What I can do is . . .
I push myself to force this possible future into focus. What I can do is protect myself while I pursue what I love. I have to face the fact the fear is coming. I’ve felt it in recent weeks like I did before Only Once—tremors before tidal waves. What I need to do is use what I have to stay upright. I have knowledge of myself. I have courage. I have my therapist, with whom, I decide, I’ll schedule weekly calls surrounding the release.
I’ll need them, because I’m finishing this book. Because it’s coming out, and it’s going to be good.
I stand, swiping the sand from my legs. I don’t let my eyes linger on the horizon, now decked in the final embers of daylight. If I write, if I finish this book, it’s because I want to. Which I do. I have my direction. There’s nothing left to hide behind.
I walk back to my car, back to Nathan. Back to my life.
60
Nathan
I run.
I follow every street in our small neighborhood, hoping I get lost somehow. I pound the pavement in ways I never have before, the effort cutting my windpipe raw. The curbs of each corner fly past me, indistinct, while I push myself ever harder.
When Katrina left without a word, I did the only other thing I could instead of writing. I grabbed my running shoes and headed out, directionless. I couldn’t sit in the house with her gone, wondering if she was even coming back.
Finally, on the verge of collapse, I have to return home. When I do, her car is in the driveway. Despite myself, relief rushes into my pounding heart, fear following close behind. I speed up my steps. If Katrina’s here, it means something. I just don’t know what. I’m simultaneously unable to process and hyperconscious of the details of the night, the solitary hum of some insect, the crescent moon overhead. On the porch steps, I tell myself how this will go. I won’t let history repeat. I’m different now, and I think—I hope—Katrina is, too.
I walk in the front door, listening. The house is silent. There’s no sign of her on the first floor. The lights are off. The room is still. I climb the stairs, every creak of the wood conspicuous in the quiet. Reaching the upper level, I find her door half open.
I pause outside. I didn’t hold back with her on the porch, and although I want to hide the emotions in me that feel too big to contain—want to write them down, pull them out of myself onto the page, where they’re easier to comprehend, where I can hold them at a distance—I won’t. Which means I can’t hide from her now. From whatever she has to say to me.
I knock gently on her door. It swings open, revealing her sitting at her desk, typing quickly on her computer. She’s barefoot, sand speckling her ankles. She went to the beach.
I don’t think she notices when I step into her room. She’s focused, fixated on whatever she’s writing. I wonder for a second if it’s some warped parallel of what I wrote to her four years ago. Some damning scene rejecting me and what we might have. I’m done having this conversation in fiction, though. When I speak, my voice is fragile. “Can we talk?”
She stops typing and spins to face me, her eyes shining brighter than I’ve seen in days. In years, maybe.
“Of course,” she says. I hear the same change in her voice. She sounds full of confidence, renewed in some ineffable way. “I want to talk. I want—” She cuts herself off and stands up. “I’ve realized exactly how much I want.”
Wild emotion seizes me. Whatever she was writing, it wasn’t a rejection. I can read it on her face. I know what I’m feeling. I know what it demands. Following the impulse, I reach for her hand.
She squeezes my fingers firmly. Then she pulls her hand free with an apologetic smile.
“But first, I want to finish our book,” she says.
The skin of my hand is cool where her fingers left mine. I study her expression, surprised by the subject change. She’s indecipherable. “I don’t understand,” I say gently, recognizing how unusual this is with the person whose mind I’ve learned to read.
“I want to show you I can finish it. I want to show myself. I need to face this, Nathan,” she replies. She doesn’t sound scared, just determined.
I nod. It’s wonderfully easy, following Katrina wherever she leads. “I’ll write anything with you,” I say.
She smiles, the expression seeming to radiate through her. “Thank you.” Saying nothing more, she starts to turn to her computer.
“And us?” I ask.
She stills. Her features cloud. Nevertheless, I see her struggling to look past the clouds instead of staying lost within them. “I have to know there is an us outside of writing. With Chris I was the bestselling-author trophy fiancée. I need to know you want to be with me, not just a cowriter who will help your career.”
I take my time before replying, understanding what she means. There’s never been me and Katrina without our writing career. Writing is our entire life together. But while I may have fallen in love with Katrina through our writing, it wasn’t because of the copies I thought she’d sell. It was because I saw her in her words. That’s why I love her. And I want to prove it to her.
“Katrina, we can walk away from the book,” I say, and it feels easy. “You’re worth more to me than a book deal. Than a lifetime of them.”
“No.” The immediacy and quiet resolve of her response surprises me. “I want to finish the book,” Katrina continues. “It’s important to me.”
While unpacking this vibrant change in her is tempting, I can feel our conversation has momentum I don’t want to lose. Instead I refigure my idea. “So . . . so we separate them. The writing, and us. We finish the book first. We put us on pause until we do.”
This is not easy for me to say. The thought of holding myself back from Katrina for even one minute more—to say nothing of the remainder of our word count—is painful. It’s the right decision, though.
“If you want this, then we start us as us, not as cowriters,” I conclude.
I’m comforted when relief mingles with the caution in Katrina’s eyes. “That means no putting into our writing everything we’re not saying to each other,” she warns me with a half smile. “No angry edits. No late-night love letters written in someone else’s voice.”
I hold my hand over my heart, returning her smile. “I promise,” I reply. “When I want to say something to you, I’ll say it to you. When the book is done.”
“I look forward to it.” She seems forlorn for a moment. I feel the same way. It’s a short goodbye even though neither of us is leaving. Then something new catches her eyes, making them sparkle. “How quickly do you think we can write this ending?”