Page 98 of You First
The words hung between them with so much weight and consequence that their eyes locked.
“So do I,” she said softly.
They stared at each other through their tiny cameras, and Meredith took a cleansing breath.
“I’m supposed to be helping you.”
The corners of Gray’s mouth tipped up. “Yes, how do you propose to do that?”
Meredith steadied her phone on the dashboard and angled it toward her. Then she lifted her laptop. “I have my computer here. Do you trust me?” she asked.
“With my life.”
This time she couldn’t help her smile. “Okay, then. Dropbox me the chapters you want to edit. I’ll read them aloud, and you can tell me what needs to be changed.”
On screen, Gray’s eyebrows climbed. “That’ll take hours.”
Meredith shrugged. “This is me showing up for work, Blakewood. You have chapters to be edited, and I’m your assistant. As long as Oscar’s asleep, we can do this.”
“Then let’s do this,” he said, grinning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THAT DAY — ANDas much as she could at night — Meredith worked online with Gray. When she still wouldn’t go to his house on Wednesday afternoon, Gray accused her of being overly cautious, but Meredith had to be certain she wasn’t coming down with strep before she saw him.
So they worked.
By Wednesday evening, they’d gone through more than half of his manuscript, and Meredith was simply in awe. She’d get so lost reading the story aloud that Gray would sometimes have to say her name twice to pull her out of it. But when he did, the subtle changes — cutting a word here, adding a layer of description there, or changing the rhythm of a sentence — made the work stronger every time, and Meredith couldn’t help but admire his talent.
She marveled, too, at the darkness of his imagination. In one scene, Alex Booth found himself in a hand-to-hand battle for his life, and the details left her squirming. The snap of ligaments. The soft yielding of his opponent’s eyeball. The hinging of a windpipe, and the flow of urine as life drained out of the attacker’s body.
It left her shivering.
“Have you had enough for today?” Gray asked through her headphones.
Leona and Big Jim had gone to bed, and she’d tucked Oscar in and changed into her pajamas hours before. Jamie was out with friends — or so she guessed — so Meredith had claimed the rocker on the far side of the living room. With the hum of the dishwasher going, and her hushed reading of Gray’s novel into the mic of her headphones, Meredith figured she had enough privacy to leave the cold isolation of her car.
“Maybe,” she said, wincing into the camera of her phone. She’d used a stack of books on the end table to adjust it so they could see each other as she read, and she had to admit that Gray looked proud.
“It’s supposed to be disturbing,” he said, again reading her mind.
Meredith gave a shudder. “Well, you’ve succeeded. But if they ever make this into a movie, I’m covering my eyes and plugging my ears for this whole scene.”
This set Gray laughing. “I’ll tell you when it’s safe to look.”
At the hint of this possible future, Meredith grinned. “Do you think your books will ever be made into films?”
Gray’s look of pride grew humbler. “Negotiations are in progress,” he said, shrugging, as though the prospect of a movie deal meant next to nothing.
She felt her eyebrows climb. “Are you serious?! Shit, Gray, that’s amazing!”
“I’m not holding my breath,” he said, but the light in his eyes told her that the thought excited him, even if he didn’t want to admit it.
“Still. The fact that it’s even a possibility is just… wow.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Promise you won’t say anything about that. Not yet, anyway.”
Meredith slapped her palm against her chest. “I’d never!”
