Trina, to her credit, turns in her chair to fully face Scarlett and says, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Are you sure?”

Scarlett tears her eyes away from me to turn her attention to her agent. “No,” she says, and I have to chuckle at her honesty. “But he loved the book without knowing I wrote it, without any preconceived notions. And if I know Ryan…” She trails off and looks at me again. “There’s no one who will take care of my story the way he will.”

As if that weren’t enough to make my entire year, Scarlett smiles at me. It’s a soft smile, one that only teases at the corners of her lips, but it’s reflected in her eyes. It warms me from head to toe.

“I promise your book is in good hands,” I say, because I have to say something before this feeling completely consumes me.

“I know,” she replies with all the confidence in the world.

Chapter 7

Scarlett

Two days later, I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch in my therapist’s office, the decorative throw pillow in my lap the only barrier against whatever awful, emotional work she’s going to make me do after telling her exactly what happened in that meeting.

Dianne—as she’s insisted I call her for the past several years, ever since Trina dragged me in here to see her—stopped writing on her notepad about halfway into my story. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was engrossed in it.

“So you’re going to be working with Ryan on a book that they believe will be another bestseller after walking away from both him and a deal that could have resulted in multiple other bestsellers and completely cutting him and writing out of your life?”

Huh. Maybe she was engrossed in my story.

“That’s about the gist of it,” I say drily. “When you say it like that, it sounds like I’m making a huge mistake.”

“Do you feel like you’re making a mistake?”

A grumble starts low in my throat. “I don’t feel like being therapist-ized today.”

She laughs. “I’m not, I swear. I’m trying to point out that mistakes are often a matter of perception. If you perceive this as a mistake, then it likely is, and vice versa. If you think you’re not doing the right thing for your book—and, more importantly, for you—then you’ll never be able to get past that to a place where you are happy with your decision.”

I wrinkle my nose and pull at a loose thread on the pillow in my lap. “That actually makes sense.”