Chapter 25
Scarlett
For two people for whom words are our lives, we don’t share many over the next few days. Instead, we spend our time exploring each other’s bodies, savoring all the ways we still fit together.
During the day, Ryan goes to work. Every morning, he tells me he wishes he could stay with me, but he wouldn’t get anything done. There are a few projects in addition to mine that need his attention, and he’s been distracted.
When he’s gone, I write. And while I still have trouble letting go of the work each night, Ryan interrupts, and the pull of his touch is enough to make me close the computer and focus on other things like eating, bathing, laughing, making love.
There’s a voice in the back of my mind that says Ryan used to be enough to keep me grounded before, too, and look how that went. But it’s still small enough that I can generally ignore it. Besides, last time it wasn’t the writing that did me in. It was all the extras—publicity tours, endless book signings, JMP’s constant need for more and more and more. And then the ultimate knowledge that my life could never look the way I truly wanted it to: slower moments, quiet mornings, maybe even a family…
That’s not going to happen this time. Trina made sure of it.
Different book. Different Scarlett. Different outcome.
Ryan has been very careful not to ask me about my breakdown. There have been a few times when he’s skirted around the issue but stopped himself short of asking. For some reason, he seems reluctant to talk about it. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because he’s worried that asking will remind me why I left in the first place or if it’s because he truly doesn’t want to know. There are so many things I want to tell him, but I decide to let him take the lead. If he keeps changing the subject before asking, he has his reasons. I’ll respect those boundaries. Anything he wants to know, I’ll disclose. But for now, at least, I want to give us a chance to look forward instead of back. It’s what he seems to need from me, and I want to make him happy.
One night as we’re lying face-to-face in his bed, sated but still unable to take our hands off each other, Ryan skates his fingers lightly over the curve of my hip. He’s taken to touching me in small ways like this, ways that are full of both tenderness and awe, as if he can’t believe I’m here with him.
“Five years.” He says it like a prayer, like he’s lifting his gratitude that we came back to each other up into the universe. It has been such a long time and also no time at all.
“Five years,” I whisper back, hoping that if I add my prayer to his, it’ll mean something more.
“What did you do all that time?”
This is the first time either of us have broached the subject. It feels like a carefully designed question, dipping his toes into the waters of the past, and I imagine he’s working backward toward the day I left. Which is good. It gives me a chance to think carefully about how I want to tell that story when the time comes.
“This and that,” I hedge.
He pinches me, and I giggle. Smoothing over the spot with his thumb, he smiles softly. “Were you alone that whole time?”
“Are you asking me if I slept with anyone else? Because if we’re sharing that kind of history, you’d better be ready to fess up yourself.”
“No,” he says quietly, unwilling to play into my teasing. His tone quickly sobers my mood. His gaze drops to my lips, then back to meet mine. “I called everyone when you wouldn’t answer me. Trina, Mandy, Ava, Katherine…anyone who would have had any contact with you. None of them knew where you were. I went to your condo more times that I’d like to admit that first year. No one had heard a word from you. When I saw your condo was for sale, I finally gave up.”
“But you never stopped worrying,” I finish for him.
“No. I never stopped.”
He’s not wearing his glasses, and his face looks somehow younger and more vulnerable without them. Ryan has always been expressive, but he’s even more so now, without those dark frames to shield him. And the look on his face could break my heart.
“I’m so sorry,” I say on a shaky breath.
Ryan runs his hand soothingly over my side. “No, beautiful. None of that. That wasn’t what I meant. Of course I worried, but eventually, I lived my life. I’m just asking if you were able to live yours, too. I wanted that for you.”
“Well…” I chew on my lip, glancing at the wall over his shoulder. “Yes and no. At first, I left town. That’s why I was never at the apartment. I thought traveling would be a good idea, but I guess I was actually running away.” I take a deep breath and laugh humorlessly. “Shockingly, all my problems followed me wherever I went, and then some, because people would recognize me. I got very good at slipping out of places before anyone could talk to me. I can’t tell you how many times I stopped for a coffee or something and someone said, ‘You look like that writer. You know the one?’”
Ryan chuckles, and it gives me permission to smile, too, though mine is sadder than his.
“So then, I figured I’d come back, but I couldn’t go to the condo. Too many memories.” I finally look at him, then, wincing. “I gave up my old place, hired people to put a lot of stuff in storage, and moved into the place I’m in now.”
“What about your friends?” He almost tiptoes up to the subject, as if he’s afraid of what he might find.
I sigh, looking upward toward the ceiling and rolling onto my back. Ryan’s hand doesn’t lose contact with me as he rests his palm on my stomach. It makes me inexplicably uncomfortable to have his hand there, but its absence would be worse, so I let it go.
“Mandy had just signed her deal, as you know. She was…not happy with me.” I swallow hard. That’s all I can say about that; the rest is still too painful. “Ava and Katherine sided with her. My parents also couldn’t believe I left that money on the table, and even before that, they didn’t think writing was a stable career choice, as you know. I couldn’t deal with their disdain…so I didn’t. And everyone at JMP was only my friend because I had a deal there. Trina stuck by me. God knows why. I think it’s because my royalty checks kept coming, so she was still getting paid.”
Ryan moves his hand to cup my cheek and trails his thumb lightly over it. “That’s not why.”
