Skylar
"Dear sweet baby Jesus." I grimace as another traveler hacks into the open air without so much as attempting to cover his mouth. "Do these people know elbows exist, or are they determined to share their cooties with the entire airport?"
"I know, right?" Vince sighs beside me.
I angle my head toward him and wrinkle my nose. The poor woman across from us doesn't stand a chance. She's already been coughed on twice, and we've been sitting at our gate for less than ten minutes. Airports are floating petri dishes with overpriced coffee.
My skin crawls.
I'm a self-confessed germaphobe, which makes business travel one long exercise in pretending I don't want to disinfect every surface within arm's reach.
Unfortunately, journalism doesn't care about my comfort level.
Stories happen where they happen, and if I want to chase them, I climb aboard airplanes with several hundred strangers and hope none of them decide to gift me whatever plague they're incubating.
It's worked out well enough so far.
My work has carried me around the world and landed me opportunities I never imagined when I first picked up a notebook. My latest feature ran in Time, and Vince insists there's a Pulitzer somewhere in my future. I smile every time he says it, mostly because he believes it enough for both of us.
Journalism pays the bills. Eden Skye feeds my soul.
No one in this terminal knows they're sitting beside a romance author. That's exactly how I like it. Eden gets to dream while Skylar investigates. One life keeps the other honest.
"I'm going to grab a Cinnabon." Vince pushes himself to his feet and slings his backpack onto the chair. "Want anything?"
"I want you to make better choices."
He snorts. "Not happening."
A few minutes later, he's back with a cinnamon roll roughly the size of a hubcap. The sugary scent drifts in my direction before he even reaches his seat.
I stare at the pastry. Then at him. "Don't you have diabetes?"
"I do." He shrugs without an ounce of guilt. "I also have insulin."
"I'm not judging."
His eyebrows climb.
"Fine." I sigh. "I'm judging a little."
"A little?" He laughs. "Sky, you judge people for breathing too close to you."
"That's different."
"It really isn't."
Just to annoy me, he slowly lifts the cinnamon roll toward his mouth, takes an exaggerated bite, then closes his eyes as though he's having a religious experience.
"Mmm."
I roll my eyes so hard they practically qualify as cardio.
Some battles aren't worth fighting.
While Vince communes with sugar, I unzip my laptop bag and reach for my notebook. My fingers automatically search for a mechanical pencil. I buy them everywhere. Target. Walmart. Grocery stores. Office supply aisles. It borders on ridiculous.
Pencils forgive. Pens don't.
A pencil lets me erase a mistake and pretend it never happened. A pen insists I live with it forever. I have enough perfectionist tendencies without adding permanent ink to the equation.
"What are you writing?"
I instinctively pull the notebook closer. "Nothing, Nosey. I'm looking over your edits."
"The edits are finished." His tone carries that familiar blend of confidence and impatience. "Move on to the next book."
Heat prickles the back of my neck. Vince has many admirable qualities. Diplomacy isn't one of them.
"That isn't how I work, and you know it."
"I know you pay an editor and then insist on editing the editor."
"I review the edits."
"You rewrite the rewrites."
"I make sure everything still sounds like me."
He's quiet for a beat before giving me the look. The one that says I'm about to tell you something you don't want to hear.
"Sky, control has diminishing returns. At some point you have to trust someone besides yourself."
There's the word.
Control.
It's the luxury traditional publishing never offered. Under my own imprint, every sentence lives or dies because I decide it should. Maybe that's stubborn. Maybe it's perfectionism. Maybe it's both.
"I hear what you're saying," I tell him, softening my voice. "I really do."
"You just aren't going to listen."
"Probably not."
He laughs.
I smile despite myself.
The truth is, he's right more often than I care to admit.
Journalism taught me to chase facts and file the story.
Fiction is different. My characters don't disappear when the manuscript ends.
They linger. They argue with me. They wake me up at two in the morning with better dialogue than I wrote the day before.
Walking away from them has never been my greatest strength.
I flip open a fresh page in my notebook.
"What now?" Vince asks.
"I'm working through the next story."
"So, write the messy version."
"I am."
"No." He points at the notebook. "You're outlining instead of writing."
"I'm thinking."
"Same difference. Just get your thoughts down on paper and let me do the rest. Use your imagination, and I'll polish the words. You can't drag your feet, Sky. There's too much competition."
I sketch a circle in the margin and stare at the blank page. The next story is there. I can feel it. I just haven't found the door yet.
Though he spoke around a mouthful of food, my disapproving look wasn't lost on him. He politely covered his mouth with one hand and continued talking anyway. Thankfully, only two more bites remained before the cinnamon roll would finally disappear.
"This is really delicious. You should try one," he mumbled after swallowing. He dabbed at his lips with a napkin, wiping away the streak of white icing that clung stubbornly to the corner of his mouth.
"Excuse me."
Vince and I look up at the same time.
The man seated directly across from us had lowered his hands from his laptop keyboard. Judging by the timing, he'd apparently been listening to our conversation while he worked.
"I couldn't help but overhear you talking about edits and rewrites. Are you an author?"
His expression was sincere, his eyes kind, but it was his voice that immediately captured my attention.
