16. Erika
— ? —
Erika
The clip has been spreading for weeks. I didn’t know anyone was filming, didn’t know that my acceptance speech would resonate with millions of people scrolling through their phones at two in the morning looking for a reason to feel less alone, but it did.
For every woman who’s ever felt invisible. Wanting to be seen. Those words, spoken on a stage next to an empty chair, have been viewed fourteen million times, and the number doesn’t feel real, more people than live in some countries, more than I ever imagined would care about anything I had to say.
The think pieces came first, then the threads, then the podcast episodes analyzing my speech, my dress, my body language, the way my voice cracked on “wanting to be seen,” people I’ve never met dissecting my life like it belongs to them.
Then came the readers, and my book jumped from obscure indie romance to the bestseller list in two weeks.
Coming Home, the story I wrote in stolen hours before dawn, is sitting at number seven on the New York Times list, and Tessa calls every morning with new opportunities, foreign rights in twelve countries, audiobook offers from three studios, interview requests from magazines I used to read in grocery store checkout lines.
And now the trades are reporting that Dean Calloway’s production company is circling the film adaptation.
I’m at the typewriter when it happens, halfway through a scene that’s fighting me, a woman standing in a hallway trying to decide whether to knock, and I’ve typed the knock three times and pulled the page three times because every version has her knocking too soon, and I’ve just decided she doesn’t knock at all, she stands there until someone opens the door, and I’ve rolled in the fourth sheet and gotten as far as her hand when my laptop chimes on the kitchen table behind me.
I’m sitting at the table staring at it when my royalty statement loads, and the number makes me blink, then blink again, then close the laptop and open it to make sure I’m not hallucinating, and I’m not.
I stand up and pace my small apartment, trying to process what this means, because that number represents years of writing before dawn while Kai slept, years of believing in a thing no one else could see, years of being told my dreams were impractical and I should focus on supporting my husband’s career instead of building my own.
I’m still pacing when someone knocks on my door, and the buzzer never went, so somebody downstairs let him in, and I’m going to have words with my neighbors.
My heart does a stupid little jump, because apparently my body hasn’t gotten the memo about boundaries, and when I check the peephole it’s exactly who I expected.
Kai. He’s holding a bottle of champagne and wearing that expression I know too well, the one that says he’s about to try a thing he’s already convinced will work, his hair a mess and his shirt open at the collar, exposing the hollow of his throat, and I hate that I notice, that my eyes trace the line of his neck down to where his pulse beats beneath tan skin.
I open the door but don’t step aside. “What do you want?”
“I heard about the bestseller list. And the film news.” He holds up the champagne. “I thought we could celebrate.”
“We aren’t celebrating anything together.”
“Then let me celebrate you. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
I should close the door, tell him to leave, to stop showing up, to accept that this is over. Instead, I step aside.
He walks in like he belongs here, which he doesn’t, and sets the champagne on my counter, and his cologne reaches me as he passes, that familiar woodsy scent that used to mean home, and my stomach tightens against my will.
His eyes sweep the apartment, the small space, the secondhand furniture, the typewriter on the desk by the window, and when he turns back to face me I catch the way his shirt pulls across his shoulders, the breadth of them, and I make myself look at the champagne instead.
“You’re using it,” he says quietly, looking at the page rolled into the typewriter.
“I told you. I kept it because I wanted it. Not because of you.”
“I know.” He turns to face me fully. “I have an offer.”
“I’m not interested in your offers.”
“Hear me out.” He takes a breath, and I watch his chest rise and fall beneath the white cotton of his shirt. “A publishing company. Any one you want. I’ll buy it for you. You can run it however you like, publish whoever you want, build it into whatever you want it to be.”
I stare at him.
“You could support indie authors,” he continues, stepping closer. “Give them the platform they deserve. Make it everything you ever dreamed of. Partners, like we used to be.”
“Is that what we’d be?”
“Real partners this time. I know I got it wrong before. Let me make it right.”
The audacity of it takes my breath away. He’s standing in my apartment, the one I paid for with my own money, offering to buy me a company like it’s a peace offering, like he can write a check and erase four years of being invisible.
“No.”
His face falls. “Erika, just think about it. You wouldn’t have to start from scratch. You could skip all the hard parts and go straight to the part that matters.”
“I want the hard parts.” I step closer, and my voice is steady even though my heart is pounding. “I want to build it myself. From scratch. With my name on it. Not gift-wrapped by the man who ignored me for four years.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Isn’t it?” I’m close enough now to see the shadow of stubble along his jaw, the fullness of his lower lip, the way his throat moves when he swallows. “You think you can buy me a company and call it earning. That’s not how this works, Kai.”
“Then tell me how it works. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to figure it out yourself.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
We’re inches apart now, and I can see the tension in his jaw and the way his chest rises and falls with each breath, and his hands are at his sides, fingers slightly curled, and I remember what those hands feel like on my skin, the rough calluses on his palms from the weights he lifts, the way he used to grip my hips hard enough to bruise. My mouth goes dry.
The air between us is charged with four years of history and heat, and I can feel the warmth coming off his body, see the pulse jumping in his throat, and I catch myself wanting him.
I want to close the distance between us, fist my hands in his shirt and pull him down to me and let him kiss me until I forget why I’m supposed to be angry.
I want to trace my tongue along the line of his jaw and feel the scrape of stubble against my lips.
I want him to push me against the counter and make me forget my own name, and I hate myself for it.
“You need to leave,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intend.
“Erika.”
“Now.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes are searching my face, dark and intent, and I know he can see it, the want I’m trying to hide, the way my breath has gone shallow, the flush I can feel creeping up my neck.
His gaze drops to my mouth for just a second, and heat floods through me, pooling low in my belly, and I press my thighs together and take a step back.
“You know I’m not going anywhere,” he says quietly.
“I know. You keep telling me.” I put more distance between us, needing the space to breathe, to think, to stop wanting things I shouldn’t want. “But right now, you need to go.”
He picks up the champagne, then sets it back down. “Keep it,” he says. “You earned it.”
Then he walks out, and I close the door behind him and lean against it, breathing hard, my heart racing and my skin too tight and an ache between my legs that I hate, and I hate him, and I hate myself for being this weak.
My phone buzzes on the counter, Tessa’s name on the screen, and I answer without thinking, grateful for the distraction.
“Good news,” she says. “Dean wants to close the option. Dinner tomorrow night, just the two of you. He’s sending details in the morning.”
“Okay,” I manage. “That’s great.”
“You don’t sound great. Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just processing.”
“Process later. Celebrate now.” I can hear her grinning through the phone. “You’re about to be a movie, E.C. Hart. This is the beginning of everything.”
She hangs up, and I stare at the champagne Kai left on my counter, and then I open it myself and drink it alone, trying to wash away the taste of wanting him, and it doesn’t work.