Chapter Two
Two
She had a good idea what he had been angry about, and fearful of—both then and now.
There was no one in the world who liked being known less than Caleb Miller.
Even Professor Dunderson had called him a clenched fist. A closed book.
I haven’t the foggiest how you can read him, Daisy, he had once said to her.
But even her reading had been a thin sort of thing.
Fumbling in the dark, instead of her usual laser-like precision. She could tell what most people needed from twenty paces, know what they were going to ask for before they even thought of it, guess their next move before they made it.
Just not with him, never with him.
This was the closest she got.
Vaguely recognizing fear when exposed to it a second time, ten years after the fact.
Then shakily joining the dots to arrive at the most obvious solution: that she knew him too well, and he didn’t like it.
And even that wasn’t something she was completely sure about.
She lay awake going over and over it, searching for holes, things she’d missed.
Then almost ended up messaging Beck some really weird nonsense at four in the morning.
Like: In the eight years you and Harchester have worked with him, have you ever known him to be afraid, and if so, what was he afraid of?
But she managed to contain herself enough to be practical.
Very annoyed, but practical. BECK YOU SAID HE HAD AGREED, she messaged.
Then instead of refreshing a thousand times to see how sweet, soft Beck had taken this, she got up.
Went out onto the sort of porch that wrapped around the motel, and let the frosty Bangor air cool her down.
She even grabbed herself a Twinkie from the humming vending machine next to her room.
Then ate it, cross-legged on the starchy-sheet-covered bed, while going over the itinerary again.
Seven stops, in a variety of venues, from convention centers and theaters designed for him to have apologetic chats in front of sizable audiences, to independent bookstores big enough to meet the demands of a man who had never toured before.
Starting with Salem, New Hampshire, then on to Hartford, Connecticut; Paramus, New Jersey; Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; and finally ending in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Planes to catch between most destinations, cars arranged at all points, hotels booked so nothing was back-to-back.
All of it meticulously timed and planned and plotted.
She’d even made sure there was a full week between her arriving in Bangor and the first stop they needed to get to—something that had seemed very sensible of her at the time. Though she had to admit, it was now starting to seem a little less so. And a little more like a razor-thin margin.
Not to mention far more annoying than she had let herself believe when Beck—or rather Harchester, the publisher he edited for—hired her to do what she did best: handle the talent.
She’d imagined herself doing just as she had for celebrities like Alfie—which was mostly sourcing sudden items they needed, and arranging last-minute details.
Breezing in and out of their lives, and always at a distance.
But that had broken down. And not just because Caleb had spent twenty minutes getting an eyeful of her humped butt on top of a fence. Or because they’d fallen right back into arguing like no time had passed at all.
She was already obsessing over the sheer maddening mystery of him.
Even as she ate her Twinkie, and went over all her contacts for every venue, and primed I need backup types of messages for the publicity team he had previously refused to really work with at Harchester, on the inside it was all questions about everything he had done.
Despite the fact that it had only been a half hour of contact.
What would it be like after an hour of him?
Maybe even days of him, if they missed a flight, or had rooms too close together in the hotels she’d booked?
A dozen arguments about nothing, all ready to go round and round in her head.
A million gestures and foibles and quirks to obsess about over the course of a whole month.
It was undeniable that she hadn’t really thought this through.
Which was very odd, because she always thought things through.
She was known for it. Her business—Emmett Solutions—relied on it.
She was a fixer, an assister, a celebrity polisher.
Hell, she wasn’t even just that anymore.
She was a woman with ten employees working under her, being things like assistants to whole actual former members of One Direction, and PR disaster solvers for movie studio heads.
In truth, she was now so important that she had actually assigned someone to keep things running smoothly in her absence.
A cool person, too—Kelsey Yates, owner of fifty-seven colorful jumpsuits, sharp as a tack, and so cool it made her quail a little to think of this woman reporting to her.
But she did.
Kelsey had reported to her an hour ago, in fact. Just wanted to make sure I have the go-ahead to tell this comedian that we work with disasters, not creeps, she had emailed. Then on the end: boss. She, Daisy Emmett, was the boss. And she was damn good at being the boss, too.
Yet somehow she was suddenly frazzled and unable to sit down.
She paced, waiting for a reply from Beck.