Some men were remembered for their smile or their appearance.
This man's greatest asset was the rich, velvety sound of his voice.
It reminded me of James Earl Jones, Alan Rickman, or Patrick Stewart, the kind of voice that could make even the morning newspaper sound fascinating.
"I'm an editor. She's the author," Vince answered before I had the chance.
That didn't surprise me in the least. Vince had never met a stranger. If there was an opportunity to meet a prospective client, he'd find it.
"I'm sitting here working on a story." The man gestured toward the laptop in front of him before looking back at Vince. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"Not at all. What can I help you with?"
Of course, Vince doesn't hesitate. I know exactly what’s going through his mind. Every conversation has the potential to become a new editing client, and he genuinely enjoys helping writers whenever he can.
As the two of them settle into conversation, I quietly return my attention to my notebook.
Tuning out the world had always come naturally to me.
It was a skill I'd developed as an only child who spent countless hours reading beside my mother.
Books had taught me how to disappear into another world so completely that everything around me simply faded into the background.
Long before I ever traveled for work, I'd crossed oceans, fallen in love, suffered heartbreak, and lived a thousand different lives through the pages of someone else's imagination.
Perhaps that's why writing fiction feels so different from journalism.
As a journalist, my responsibility is to report the facts.
As Eden Skye, I have the privilege of creating people and places readers can lose themselves in for a little while.
Somewhere along the way, I realized I enjoyed being Eden almost as much as I enjoyed being Skylar.
She gave me permission to write romance exactly the way I believed it should be written, and I never forgot that my readers were trusting me with their emotions.
They fell in love with my characters and the worlds they inhabited just as deeply as I did, and I considered that trust an incredible responsibility.
"Sky, are you going to answer him?"
Vince nudged my elbow, pulling me back to the present.
"Huh?"
I look from Vince to the stranger, feeling warmth rush into my cheeks as I realized I'd completely tuned them out.
"Sorry." I smiled sheepishly. "I wasn't paying attention. What was the question?"
"What kind of books do you write?"
There was that voice again. Warm, deep, and smooth enough to make me want to hear him keep talking regardless of what he had to say.
I smiled.
"Romance. Contemporary romantic suspense, to be specific."
"Ah... romance."
He stretched the word just enough for me to recognize the reaction. I'd encountered it many times before. It accompanies the slight tilt of the head, the crooked smile, and the subtle hint of condescension that so often accompanies the discovery that I write romance novels.
In an instant, my perspective shifts. Eden Skye quietly steps aside, and the investigative journalist in me takes over.
I'd been collecting and cataloging reactions like his ever since I began writing under a pen name because, one day, I intend to write an exposé about the publishing industry.
It rarely takes me more than a few minutes to determine whether someone is genuinely interested in my work or merely humoring me because they don't consider romance to be serious literature.
I file his response away with dozens of others, knowing he would probably be shocked to learn just how many independent romance authors have built remarkably successful careers penning love stories.
I incline my head, choosing my next words carefully. "Yes. Romance." The answer comes out more clipped than I intend.
He studies me.
Let him.
It seems I'm forever defending my decision to write romance.
I've had this conversation enough times to recognize the look, the slight hesitation, and the subtle shift in expression that so often follows the word romance.
Everyone has an opinion. If the story is too sweet, it's dismissed as unrealistic.
If it's sensual, it's labeled "mommy porn.
" I didn't invent the chip on my shoulder.
It's been constructed one patronizing conversation at a time, and mostly by people who criticize an entire genre of literature they know almost nothing about.
I mean, really. What is so wrong with escaping into fictitious passion for a few hours?
The world offers enough disappointment without authors having to apologize for stories that remind people that hope still exists.
There is just as much room on the bookshelves which celebrate love, resilience, and happy endings, as there is for political thrillers and horror.
I refuse to feel embarrassed for writing them.
But his reaction feels familiar and I've encountered it enough to think I already know where the conversation is headed.
Silently, I hold my ground and prepare to plant my feet in statistics I've committed to memory, all the while reminding myself that numbers don’t lie and money doesn't care about opinions.
"It seems I'm a hopeless romantic," I say, meeting his eyes without wavering, "and I write stories that, as a whole, generate sales each year.
Romance novels alone generate well over a billion dollars each year.
Regardless of your opinion, a writer is still a writer, and no one should diminish the work put into these stories simply because they center on relationships.
So, according to the facts, you see, there's quite a market for love stories. "
A small smile finds my lips, smugness as much as quiet confidence because facts have a way of speaking for themselves.
His eyes never leave mine.
I've said my piece.
Experience tells me he will either dismiss everything I've said and cling to assumptions, or surprise me by considering a perspective he hadn't expected.
I study him as carefully as he studies me, prepared to defend not only my own career, but an entire community of writers whose work is too often underestimated.
Interviewing people has taught me to pay attention to the moments between words, where expressions reveal far more than conversation ever could.
What I don't expect is the warmth I find in his gaze.
There isn't a trace of ridicule in his expression. There isn't even the condescension I'd braced myself to receive. Instead, I find genuine curiosity, and it catches me completely off guard.