Page 111 of Truly, Madly, Deeply

Truly turned away, picking a spot on the floor to stare at, a dark knot in the hardwood, a blemish in an otherwise smooth board.

A few breaths later the front door shut with a soft click.

She pinched her eyes shut and pressed her wrist against her lips, stifling a sob, so, so tired of crying.

Several careful box breaths later, the back door opened, and Colin stepped inside.

“I heard your dad’s car start. Is everything okay?”

She shook her head, too choked up to speak.

“Hey.” Colin crossed the room, stopping in front of her and placing two fingers under her chin, tipping it up so she’d look at him. “Are you okay?”

In all of this, not once had Mom and Dad asked her how she felt. Whether she was all right. How she was coping with her world being rocked, with her cornerstone being cracked.

But Colin had.

How are you coping?

Do you have someone to talk to?

Seriously—do you want to talk about it?

From the very beginning, long before they’d so much as kissed, from his words to his actions, Colin had let her know he cared. Even when he’d questioned her methods, he’d never once cut her down or called her motivations into question. He’d only ever expressed that he didn’t want to see her hurt.

His hands swept up and down her back, shushing her softly because—God, she was crying, the tears she’d tried so hard to choke down spilling down her cheeks and soaking into his shirt.

“You’re going to be okay,” he murmured, and she clung to him a little tighter, fisting his shirt in her fingers. He sounded so sure.

She wished she could say the same.

Chapter Twenty

Every summer, like clockwork, Truly got a damn summer cold.

Fever? Check.

Headache? Yup.

Congestion? Ugh.

On top of the sniffling and sneezing and general malaise, she’d woken up to an email from her editor, edit letter on her latest book attached.

The book, the one she’d spent the better part of four months writing, was shit.

Okay, her editor had put it more delicately, but the second half of the book needed a complete overhaul, was going to require Truly to scrap thirty-thousand-some-odd words and rewrite the ending.

Apparently, the book lacked her signature Truly St. James spark. It was too heavy, light on the swoons, the dénouement lackluster, and the kicker?

Her editor found the romance unbelievable.

I’m just not sure I believe these two characters will be together past the final page, her editor wrote.

The most important element of the book and Truly had come up short. Way short.

The fact that she’d done this a dozen times didn’t matter—Truly St. James had forgotten how to write a book.

She washed three ibuprofens down with a sip of peppermint tea—the only drink that didn’t make her feel like she was gargling razor blades courtesy of her oh so lovely back-drip—rested her fingers on the keyboard, and stared blearily at the blinking cursor on her screen.

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