Chapter Twenty-Six
Ciara
The news is everywhere. Every social media platform. Every blog. Every entertainment site. My only consolation is that they’ve got only half the story. They know there’s a book but don’t know who’s writing it. For now, I’m in the clear.
I can cling to that much, at least.
“No one’s getting through that,” Ronan calls from the pub door. He slaps the wood with his palm and double-checks the lock. “You’re sure Maddie will be all right?”
“She said she’s going to ‘disperse’ them,” I say. “I think it’s best not to ask questions.”
“Certainly never failed me,” he agrees as Sam emerges from the back room, his phone in one hand and a glass of water for me in the other. He’s been on and off with Casey for the last while and puts him on speaker now as he sits in the booth beside me.
“Hey,” he chides when he sees my own phone in my hand. “Don’t look at that.”
I ignore him, continuing to scroll through a sea of comments.
“Ciara. Come on. Nothing good is going to come of reading that stuff.”
“They’re not all mean.” Only the ones I’m paying attention to.
Sam and Ronan share a look before Ronan plucks the thing from my hand.
“You have no self-control,” Sam says as I sputter, and Ronan makes a show of putting it behind the bar.
Whatever.
I know he’s right, even though I hate to admit it. It’s just that at some point in the past hour, I’ve become a glutton for punishment.
There’s a lot of excitement. A lot of exclamation marks.
But not everyone is happy about the book.
A lot of them are furious. They don’t think the series should be touched.
And the rest just want to know who’s writing it.
A gazillion forums and threads have appeared, all dedicated to discussing who it could be.
My name’s come up a few times, which I guess should be expected, but it’s still startling.
“I just don’t understand how they found out,” I say for the millionth time.
“Who else knows about the book?” Casey asks over the phone.
“Just Maddie. But she’s known from the start.” And no way would she leak it. No one here would. “There was a woman at the beach who saw me writing it,” I say. “She said she was a fan, but I don’t think she realized what it was. She never said anything. But maybe?”
“It’s unlikely, if she didn’t ask you about it at the time. Anyone else?”
“No one.” I pause. “Except…well, Mary did—”
Sam’s eyes dart to me. “Mary knows?”
I frown at his tone, feeling weirdly defensive of her since she helped me with that reader at the beach. She’s a gossip, but she’s our gossip. “She wouldn’t say anything.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“But she’s—”
“It wasn’t her,” I say sharply, and Casey clears his throat.
“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” he says. “All we can deal with right now is what we’re going to do going forward. I have Laura on the phone here, Ciara. She works with Sam in editorial.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” a woman’s voice chimes.
“You too,” I say, unable to help myself as I glance sideways at Sam. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
He gives me a look.
“I’m going to get right to it,” she says. “I’m sorry that this happened, but in these kinds of situations fan theories tend to run wild, and we want to put a stop to that. I think the best thing to do right now is to be truthful and explain exactly what’s going on to our readers.”
“What?” I sit up, panicked, and Sam immediately jumps in.
“We’re not releasing Ciara’s name as the author.”
“Oh no,” Laura says quickly. “Don’t worry. I’m talking purely about the book just existing at this stage. It’s a good news story, and we should treat it as one. But we need to control it. I think we should make an appearance at Ravicon this Saturday.”
I suck in a breath as Sam goes still beside me. Neither of us answers.
“Are you still—”
“We’re here,” Sam says, his eyes on me. “I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that’s an option. Even if she’s just representing Frank’s estate, if Ciara shows up, people might—”
“Sorry, Sam, I didn’t mean Ciara,” Laura interrupts. “I meant you.”
“Me?” His surprise would be funny if I weren’t freaking out.
“Unless you want to break the news now, Ciara? Get ahead of the game?” I can hear the hopefulness in her voice, but the thought fills me with such anxiety that I don’t even consider it.
“Can’t we just put out a statement?” Sam asks when I don’t respond.
“Yeah, if we want to be bad at our jobs,” Laura says bluntly, and despite everything I decide that I kind of like Sam’s work nemesis.
“Look, obviously this isn’t how we wanted the news to break, but it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Ravicon is the best place for us to speak directly to his readers and you’re already in the country.
It’s all anyone is going to talk about anyway. ”
Sam opens his mouth, but I put a hand on his knee before he can respond, and when he looks at me I nod.
You sure? he mouths, and no, I’m not sure, but Laura’s right. We have to do something.
“If you think we should,” I whisper, and don’t miss the flicker of relief on his face even as my chest tightens. It’s the right choice. I just don’t like it.
“Okay,” he says out loud. “So long as I know what I’m saying, I can do it.”
“Great,” Laura says briskly. “There’s a flight that night we can book you on and then Casey has agreed we should have an all-hands-on-deck meeting on Monday to—”
“Flight?” Sam interrupts. “What flight?”
“To New York,” Laura says.
Sam’s eyes flash to mine, but it takes me a moment—one distracted, lost moment—before I realize what’s she saying.
