Chapter 18 #2
Vera’s collection takes up an entire wall of the living room.
They’re paperbacks mostly, spines cracked and softened from years of rereading.
Hardcovers are interspersed as well, and a few are so old the corners have worn to bare cardboard.
They’re organized by nothing I can discern—not author, not title, not publication date.
Just shelved wherever they fit, the way books accumulate in a house where they’re actually read.
My books are mixed in now. Fifteen years of additions, blending with hers until you can’t tell where her collection ends and mine begins.
Jessica runs her fingers along the spines, stopping occasionally to pull one out and examine it.
“She has three copies of this one,” she says, holding up a battered Nora Roberts.
“She kept buying it because she’d lend it out and not get it back. Eventually she just started buying extras.”
“Smart.” Jessica slides it back into place and keeps browsing. “These are organized by emotional impact, aren’t they?”
I stare at her. “What?”
“This whole section is angsty second-chance romances. This one is enemies-to-lovers. This one is—” She stops and pulls out a book.
One of mine.
Book three. The one I wrote right after I stopped talking to my father for good.
“V. Langley,” she says softly. She opens to a random page, and her expression changes as she spots the handwriting in the margins.
“Is this...?”
“Vera’s notes. She read everything I published. Gave me feedback whether I wanted it or not.”
Jessica reads aloud. “‘This hero needs to stop apologizing and start acting. Words are cheap, boy.’” She looks up. “She called you ‘boy’ in the margins of your own book?”
“She called me ‘boy’ until the day she died. Said I’d earn ‘man’ when I stopped being afraid of my own heart.”
Jessica flips to another page. “‘His groveling is almost good enough.’” She’s smiling now, but it’s a complicated expression. “She was tough.”
“She loved me. That’s how she showed it.”
Jessica turns more pages, reading snippets of Vera’s marginalia. I watch her piece together my grandmother through her opinions, humor, and no-nonsense approach to love stories and the men who wrote them.
Then she pulls out another book. The one her two-star review destroyed.
She opens the front cover, and she freezes.
“Scott.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a note in here.”
I know exactly which one.
“‘My boy’s getting better,’” Jessica reads slowly. “‘Still needs more groveling. But he’s finding his way back to honesty. I’m proud of him.’” She looks up, eyes bright.
“She wrote it before she died. I found it when I was going through her things.” My throat is tight.
“But I gave it two stars.”
“You were right to. It wasn’t my best work.”
Jessica closes the book carefully. Holds it against her chest like she did with the pillow.
“That’s why you kicked me off the ARC team,” she says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Because I saw through you.”
“Because you saw me. Period.” I take a breath. “And I wasn’t ready to be seen.”
She puts the book back on the shelf with the same care she’d give something fragile. Her hand lingers on the spine for a moment.
When she turns back to me, her walls are still up. But there’s a crack in them now. I can see it.
“Thank you,” she says. “For showing me this.”
“There’s one more thing.” The words come out before I can second-guess them. “If you’re willing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“The rest of me. The part I show the world.” I meet her eyes. “It’s not pretty. But you should see it. If you want to understand.”
Jessica studies me for a long moment, like she’s weighing the options. Should she stay safe and keep the walls up or take one more step into the unknown?
“Okay,” she says finally. “Show me.”
The penthouse is everything Vera’s cottage isn’t.
Jessica stands in the middle of my living room, turning slowly, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the white walls, the gray furniture, the chrome fixtures. Everything sleek and cold and deliberately impersonal.
“This looks like a hotel,” she says.
“That’s the point.”
“To appear as though no one lives here?”
“More like someone without feelings resides here.” I toss my keys on the counter, the sound too loud in the sterile space. “Someone practical. Professional. Someone my father would approve of.”
She picks up a chrome sculpture from the coffee table—an abstract item I bought because it matched and I couldn’t think of anything I actually wanted.
“This is sad, Scott.”
“I know.”
“You don’t even have books out here.”
“I know.”
She sets down the sculpture and crosses her arms. “So where’s the real stuff?”
I lead her down the hallway, past the guest room no one has ever used, the bathroom that looks like a spa advertisement, and to the door at the end that’s always locked.
“No one’s seen this except Grayson,” I tell her. “And he found it by accident. Walked in when I forgot to lock it and never let me live it down.”
“What’s behind it?”
“Everything I actually am.”
I unlock the door, push it open, and let her see…
The writing office is warm chaos.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with romance novels—hundreds of them, organized by subgenre and author. A leather chair that’s molded itself to my shape over countless late-night sessions sits near my desk.
Stacks of manuscript pages are scattered next to notebooks filled with my handwriting. A cork board covered in plot notes and character sketches and random inspiration hangs on the wall near my desk.
Jessica walks in slowly, like she’s entering a church. Her fingers trail along the book spines, the same way they did at Vera’s.
“This is where you write,” she says.
“This is where I’m real, or at least attempt to be.”
She keeps moving, like she’s taking in the contrast between this room and the rest of the condo. The evidence of a secret life lived in the margins of a public performance.
Then she sees the frame on the wall directly across from my desk with simple black wood and professional matting.
