Chapter 11
The evening sun flashes off the glass and steel of Union Square as I step into Carl's building.
I'm still a little shaken.
Not by what I said, but by how easily all the lies came.
I don't know Ben that well. Just friends with his sister, Mara. She used to be my close friend. One of the best, actually. Never introduced her because she's a New Yorker. Sharp, charismatic, hard to forget, harder to read. And yeah, I love Mara.
Only, I wasn't really talking about Mara.
Georgina, Carl’s assistant, opens the door and ushers me in. His office is Carl distilled: grandiose, curated to death, filled with striking furniture.
The walls glint with framed bestseller covers, arranged not as décor but as trophies—a testament to his uncanny instinct for what readers will eat alive.
Carl's behind the desk, typing like he's negotiating a hostile takeover in a wet-looking emerald suit. Almost too much. Except it's Carl, so it isn't.
I smile. Technically, I'm a washed-up author, but I still have the top literary agent on the West Coast.
Last clack of the keys and Carl rises, arms wide as he gives me a once-over. "Is it hot in here, or did Basic Instinct just get a sequel starring my favorite femme fatale?" He rushes toward me, takes my hand, and spins me around.
And just like that, the day gets better. I love Carl.
"You like it?"
"Do I like it?" He nods theatrically, twice. "You look the best I've seen you in ages."
"Thank you. You look great yourself. Your suit matches that fox-glint in your eye."
His brows flick up, playfully. "I am a fox, aren't I?"
He is. Ginger hair, wiry frame, his skin is so glowing and pulled back—maybe Botox, I never asked—that you would never be able to guess he's close to fifty, and when he grins, you're never sure whether to hug him or back away slowly.
When we sit, I don't expect pleasantries, so I blurt out the vague pitch I crafted literally this morning—old love, poor timing, a goodbye that pretended to be mutual.
Carl patiently nods, fingers steepled, and so obviously waiting for me to finish that my throat goes tight with the impending doom.
"That's sweet, but you know what's selling now?" he says then. Pause. Smirk. "Psychos in love."
My gaze flicks to the wooden monkey statue behind him with that perpetual confusion. Honestly, same.
"Ehh, but psychos can't love?" I say.
"Exactly." He points at me, basking in the win. "Julian Vexley has been number one for two months now. Brilliantly twisted genius. The man weaponizes everything humans like to hide."
Carl gets up, plucks the book from his library, and hands it over.
"Love has another name," I read the title aloud. There's a rope and a rose on the cover.
I cringe and slide it toward him with two fingers. "It's giving Stockholm syndrome. In Helvetica. Not even close to my tone."
"Obviously." Carl shuts his laptop and studies the cover in awe, seeing something I don't.
"I've already mapped it out. For your genre, we go spicier for the next tone. I like the old love, but we need more tension. Something forbidden. A sexy triangle?"
I blink because it's uncanny he'd suggest that. Even weirder how my brain rejects it now that it's been said out loud.
I cross my legs and fold my arms. "Richard wouldn't take that well. He takes things too personally."
Carl's eyes narrow, unexpectedly fierce. "That's not for him to decide. You're not telling him how to run a hedge fund."
"I know. But you know him—"
"This is your work. It's fiction."
"I know, but—"
"There is no but," he cuts in impatiently, then sighs sullenly and points at me in frustration.
"Your first book made people squirm. That girl clawing her way out of a flaming childhood, trying to share her feelings, and that broken-lover thing?
" His palms open for effect. "Stellar. People cried in public. It felt like scar tissue."
Because it was my scar tissue. My way of untangling what happened ten years ago.
Carl shrugs his lips, lifts a shoulder. "The last two? Some good bits, but I brought them to the tub and ended up scrolling Tod's feed."
Tod. Carl's husband, who's a culinary star with a million followers and a feed full of videos that look like kitchen pornography. That Tod.
"Wow." I pull a face. "Really kicking a girl mid-crisis."
Carl softens just a notch and leans over the table. "I'm not trying to hurt you. Just reminding you what you're made of."
Well, I'm starting to think I just got lucky. A girl with too much anxiety, haunted by a literary ghost that only visits when Mercury isn't in retrograde. And according to Lucy, it always is.
"Can it be something else?" I practically beg. "Anything but betrayal?"
Carl sits leisurely on the edge of the table, crossing his arms. "Betrayal keeps people up at night. And it sells."
I make an annoyed face. "Never got why."
"Because readers want to blame others for the things they secretly want.
They want characters who screw it up, choose chaos, so they don't have to.
" He lifts his hand, slowing down when he sees me open my mouth.
"I know. I know. You don't like dancing with the devil, but—we need something that puts you back on the map. I'm very serious."
"So you want me to bleed on the page again," I joke.
"No," he says sweetly. Then his eyes glint and his tone goes darker. "I want you to twist the knife, see how much deeper it can go."
Chills. Actual chills.
"Oh my god, you said it like a final line in a movie," I say, staring at him.
He shrugs, his conviction unshakable. "Authors don't have to be original, just honest. Then let the world decide what the hell they want to do with it."
I roll my eyes, more at myself. "I'm too much of a good girl to not care."
"Good girls end up broke."
"Okay."
"Forgotten."
"Got it."
"Mid."
I burst out laughing. "Who taught you that?"
Carl gives a smug nod, teetering on a chuckle himself. "You're better than that. Do you have any idea?"
A sigh. "I do. There might be a story I'm trying not to write."
His brows jump, intrigued, and he points a sharp finger at me. "That's the one I want. Three chapters in a week?"
