Chapter 43 #2
“O...kay.” I breathed, a little surprised, because all the oxygen seemed to have left the room, leaving only John, me, and this damn book.
My insides tingled as if a colony of ants had decided to nest beneath my skin. I didn’t know what to expect. An apology, maybe?
I stared at the page.
It read:
For Nora
Two Truths and A Lie:
You shook me and split me open, and then this book fell out. Thank you.
Meg Ryan movies suck.
I have never not loved you.
The room was silent, void of all sound. All I could hear was the roaring white noise that filled every cell of me. Each word dropped like a stone, anchoring itself like the cornerstone of a completely different picture.
My eyes darted between the last sentence and the first.
I have never not loved you.
For Nora.
Wondering if he’d made a mistake—written my name instead of someone else’s. I swallowed hard, but the words stayed unchanged.
I looked up at him, suddenly breathless, like I’d just run up a flight of stairs. And then I remembered that I wasn’t alone. Hundreds of people were watching me. Waiting for a reaction.
“You know these things are kinda permanent, right?”
A wave of released breaths and shallow laughs flitted through the room.
One side of John’s face slipped into a careful smile.
“I sure hope so,” he said, still standing.
Words blurred as tears pricked at my eyes. I sucked in a sharp breath, trying to hold them back. I looked over my shoulder—there, the door was wide open. Pyramid head stood between me and the crowd that had just seen my broken heart splattered on a page.
“I should let the next person ask the questions,” I said, turning abruptly, nearly toppling the microphone.
Some people stood to get a better view as I fled the scene of the love crime.
“Nora, wait—” Out of the corner of my vision, I saw John jump over the panel table and down the path between the chairs.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, shoving people out of my way before nearly colliding with the massive cosplayer. Without thinking, I dropped to my knees, slipping out between his legs and into the bright, crowded hall full of people.
I was about to sprint out of the building when I bumped into someone. My nose received an unexpected hook from an elbow.
“Ah, fuck,” I swore.
The person turned. “Oh, love, so sorry I—Nora?”
I looked up through tear-filled eyes and into the bewildered face of Otis, holding hands with Jeremy.
“What are you doing here?” he said, aghast.
“Apparently getting my nose broken,” I said, clutching my hand around the pulsating pain.
Otis scrambled through his pockets, and Jeremy handed me a handkerchief. Otis threw him a crooked smile. “Look at you, all prepared.”
“You said you had theater practice.”
He winced. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but Jeremy and May—”
“I gotta go.” I took the cloth and blotted the red. Yikes.
Otis’s hand reached out to me. “What are you running from? Wait, is that John?”
I groaned, unable to keep the tears inside any longer.
“Nora?” John’s voice traveled over the crowd.
“It is John,” Otis said, gasping, tugging on my sleeve. “What’s going on? Did he hurt you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” My tears mixed with blood as I turned, feeling his closeness. I didn’t care how awful I must look anymore.
“How dare you?” I said.
John looked for all the world like a beaten puppy. Still hot and all, but there was a definite and unfair puppyness to him. “I’m sorry, I should have warned...what happened to your face?”
“How dare you?” I said, now louder. I noticed a large portion of the crowd that had sat at the panel was now standing behind him.
I stabbed my finger in John’s direction, while grasping the bloody tissue.
“How dare you write those words for all to see? How dare you make me feel this way? I’d given up on this,” I waved to the space between us. “Tried to make peace with it—”
“Tried and failed,” Otis interrupted.
I shot him a sour look and turned back to John, who looked like he was taking the beating of his life but knew he deserved it.
“Nonetheless, I tried really, really hard. I had precautions in place, John. I’d locked this thing up.
” I pointed at my chest. “Real good. I didn’t want any of those feely things.
But then you came around with your stupid face and your stupid charm.
And the worst thing is, I let you. I let you in, John.
I let you in, and it felt so good to have you there.
To think of what could be.” Blood dripped over my chin.
I brushed it away. “Just to find out I had made a total fool out of myself.”
He winced. He went to slip his hands into his pockets but stopped, putting them on his waist instead. Ready to take what I was dishing out. And oh, we were just getting started.
“You lied to me.”
I gave him the space to speak. To make excuses. He didn’t. I hated that it made me love him even more.
The thought struck me like a piano falling from the sky.
I loved him.
Not a crush. Not a fling. Not a mistake.
I loved John.
“I don’t hand my heart to people.” The bleeding in my nose had stopped. I dabbed at the last of it and held out the soiled handkerchief to Jeremy, who raised his hand.
“Keep it.”
John shifted, ignoring the growing circle of spectators. “Let me explain.”
I wanted to shoot him down, but when I saw the pleading expression in his eyes, I just nodded.
His shoulders dropped. “You were right. It was a bet.”
I winced.
“My father…Lew, he wouldn’t give me anything without a taunt. He baited me. I had to prove I was worthy of his stories, his…legacy. So we made a bet. If I could win on my own, I would keep the house.”
