Chapter 2
TWO
SCOTT
Imake it exactly three steps out of The Fiction Nook before I trip over my own feet.
Not a little stumble or a minor balance correction. A full, spectacular near-face-plant that requires grabbing the doorframe like a man who’s just discovered gravity is a personal enemy.
I’m forty-five years old. I own half the commercial real estate in Twin Waves. I’ve closed deals worth more than some countries’ GDP. I once stared down a room full of hostile investors without blinking.
And I just nearly killed myself on a perfectly flat boardwalk because I was too busy looking back through the window at Jessica Wells.
I catch myself with what I desperately hope passes for casual grace but probably looks like a giraffe on ice skates.
Through the glass, she’s watching me with the ghost of a smile before she turns away.
Of course she saw.
The universe has an excellent sense of comedic timing and a personal vendetta against my dignity.
“Smooth, Avery,” I mutter, straightening my tie and attempting to salvage what’s left of my self-respect. “That’ll definitely convince her you’re a competent adult and not a disaster in an expensive suit.”
A tourist family walks past, the father giving me a concerned look.
But to be fair, I am talking to myself on the boardwalk, in public.
I walk back to my condo like everything is normal, refusing to look back or acknowledge that my heart is still racing from the moment her hair fell down and I forgot every word in the English language.
The five-minute walk takes approximately seven years. I replay the conversation on loop—if you can call hostile negotiations peppered with accidental sexual tension a “conversation.”
I focus on the way her eyes flashed when I mentioned the rent increase.
How she stood her ground in jeans and a cardigan with a hole in the elbow and still made me feel like the underdressed one.
The moment her hair fell down and I nearly forgot every reason I’ve spent six months staying away from her.
That stupid pencil, coming loose at exactly the wrong moment.
Or the right moment, depending on how you define “disaster” and whether you enjoy watching a grown man’s brain short-circuit in real time.
I wanted to touch her, tuck that strand behind her ear and watch her breath catch, to stop being the villain in our story long enough to tell her the truth about everything.
Instead, I threatened to sell her building.
Because I’m a bestselling romance author who can’t talk to the woman I love without sounding like a corporate jerk.
The irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t actively destroying my will to live.
My condo is exactly what you’d expect from a man who has too much money and not enough emotional intelligence to decorate with anything resembling personality.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the Atlantic, surrounded by white walls and gray furniture. Not a single personal item is visible because personal items tell stories, and I’ve spent years making sure no one reads mine.
It looks like a luxury hotel designed by someone who’s never experienced joy, and I hate it.
I drop my briefcase by the door. It lands on my foot because today is committed to humiliating me, and I limp toward the one room that matters. The guest bedroom at the end of the hall. Always locked. The only space in this entire hollow apartment that feels like home.
My writing office.
Also known as: the room where I keep all the evidence that Scott Avery, ruthless businessman, is actually V. Langley, romance novelist who writes about feelings for a living.
If anyone ever found this room, my reputation would be destroyed.
If Jessica ever found this room, I’d probably die on the spot, which would at least solve the problem of having to explain myself.
I unlock the door and step into a different world.
Where the rest of the condo is cold surfaces and carefully curated emptiness, this room is warm chaos.
My leather chair has molded itself to my shape over countless late-night writing sessions.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are crammed with romance novels—hundreds of them, organized by subgenre and author and level of emotional devastation.
My desk is covered in coffee rings because I never remember coasters when I’m deep in a scene. Stacks of manuscript pages are covered in my handwriting because sometimes the words flow better by hand.
And on the wall directly across from my desk, in a simple black frame, hangs the review that broke me.
J.A. Reads Romance left a two star review six months ago.
I’ve read it approximately five hundred times. Maybe more. I’ve memorized every word. Every devastating, accurate observation.
Most people put motivational quotes on their walls. I put my worst review.
This is probably why I’m single.
She was right, though, I’m assuming she’s female, that’s the impression I’ve gotten.
But her accurate assertion is the part that gutted me.
