Chapter 8 Falling in Love Again Elizabeth
Falling in Love Again
Elizabeth
You know what’s great about me?” I asked Lila, who, despite all my plans, I had really come to adore over the past two months of working together day in and day out.
With a pace of two thousand words a day, taking Sundays off, our first draft was complete.
Of course, we still had plenty of editing to do.
“Oh, gosh,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “The list is so long!”
“What I love about me,” I said, “is that I have been so laid back about this entire ghostwriting process.”
Lila laughed. No. Not laughed. Guffawed. “I’m sorry. Is that what you would call it, Lizzy?”
I loved my new nickname now that I’d had time to adjust to it. She handed me a stack of paper, and I gestured as if to say case in point. “Well, yes. I let you write these last three chapters alone.”
She put her hand to her heart. “It’s amazing, really,” Lila said. “Me, a published author, who had written the previous thirty-six chapters with someone snapping over her shoulder No! Not that word! and She should toss her hair here! managed to produce three solo chapters!”
“Oh, the sarcasm,” I said. I held the pages to my chest and grinned at her.
She smiled back. “It’s good, isn’t it? The book.”
“Oh, it’s good. Great, actually. We make an excellent team.”
“I have to go to the coffee shop, but let’s discuss the ending this afternoon after you’ve had time to digest it. I emailed a copy to you too.”
After Lila left, I sat down on my couch, pulling a chunky white cotton throw over my lap, and prepared to fall into these last three chapters.
I had to admit that I was hoping that, somewhere in this process, I would find my writing groove again.
Unfortunately, I had not. I had been able to offer plenty of suggestions, but I still hadn’t written one stark word.
It was disappointing, to say the least. But Grady was going to ask Lila if she would ghostwrite my next book, too, which seemed a better solution than giving back the advance or never putting out another novel.
I noticed that he hadn’t been coming around much while she was here these past few weeks, and I wondered what that meant. Was he just busy? Or had the spark fizzled? Either way, I knew what I had seen had been real. And it made me happy that Grady’s heart had thawed a little, at least temporarily.
I began reading, and right off the bat, something felt different. Something felt off. “No, no, no,” I said, then sighed. “Give her an inch, and she’ll take a mile.”
I hurried off to the office, knowing that this would never do—and knowing how to fix it. I logged into the laptop, opened my email and the document. I pushed Lila’s final three chapters down with my enter key and began to type.
Mrs. Percy had never expected to fall in love with Nathaniel.
That was never the plan. He was never to be more than the stable boy who gave her her fun—and maybe a baby she could love, something that Lord Richardson would never be able to.
But now, he had become more. And she felt like her heart might break if he left her here, alone in these moors to her cold castle and these frigid winter nights.
There, I thought. This is exactly where we needed to go.
I leaned back, considering what would come next, and gasped. I had done it! I had put words on paper! The dry spell was over! I wanted to call Grady, but I was too afraid I would lose it. So, I kept writing and writing, feeling that warmth spread in the center of my chest.
I had always said that writing was a little like falling in love. And here, now, at this desk, writing for the first time in more than three years, I was falling in love all over again.