“The cabin,” I whispered, remembering the childhood drawings hidden under the bed.
He nodded, his shoulders sinking further. “It was stupid. Arrogant. I shouldn’t have taken someone else’s place. But unfortunately I suffer from the affinity most children do towards their parents, sometimes undeserving. We want to make them proud.”
His gaze never wavered from my face, even as more and more people gathered around us, phones out, filming this very public confession.
It made sense now. John had wanted to hold on to something that felt like home.
“Say something,” he pleaded.
I laughed bitterly. “I took your silence as a sign that this was over.”
“My silence? You blocked me everywhere,” he said, a touch of amusement in his voice. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. I sent you a dozen emails. I called nonstop. And when I couldn’t reach you, I called your friend—” He waved at Otis.
“Otis would’ve told me,” I muttered.
“Would he?” John raised an eyebrow.
I turned and saw Otis shrug. “I thought we decided we hated him.”
I sighed, dropping my shoulders.
“I called. Texted. Emailed. Hell, I sent so many flowers, my credit card was in the red. I thought you didn’t want to hear from me.”
The flowers. On Mom’s table. A new batch every week. “You called?”
“So much that I was sure the police would arrest me for stalking.” Another step closer. I could touch him if I reached out.
“And Vivian?” I whispered, so only he could hear.
He closed his eyes, regret washing over him. “She… I’m sorry. She can be overprotective. She should’ve let you see me.”
“So you two aren’t…really? Never were?”
He shook his head. “She told me you came to see me. By the time she did, you were gone. She feels awful about it.”
She had been hard on me because she was protective of him. Like I would’ve been with Otis.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
His face softened. “I know.”
“What happened to the house?”
“It’s mine. It always would have been. He was just playing games.”
“What a dick,” I blurted before I could help it.
But John laughed. The sound was a balm to my sore heart.
I looked at my boots. “The whole book deal thing…” I shook my head, drawing my shoulders up.
“I made the wrong choices. I thought I needed to show him. But you...” He reached for my hand, his fingertips brushing mine, pulling me closer. “You woke me up. And I regret nothing more in life than having hurt you.”
I sniffed, wiping away a tear. I wouldn’t cry.
“You’re the Kathleen Kelly to my Joe Fox.”
Well, fuck, I thought. And then I cried.
“But I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.” He was so close now I could smell his cologne, and it was doing bad, dangerous things to my head. Unfair things. “Just say the words. And I’ll go.”
Curiosity won out. “What happens to the book now?”
He looked over my shoulder. “They didn’t tell you?”
I turned, and Jeremy gave me a small wave. “May and I signed the deal. John dropped out.”
I opened my mouth, but John’s words interrupted. “I have it on good authority that Haller & Mark have a proposition for you, too. If you want it.”
My mind spun. “I don’t know what I want.
I don’t even know if this was the right thing for me from the start.
But... I can’t...” I shook my head. “I can’t get your stupid face out of my stupid head.
I can’t let go of you. Trust me I tried.
” My voice cracked on the last words, and I surprised myself.
“Then don’t.” His eyes were unguarded now. Soft. Open. Waiting. “Please, don’t.”
The carefully constructed lies I had built crumbled. The carefully spoken affirmations turned to dust. I swallowed a lump in my throat. Let myself breathe. Maybe...
“I don’t want to hear any more lies. Just truths. Or I will cut off your balls.”
Someone choked on a laugh. I think it was Otis.
John’s face broke into a wavering grin. He raised a hand to my temple, gently tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.
“What would you have said if I’d picked up one of your calls?”
I let him step closer, allowing my body to naturally drift into the space that smelled like him.
“That I love you, Nora. I tried so hard not to. But ever since I saw you flip that vampire off at comic con, I knew it was a lost cause. I tried to call off the bet, tried to tell you, but I was too late.” He brushed his thumb over my jaw.
“And I would have told you that you make me furious, but when we’re together, I feel like I’m alive. ”
I let myself fall into the depths of his eyes. “I love you too, you idiot.”
He let out a relieved laugh. Just then, I caught sight of something I hadn’t seen before—ink sprawling across his forearm. A bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils from You’ve Got Mail.
I gasped in excitement, shaking my head. “Welcome to the rebel club.”
The smile he gave me made my knees weak.
“So, what’s this book of yours about?” I asked into the space between us.
John bit back a sly grin. “It’s our story.”
The room seemed to blur as I asked, “Does it have a happy ending?”
He tugged my hair behind my ear. I let him. “I guess we get to decide that.”
This man. A born romance writer. It should be gross. Yet, it wasn’t.
A rogue tear slipped down my cheek.
“Would you kiss already?” someone shouted. Laughter spread through the crowd.
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, now we have to, since they asked so nicely,” I said.
“Yeah, they paid good money for those tickets. Don’t wanna disappoint them.”
I punched him gently. He caught my hand and pulled me into him. Then, lifting me off the floor, our mouths, like two galaxies drawn to one another, finally collided.