Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
We ride home in tense silence. My arms stay crossed over my chest. My left butt cheek throbs with a dull ache. I think we’ll continue on like this the whole night, stomping around upstairs in the cottage while we brush our teeth, trying to outdo the other person in this childish game of anger.
I’m prepared to continue, raring to go even, except when we walk into his home, Nate yanks off his jacket, turns to me, and points to the kitchen table.
“Sit down,” he demands.
CHAPTER 12
NATE
Summer sears me with her eyes as she rounds the table and takes a seat as far away from me as she can get. Still, her arms are crossed. Her eyebrows are furrowed. Her hair is as wild and untamed as I’ve ever seen it, damp from the snow, cascading down around her. I look at her, she looks back at me, and I feel a tug in my chest.
Before I know it, I’m talking. “I told you about my old editor, that she left InkWell after the release of Echo of Hope…”
Summer doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t soften her expression or make this any easier, and why should she? I’ve been an asshole all evening.
I consider taking the seat across from her, leveling the playing field, but I’m scared if I move or change course, this confession will dry up and disappear.
“She is the only reason I could publish Echo of Hope. She was influential in helping me plot and write, and she was by my side through the entire thing, more so than a normal editor would be. I’m terrified my ability to create is intrinsically tied to her. I haven’t written at all since she left.”
There. I’ve said it.
This heavy truth has sat like a boulder on my chest for years.
Summer’s frown deepens, not with sympathy but with disbelief. And maybe because I’ve already started, or maybe because none of this feels real anyway, I keep going.
“If I start and fail, I’ll know she had the magic. If I fail to start, I get to live out the rest of my days never testing that theory. It’s Schrödinger’s cat.”
“What?” She shakes her head impatiently.
“The cat is both alive and dead in the box, right? I am both a great writer and a hack. I have enough money to live out the rest of my days without finishing my series. I never have to open the box.”
She stares at me with those cunning green eyes, absorbing this while I wait.
Then finally, she shakes her head again. “You’ve done a real number on yourself. Sheesh, you’ve really bought into this, haven’t you? First, you can’t write because of the expectations of your readers, the demands they’ve put on you…and then, as if that wasn’t enough to break your spirit, you’ve decided you’re nobody without some editor? Who cares about her?! She wasn’t with you when you wrote The Last Exodus. I know she wasn’t because you finished that book while you were still brave, still willing to try something new and go out on a limb. All of this Schrödinger’s cat nonsense—” She scoffs. “Were you always such a coward?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, surely not, right? Surely at one point you were the man willing to walk away from his PhD program to pursue a career in writing, to quite literally RISK IT ALL, but now you won’t even pick up a pen?” She shakes her head in disgust.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Give back the money,” she insists with a sharp attitude.
“What?”
“Yeah, give it all back, everything you’ve earned from the entire series and then see what happens.” She stands up and slaps her hands down on the table. “That’s part of your problem! You’ve lost the desperation, the hunger you had as an aspiring author. The man living in a crappy apartment, worried about how he’ll manage to pay back his school loans and make rent next month.” She points an accusing finger at me. “He’s not worried about all this…this bullshit. He just wants to create, to make something that might pull him up out of the darkness. He wants to write a book that might mean something to one person, or if not to anyone else, to himself!”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snap, unwilling to bend even a little.
“Don’t I?” She laughs caustically. “You and I aren’t so different. You left your PhD program? I never even pursued mine. My family wanted me to go into medicine, just like them. I agreed to it, told them I’d applied and interviewed. I got accepted into every single school. Baylor, Tulane, Emory, Duke. And guess what? I changed course.” She spits out the words with venom. “I went against my family and pissed everyone off because I was so desperate to pursue a career in writing.” She opens her arms wide. “This is all I have: this job, this assignment with you. Nobody understands it. And to top it off, there’s you! This—this closed-off jerk who only cares about himself!”