Chapter Four
Kenzie wasn’t surprised Danny’s truck was already parked in the clearing she’d given him precise directions to. He was obviously anxious about his manuscript, and it was probably worse now that he’d let somebody else read it.
She parked next to him and turned her car off, but he wasn’t sitting in the truck. After scanning the area, she spotted him in the woods.
Danny was at the edge of the river, with his hands shoved in his pockets, watching the water tumble over the rocks. With a blue Henley shirt hugging his back and worn jeans stretched over his butt, he looked like he belonged here in the woods, being outdoors rather than stuck at his desk.
She was wondering if he’d ever tried writing outdoors, with a pen in a notebook, when he turned.
A grin lit up his face when he saw her, and Kenzie’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
The man was so attractive he made her knees weak, had a smile that promised all manner of very enjoyable shenanigans, and knew how to punctuate a text message properly.
He should be illegal.
But he was also headed back her way, so Kenzie forced herself to let go of the wheel. Somehow, she had to stop having these potent reactions to making eye contact with him or she’d end up embarrassing herself and having to avoid seeing him at all.
Kenzie shoved her bag under the passenger seat, out of sight, and got out of the car. After locking it, she dropped her keys in the front pocket of her jeans and slid her phone into the back pocket before heading toward him.
“You picked a beautiful spot,” he said when she reached him.
“There’s a walking trail along the bank of the river. It’s probably over a mile, and there are a few places with rocks or roots to navigate, but it makes for a nice walk.”
“Sounds great.” He turned back toward the river, and she fell into step beside him. “It’s places like this that remind me I don’t get outside nearly enough anymore.”
“You bought a campground with your brothers, but you don’t spend a lot of time up here.”
“That’s kind of how it was set up,” he explained. “I put in more toward the financing and they put in more of the sweat equity. It was more of an investment in my brothers than an opportunity to get outdoors more often.”
Kenzie smiled her thanks when he held a protruding branch up so it wouldn’t hit her. “I have what might be a strange question at this point, but I realized I call you Danny because your brothers do and that’s the only thing I’ve heard you called, but would you rather I call you Dan?”
“Definitely not,” he said quickly. “The only place Dan Kowalski exists is on my book covers. And my social media, I guess, which means readers call me that. I’m Danny, though, unless I’m in trouble with my parents, and then I’m Daniel.”
“It doesn’t bother you having a form of your name you don’t use on your books?”
“Not really. It’s kind of like a pen name, I guess.
” He chuckled, but there wasn’t any amusement in the sound.
“I always intended to use a pseudonym so there wouldn’t be that connection to Uncle Joe, but everybody really urged me to stick with my name.
Authenticity and all that, and no, of course you won’t be tied to your uncle because he writes horror, they said.
Then, every piece of prelaunch buzz for my first book mentioned my relationship to bestselling horror author Joseph Kowalski. ”
“That sucks, but it’s also their job to get as many eyeballs on your book as possible, right?” He nodded reluctantly. “My question would be how many people mentioned your uncle in the buzz for your second book?”
“That’s a very good point, because not very many.” He walked in silence for a moment and then sighed. “Maybe the marketing for my fifth book should have heralded it as my final book.”
“You’re going to figure it out, Danny.”
“How come when my family says that, I think they’re just trying to make me feel better, but when you say it, I kind of believe you?”
“Because I’m not your family, so I don’t have any obligation to make you feel better. I have the option of calling you a whiny baby and not talking to you ever again.”
“Whiny baby?”
“I’m not saying you are. I’m just saying I have the option of saying you are, which gives me more credibility.”
“Also, you not talking to me ever again would make eating at the restaurant more awkward.”
“Not really. You have to tell me your order, but I don’t have to speak. And the total’s written on the bill, so I don’t even have to tell you how much you owe.” She shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to Pete Dooley for six years, but he’s still a regular.”
His laughter was loud in the quiet woods. “I feel like there’s a story there, and I definitely want to hear it, but right now I feel like we’re putting off you giving me really bad news.”