Her words, preserved behind glass.
“‘V. Langley used to write heroes who wore their scars honestly,’” she reads slowly.
“‘This book feels like he’s hiding behind walls while pretending to be vulnerable. The hero’s emotional journey rings false—like the author is writing what he thinks readers want instead of what he truly believes about love. ’”
She stops. Turns to face me.
“You framed my review.”
“I’ve read it five hundred times.”
“It was a two-star review, Scott. I eviscerated you.”
“You were right.” I lean against the doorframe, keeping distance between us because if I get too close I might do something stupid like beg her to forgive me.
“Every word. I was hiding. I was performing vulnerability instead of living it. I was writing what I thought people wanted because I was too scared to write what was true.”
“So you framed it?”
“To remember—every day—what happens when I stop being honest.”
Jessica looks back at the review. “That’s why you kicked me off the ARC team,” she says quietly. “Not because you were angry.”
“Because I was devastated. Because a stranger on the internet saw through me more clearly than anyone in my actual life. And I couldn’t handle it.” I take a breath. “You broke me open, Jessica. And I was too much of a coward to thank you for it.”
She’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I start to worry I’ve said too much, handed her weapons she could destroy me with.
Then she says, “Most people just leave bad reviews on Goodreads. They don’t shrine them.”
The laugh that escapes me is raw. “I’ve never done anything the normal way.”
“No. You haven’t.” She turns back to the bookshelf, running her fingers along the spines. “Your romance collection is better than mine.”
“I’ve been building it for twenty years.”
“You have the entire Laura Kinsale backlist.”
“She’s a master.”
“You have foreign editions.”
“The Italian covers are better.”
Jessica pulls out a book—one of my own, a foreign translation—and examines the cover. “This is you, isn’t it? This whole room. Not the penthouse. Not the suits. This.”
“This is me.”
She puts the book back and turns to face me.
“I don’t know what to do with this, Scott.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“You’ve been three different people and I’ve been furious at all of them and attracted to all of them and I don’t know which one is real.”
“They’re all real.” I push off the doorframe, take one step toward her. “The businessman who threatened your lease, the author whose books you loved and hated, and the correspondent who fell for you through letters… All of them are me.”
“That’s a lot of people to trust.”
“I know.”
“I’m not good at it.”
“I realize that too.”
She’s standing close enough now that I could reach for her, but I don’t.
“My ex-husband made me feel like every opinion I had was wrong,” she says quietly. “Like loving books and wanting a bookstore and believing in romance made me foolish, naive. Less than.”
“Your ex-husband was a jerk.”
“He was. But I believed him for ten years.” She meets my eyes. “That’s a long time to believe someone who’s wrong about you. It leaves marks.”
“Something I know about.”
“I know you do.” She takes a breath. “I’m not ready to forgive you, Scott. Not yet. There’s too much to untangle.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness.”
“What are you asking for?”
I think about it. What am I asking for? What do I actually want?
“A chance,” I finally say. “To be the person Vera saw in me, the one you saw in my letters. Who I’ve been trying to become since you told me I’d lost my way.” I hold her gaze. “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to let me earn it.”
Jessica doesn’t answer. Not with words.
But she doesn’t leave either.
She looks back at the framed review on my wall. At the bookshelves full of love stories, the evidence of a life I’ve hidden from everyone except her.
“Take me home,” she says finally.
My heart drops. “Okay.”
“And Scott?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For showing me.”
I nod. It’s not forgiveness or a promise, but it’s not nothing either.
It’s a door, cracked open.
And I’ll take it.
The drive back is quiet, but different than before.
Jessica stares out the window again, but she’s not guarding herself the way she was on the drive out. Something has loosened like a knot that’s been worked at but not yet untied.
When I pull up to her building, she doesn’t immediately reach for the door.
“I started writing,” she says.
“What?”
“A few nights ago. I opened my laptop and just...started. I ended up with three pages, terrible pages, but mine.” She finally looks at me. “You asked me once, in a letter, what was stopping me from writing my own stories. I didn’t have an answer. I think maybe I’m finding one.”
“That’s—Jessica, that’s wonderful.”
“It’s probably garbage.”
“All first drafts are garbage. That’s what revision is for.”
She laughs softly. “Spoken like a real author.”
“Spoken like someone who’s written a lot of garbage.” I want to ask to read it, to offer help, anything to keep this conversation going. Instead, I say, “I’m glad you’re writing.”
“Me too.” She reaches for the door handle, then pauses. “The cottage, Vera’s place, is special.”
“It is.”
“Don’t let anyone else change it.”
“I won’t.”
She opens the door, steps out, then leans back in.
“Goodnight, Scott.”
Not ‘Mr. Avery,’ not cold. Just my name, in her voice, like it belongs there.
“Goodnight, Jessica.”
She closes the door, walks down the boardwalk to her building, and disappears inside.
I sit there for a long time, engine idling, replaying every moment of the evening. From the candles to the laughter to Grandma’s signs. And finally, the framed review and her face when she finally understood.
It’s not forgiveness or a beginning, but it’s not an ending either.
And for now, that’s enough.