Chapter 2
Two
Everly
Stop!
Okay, I don’t shout it, but I want to. Ever since he said There’s this author—Sutton Blake. Yep, those are the words that started the sirens blaring inside my head. Sutton Blake, a.k.a. me. Wee-ooo Wee-ooo. Danger.
And I told her—
“You wrote to her?” It’s meant to sound chill—totally normal—except that my voice comes out all squeaky and weird. “Sorry, hold on. When you say you wrote to her”—my voice isn’t a whole lot better this time, but I can’t seem to stop myself—“do you mean an actual letter? On paper?”
He pauses. I guess I would too, given my tone. I mean, clearly the answer is Nope, I emailed because we’re no longer living in the Victorian era.
But I can’t breathe. And this guy’s completely oblivious to it. He can’t see the blood draining from my face or feel the tingles pouring from the top of my head down as I’m rewinding his words all the way to In her first book, there’s this line…
Yeah, right about then, my head turned to static, like those old TV screens from the nineties. Fuzzy and warm.
And yet he kept talking: And I did something crazy. I wrote to her. Anonymously. A letter to her publisher, because I didn’t know how else to reach her.
That’s when the static cleared, his words slicing through the noise in my head.
He couldn’t be…I almost gasp aloud at the realization.
Oh no. No. I can almost hear the next words coming out of his mouth, and I have to resist the urge to slap my hands over my ears and shout “La la la!” Because there is no way—zero percent chance—that this man could be my mystery fan. Right?
Why do these things happen to me?
He pauses. I can hear the sheepish smile even in the dark as he answers my oh-too-obvious interruption. “Yeah. I know, it’s embarrassing. But yeah. There’s something about ink and paper. Blue ink, actually. In case you were wondering—which I’m sure you’re not.”
I press my lips together so hard they go numb. Blue ink.
I know the blue ink. I know the right-slanting handwriting and the way he signs B.B. at the bottom and the small, careful way he folds the paper into thirds, like the words inside are fragile.
I have five of those letters in a box on my desk.
It’s him.
“That’s not embarrassing.” No more embarrassing than the letters I wrote back to him. Yes. Yes, I did.
Could this get any worse?
“No, it is. But I appreciate you saying it’s not.” His voice is soft in the dark. Like his letters. Sweet. Endearing.
From a hockey player.
Am I breathing? I can’t tell. The silence settles around us, seeping into me through his jacket, the black swirling in my eyes. It stretches, and I fumble for something to say. “Did she write back?”
Why? Why would I ask that? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I know she wrote back. I know she poured her heart into five thoughtfully, carefully crafted responses, all signed S.B. Why? Because his letter deserved so much more than the standard response.
“Yeah, actually. She did write back.”
Aw, he makes it sound almost magical.
“The thing is…she didn’t have to,” he continues.
“Who am I to a world-class author like her? I’m nobody.
She could have thrown them away. Could have sent some standard prewritten response.
But she didn’t. I don’t think she knows what that meant to me.
So often, people take one look at the jersey and reduce me to a number on the team. She made me feel like I mattered.”
I swallow down something sharp. Shoot, now my eyes are burning.
Talk about vulnerable. Sheesh, my editor would be thrilled.
But I can’t—absolutely cannot—use this confession in a book.
What kind of person do you think I am? “I think you probably did matter…to her.” The words scrape from my throat. Because they’re real.
“You think?”
“I know.” The words come out too fast. Too sure.
I backpedal. “I mean—I know what reader letters mean to an author. E.J. gets them all the time, and they’re…
they mean everything. So a romance writer?
Someone whose whole job is writing about connection and vulnerability?
Getting a letter from someone who actually felt those things? ” I swallow. “Yeah. It mattered.”
He’s quiet. Long enough that I wonder if I said too much.
I definitely said too much.
His shoulder brushes mine. It’s strong, warm. “Can I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking me things for the last forty minutes. Why stop now?”
“Fair point.” A beat. “Earlier, when I asked if you’d ever done something that would change how people see you, you said yes. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but…does it ever get heavy? Carrying it?”
I close my eyes. My fingers find the bracelet on my wrist, the tiny book charm, and I press it into my skin like an anchor.
“Every day,” I say. “It’s like—you know how in thrillers there’s always a character who’s running from something?
And you think, Just tell someone. Just say it out loud. How hard can it be?”
“And then you realize it’s not about hard. It’s about what you lose.”