"Well, can I say no?"
"No," he says resolutely, but smiles.
Then he stands, loops around the desk, and perches closer to me. "Business aside, how are you?"
"Good," I say automatically. "How's your new home cinema?"
"Incredible," he grins, and unlocks his phone, flipping it around to show me a photo of Bridgette, his emotionally unstable bulldog, sprawled on a plush blanket in front of an absurdly large screen.
"Tod's been obsessed. You have to come over.
We'll screen Roman Holiday. You'll feel like you could kiss Audrey. "
"Sold." I smile.
He smiles back before he suddenly becomes fascinated by the tip of his shoe.
"Why don't you come alone? We can catch up properly," he says.
It's the third time he's suggested not to bring Richard.
I should probably ask why—probably—but me being me, I don't. I just nod.
He smiles and makes a lazy circle in the air, sketching my outline in midair. "You've got that glow today."
I frown, skeptical. "Really? After the day I've had?"
He looks at me curiously. Loves a good gossip, our fox. "What day?"
I shake my head. No way I'm telling Carl about my ex-best-friend-could-have-been-love-I-might-write-about being back. "I'll tell you when we do the Roman Holiday."
"Deal. And whatever you're doing, keep doing it," he says and there is that fox grin. "Just send me those chapters."
My eyes catch sight of the framed You Don't Know This cover with my name printed beneath it.
I know it's still there, that thing I used to have. I just have to dig it out.
The next morning, I brush my teeth, fall into my chair, and start. First one line. Then another. Then a paragraph. Then I'm flying.
By the end of it, I've written two and a half chapters of something that actually deserves to be weighed against Tod fisting bread dough.
Tessa is a law student, dating Simon, a nice guy who means well, but will never understand her. He grew up on steady ground. She comes from fracture and chaos, and that kind of history has to be let loose, set free, so she can soar.
Then Damien walks in. Her old friend. Old-soul wisdom spoken through a smug smirk, scars stitched beneath denim.
He's trouble—the messy, liberating kind that doesn't try to fix you, but wants to touch every broken piece until it starts to hum again.
Both Tessa and I fall in love with him instantly.
It's inevitable that an author falls for their characters, but Damien... I think I love Damien.
Reading the lines back, my mouth aches from that stupid, post-orgasmic smile.
That's what my first draft always feels like: you let it burst out of you, raw and ecstatic, still buzzing with life, and then the rush fades, and you realize it's also a beautiful mess that needs a good clean up, but that excitement? That's what I live for.
The hours of peeling my insides open come at a cost, though.
By dusk, I'm slumped across the sofa, clutching my head, the migraine drilling straight between my eyes.
Richard comes home not long after, cheerful because the deal with Piper is moving forward and it'll be big.
He booked that French cooking class I mentioned once in passing—his apology. Not the cost, but the remembering.
I blow him a kiss for it, and he leans over, pressing a real one on my lips as his hand lands on my shoulder, tentative at first because we fell out of habit, then firmer.
"Richard." I push back gingerly and give him a tired smile. "I have a horrible headache."
He frowns, caught between disbelief and, if I read it well, frustration. "Really? We haven't been physical in weeks."
I give him a pointed look. "I know that. And it's not just on me. You're constantly at work."
His lips purse, but he doesn't say anything.
So I sigh, softening slightly. "Richard, I'm not faking it."
He studies my face, the raw want obvious behind his eyes for once.
"I miss you. I'm working so hard for us. Not because I don't want to be with you." He straightens and glances down, pride stung. "Are you shutting me out?"
"What? No. I just told you," I snap, then sigh again. "I need to rest a bit, sleep. That's all."
Another beat.
He exhales tensely and pulls his hand away, doing a poor job at smiling. "Fine. Did you take a pill?"
"I took a half. I could use the other one."
"Alright. I'll bring it." He gets up and shuffles to the kitchen, rummaging around. Then I hear him on the phone.
"Hi, I would like to order a truffle pizza," he says and then his voice quickly brightens up.
"Oh hi! Yes, that's us... How are you?..
. No, don't worry, we will come over again.
We're just very busy now... Could you put more truffles on the pizza?
It's for my wife. She's having a bad headache and it might make her feel better.
.. Sure, I don't care how much it costs, I'll pay extra. "
"Damn it," I mutter to myself, beyond guilty and heartbroken.
The truth is that even if the headache wasn't there, I don't think I could do it today.
There were long stretches of time when I felt neglected by Richard, wondering why he didn't want me the way other men did.
Times when I eyed the long-legged airheads preening around him, thinking they could replace me because let's be real—Richard is very handsome, has a lot of power, and I have yet to meet a woman who wouldn't melt around him.
I did. It took me approximately thirty minutes, because he has that thing where when he looks at you, he makes you feel special.
And no, he never gave me a reason to doubt him, not really, but jealousy doesn't need evidence—it only needs imagination, and I'm pretty good at that.
It sucks because it makes no sense that I would refuse him now, that the thought of my husband touching me feels wrong, like I'd be faking it with my own body.
All because of a man who sleeps upstairs in a bed with his wife and does god knows what. It's absurd and humiliating and so me, all over again.
An hour later, we're in the living room.
The second half of the pill didn't help. Not even the scent of truffles as Richard eats next to me while watching the report on the stock market.
Then—ding, ding, ding—my phone lights up with three back-to-back texts. The letters blur.
Then I squint and they sharpen, my eyes snapping open like the dead just woke.
Mara: Babe, we got a free ticket for you!
Mara: You're coming!