Chapter 22
Ryan
Six Years Ago
“I don’t think secluded is a strong enough word.”
Without looking, Scarlett waves a hand over her shoulder to swat at me. I take a step back, laughing as she narrowly misses knocking the glasses off my face.
“Will you please not read over my shoulder? You’re interrupting greatness here.” Her keyboard doesn’t even stop clicking as she speaks. If I hadn’t been witness to her process for over a year now, I would think she was just click-clacking at fake words to make a point, but she’s not. She really can talk and type at the same time.
Sort of. Sometimes I find little snippets of our conversation buried in parts of her draft where they have no business being. I quietly delete those for her with a soft smile, unlike when I find familiar phrases very purposefully woven into the fabric of her writing. I bask in those and let them warm me to my core.
Scarlett is likely only vaguely aware of the way I’m watching her right now. She’s sitting cross-legged on a chair we dragged in from the kitchen at a table turned desk in the corner of my bedroom. There’s a perfectly good home office in the next room, but she insisted on this setup. I like to think she wants to be close to me as she works, especially as more and more of her time has been taken up by working. The requests from book clubs and podcasts and other interviewers have continued to roll in, especially now that her second book is getting closer to release. I picked up editing some of it in order to speed up everything and save her some time. Writing, editing, and doing press has proven difficult for her. On more than a few nights. I drift off to sleep and wake up before the sun rises to her clacking keyboard, sure she hasn’t slept at all.
But right now, she seems relaxed. Calm. Happy. She’s wearing black joggers and an oversized T-shirt that hangs off her bare shoulder. Her dark hair cascades down her back, and every once in a while, she pauses to twirl a strand of it around a finger before leaning forward and typing again. She’s never been one for makeup, but she wears absolutely none when she’s working. Once, she told me that she touches her face and bites her lip too much while she writes to bother, and either way, it doesn’t matter because who is watching her anyway?
Me. I watch her. She’s so fucking beautiful like this—at home in my space and hyper-focused on creating her beautiful art. I can’t look away.
It’s a moment before I realize the sound of the keyboard has stopped. She doesn’t move, but she drags her bottom lip between her teeth, and I hurry out to the kitchen to busy myself with making some tea before she realizes I had been ogling her like a creep.
“What’s a better word, then, Mr. Editor?” she calls from the bedroom. She leans back to look at me through the open doorway. The chair creaks as it accommodates her new position.
I drop two tea bags into their respective mugs and smile to myself at how perfect they look together on my counter. “Personally, I prefer Ryan Whitlock, the Wise and Witty Syntax Sorcerer, Wielder of the Red Pen, and Master of Manuscripts.”
Scarlett throws her head back and cackles, exposing the long column of her throat. The chair almost tips from underneath her, but she catches herself at the last second without interrupting her laughter. “I meant instead of secluded ,” she says when she can finally talk again. “But if we’re naming you instead, I have some ideas.” One of her dark eyebrows ticks up, and those lips, swollen and pink from being dragged through her teeth, curl up into a smirk.
I take the steaming mugs back into the bedroom and set one on a coaster next to her laptop. Using my now-free hand, I tuck a wayward strand of her hair out of the way, letting myself linger in the softness of her skin. The mirth drains slowly out of her round, blue eyes as it shifts into something closer to desire.
“I’d very much like to hear what names you have for me in that big, beautiful brain of yours.” I press a kiss to her forehead as if I could kiss her brain right through her skull.
“Hmm.” Her eyelids flutter closed. “I don’t think you want to know what I call you in my head.” She lets out a breathy sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Most of the names I call you when going through your edits aren’t very nice.”
“No?” I tip her chin up so I can kiss her nose. “That doesn’t seem fair. Every name I have for you is exceptionally kind.” A chaste kiss to her lips. “ Brilliant .” Another. “ Beautiful .” Another. “ Amazing .” I use my tongue to soothe the swelling where she’s scraped with her teeth.
“You really missed an opportunity for alliteration here, oh Wise and Witty Syntax Sorcerer,” she teases against my lips. Her hand snakes up to the back of my neck as she pulls me closer and opens for me.
“In my defense”—more kisses, as if even a moment separated is too long—“I’m distracted.”
“Mmm.” The sound of her hum vibrates through me and goes south, settling between my legs. “The Master of Manuscripts is slacking on the job.”
I put my mug on the desk next to hers. “I’m not on the clock,” I correct her, returning to kiss a line down her neck to that bare shoulder that has been plaguing me since she pulled her laptop out to start working. “You shouldn’t be, either.”
At that, she practically wilts. Where there was a tangible sexual energy between us not one second ago, now there’s nothing. I rest a hand on the edge of the desk and another on the back of her chair, caging her in before I pull back to see her wincing in apology.
“I’m almost done with this chapter. I need to get it out, or I’m going to be behind. Can we…put a bookmark in this, maybe?”
In the year since we started seeing each other, I’ve never once resented Scarlett’s writing process. She has always been intensely focused, sometimes going silent for weeks on end if she’s working out a difficult passage. It has been fairly recent that she’s let me be in the room while she works at all, and being able to watch her create is a privilege. Having any part in her work is exhilarating. Her writing is full of emotion. It regularly moves me to tears, and I want to support her in any way I can.
