Page 7 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
Something in my chest loosens.
“That’s not weird at all. That’s—honestly, that’s probably the best thing an author can hear. That their words mattered enough to make someone reach out.” She pauses. “For what it’s worth,” she adds, “I think the author would love to get a letter from a person who really appreciates their work. I think they’d consider it a sort of gift.”
Ten full seconds of nothing, but suddenly, the elevator isn’t cold at all. And the silence isn’t sharp.
She can’t see my face. She can’t see that her words just landed somewhere I didn’t know was still soft. She pulls my jacket tighter—I hear the fabric shift—and something about that smallness, her wrapped in something of mine, makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of a line I don’t know how to uncross.
Don’t. You don’t even know her name.
“You’re dangerously easy to talk to,” I manage. “You know that?”
“You know, I’ve been told.”
More quiet. I can hear her breathing. Steady. Close. The elevator feels smaller than it did thirty minutes ago, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.
“Have you ever done something—” I start, then stop. Regroup. “—something that, if anyone knew, it would completely change how they see you?”
She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her voice is different. Softer. Like I just stepped on something she didn’t expect.
“Yes.”
One word. But the weight of it fills the dark.
“Me too,” I say. And then, because the dark makes me stupid and honest and, apparently, incapable of self-preservation: “I read romance novels.”
A beat. “Oh. And that’s bad because…?”
“Not just read them. There’s this author—Sutton Blake. She writes hockey romances and they’re—” I stop. Swallow. Start again. “Everyone else—movies, books, whatever—shows hockey players like machines. Stats and slap shots and two-dimensional tough guys. She writes us like people. Like men who are a little messed up and maybe don’t have it together on the inside and…okay, that sounded ridiculous.”
“But true?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s delete.”
“No. Let’s not. Why do you like her?”
She’s not laughing at me. (Although, to be clear, I’m laughing at me. Because the words coming out of my mouth feel…well, corny and emotional. And heaven help me, I can’t seem to stop. I don’t think I even want to. Sheesh, in thirty minutes, I’ve crossed over some unseen personal line with a stranger in the dark. Was there something in the punch?)
“In her first book, there’s this line. The hero says ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to be worthy of everything everyone’s given me, and yet I never seem to measure up.’ I read that at two in the morning in a hotel room in Calgary, and I just—I sat there. Because I’d never seen that sentence before, and it was already mine. Like she’d reached into my chest and found the thing I couldn’t say and said it for me.”
And now I want to pry open the doors and run. Seriously, Beckett!
The silence on her side is absolute. Not uncomfortable. Not bored. Just…absolute. Like she’s holding her breath.
Maybe she’s in shock. I know I am. And like a runaway train, I can’t seem to stop.
“And I did something crazy,” I say. “I wrote to her. Anonymously. A letter to her publisher, because I didn’t know how else to reach her. And I told her?—”
Two
Everly
Stop!
Okay, I don’t shout it, but I want to. Ever since he said There’s this author—Sutton Blake. Yep, those are the words that started the sirens blaring inside my head. Sutton Blake, a.k.a. me. Wee-ooo Wee-ooo. Danger.
And I told her?—
“You wrote to her?” It’s meant to sound chill—totally normal—except that my voice comes out all squeaky and weird. “Sorry, hold on. When you say you wrote to her”—my voice isn’t a whole lot better this time, but I can’t seem to stop myself—“do you mean an actual letter? On paper?”