“We need you back here,” Casey continues when Sam doesn’t say anything. “I know you wanted a few more weeks, but there’s too much work to do now.”
He keeps talking, but it’s like he’s speaking in a different language, one I can’t even hear owing to the sudden roaring in my ears. New York? He can’t go back to New York. He can’t—
“You’re doing great work, Ciara,” Casey says, and I zone back in with a snap. “I know you’re worried about this, but you don’t need to be. Your only job here is to focus on the book.”
“Okay,” I say weakly. Though I don’t know how I can do that when right now all I can focus on is the man sitting beside me. The one who doesn’t look any happier than I do.
“Could you give us one second?” Sam asks abruptly, and doesn’t wait for a response before putting us on mute. “I don’t have to do it,” he says to me. “Any of it.”
“Of course you do.”
“Ciara—”
“I’m okay,” I lie. “I get it. This is your job.” And I’m just a part of it. The little-girl pity party in me is having a field day, but the adult me smiles, trying to be encouraging.
His dark eyes study me, but I don’t know what he’s looking for. What he wants.
“Would it be better if you went back?” I press, and his jaw clenches.
“Yes,” he says eventually. “Casey put me on this book. That means that I’m in charge of it. That every decision should go through me. It would be easier for everyone if I were in the office.”
“Then that’s where you should be.” The words sound forced even to my own ears, and I nudge his knee with mine. “Especially since Laura seems to be in charge right now.”
He doesn’t smile at my attempt at lightness. Doesn’t even pretend to, and when he doesn’t respond, I lean forward and unmute the call. “Okay,” I say. “Keep going.”
“Sam?” Laura asks.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat, pulling his gaze from me. “Okay. What are we putting out in the meantime?”
Laura launches into the details, saying things like statement and sign off and Entertainment Weekly. Sam jumps in every now and then, switching to editor mode before my eyes, but I say nothing. Do nothing.
I felt as though my world was just starting to make sense again, and now it’s being ripped apart in real time. And when Ronan sets a small glass of clear liquid before me, a gentle expression on his face, I don’t even ask what’s in it before snatching it off the table and knocking it back in one.
We spend the rest of the day at Ronan’s before returning to the house. Thankfully the people lurking on the road have gone by the time we get back, Maddie having done as she promised.
Once inside, I say something about needing a shower and take the stairs two at a time, letting the water wash the day away before I dress for bed. It’s well before my usual time, but I’m so exhausted I can’t even think.
“You’ve been staring at the wall for five minutes now.”
I look up to find Sam standing in the doorway. His hair is wet and he’s changed his clothes and the thought of him leaving makes me want to throw something at him.
“The only way to know that is if you’ve been staring at me for that long too,” I say instead.
“I don’t deny it.”
“You can come in,” I tell him, and he hesitates only briefly before sitting beside me on the bed. He smells like my soap.
“You okay?” he asks.
“No.” And then, “I want to go with you to Ravicon.”
He frowns at that. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to. I mean, not attend, but I could go with you to Dublin. Especially since you’re leaving straight after.” My throat closes up as soon as I say the words and an awkward silence stretches between us.
Sam is the first to break. “Ciara—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I interrupt. “I know we should, but I don’t want to. Not tonight.”
He seems torn but relents, as if knowing one wrong move will break me. “Of course you can come,” he says quietly. “You can stay in the hotel if you don’t want to go in. The convention’s been booked out for a few weeks, but they set rooms aside for panelists.”
“And you’re going to do a panel?”
“They’re calling it ‘The Future of Ravian.’ It was supposed to be on fan fiction but slotting me in there made the most sense. I’ll be as vague as possible about everything else, and that’s it.”
“That’s it,” I echo.
And then he’ll get on a plane and go back to New York and I don’t want him to go.
“I’m fine,” I say, even though he didn’t ask. “Honestly. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day and I’m worried about Maddie and now, with the book, and I’m just…really, really tired.”
Sam stays silent, letting me babble even though I wish he wouldn’t.
I wish he’d order me back to the office, tell me to get to work.
But he just sits there, his leg pressed against mine, and his gaze on me, and when I try to take a breath it shudders, as though something’s stopping it from coming in all the way.
“Shit,” I mutter because I don’t cry. I never cry.
I get moody and quiet and don’t speak to people for days, but I don’t cry.
But now the tears are slipping down my cheeks and my throat feels tight and my head feels full and Sam’s putting an arm around me, not drawing me into his side but onto his lap, and I wrap myself around him like a goddamn koala.
His hand creeps up into my hair, and I bury my head in the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply.
We stay like that for so long that I must fall asleep. I must, because one moment my eyes are closed and the next, they’re open and we’re lying on my bed above the sheet, as wrapped up in each other as two people can be with their clothes still on.
Sam is dead to the world, and I spend a few minutes just staring at him, trying to commit every inch of him to memory, because he’s leaving. He’s leaving and I’m too scared to ask him to stay because I don’t know what I’ll do if he says no. I don’t think I could take it.
I watch him until my eyes grow heavy again, and, this time, I fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat beneath me.