Chapter 1 #2
"Could say the same about you." He stands, pushing a strand of dark hair from his forehead. "Though I suppose neither of us is known for our conventional scheduling."
Liam moved to Macmillan around the same time I started my internship with the publishing house. We bonded over late nights, strong coffee, and a shared love of authors who died tragically young. He's brilliant and kind and has this way of looking at me like I'm worth paying attention to.
Despite being the nephew of the CEO Margaret, he never took any shortcuts and wanted to start in the trenches with me and build his way up.
I respect him for that.
"Coffee?" Liam asks, already heading toward the kitchenette.
"Please. I need all the caffeine I can get today."
"Rough night?" he asks, studying my face with that careful attention I'm beginning to recognize.
"Something like that."
“I’m on it.”
He returns with two steaming mugs, handing me mine with a gentle brush of fingers that I pretend not to notice.
We settle into our usual spots—him behind the desk, me perched on the windowsill where I can watch the street come alive.
Liam doesn't push, which is another thing I appreciate about him. He simply sips his coffee and lets the comfortable silence stretch between us.
"Oh," he says suddenly, as if remembering something. "I talked to Margaret yesterday."
My stomach does a little flip.
Margaret Macmillan, the chief editor, who gives Anna Wintour a run for her money, is the kind of woman who could make or break careers with a single red pen stroke.
"About?"
"You. Your manuscript." His eyes brighten with enthusiasm. "She's still interested in reading it, you know. I've been telling her about your writing for months."
I shake my head. "Liam—"
"I know, I know. You want to wait until it's perfect. But Nora, nothing is ever perfect. And what you've written, it's extraordinary." His voice takes on that passionate quality he gets when discussing literature.
What I had written was a story about two souls who existed in different times and keep finding each other in this lifetime through a series of synchronicities.
“The way you weave past and present together, showing how love transcends time itself. It’s brilliant and I know she’s going to think the same." He continues.
Liam’s seen exactly three chapters, stolen glances at pages I left on my desk during particularly vulnerable moments.
What I love most about stories—that although they might be fiction, there are elements of truth between the lines if you look closely enough.
Stories don't just entertain; they connect us to something larger than ourselves.
They remind us that we're not alone in our struggles, our hopes, our deepest fears.
A good story makes you feel like the author has reached across time and space to touch your soul, to say "I see you, I understand you, you are not alone."
That's what I'm trying to create—a bridge between hearts, a reminder that love, in all its forms, is the thread that connects us all. Sounds sappy as hell but these days, writing those feelings into words seems to be the only therapy that’s working.
Somewhat.
"It's not ready," I say, the same excuse I've been using for weeks.
"Or maybe you're not ready to let other people see how talented you are."
I take a long sip of coffee. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"
"Just think about it," Liam says gently. "What's the worst that could happen?"
Margaret could hate it.
She could tell me I'm delusional.
She could confirm what I already suspect—that I'm just a traumatized teenager playing at being a writer.
"I'll think about it," I say instead.
Feels like that's all I seem to be doing lately.
Thinking instead of doing.
“I’m holding you to that.”
The day passes in a blur of manuscripts and phone calls, authors with fragile egos and agents with steel spines. I lose myself in other people's words, in stories that exist safely on the page where happy endings are possible.
By the time I leave the office, the sky has deepened to that particular shade of London twilight—not quite blue, not quite gray, but something in between that feels like secrets.
The tube is crowded with evening commuters, everyone studiously avoiding eye contact while pressed together like reluctant intimates.
I find a seat and pull out my headphones, scrolling through my playlist until I find something that matches my mood.
The song that comes on is one I haven't heard in years—Fleetwood Mac's "Thrown Down.
" I’d almost forgotten it even existed. It's tender and melancholic, and the haunting melody fills my ears.
The song speaks to the emotional turmoil of relationships where mistakes have built barriers between two people—those invisible barricades that make forgiveness feel impossible even when love remains.
There's something achingly familiar about it.
I look up through the tube window as we emerge above ground, catching glimpses of the London sky. The moon is visible, pale and nearly full, hanging like a question mark over the city.
I can't help but laugh at myself.
Here I am, listening to a song and staring at the moon like some kind of romantic comedy protagonist.
I roll my eyes at the cliché, I can’t stop wondering if he ever looks up at this same moon and thinks of me.
The song keeps playing and suddenly I’m eleven again, lying on the bedroom floor at the lake house while he changed the track on that old discman, talking to me about the meaning behind every lyric—pretending to care, but really just wanting to hear his own voice when he spoke about something he loved.
If somewhere in Spain, he’s standing under this same night sky, does he remember the girl who came along for everything, who would have followed him anywhere until life decided otherwise?
The train pulls into my station, jolting me back to reality. I pocket my phone and push through the crowd, emerging onto streets that still feel foreign despite months of walking them.
I head home to Camilla and leftover takeaway, humming along to the song still playing in my head.
Before stepping inside, I glance up one last time at the moon—full, impossible, constant—and wonder if he’s looking at it too.
I think that’s the cruelest thing about growing up.
It isn’t losing your innocence—it’s realizing that love doesn’t always survive transformation, that sometimes the people who knew you best become strangers to who you’re becoming.
But maybe, if we’re both looking up at the same impossible sky, carrying the same ache across different time zones, we’re still sharing something.
Even if we’re no longer sharing everything.