“Of course.” I plant one more kiss on her neck for good measure, then make my way to the bed. Leaning against the headboard, I stretch out my legs and grab the manuscript I had printed out at the office before coming home tonight.
We work in silence for who knows how long. Scarlett seems lost in her own world, and it doesn’t take long for the rhythmic clicking of her keyboard to become background noise to my own reading. Soon, I’m so engrossed in the story in front of me that I don’t notice when the sound stops, and the room falls into complete silence.
“What about love ?”
She’s so quiet, I almost don’t hear it. Her back is to me, and she’s staring at a dark laptop screen. It must have shut off while she was thinking.
I gently lay the manuscript on the nightstand and my red pen on top of it. “What about it?”
From this angle, I can make out the thumb of her left hand pressing circles into the palm of her right. I’ve seen her make this exact motion when she’s on the phone with her editor and she isn’t quite sure how to proceed.
“I…I was wondering if it’s a strong enough word. Love .”
Ever so slowly, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. Scarlett doesn’t move to look at me, but her shoulders tense and her thumb stops its movement.
“It doesn’t seem strong enough.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Not by your standards anyway. But I can’t think of another one that would be more appropriate—”
“Scarlett,” I say, my voice low and soothing. “What are you trying to say?”
She does turn to look at me then, draping an arm over the back of the chair and pressing her chest into it as if she could hide her vulnerability. Her brows are pinched together, and her bottom lip looks like she’s drawn blood by chewing on it so much.
Those blue eyes meet mine, and I could swear I see turmoil playing out in their depths. “I love you?” Her voice tips up on the end like a question, and her eyes fall to the ground. “See? It’s not right,” she mutters to herself as she shakes her head.
I take two steps and fall to my knees in front of her. She opens her legs to accommodate me as I push my torso between them and reach up to cup her beautiful face in my hands. “You love me?”
“I more than love you,” she whispers shakily, as if she might cry. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“ Love isn’t a strong enough word,” I whisper back. A tear trails along her cheek, and I swipe at it with the pad of my thumb. “Not for how I feel about you, either. I don’t think the English language has a word that can describe it.”
She barks out a wet laugh. Her trembling hands circle my wrists as she presses her eyes closed, tears leaking from them. “English sucks.” She sniffles. “You’d think the Wizard of Words would be able to come up with something.”
“Syntax Sorcerer,” I correct her softly.
“I was referring to myself,” she fires back. Those eyes open and land right on mine, and they almost glow in the soft light of the room.
Chuckling, I wipe her lingering tears away. I want to scream from the rooftops or do a dance. Maybe burst at the seams. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am in this moment. But instead of doing any of those things, I say as calmly as I can, “I suppose love will have to do.”
And then, I decide that my mouth is better used to kiss her than to unsuccessfully try to find words to adequately tell her how I feel. Gently, I pull her closer, and she obliges. Her mouth opens immediately, and she lets my tongue dance with hers. When she scoots forward on the chair to press her chest into mine, I can feel her racing heart. My own is still soaring, beating in time with hers.
Scarlett loves me. She more than loves me . And I feel the same way about her.
She pulls back to look at me, studying my face like she’s committing it to memory.
“ Love ,” she whispers, as if trying on a new word to see how it feels.
“ Love ,” I reply, turning the word this way and that.
We share a smile, letting the word settle between us. And even though I can tell she’s just as happy as I am to have finally shared this with me, there’s something else tugging at her attention. Instead of annoyance at having to share this moment, though, I am filled with a giddiness that I know her well enough to be able to tell when she’s fully here with me and when she’s not.
I know her. I love her. And she loves me. That’s all that matters.
I smile indulgently at her. “Do you want me to read through your chapter?”
“Oh. It’s late,” she protests half-heartedly.
“I want to.”
She leaps off the chair and grabs her laptop. I recline on the bed against the headboard in my original position with my legs spread out, and she crawls over the expanse of the bed to hand the laptop to me.
“I’m really excited about this one.” She kicks her legs under the blankets and lies on her stomach with her hands making a pillow under her cheek as she looks up at me.
If history is any indication, she’ll be asleep in minutes. I don’t mind; the love of my life is deeply satisfied, both emotionally and artistically. There’s no small amount of pride in knowing I’ve played a part in both, and with all the late nights she’s been pulling recently, she needs the rest.
Sure enough, I haven’t even gotten to the second new page before her breathing evens out. A quick glance in her direction tells me her eyes are closed, and her body is relaxed into the mattress.
I smile softly as I watch her and send up a quick thank-you to whatever higher power put this woman in my path. She loves me , I think, and my smile grows even wider.
Trying to focus, I turn back to Scarlett’s laptop. But after another page, I feel her hand on my thigh, chilled even through the fabric of my sweatpants.
She sighs contentedly in her sleep, and her breathing slows even further. Her hand anchors herself to me like she’d been adrift in her dreams and needed something to hold on to.
No, like she needed to hold on to me . I’m what she’s chosen to anchor herself to. Not her job or her words or any of the other options she has to ground herself. Me.
Love might not be a strong enough word to describe how I feel about her, but I resolve, right then and there, to be strong enough for her so she can anchor herself to me forever.