Kenzie smiled, nudging his arm with her elbow. “I don’t have really bad news, but I should probably tell you up front I printed it out so I could write on it and I made a ton of notes.”
He groaned, pretending to clutch his chest. “I know that was the entire point, but also ouch.”
“To be fair, most of those notes are totally ignorable. I’m just a reader, and can you imagine if readers got to have input while you’re actually writing the book?
” As soon as she said it, Kenzie’s cheeks flushed.
“Oh, I guess you can imagine it, since you don’t let anybody read it until it’s done. ”
“It’s different with you.”
“Because I’m just a waitress?”
His head whipped around, his brow furrowed.
“Of course not. One, there’s no such thing as just a waitress, Kenzie.
That’s not something you’ll ever hear from me.
But also, it’s different with you because…
it just works. You give such great insight and you’re a great problem-solving partner.
The way you think clicks with the way I work, and I can’t explain it, but it’s not the same. ”
“I enjoy talking about your work with you. It’s like a puzzle but some of the pieces are hidden and you have to fit other pieces together before they’re revealed.”
“Or you put the pieces together wrong and the entire thing burns into ash.”
“Your book is not ash. With the disclaimer I don’t know anything about plotting arcs or whatever they’re called, and I hated talking about themes and allegories and stuff in high school, I marked the spot where the heart went out of the story.
” She shrugged. “I might not be able to explain it well, but it felt flat after that point. There was no…heart? Spark?”
“Like I was forcing a story that didn’t work just to put words on the page because I signed a legal contract saying I would?”
The weariness in his voice made her heart ache for him, but maybe as much as this conversation would be hard for him, it might help. “Exactly like that. But I also think I know why.”
He stopped walking, and she turned back to find him staring at her. “You do?”
With him looking at her so intently, something like imposter syndrome set in. Who was she to tell an author with Dan freakin’ Kowalski’s credentials that she knew what was wrong with his book?
“A multigenerational family saga is a big swing,” she said, because it was too late to back out now.
“Lots of juicy secrets and conflicts, and it was engaging until you brought them all together on the coast of Maine because the family matriarch is on her deathbed and has something to say that’s going to blow up the family. ”
He winced and resumed walking. “It was supposed to pick up steam from there, not lose it.”
“It would have, if you’d stayed true to the character.
But you, Danny Kowalski, are writing about a toxic family, but when push came to shove, you chose not to lean in on your protagonist screwing over his brother because you wouldn’t screw over your brother.
His point of view became your point of view. ”
Kenzie had gotten caught up in finally being able to share her thoughts, walking faster and gesturing with her hands, so it took her a second to realize Danny had stopped again.
She turned to find him standing motionless, staring at her with his brow furrowed.
Great. She’d made him mad. Or poked at a soft spot in his ego.
That hadn’t taken very long.
* * *
Months. For months Danny had struggled to put words on the page, knowing his story was broken in some way he couldn’t see and hoping if he just kept pushing, the answer would come to him. That hadn’t worked.
In only a few days, Kenzie had nailed it.
“I could be wrong,” she said, and Danny realized he was silently scowling at her. “I mean, what do I know about writing a book?”
“No, you’re not wrong.” He stepped forward, reaching out to touch her arm because he didn’t like seeing that uncertainty on her face. “I was just in my head for a few seconds because what you said broke my brain.”
“In a good way?” She laughed. “You looked like you wanted to use me as research for a murder mystery for a few seconds there.”
“I’m sorry. When the book takes over my thoughts, I tend to lose track of what my face is doing.” He forced himself to drop his hand because awareness of the warmth of her skin under his touch was threatening to drive the plot problem right out of his head again. “Tell me more.”
They started walking again as she spoke.
“Okay, the scene when Stephen’s father is belittling him for having moved away from the family and making a life of his own—you have Stephen about to spill his brother’s awful secret, and I was on the edge of my seat because that was going to change everything, but then…
he didn’t. He chose to be loyal to a brother who didn’t deserve it.
And I kept reading, thinking maybe you were just trying to increase the tension, but there wasn’t any tension. Stephen just chose not to.”
“But he left his family and struck out on his own so he wouldn’t be like them.”