“Exactly.” My voice comes out smaller than I want. “You build a life around the secret. People know you as one thing. And the real you is this other thing, hiding underneath, and if it comes out—”
“Everything falls apart.”
“Everything falls apart.”
And he goes quiet.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I like the version of you that’s in this elevator.”
“You can’t even see me.”
“I don’t think it would change if I could.”
Oh, wow.
The lights dance on, just for a second.
One stuttering flash, and I turn instinctively—the way you do, toward the other person, the shared experience, the Can you believe this?—and I see him.
Ice-blue eyes. Dark, wavy hair. The jaw. The cheekbones. The stubble.
Beckett Benson.
My stomach drops through the floor of the elevator just as the lights flicker out again.
B.B. Benson. Beckett Benson. It’s been in the signature this entire time, and I never—how did I never—
“Hey, you okay?” His voice. The voice from the letters. The voice from the dark. “The lights should come back. We’ll be—”
The emergency power kicks in. The elevator groans and starts to move. The lights are still out, but I’m already scrambling to my feet, pulling off his jacket. Waiting for a sliver of light, for the crack of the door. My hands are shaking, and I can’t make them stop.
The lights flicker to life.
“Here.” I toss the jacket blindly in his direction. “Thank you for the jacket and the conversation and I have to—”
“Wait, are you—”
The doors open.
I don’t walk. I don’t look back. I am gone, moving through the lobby like a woman being chased. Yeah, well, you try and stick around when you discover your mortal enemy has a heart.
Wait. He didn’t know it was me, right? Maybe he was playing me?
I don’t know. The lobby is packed, and I use the crowd like a shield, weaving through bodies until I find a bathroom.
I grip the counter with both hands, my heart racing. The mirror shows me a woman who looks like she just saw a ghost. Short, dark hair askew. Mascara holding on by sheer willpower. Eyes wide enough to see the whites all the way around.
“What just happened?” I whisper to my reflection.
My reflection does not have answers. Typical.
Beckett Benson reads my hockey romances. Beckett Benson is my anonymous fan. Beckett Benson—the boy who ruined…everything for me—quoted Breakaway from memory in a dark elevator and said my words reached into his chest and found the thing he couldn’t say.
I’m gripping the counter so hard my knuckles have gone white.
The bathroom door bangs open.
“E.J.! There you are.” Bree’s got the look of a woman who’s been trying to tame lions for the last hour in a blazer made of steak.
“The line is wrapping around the table. I’ve got people asking when you’re coming back.
I’ve been telling them you’re having a moment of artistic contemplation, which sounds better than hiding in the bathroom but—”
“I’m coming.”
She pauses, her gaze snagging on every line of my face. “Are you okay? You look—”
“Fantastic. I look fantastic. Just…give me thirty seconds.”
She holds up a finger. “Thirty. Then I’m dragging you out by your lanyard.” Then she frowns. “Where are the books?”
I sigh. “Long story—”
“Never mind, I’ll get them.”
Right. I hand her the keys. She leaves. I stare at the mirror, and I do what I always do when reality gets too real.
I put on a mask.
I’m E.J. Hartley. I write thrillers. I’m here to sign books for charity. Nothing happened in that elevator. Nothing.
I straighten up, take one last look, then head back to the ballroom.
The signing line is long—Bree wasn’t exaggerating. But my stomach is eating itself, and I haven’t had food since the sad granola bar I inhaled in the car on the way here, and if I’m going to sit and be charming for the next hour, I need sustenance.
Also, I’m cold. I reach for my black sweater, and for a second, all I can think about is—
Nope. Delete, delete.
I spot Bree coming back from the car, box of books in hand. That was fast. “Bree, I’m grabbing us food first. Two minutes.”
“E.J. No—”
“Two minutes. You want crostini?”
“I want you at the table.”
“Crostini it is.” She’s going to murder me, I know it. But at least I won’t die hangry.
The buffet is half picked over, but there are still mini quiches and those little toast things. I grab two plates—one for me, one for Bree—and start filling up. I’ll admit, maybe the close call with Beckett has me stress eating.
I make it to the end of the line before I spot the drinks and realize two hands aren’t going to cut it. I snag an empty serving tray from the end of the buffet. I’m sure nobody will mind.
I’m arranging the plates when a shadow falls over the tray.
A hand places an empty Perrier bottle between the mini quiches and the crostini. “Thanks.”
One word. Casual. Already turning away. Already looking at his phone.
Cedar and sandalwood.