Chapter 12
TWELVE
SCOTT
I’m already here, early, sitting on the driftwood log where we had our seagull therapy session, watching the sky shift from black to deep blue to something softer at the edges. I’m nearly half an hour early because apparently I have no chill whatsoever.
The ocean is still dark, waves whispering secrets I’m too anxious to decode. Yesterday in her office, I almost told her everything. Almost kissed her. Almost destroyed my entire carefully constructed double life because she looked at me like I was someone worth knowing.
Footsteps in the sand have me turning.
Jessica is walking toward me, wrapped in an oversized cardigan that’s slipping off one shoulder, her auburn hair loose. She’s carrying two coffee cups like offerings.
She looks nervous. Determined. Beautiful.
“You’re early,” she says.
“So are you.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
She sits beside me on the log, close enough that our shoulders almost touch, and hands me one of the coffees. Her fingers brush mine, sending warmth through me.
We sit in silence for a moment, facing the horizon where the first hints of pink are starting to bleed into the blue.
“So,” she says finally. “Before you say anything, I have questions.”
My heart rate spikes. “Okay.”
“And I need you to be honest with me. Completely honest. Even if it’s hard.”
“I can do that.”
“Can you?” She turns to look at me, and there’s something searching in her expression.
Something that makes me think she already knows more than she’s letting on.
“Because I’ve been thinking, Scott. About a lot of things.
About the letters. About you. About how certain coincidences are starting to feel less like coincidences. ”
I should just tell her. Right now. Rip off the bandage.
But she’s still talking.
“Before I ask my questions,” she says, “I need to tell you something first. Something I haven’t told anyone. Because if I’m going to demand honesty from you, I should probably start by being honest myself.”
“Okay,” I say carefully. “I’m listening.”
She takes a deep breath and stares out at the water.
“Before the bookstore,” she says, “I was an insurance claims adjuster.”
I blink. “You were a what?”
“Insurance claims adjuster. For fifteen years.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.
“I sat in a beige cubicle under fluorescent lighting that made everyone look like they had a liver disease, and I told people their water damage wasn’t covered.
That their roof replacement was ‘outside policy parameters.’ That their dead grandmother’s jewelry wasn’t worth what they thought because they’d failed to update the appraisal. ”
“That sounds...”
“Like a special circle of hell designed specifically for people who secretly wanted to spend their lives surrounded by books?” She picks up a shell and turns it over in her hands.
“It was exactly that. My ex-husband loved it, though. ‘Great benefits,’ he said. ‘Stable. Recession-proof.’” She pitched her voice lower, mocking.
“‘You can always get a job in insurance, Jess. Nobody gets laid off from crushing dreams.’”
“He sounds charming.”
“He was a delight. Eight years of marriage to a man who thought ‘impractical’ was the worst insult in the English language.” She throws the shell toward the water.
“I wanted to open a bookstore. From the very beginning, I told him that was my dream. A little shop filled with romance novels, book clubs, a place where people could find the stories they needed.”
“And he said no?”
“He laughed. The kind that makes you feel about two inches tall.” She mimics the sound, bitter. “Said, ‘That’s cute, Jess, but let’s focus on something realistic.’ And I believed him. For eight years of marriage and another five years after the divorce, I believed him.”
The sun is fully up now, painting the world in shades of gold and pink. The ocean sparkles like someone scattered diamonds across the surface. It’s the kind of morning that poets write about, and I’m sitting next to a woman who spent years being told her dreams were worthless.
“You want to know the worst part?” She pulls her knees tighter to her chest. “I used to read romance novels at my desk. During lunch breaks. I’d hide them inside manila folders labeled ‘Quarterly Reports’ so no one would judge me.”
Despite everything, I almost smile. “That’s either genius or deeply sad.”
“Definitely both.” She glances at me, a ghost of humor in her eyes.
“What changed?”
She’s quiet for so long I think she’s not going to answer.
“There was a woman,” she says finally. “A widow. Her husband had just died—heart attack at the grocery store, completely unexpected. One day he was buying bananas, the next day she was picking out caskets.”
I wait.
“A week after the funeral, a storm came through and collapsed part of her roof. Not the whole thing—just enough to let the rain in to ruin the bedroom ceiling and destroy some of his clothes she hadn’t been able to pack up yet.
