The Things We Leave Unfinished Yarros, Rebecca (reading like a writer .TXT) 📖

didn’t flow steadily, and it wasn’t smooth or predictable. Here, it could slow to a trickle, and when you least expected it, send a wall of water in a flash flood that would destroy everything in its path. It was like everything else in the mountains—dangerously beautiful.

“I did what I had to.” He shrugged, and we turned to walk along the creek. “Do you miss New York?”

“No.”

“Quick answer.”

“Easy question.” I tucked my thumbs into my back pockets. “I guess this is when we start the book fight?”

“I’m not the one saying it has to be a fight. Let’s start out easy. Ask me a personal question. Anything you want.” He pushed up his sleeves as we walked, revealing a line of ink down one forearm that looked like the tip of a sword. “I’ll answer one if you do.”

That seemed easy enough.

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“What’s the story behind that tattoo?” I motioned toward his forearm.

He followed my line of sight. “Ah, that one was actually my first.” He pushed up his sleeve as far as the material would let him go, revealing the blade of a sword that served as the needle for a compass. I’d seen enough pictures to know it covered his shoulder, though I could only see the base of it right now. “I got it the week before Avalon Waning published. I wove a King Arthur parable into this guy’s search for—”

“His lost love. I’ve read it.” I nearly tripped as he gave me a slow smile, and I jerked my gaze back to the path. “Do you have tattoos for all your books?”

“One, that’s two questions, and yes, but the other ones are smaller. When Avalon published, I thought it might be my only book. My turn.”

“It’s only fair.” Here comes the question about the last affair…

“Why did you quit sculpting?”

What? My pace slowed, but he matched it. “Damian asked me to put it on pause and help him get Ellsworth Productions off the ground, which made sense. We were newlyweds and I thought I was helping to build our future. It was still art, just his form of art, right?” I shrugged at the naive thoughts of a twenty-two-year-old girl. “And then pause became more of a stop, and that part of me just…” The right words had always failed me in this topic. “…dimmed. It went out like a fire I’d forgotten to tend. The flames dwindled so slowly that I didn’t notice until they were nothing but embers, and by that time it was the rest of my life that had gone up in flames. There’s not a lot of room for creativity when you’re focused on breathing.” I could feel his stare, but I couldn’t meet it. Instead, I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I think it’s coming back, though. Little by little.” I thought about Mr. Navarro’s shop, then the cost of actually doing something about it. “Anyway, that’s one question, and I owe you another, so ask away.”

“Why don’t you trust me with the story?”

My spine straightened. “I don’t trust anyone with it, and neither did Gran. It’s not easy, knowing someone is about to fictionalize what actually happened to your family. It’s not just some story to me.”

“Then why sell it at all? Just to make your mother happy?” His dark brows lowered. “Is that really the only reason you agreed?”

Was it? I watched the creek rush past, giving his question some thought. He earned another point by not prodding for an answer. “It was fifty-fifty,” I finally said. “I wanted to make my mother happy. I wanted to be able to give her something she wanted, since…it doesn’t happen often.”

He shot me a quizzical look.

“We have a complicated relationship. Let’s just say that while you eat with your family once a month, Mom and I have dinner maybe once a year.” That was putting it lightly, but this wasn’t a therapy session. “The other part of me watched Gran work on that book off and on up to the winter I got married.”

“Did she stop then?”

“I’m not sure, since I moved to New York, but I came home every couple of months, and I never caught her working on it again.” I shook my head. “William—my grandfather—was the only person she ever let read it, and that was back in the sixties before she wrote the last few chapters. After he died—car accident,” I said in quick explanation, “she didn’t touch it for a decade. But it was important to her, so eventually she took it out again. She wanted to get it right.”

“Let me get it right.” His voice lowered as we neared the bend in the creek.

“I hoped you would, but then you started spewing all the happily-ever-after—”

“Because that’s her brand!” His posture stiffened beside me. “Authors have a contract with their readers once they get to the point your gran was at. She wrote seventy-three novels that gave her readers that joyful payoff of a happy ending. You honestly think she was going to flip the script for this one?”

“Yes.” I nodded emphatically. “I think the truth of what happened was too painful for her to write, and the fantasy you want to create was even more so, because it only reminded her of what she couldn’t have. Even the years she spent married to Grandpa Brian weren’t…well, you’ve read what she had with Grandpa Jameson. It was rare. So rare that it comes around maybe what? Once a generation?”

“Maybe,” he admitted softly. “That’s the kind of love that stories are written about, Georgia. The kind that makes people believe it has to be out there for them, too.”

“Then you ask Grandpa Jameson how it ends. She said only he would know, and he’s kind of hard to get ahold of.” I looked back toward the path. The creek began its gentle curve, following the geography of my backyard. “Have you thought about where it would be shelved?” I asked, trying a different avenue