Page 22 of Long Story Short

Jake looked at the open door. ‘I would have thought people would be coming in by now.’

‘They will,’ I said, but my eyes followed his to the door, a heavy feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. I had been so focused on how we could salvage Jake’s good name, I hadn’t thought about a scenario when we wouldn’t be given the opportunity to actually do so.

‘I don’t know, Freya. I think I might have ruined it all. Now they know that article was true, would anyone want to read a romance book from me again?’

I bit my lip, hating that things were going so badly. Was it really all lost? Then an idea popped into my head. ‘You could do a shout-out on social media? Ask your readers to come here today so you can explain why you said what you did about romance books. Ask them to give you a second chance. If that’s what you want.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jake said, shifting in his chair nervously.

‘As you say, you’ve confessed that article was true. You need to say something at this point. You can’t keep saying what Hayley told you to. If you want readers to want to read any more books from you,’ I said, as encouragingly as possible. ‘We could film a quick video and then post it online. See if we can get readers in here to listen to you.’

Jake thought for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll make a video and see if we can get some people in here.’

Hope lifted my heart that he was finally going to take my advice and be honest with everyone. I pulled out my phone. ‘Right then.’ I opened up the camera, training it onto to Jake beside me. ‘Tell everyone why they should come in here. Let’s get you an audience.’

Jake took a deep breath then gestured for me to go ahead.

I counted him in and then he took a breath and faced the camera. ‘Hi, everyone. I am about to start my reader session in room 10B. I understand that after the panel I took part in yesterday, there will be a lot of you who may have come to this session that have changed your minds. I can’t blame you but I’m asking you to please come and join me. I want to explain what happened with that article that I know you all are aware of. I respect my readers with all my heart, and I want to be honest with you all. I hope you will give me a second chance.’

I stopped filming once he had finished speaking. ‘That was great.’ I quickly uploaded the video to Jake’s social media, tagging the conference and everyone I could think of who might share it, including Hayley. I hoped she would at least see how much we were trying to make things right.

‘Let’s hope it brings some people in. And I can work out the right thing to say.’

‘Just be yourself,’ I advised. ‘Be honest.’ I felt like a broken record telling him that but he seemed to be really struggling with it. I had no idea what had caused such a big issue in his personal life that it had led to him putting his career in jeopardy, but I could see he really did care and seemed to want to fix things. I hoped if he cared enough about his career then he would finally open up.

It seemed like a long time before anything happened. I began to wonder if anyone would show up despite Jake’s video. But then, I heard a noise from outside. We both turned to the door to see a group of four women come in, chatting excitedly, holding their phones. I breathed a sigh of relief.

More people followed then, the room filling up as everyone, curious to hear what he was going to say, sat down expectantly.

Jake turned to me. ‘Thank you,’ he mouthed.

My whole body lit up.

By the time the session was due to start, the room was about three-quarters full, which I knew was the best we could have hoped for giving how shaky Jake’s reputation currently was in the romance-book community.

The conference administrator came back in and announced we were now starting. I held up my phone again to film what Jake said, hoping that readers who hadn’t come in would then watch it later on.

Jake stood up, and everyone fell silent. I could see that his legs trembled slightly but to the room, Jake appeared confident as he smiled and ran a hand through his hair. I liked that only I knew how much this meant to him. And I willed the universe to make this go well as I started recording.

Jake cleared his throat. ‘Thank you all for coming today. I know most of you probably felt like this was the last session you wanted to attend.’

There was scattered nervous titters at that.

‘But I’m glad you’re here. I want to start off by saying I’m sorry. Not only for saying that anyone reading my books is stupid for believing in happy ever afters, and implying that I only write romance books to make money…’ He took a pause when there was an annoyed murmur around the room. ‘But I’m also sorry for pretending that I hadn’t said it in the first place. For blaming the journalist involved, Kelly Shepperd, and talking about taking legal action.’

Jake glanced in my direction then. He knew I had always thought that had been a bad decision. I smiled from behind my phone, and he looked away and continued. Everyone was watching him with their full attention now; he had the room in the palm of his hand.

‘I should have been honest and admitted what I had said,’ Jake continued. ‘But I was too scared to. Not only because I was trying to frantically save my career in any way that I could, but because if I accepted what I had said, I either needed to pretend that I didn’t enjoy writing romance, and never do it again, or tell the truth. And I wasn’t ready to do that. But the truth is…’

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Jake trailed off and cleared his throat. He suddenly seemed to hesitate. He looked over at me again so I gave him an encouraging nod. ‘The truth is…’ he began again but his confidence seemed to be definitely failing him. He cleared his throat again then finally continued speaking. ‘I wasn’t sure that I wanted to write more love stories because of something that happened in my personal life. So, when I was with an author who kept trying to find out why I was in such a bad mood, I just snapped. I didn’t want to tell him… You can guess from the panel that I’m talking about Davis Mulberry here,’ Jake said, shaking his head when he said his name. ‘I was desperate to get him to stop digging, he is the last person I would ever want to know what happened, so to throw him off, I started slagging off romance books and it worked, but as you all know, we were overheard. I didn’t want him to know what was going on in my private life. And I can’t share what was going on. I just can’t. But long story short, I didn’t mean what I said about romance books. I respect the hell out of romance books, and everyone who reads them,’ Jake added.

After he paused, there were murmurings again around the room, and some people who spoke loud enough for me and Jake to hear as well. I listened to the chatter with concern.

‘Is that it? I thought we were going to hear the truth!’

‘He’s only telling us half the story.’

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