I shrug as best I can with my body pressed into the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. “That might be why. But it doesn’t really matter. Once I realized I didn’t have anyone left, the full weight of what I had done sank in. I was probably depressed before, but the constant movement kept me going. A body in motion and all that…”
“But when you stopped, you really started struggling,” he guesses.
“Pretty much. So then there was therapy, medication, a lot of trial and error. And then research. Plotting. Outlining. Writing. And now.”
He studies me for a moment with those brown eyes. His eyesight is terrible without his glasses, but I’m close enough to him for him to see me clearly. I roll back to my side so we’re almost nose-to-nose.
“I won’t lie. That makes me feel slightly better.”
I huff a laugh. “Why? Because I didn’t mention sex with anyone else in my sad story?”
He chuckles. “No. Though now that you mention it…”
Scoffing, I smack him lightly on the arm which only makes him laugh harder. His laughter takes a little of the heaviness off my heart.
“I wasn’t exactly celibate these five years, though no one ever compared to you,” he says.
That hurts, but it’s not a surprise. Ryan is a catch. “I wouldn’t expect you to have been.”
“But what I meant was I spent a long time wondering if I had missed something huge. Something I could have fixed. If I didn’t take good enough care of you…” His emotion cuts him off.
It’s my turn to hold his face in my hands. “Please believe me when I say there was absolutely nothing you could have done. All of this was so far out of our control. That was part of the problem. I didn’t have a handle on anything.” I almost continue on to the end of the story, the part I’ve tucked away and hidden from for years, but he’s gone introspective now.
“I could have pushed them for less press or longer deadlines instead of more money. I was young and stupid—”
“We both were. Please, Ryan. I need you to understand that I don’t blame you for anything that happened to me. I never did. It took a lot of work before I was able to stop blaming myself, and I don’t want you to carry that burden, either.”
He watches me for a long time, and I try to convey as much genuineness as I can in my expression. Eventually, he closes the distance between us and kisses me gently.
“Okay,” he says into my lips. “Thank you for telling me.”
I kiss him back, letting my body once again show him exactly how grateful I am that we’re here, together.
“I really thought I was doing better than this.”
I’m sitting on Dianne’s couch, picking at loose threads on a throw pillow in my lap again. I’m surprised this thing doesn’t have holes in it by now. Or maybe she replaces it every once in a while, like a parent swapping out a dead goldfish when their kid isn’t looking.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
Ugh. She’s going to make me figure this out on my own. I hate it when she does that.
“Well, it took a while, but now I’m able to talk about this so easily with you. I thought that was it. Once I could talk it out, I’d be better.” As soon as I say that aloud, I realize how stupid it sounds.
Luckily, Dianne doesn’t laugh at me. Instead, she tilts her head and indulges me with a smile. “Is that really what you thought?”
“Not anymore,” I grumble, face tilted down to the pillow.
She does chuckle at that, but it’s motherly, not derisive. “You should be incredibly proud of yourself, Scarlett. You showed up here—”
“I was dragged here by my agent.”
“Trina doesn’t have the muscle to carry you. You walked through that door on your own two feet, and you’ve kept showing up and working hard to get to a place you feel good about. I mean, look at you. You’re not only writing again, but you’re publishing, too. Two years ago, you didn’t even want to consider that as a possibility.”
“Ryan had to come over and remind me to eat. And bathe,” I admit to the pillow.
“Progress isn’t linear.”
“It should be for me,” I insist stubbornly.
Dianne’s nostrils flare as she frowns at me. “I know you’re deflecting, but I also know you hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. We’ve talked about that when it comes to your writing. It applies here, too. And look, you did eat when Ryan reminded you. That’s improvement. And you bathed, I’m guessing, because you don’t stink more than usual.”
I raise my gaze to glare at her, and she winks. I roll my eyes. Somehow, I always end up feeling like a petulant teenager when I’m here. “So why can’t I talk to Ryan about some of the things that happened? I feel like I clam up, or we end up taking about something else.” Or making out, but that’s probably too much information. I’m sure she’s figured it out anyway.
“Has he asked?”
I make a noncommittal noise. “He never seems to want to know what happened before. Only after.”
Dianne tips her head back and forth, considering. “That could be why. You’re responding to him. Though eventually, you’re going to need to be strong enough to bring it up on your own, if it’s something you feel he should know.”
“He deserves the full story,” I say with more conviction than I feel.
She nods as if this were her assessment, too. “Sometimes, when we’re dealing with something alone, we do a lot of work, and we feel really great about it. But when we try to see it through someone else’s eyes, it can be like holding up a mirror when you’re under fluorescent lights. It shows all the imperfections.”
“That is an oddly specific metaphor.”
She shrugs. “I’m not the writer here. My point is that you’re starting to let people in again. That’s amazing progress. There are bound to be some growing pains.”
“Person,” I correct her. “I’ve let one person in.”
“And your circle has doubled,” she points out.
I’d be offended if it weren’t true. Since it is, all I can do is nod.
“Be gentle with yourself, Scarlett. Everything will happen in time. And when that time comes, you need to remember that you’re strong enough to work through it.”
The only problem is that I’m not only concerned for myself. Now that I have Ryan again, I’m worried about him, too. And us.