” Jessica’s voice goes flat. “She’d missed only one payment.
Three months before her husband died, they’d had some financial trouble and the premium was late. Eleven days. That was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For me to have to call her and tell her she wasn’t covered. That the roof collapse wasn’t our problem because of eleven days three months ago.”
The weight of it settles over us.
“She cried,” Jessica says quietly. “Not the angry kind of crying. The exhausted kind. The ‘of course this is happening, why would anything good happen to me’ kind. And I sat there in my beige cubicle with a Tessa Bailey novel hidden in my ‘Quarterly Reports’ folder and thought: I cannot do this for one more day. I cannot be this person anymore.”
“So you quit.”
“The next morning. I walked in, gave my two weeks, and watched my supervisor’s face cycle through about fifteen stages of grief.
” She smiles faintly. “Apparently I really was the best employee in the department. They offered me a promotion. The corner cubicle with the window that actually let in natural light. As if sunlight would make denying claims more palatable.”
“But you left.”
“I left. Cashed out my investments—I’d put my divorce settlement away for years, just letting it grow while I worked up the courage to touch it—and I signed a lease on the boardwalk.
” She looks at me. “The space where my bookstore is now? I walked in and burst into tears. The realtor thought I was having a mental breakdown. I told her they were happy tears.”
“Were they?”
“They were terrified, overwhelmed tears. ‘I’m actually doing this and David is going to be right and I’m going to fail and everyone will know I’m impractical and stupid and—’” She cuts herself off. “But also happy tears. Because even if I failed, at least I’d know I tried.”
The ocean glitters between us, waves rolling in lazy and eternal. A pelican skims the surface, hunting for breakfast. The whole world feels soft and new and full of possibility.
“You didn’t fail,” I say.
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.” The words come out fiercer than I intended. “The Fiction Nook isn’t going to fail. I won’t let it.”
She turns to look at me, really look at me, and there’s something vulnerable in her expression that makes my chest ache.
“Why do you care so much? About my little bookstore?”
Because I’m in love with you, your reviews taught me how to be a better writer, and I’ve been writing you letters for months and you don’t know it’s me. Because everything I’ve done since I met you has been about protecting you, even when it looked like I was threatening you.
“Because some things matter more than profit margins,” I say instead. “Even if I’m terrible at showing it.”
“You’re not…” She says it softly, like a confession. “You’re just...hidden. Like there’s a version of you underneath all the suits and spreadsheets that you don’t let people see.”
I freeze.
“It doesn’t fit,” she continues. “Scott Avery, Real Estate Developer, secretly reading Whitman in the reference section. It’s like finding out a calculator has feelings.”
“I’m not a calculator.”
“No. You’re not.” She tilts her head, studying me. “So who are you, really? When no one’s watching?”
I should lie. Should deflect. Should make a joke and change the subject.
Instead, I say: “Someone who’s tired of pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“That I don’t feel things. That business is all that matters. That I haven’t been—” I stop myself just in time. “That I haven’t been changing. Because of you.”
“Me?”
“You. This place. The way you fight for what matters.” I turn to face her fully. “You make me want to stop hiding.”
“Then stop.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
Because if I stop hiding, you’ll know everything.
You’ll know I’m V. Langley, the author you’ve been reviewing.
You’ll know I’m Coastal Quill, the correspondent you’ve been falling for.
You’ll know I kicked you off my ARC team and read every brutal word you wrote about me and let it break me open in ways I’m still not sure I can survive.
“Because some truths are harder to tell than others,” I say.
“Try me.”
We’re close now. I’m not sure when that happened—when the careful distance between us collapsed into something dangerous. I can see the sunrise reflected in her eyes, all gold and pink and impossibly beautiful.
“Jessica—”
“You scare me,” she admits. “The way you look at me. Like you’re trying to memorize me.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m terrified I’m going to mess this up. And I want to remember what it felt like before I did.”
“Mess what up?”
“This.” I gesture between us. “Whatever this is. Whatever we’re doing at sunrise on a beach pretending we’re just a landlord and tenant having a casual conversation.”
“Is that what we’re pretending?”
“I don’t know what we’re pretending anymore.”
She laughs, quiet and a little breathless. “Me neither.”