Not that someone finally noticed my books had gone hollow—plenty of reviewers had.
But that she noticed. The anonymous voice who’d been championing my work since book one.
Who wrote reviews that understood what I was trying to say even when I didn’t fully understand it myself.
I’m a romance author who broke a reader’s heart, and not in the satisfying “ugly-crying at the black moment” way. In the “you used to be good and now you’re not” way.
But everything is fine, right?
I sit down at my desk, narrowly avoiding the coffee cup I left there three days ago with the questionable contents and open my laptop. I keep J.A. Reads Romance’s complete review history bookmarked because I’m not obsessive, I’m thorough.
There’s a difference. Probably.
I’ve read all her reviews. The glowing five-star raves for books that moved her. The thoughtful three-star assessments that acknowledged flaws while finding the heart. The rare two-star devastations reserved for books that felt dishonest or manipulative.
Books like my last three releases.
It’s been a delightful six months, really. Nothing builds confidence like watching your favorite reviewer systematically dismantle your life’s work with genuine disappointment.
My phone buzzes with an email notification.
I almost ignore it but I’m busy wallowing. Then I see the sender.
Harold Brix.
My stomach executes a complicated gymnastics routine involving at least three flips and a dismount into pure dread.
Harold is one of Reed Development’s primary investors. He and Patricia Morgan sit on our advisory board, which is a polite way of saying they own enough of the company to make my life miserable whenever they feel like it, which is often, because Harold’s only joy in life appears to be disapproval.
I open the email.
Scott,
I know we’ve discussed this at length, but it seems you need another reminder.
Patricia and I have reviewed the Q3 performance metrics. Several properties are still significantly underperforming. The boardwalk location (currently leased to the bookstore) is flagged as 47% below market rate for comparable retail space.
We need a resolution within 90 days. Either bring the property to market rate or sell to a tenant who will.
Let’s schedule a call this week.
-HB
I read it again, hoping the words might rearrange themselves into something less catastrophic, but they’re still the same the second time. Imagine that.
I told Jessica sixty days, which means I technically bought her an extra month before the board starts asking questions I can’t answer without revealing that I’m a lovesick idiot who’s been subsidizing his crush’s business for three years.
Questions like: Why have you been carrying this property at a loss?
Why did you personally intervene when the previous landlord tried to sell?
Why does your real estate development firm have a glaring blind spot for one specific bookstore owned by one specific woman with hazel eyes and a cat who likes you better than she does?
The answer, of course, is that I’m a fool of spectacular proportions.
I’m in love with her. Have been since the first time I walked into The Fiction Nook two years ago for a “routine property inspection” and found her recommending a romance novel to a teenager with such genuine care that I forgot how to speak.
I’ve been using my position to protect her business while simultaneously pushing her away, because I’m a coward who doesn’t know how to reconcile the man I show the world with the man I actually am.
But I can’t tell Harold that.
“Dear Harold,” I mutter, drafting a response in my head. “The bookstore is underperforming because I’m emotionally compromised. Please adjust your spreadsheets accordingly. Best regards, your disaster of a business partner.”
Yeah. That’ll go over well.
I close the email and open a different file instead.
The manuscript.
The one I’ve been working on for six months, ever since J.A.
Reads Romance told the world I’d lost my way.
The one where I’m trying to write honestly for the first time in years, which mostly means I write three sentences, hate them, delete them, and then stare at the blinking cursor like it personally offended me.
The scene on the screen is barely coherent. But it’s also more real than anything I’ve published lately, which is either progress or evidence that my published work is truly terrible. Possibly both.
He watched her through the shop window, this woman who saw through every careful defense he’d built. She moved between the shelves like she was dancing, pulling books for customers with care like she was handling precious goods.
Which, he supposed, books were to her. Not just inventory, but stories with hope and connection.
Her eyes were hazel—brown in some lights, green in others, always changing, impossible to pin down, like trying to capture water in your hands.
He was standing outside her world, looking in, without deserving to enter but unable to walk away.