Chapter Ten

Returning to her suite from a disguised coffee run in her dad's Toyota Highlander, Katie was looking through the slider at the floor to make sure her babies wouldn't dash out.

That was why she didn't see her agent chatting cozily with her mother on the tiny sofa until after she opened the door.

"Katie!" April had on her we'll fight later face, along with an off-the-shoulder tangerine cashmere sweater and tall leather boots.

"Look who's here!" Diana stood, beaming, her hands around a teal Fiestaware coffee mug because yes, yes, she had made coffee, in Katie's suite, and yes, yes, there was a plate of cream cheese Danish on the low table in front of Diana and April. In fact, there was holiday music playing on the sound system, and Katie's babies were scattered about in contented poses because Diana had probably let herself in with a bag of Temptations, their favorite junk food.

Katie smiled without teeth. "Surprise," she said, sitting down in a glider across from them and not very tidily concealing her irritation. "I must have missed a call?"

"Mm." April sipped her coffee. She looked tired. To be in Green Bay by this time of day, she must have gone to the airport early and spent the whole day en route. April hated flying. "This is delicious, Diana."

"I smell Highlander Grogg," Katie said. "Diana Price, did you have advance notice of this visit?"

Her mother kept the Highlander Grogg coffee in what she called the "back pantry" and only pulled it out, ground it, and brewed it for very special guests. It was not something she would do if April had suddenly showed up on her doorstep unannounced.

"April called me from the airport." Diana's eyes dared Katie to be even more impolite than she had been already, thereby corrupting Diana's good-mother image. "You had made it very clear at breakfast that I wasn't to disturb you for any reason because you were writing this morning. So I didn't. When she arrived, you were out." She raised her eyebrows. I am unimpeachable, her serene blue eyes told Katie.

"You came a long way for cream cheese Danish," Katie said to April.

"In fact, yes." Katie's agent gathered her mass of curly hair into her hands, twisted it, and wrapped an elastic around it. "Flew first class, also. They're really, really good."

Diana gave April a big smile. "You're so sweet. Thank you. And it's always so good to see you and have a chance to talk. I know you two must have important business to discuss, so I'll see myself out. Just holler if you need anything."

April stood, opening her arms, and Katie watched as the two hugged like sisters separated at birth. Then her mom gave her a little wave and left the suite.

She looked over toward the kitchenette, where her laptop was glowing gently on the countertop, open to the scene she'd been in the middle of when she got to a tricky bit that she couldn't figure out the words to express. Katie had given herself permission to run out for coffee in the hope that driving would help her brain untwist itself. It almost hadn't worked, but then as she turned into the driveway she'd seen the entire scene in her mind's eye—every line of dialogue perfect—and all she wanted to do was write it down before it got away and hopefully get through the rest of the scene before dinnertime so she could eat the stuffed shells her mother was making—which, it now occurred to Katie, she was making for April—and then call Wil.

What she didn't want was this. With April.

Whatever this might be.

"Your pages have been breathtaking," April said. "I'm refreshing the Dropbox link every half hour, hoping you've updated."

"That is a very good place to start," Katie said. "I'm hoping you will finish by telling me they were so good you had to tell me in person, and that's why you're here, and then you will leave me alone to make more of those pages, since I am officially incommunicado"—Katie made sure to pronounce every syllable of the word—"and on retreat. As discussed. And planned for."

April put her coffee mug down and crossed her legs. Katie had never seen the boots she was wearing before. They looked as though they'd been handcrafted by an angel in the kind of workshop that could only be located in—

Shit.

"You were in Mexico!" Katie said. "Those boots are from Léon, aren't they?"

"I could've bought these boots anytime. I go to Mexico not infrequently. Three clients have homes there." April was dimpling.

"But you didn't." Katie heard the suspicion in her voice and didn't like it. She'd always been able to trust April. She'd trusted April from their very first meeting when Katie was hurting so much, having panic attacks, barely able to sleep. She didn't want to have any reason, ever, not to trust April.

"I didn't. I took the meeting."

Goddamn it. "With Marisol Gonzales."