Saw Caleb’s face every time she closed her eyes.
That sulky lower lip, so often pinched into a disapproving line.
The grizzled fur along his killer jawline, now more salt than pepper.
That roll always ready in his dark eyes; that line perpetually between his thick brows.
Everything so strangely the same.
Even the clothes—the denim shirt, the jeans, the boots.
And worst of all: the things he said. Because Christ, the answer Beck gave her.
Well jeepers Daisy, he DID agree to this, he had written.
I mean maybe not as wholeheartedly as I suggested, but I swear it was there.
Then below it, he had pasted the actual thing Miller had said.
Well I suppose if my contract says it I really should, shouldn’t I?
she read, and came fairly close to hurling her laptop.
She had to take deep breaths, go get another Twinkie, cram it all into her mouth in one go. And only after she had could she sit back down on the bed, cross-legged in front of her laptop, and address the situation.
Because the thing was: that was a yes, from anyone else.
But oh, it was something very different from him.
Very different, and very not understandable to someone as sincere and decent as Henry Samuel Beckett.
Beck, that is him saying it would be sensible to agree but he’s not going to, she typed back, once she’d fully composed herself.
It’s him mocking the contract. Or saying he doesn’t care about it. He’s being a sarcastic ass.
And she could practically see Beck’s answering expression behind her eyes, once she’d sent it. The living embodiment of the word golly. The very essence of goodness me. Those big eyes of his suddenly even more enormous, his mouth beneath his mustache an O of scandalized bafflement.
Though it still made her laugh with near surprised delight when he actually replied with the shocked-face emoji. Then three little dots, and a stop. Then three little dots, and a stop. And finally some words:
Oh no I’m so sorry Daisy. You must come home immediately, I’ll sort everything, we’ll talk to him, don’t worry, I will get you out of this terribly harrowing situation I have buffoonishly put you in.
Because that was the thing about Beck:
He was a good man. Very good. Too good, really, considering her reaction to his scrambled apologies. She saw him take the blame for something he hadn’t done, and immediately wanted to hug him through the iMessage app. And then just tell him everything was going to be okay, honestly.
She even found herself typing it.
Like he’d knocked her solving-other-people’s-issues funny bone.
And her hand simply kicked up and onto the keyboard of her phone.
Hey no, I’ve been in worse situations. Way worse.
One time I had to discreetly get a famous British actor out of a hotel room with his knob still stuck in a bathroom tap, she wrote.
Then after a moment of tense negotiation with herself, she finished the thought.
So this is basically child’s play. I’ll get him to come around.
Even though she didn’t know if she really believed it.
Caleb Miller never wanted to come around about anything.
Hell, he was a whole romance writer now, inexplicably, yet somehow had never even come around to the idea of anyone living happily ever after.
He’d just obviously been able to pretend to feel the things he had put in his admittedly good books in order to phonily recreate them in a convincing way, until finally he’d gotten sick of even that much.
Because it wasn’t just the stuff he’d said on The View.
It was the stilted book before that—Everything Is Not Completely Fine.
The one she flicked to, and read over the beginning of, as she tried to figure out what to say to Beck. Just to remind herself of who he was, or who he had become now that even pretending to understand love had fallen away.
He stood on the bluff, looking out at the raging ocean, she read.
The cold, raging ocean. Like the one inside himself, that he knew now he could never conquer.
If he had stayed with Rose it would have drowned her, that much was certain.
He was not fit to love someone like her, or be loved by her.
His happy ending was in being at peace with that.
Or whatever kind of peace he could manage.
He pictured an island in the middle of this expanse of rough water.
A house there, lonely as a lost bird, weather-beaten but still standing.
Not much inside, of course. Spare and simple. But it was enough for a man like him. It would keep him safe. It would keep Rose safe. And she would go on to find the man she deserved, warm and passionate and good.
Maybe, he reasoned, after a time he would get himself a dog.
Then he started toward the nearest boat rental company.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
There was also the god-awful epilogue that suggested maybe things weren’t fine at all. Maybe the ornery asshole doesn’t get the girl at the end. Maybe he doesn’t even deserve to. Maybe he should live in a survivalist compound with seventeen werewolves guarding the gates.
If you’re sure, Beck typed.
I’m sure, Daisy replied.