“Okay, so I might’ve been a little nosy.” She held her thumb and finger together.
I just gaped at her.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Okay, a lot nosy. I caught a peek at what you were tapping away at a few months ago. Liked what I saw. A whole lot. Now, my upbringing means I’ve been forced to read all sorts of bullshit written by long dead fancy English people. It’s okay. Whatever. But I don’t really care about all that. I like romance. Smut. Dirty stuff, you know?” She winked at me. “Brock likes it too. He takes it as a personal challenge to recreate every scene from my books.”
Sharing. That was Amy.
“Anyway. I’ve read everything there is to read, especially when you’ve got a baby on your tit for the first year of their life. So I was hooked by the snippet I glanced at on your laptop. So when you were getting ready, I emailed myself the file. Got even more hooked. Then totally pissed the book wasn’t finished. I also knew I couldn’t ask you to finish it and send it to me because you were all secretive about it in the first place.”
She sipped her champagne.
I continued gaping at her.
“I knew you wouldn’t take my praise without thinking I was just a friend blowing smoke up your ass,” she continued. “I also knew you’ve been pulling your hair out, trying to find a job that pays decent and doesn’t make you want to blow your brains out. Pretty slim pickings. I also know you wouldn’t take a job from me or Gwen or Mia or any of us gals. So I took it upon myself to contact some agents and publishers, sending them the first half of your book. They bit. Hard.”
Her eyes were alight with excitement.
“We’ve been in a fucking bidding war. I wasn’t going to bring this to you until I had a number that you deserved. That might prove to you that you are seriously talented.”
She tapped a red tipped finger on the stack of papers in front of me. “That is a pretty great number. Not what you deserve, because in my eyes, you are priceless, but it’s pretty fucking great. So we’re celebrating tonight. I’m getting you drunk. Then you can have hot, drunk sex with Kace, wake up tomorrow and have hot hungover sex, then open your laptop and write the rest of the story. If you haven’t finished it already. I suspect Kace has been a total muse.”
She was right.
He had been.
At first, misery and pain were my muse. Longing for Ranger. Memories. With Kace in the picture, I still had all of those things, but something else too.
Which only pissed me off even more.
“Okay, so you’re telling me that you invaded my privacy, read something that I did not want anyone reading, then, without my permission, negotiated some kind of deal?” I recounted, voice quiet.
Amy caught the fury in it. The girl wasn’t stupid. “Not some kind of deal. The deal. I knew you’d be pissed. Okay, I thought the champagne at the really big number might help with that, but—”
“No buts,” I hissed at her, slamming my glass down so the liquid sloshed all over the papers. “You had no right to go behind my back like that. To take something from me that was personal. That I hadn’t told you about because I didn’t want to tell you about it. That I didn’t want the fucking world to know about. I don’t need you coming in here with your two-hundred-dollar champagne trying to fix me. Or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing because you feel sorry for me. Or feel guilty about the fact that you have a husband and a life that’s still whole. Just because you didn’t have to bury Brock does not mean you get to come and do this shit.” I waved my hand at the table.
“Lizzie,” Amy croaked, red tinging her cheeks.
I glared at her. “No,” I roared. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want you to leave.”
She flinched like I’d struck her. I felt guilty, but still angry enough to keep my glare in place.
Her emerald eyes measured me, likely trying to figure out if she could talk me down. Reading me correctly, she picked up her purse from the table.
“Fine, I’ll leave. I’m not going to apologize for doing this, though. Even though you’re right, I did invade your privacy. I should’ve told you. But I can guarantee what would’ve happened if I had tried to talk to you about this. Nothing. You would’ve shut down. Retreated back. Just when you were finally venturing out. Living again. There’s something that makes you push away happiness. The future.”
She sucked in a breath. “I get it. You’re trying so hard to hold on to the past, to hold on to him, you can’t grip anything else. You certainly can’t build any kind of life other than the one you’d had with him. You can’t grow into someone different than you were when you were with him. Because then he’s further away. I get that, honey. Not in the same way, I’m sure. But I do understand. So I’m not going to be sorry for this. For fighting for my friend. For trying to show her that she has a future.”