April smiled, and Katie knew that smile was about how well the meeting had gone. April had departed from Léon to Green Bay, Wisconsin, excited to share something wonderful with Katie, and very likely there was an explanation for why April hadn't talked to her first.

Katie wished these mental reassurances were doing more to blunt the sharp edges of her panic, but she hated, hated, hated when people on her team went off-book. They'd had a plan. Marisol was part of the plan, but the Marisol part of the plan was not yet.

"I know Honor spooked you," April said. "But don't forget that the possibility of our snagging Marisol is part of why you attracted Honor's interest in the first place."

Katie narrowed her eyes like she knew what she was going to say, and it was very cutting and business-time, but this was a ruse. She'd walked up to the sliding door with characters' words in her head and then witnessed the car crash of her Los Angeles life rear-ending her Green Bay life, which was happening a lot lately, and now her brain was stuffed with an image of April in a handmade tile–decorated sunken living room, talking to Marisol Gonzales without her.

Katie was hurt. She was trying to stem that hurt, and trying to find a position for her body that didn't remind her that she was hurt. She sat up, opened her chest, and dropped her shoulders.

Then she had to wipe away tears.

They were not business-time tears.

"Honey," April said. "I'm sorry. Marisol reached out again, and I figured out, first, that I didn't want to ask you to give me your blessing to meet with her, and second, that I really wanted to meet with her, and third, that we needed to talk. Probably it would've been nice if that all happened in a different order, but it didn't." April leaned forward so Katie would make eye contact with her. "I thought for a long time on my flight from Léon about why I didn't want your blessing, and I think it's because I feel like we haven't made the move from an agent-client relationship to an equal partner relationship. I have to feel like I can make decisions when they present themselves. I have as much invested in our success as you do."

Katie closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe. When she felt settled, she opened her eyes to find April waiting, just like she always had, without judgment, without rushing her.

They were friends. That was why Katie felt scared and hurt and angry. She wasn't afraid that April would betray her or make a bad decision. Katie was afraid that April didn't get how easy it would be for Katie to make one wrong move and lose everything for both of them. And then she'd lose April's friendship.

She'd lose April as part of her family.

Katie got up and put a Danish on a plate and carried it back to the sofa. She set it down on the coffee table. "Okay." She nodded at April. "First things first. Tell me why you were afraid to talk to me."

April nodded back. "Thank you. Well, I want to start as we mean to go on, and that means we take calls and meetings with people like Marisol Gonzales, because we are not making something that makes someone like Marisol Gonzales wait. Right? We're making something that flings open every gate and door as wide as possible for Marisol Gonzales. We're making something that Marisol Gonzales wants as much as we want her. If we are waiting to satisfy what Honor Howell wants, we will wait forever, because Honor is the money, and money is conservative, and what you and I both know is that no one is going to give money to two women who aren't C-suite for our ideas. They're going to give us money because we're already so good, they would look ludicrously irrelevant if they didn't."

Katie had to concentrate to keep her throat from constricting around a weepy hiccup she was not going to let out. "That's quite a speech."

"I practiced it on the plane."

"On your way to Léon or on the way here?"

"The one I practiced on the way to Léon was a lot more apologetic and groveling. But the meeting was fire, so I came up with that one on the way here." April patted her knee, and Sue leapt up beside her, making biscuits until she was comfortable along April's thigh. It was something Katie had seen happen so many times in her own home that having April here in Diana and Craig's basement suite started to feel inevitable.

"Who knows you're here?"

"Only Madelynn. Not even an assistant. The nice thing about my work is that even though I'm a stacked six-foot-tall ginger, no one notices me when I'm with the caliber of clients I represent. That means this meeting didn't happen until we both say it did."

Katie bit her tongue to keep from saying that she wished this meeting weren't happening, because Green Bay was supposed to be a step before. It was supposed to be the step where she wrote the screenplay so they could say they had exercised the option on a wildly bestselling book. Then they committed Marisol. Through both those steps, Katie continued to maintain her status as both the highest-paid Oscar-winning actress in Hollywood and a serious director. Then Honor.

