Chapter 36 #2
I can’t even say that I’m surprised. I knew that at some point my publisher would decide I’m not worth the drama.
It’s the loudest thought in my head and the monster in my closet.
It’s the nightmare that wakes me up in a cold sweat.
I chased my dream, and I got it—and now there’s nowhere to go but down.
In the decade since I got my book deal, nearly every thought and action has been driven by the fear of what will happen when it’s gone.
“Well, fuck.” West lets his head fall against the wall. “My agent dropped me.” I open my mouth to let out a string of incoherent rage, but he squeezes my hand and shakes his head. “It’s my own fault. My agent represents a lot of YA authors.”
“Schedule another interview with that journalist. She won’t ignore you this time; you’re in the zeitgeist now. Make your apology tour, and your career will be fine. The Torchers will leave you alone.” The second half of that sentence hangs unspoken in the air. As long as you’re not with me.
West scoffs. “You’re worried about my career?”
“Obviously.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. All I care about is what happens to you.”
I swipe tears off my cheeks. “They can’t postpone my book forever,” I insist, though I wonder how long they’ll wait. Until the scandal blows over? Until I speak out against West?
“I’m relieved to hear that, but I’m worried about you. Here”—he lifts his free hand and taps me lightly on the temple—“and here”—over my heart. “I don’t want you to suffer the same way you did last time.”
We sit so long that we watch the light bleed from the sky, quiet surrender settling around us. With my head on West’s shoulder, I track the sun as it sets, shadows lengthening until they swallow the room whole. “You’re going to leave again, aren’t you?” he whispers into the dark.
I suddenly wish I hadn’t avoided this conversation until now.
If we’d already made the important decisions without the weight of all this surrounding noise, maybe this week would have a different ending.
But I’m leaving, and once again, he won’t ask me to stay, because he doesn’t want to be a person who holds me back.
And I won’t ask him to follow me, because he deserves every bit of success coming to him, and I refuse to get in the way of that.
“What other choice do I have?” I ask eventually, so long after West’s question I wonder if he forgot it. “I don’t want you punished for your association with me.”
He drops my hands and presses his palms into his tired eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Use me as a convenient excuse. I’m telling you that I do not give a single fuck what the internet thinks about me. When you leave, you don’t get to pretend like you’re saving me from anything. You’re scared,” he says bluntly.
“I have every right to be scared. You have no idea what it was like for me last time, because you weren’t there,” I snap with more force than intended.
Hurt flashes across his features, an edge of resignation bleeding through. I realize with an unpleasant lurch that he told me this would happen when he asked me to read his apology letter. He knew there would come a day, sooner rather than later, when I would throw our past in his face.
He rolls his shoulders and looks me square in the eye.
“You’re right. I don’t know, and I feel awful about what you went through.
But that’s not the whole story. You’re leaving because you’re scared of not measuring up to your warped definition of success.
You don’t believe you can be happy without it. ”
I push to my feet. “Don’t act like you’re the expert on me. We barely even know each other.” The lie burns all the way up my throat, leaving a bitter taste on my tongue.
West’s eyes flash as he stands, bringing us chest to chest. “And that. Right there. I think you’re scared that I’m all in. That I’m ready to start a life with you right now.”
“We live on opposite sides of the country!”
“Details.”
“Big ones.”
“No. I love you—that’s a big detail. I don’t want to live another day of my life without you. You think I’m going to throw my hands up based on something as trivial as location or comments on the internet? Give me more credit than that. Give us more credit than that.”
My breath sticks in my chest until I’m choking from lack of oxygen. He loves me. My insides shift to make room for this new truth. It changes my brain chemistry and my cellular structure. It changes absolutely everything—except the reality of our lives and circumstances.
“You don’t want to come to New York,” I say.
His jaw clenches around the truth. No, he doesn’t. “I want to be anywhere you are.”
“What about your job?”
“I’ll find a new one.”
“What about your sister? And your home?”
He pushes his hands through his hair in frustration. “I lost you once because of distance and fear. What kind of coward would I be to not hold on to you this time?”
My body twitches with the urge to launch myself into his arms and tell him that I’ve loved him for so long I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t.
After a stilted moment in which I stand motionless, I realize that West is right about all of it.
My fear is overwhelming, smothering every other instinct and thought.
Tears build behind my eyes, and a fluttery panic takes root in my stomach.
It branches out and digs in until I feel woozy.
You’d think experience would have prepared me to say goodbye to West, but the time and the fight and the effort it took to bring us to this moment make this goodbye excruciating.
“Maybe we can try again when things settle down,” I say, a last-ditch effort to calm the beast clawing at my ribs.
He leans against the desk and stretches his legs out as he studies me. “I’m done with first kisses, Darling. I can’t keep losing you. I won’t survive it again.”
“What does that mean?”
His hands grip the edge of the desk as he studies me.
The unwavering intensity in his eyes makes my skin hot and my chest cold.
He looks at me as if he’ll never get another chance.
“It means this is our last goodbye. I hope you eventually find what makes you happy. You deserve it.” With one final, searing look, West pushes off the desk and drops a kiss to my head before leaving me alone in the office he wanted to be mine.