’s not laughing at me. (Although, to be clear, I’m laughing at me.
Because the words coming out of my mouth feel…
well, corny and emotional. And heaven help me, I can’t seem to stop.
I don’t think I even want to. Sheesh, in thirty minutes, I’ve crossed over some unseen personal line with a stranger in the dark. Was there something in the punch?)
“In her first book, there’s this line. The hero says ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to be worthy of everything everyone’s given me, and yet I never seem to measure up.
’ I read that at two in the morning in a hotel room in Calgary, and I just—I sat there.
Because I’d never seen that sentence before, and it was already mine.
Like she’d reached into my chest and found the thing I couldn’t say and said it for me. ”
And now I want to pry open the doors and run. Seriously, Beckett!
The silence on her side is absolute. Not uncomfortable. Not bored. Just…absolute. Like she’s holding her breath.
Maybe she’s in shock. I know I am. And like a runaway train, I can’t seem to stop.
“And I did something crazy,” I say. “I wrote to her. Anonymously. A letter to her publisher, because I didn’t know how else to reach her. And I told her—”