The before step was the only step that had any space in it for Katie to be Katie. Maybe for the last time.

"Tell me what she said."

April leaned forward. "She told me, stone-cold sober and multiple times, that she wouldn't make this movie without us. She is, right now, being courted by four studios—she showed me the written offers—but she wants us."

"People in Hollywood tell you they can't do it without you all the time. I'm not sure they ever mean it."

But even as Katie said it, she could feel that what April told her was true.

All the steps were happening at once.

She pressed her palms to her thighs.

"While I was here, Madelynn wanted us to call," April said. "I wasn't sure when to get that in."

"Does she have a speech prepared, too?"

April winced. "Not exactly. I mean, I don't know, actually. But for sure she has an agenda."

Katie glanced again at the countertop where her laptop was sitting. She'd had her own agenda for this part of the day. She'd liked her agenda. Screenwriting and Wil sounded a lot better to Katie than getting into two uncomfortable conversations in a row with her team.

But also, April was right. This was what Katie wanted. It was just that she'd hoped to keep her LA life out of Green Bay a little bit longer.

Maybe they were still far enough apart.

She made a gesture, and April magically produced an iPad. Then they were sitting on the sofa side by side, looking at Madelynn in an ugly Christmas sweater and wearing an elaborate headset. In the background, there were two other people pacing around with their own ugly sweaters and headsets. One of them looked like he was yelling at the newel post of the elaborate wrought-iron staircase in a beautiful Spanish Colonial home.

"Ignore them," Madelynn said, gesturing behind her. "My dad and brother. It doesn't matter. Katie."

"Madelynn."

"Chicago," Madelynn said.

"Is windy."

"There is, in fact, a lot of wind being generated from Chicago. One of those nasty ones that knock over the garbage cans. I think they call it a Ben'easter."

Katie dove toward the coffee table for her Danish and put a big bite in her mouth.

"It's getting worse," Madelynn said flatly. "Ben won't shut up. This is how he's decided to spend the holidays, it seems. As you know, it would be my great delight to take care of this for you. I don't even need you for that. Let me see." Madelynn held up a piece of paper and slid her Christmas tree–adorned glasses down her nose to read. "‘He's a dick.' I am happy to run with that. Short, to the point. Exactly, exactly correct. Do I have your okay?"

Katie stuffed what was left of her Danish into her mouth.

Madelynn sighed. "You know who called me this morning?"

"You get a lot of calls," Katie said around her mouthful of Danish.

Madelynn pointed at her through the screen. "I do get a lot of calls. But and however, I do not get a lot of calls from Markham Lockwood, president and chief creative officer at New Line Cinema." Madelynn smiled.

April squeaked and clapped her hands.

"What?" Katie looked at April. "What's happening?"

"Power," April said. "Markham would be the one waiting to hear back on the offer New Line made to Marisol."

Madelynn nodded. "And Markham, being exactly what we'd like to see less of in this town, listens to people like Ben."

"Who won't stop talking about what we're doing." April put her arm around Katie.

Finally, Katie understood. "Markham has decided we're serious," she said. "He figured out that our production studio is happening, and Marisol's on board. And if Markham has decided we're serious, it means everyone has decided we're serious." Her shoulders got tight.

"Exactly!" Madelynn said. "I hate Ben, but even publicity from a buttwart has a silver lining. His running at the mouth herded you two into a great position."

"Or a terrible one," Katie said, "especially for Marisol. Because if Markham thinks she's turning down New Line and the other studios follow suit, all she has is us. And we don't have Honor yet, or a greenlight on this adaptation, so if we don't get them, all she has is nothing."

Madelynn snorted and waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly. "Working with nothing is what this town was built on." She smiled. "I think this is the very first time you've provided me with a juicy, flavorful, good-news-bad-news, high-risk publicity situation." Madelynn sighed. "I really like it."

Katie's laptop's screen had gone dark, and it was dark outside, but she could still see sunlight painted on the floor behind Madelynn. It was sunny in California.

