I groan to myself and sink down in the seat. The manuscript is in my lap and I want to bury my face in it.
Oh, my god. I just called him, in the middle of the night, and asked if I could come over. He probably thinks this whole story thing is a totally bullshit excuse to get into his apartment. He probably thinks I’m just using it to see him.
And, okay, maybe there’s some truth to that. If I’m honest with myself, there’s a lot of truth to that. I could’ve just talked to him over the phone, but instead, I really wanted to go see him.
Because I want to be able to touch him. I want to see his face when I tell him that I hate these pages. I want him to kiss me and tell me it’ll be okay.
God, it’s so stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing. But it’s too late, the car pulls up out in front of his apartment, and I can’t help myself. I get out and ring the bell before I head up.
The elevator doors open. I sniff once and smell something delicious.
“Back here,” he calls out.
I walk into the kitchen. He’s standing over the stove pouring pancake batter into a pan. He nods at a stack sitting on a plate on the counter.
“Help yourself,” he says.
I frown. “Pancakes?”
“Sure. Nothing better.”
“But it’s breakfast food.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “Pancakes are an anytime food,” he says. “Especially when you need to talk.”
I sigh and smile despite myself. I sit and reluctantly take one, covering it in syrup, and taking a few tentative bites.
It takes me half a second to realize that I haven’t eaten dinner yet. Ravenous, I have two more whole pancakes, and he offers me some cut-up strawberries, which I gladly add to the mix.
He smiles and sips some whiskey, watching me eat. We don’t talk much, and when I’m done, I lean back and feel so, so much better.
He laughs and takes my plate, rinsing it off and putting it into the dishwasher.
“I guess I was hungry,” I admit.
“I figured you didn’t have dinner.”
“How’d you know?”
“Heard it in your voice.”
I roll my eyes. “So now you can hear hunger over the phone?”
“It’s an odd skill.” He sits down across from me again. “Okay, so what do you want to talk about?”
I sigh and pull the manuscript pages over. I had put them aside when the feasting began.
“Haylee’s pages,” I say. “I read them.”
“And?”
“I read them four times,” I say. “Slowly and carefully.”
He frowns. “Uh oh.”
“Julian, they’re bad.”
He glances down. “How bad?”
“Really bad.”
I proceed to explain the problems. He read the original pages, so he knows the story enough that I don’t have to fill anything in for him.
“Shit,” he says finally. “She’s going off the rails.”
“It sounds awful, right? I mean, it’s not just me?”
“No, it’s not just you. This isn’t some Game of Thrones bullcrap with—” He hesitates. “Have you read the books?”
“Saw the show.”
“Okay, so you know what happens in the first season. It’s not like that.”
“Right,” I say. “That was a main character dying that made total sense. This is just… swapping the hero for some random loser.”
“Exactly.” He sighs. “I’m sure she has this justified in her head, but…”
“We want to sell books. And a good story.”
“Exactly.” He leans back in his chair and sips his drink. “You know what we have to do, right?”
“Fire her and never speak of this again.”
He laughs at that. “If only it were so easy.”
That dread in my stomach comes back. “No. Come on. No.”
“You have to tell her,” he says softly.
“Julian, no. She’ll rip my head off.”
“Come on, you really have to.”
“I’m not kidding here. She’ll literally kill me, Julian. I’m too young to get murdered.”
He sighs. “At least you’ll leave a pretty corpse.”
“Not funny.”
“Look, I know she’s insane. I can be with you when you tell her.”
“I’d rather we just sold the company and pretended like none of this ever happened.”
He laughs softly. “I know. But this is it, this right here. You had a really tough first round with her, but it’s time to get back at it. You can handle this.”
I groan and shake my head. He wasn’t in that room. He doesn’t know how nasty she can be.
But maybe he’s right about something. If I’m going to become a partner in this business, I need to be able to do this sort of thing. I need to be able to make hard decisions and to own up to them completely. If I can’t tell this author the truth, I don’t think I can handle running an entire business.
Still, I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. I almost want to go back in time and pretend that I’m just a fan of Haylee and never have to work with her.