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“Okay. Pretty good.”

“Oh good. How much more do you have in the book now?”

He stared at his screen even though it had already blacked out. “I’ve just got one more scene left to write.”

“In the whole book?” She sounded breathless. Excited.

“Yeah.”

“That’s amazing! Do you think you can finish it this evening? You can work several more hours if you need to.”

He shook his head, not meeting her eyes.

“What’s the matter?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Her excitement had tempered into a thoughtful frown. “You can save it for tomorrow morning if you’d rather. Is it a really hard scene or something?”

“No. No, it shouldn’t be. I’ve been sitting here almost an hour, trying to start, and I… I just can’t.” His cheeks burned, and he didn’t know why. It shouldn’t have been such a difficult admission.

She was silent for a minute—obviously thinking things through. Then she asked softly, “How much revision do you think the book needs after you’re finished drafting it?”

“Not much. I always go back to earlier chapters and work on them as I’m figuring out what’s next, so most of the book has already been revised multiple times and is in good shape. I’ll need to clean up these last few chapters, but otherwise I think the book is pretty solid.”

He was understating it because it felt awkward to admit what he felt. The book was better than solid. It was really good. The best thing he’d ever written.

“Okay.” She thought for a while longer before she said, “Well, what about this? You take the weekend off. You need to rest anyway. Then next week maybe we can do one of the other trips. Egypt might make sense to get done now since it’s such a long trip. You can work on cleaning up those last chapters when you have time and are in the mood. Then when we get back home, maybe you’ll be in a better place to write that last scene.”

He met her eyes. She looked so soft. Vaguely anxious. Thick strands of her blond hair were escaping the messy braid.

He loved her idea. It gave him a reprieve from that final scene, and he wanted that reprieve desperately. “I should be able to push through and just get it done.”

She shrugged. “You could, I guess, but then would it be the scene you really want to write?”

“Probably not.”

“So take a break and then get back into it after the trip. If you get randomly inspired in the next week, you can just stop what we’re doing and write it then. But there’s no reason to push yourself right now. You look so tired.” She reached up and gently stroked the side of his face.

He let out a long breath and leaned into her hand. “Okay.”

She brightened again, a clear sign that he’d made the right decision. She got up to move to the couch, and after he’d closed down his laptop, he joined her.

“Nancy is bringing us dinner in an hour or so, so you’ll have time to rest before then. It looks like you’ve been ignoring a headache.”

“It’s not that bad.”

She patted her lap and then frowned when he didn’t comply with her unspoken request for him to lie down and let her massage his head.

“You don’t have to always do this,” he told her, feeling stiff and self-conscious. It wasn’t entirely rational since he’d been letting her give him head massages nearly every evening. But one night away from her made him question the indulgence.

He was always so weak and needy. She shouldn’t have to baby him so much. He should do better than that.

“Why shouldn’t I do it?” she asked, surprised and slightly hurt.

He swallowed, still compelled to make a stand. Forsomething. “I feel like I’m asking too much of you.”

“You’ve never asked me to do this, Jude. It was my idea because I wanted to do it. Where is this even coming from?”

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