In Los Angeles, there would be meetings double-booked over at least two weeks as soon as Katie returned. Directors. Brands. Madelynn's team. Studio sit-downs. Strategy sessions for the PR tour for her next feature release. Designer consults on wardrobe for the upcoming awards season. Her accounting team and wealth manager. Her PA and her PA's assistant.

Katie reached for the dialogue for her scene that she'd figured out on her coffee run—the scene she'd been ready to put down as soon as she came into the room—but she'd lost it. She couldn't remember anymore what it was that she'd wanted to write.

What she wanted to say.

"So we're good," April said. Katie could feel the excited energy coming off her body and brain.

"I can't promise that," Madelynn replied. "For example, Marisol called me an hour ago looking for a guarantee that Katie was not involved, in any way, with Ben Adelsward, and Honor called ten minutes after that, asked after all the news with my family, and then asked me if Markham Lockwood had called me and why."

"Oh my God," Katie said. "What did you tell her? Both of them?"

"I focused on flattering them outrageously."

Katie looked at the ceiling.

Back in LA, she would have to fight for six hours a night to sleep, weighing what appearances she could turn down without taking a hit to the visibility that kept everyone paid, and disappoint people in order to spend time with other people who she actually liked.

People like these two women.

Her heart supplied another name and then, right after, banged against her sternum painfully.

Because that was impossible. Where would Wil live in the middle of Katie's life? How would she go to law school? How would she do all the things that came with law school, the clerkships and internships and social hours and writing? How would she be taken seriously on a campus when there were paparazzi waiting by a coffee cart to take her picture after a long night of studying so the internet could speculate on whether she and Katie were having relationship problems?

Why would she want that, any of it?

And it wasn't how she wanted Wil. Which was something like that house in Ann Arbor, that other life, the one that hadn't happened. Except how could she have that and also make Marisol's movie and also see Wil take on the halls of justice in just the way she was meant to?

It was impossible.

"Katie." April reached over to take Katie's hand.

Madelynn's frown made Katie's heart sink. "It's not going to stop," she said simply. "I can deny and privately reassure until I'm blue in the face, but at the end of the day, no one is going to be able to take you seriously as a creator if Ben Adelsward is behind you claiming to pull your strings. And don't look at me like that, because I know as well as you do that he doesn't pull your strings, but Katie, I'm sorry, it does not matter. It doesn't matter what's real in Hollywood. It only matters what looks real. If it looks like Ben's running your show, if it looks like he has the power to make or break your projects, then he does. What people need to see is your power. Marisol's not going to want to sign on with a man she can't control, who you won't control, who has the ability to destroy her film. It's a deal-breaker, and not just for Marisol."

There it was.

Katie was a puppet. Ben had found her and made her his puppet, and his control over the early part of her career meant that even though she'd left him, even though she'd worked hard and earned her reputation, even though she'd been good, better, the best, and never allowed even a hint of a scandal to touch her name, it only mattered that she had once been a puppet, and she still looked like one.

That was Hollywood.

Maybe she could make it different, one day, for other Katies.

She wouldn't let herself so much as glance at her laptop. She'd had a handful of days making something she knew was good, that made her feel like herself. Made her feel powerful. That was all she would have, because how Katie felt didn't make a Hollywood-changing deal.

How she felt didn't make a life.

"There's another way," Madelynn said. "And I have never, ever said what I am about to say to any client, but I'm going to say it to you, because I love you. What you have to do is trust me."

Katie nodded. She wasn't really listening anymore. She was thinking a little wildly that she'd told more than one person the reason Madelynn was her last publicist was because Madelynn always did what Katie told her to do. She focused on Katie's projects, not on Katie's feelings.

Trust me.

I love you.

Madelynn was asking Katie for a different kind of relationship. That meant Madelynn was telling Katie she wanted to be a part of making something other than money and reputation and awards. Something that was a tiny, tiny bit of the Katie Price who ran a cool local theater company and met friends for coffee and held their babies.

"This is not a today project," April said. "You are on retreat. It's not even Christmas yet. The three of us haven't done the thing where we courier over expensive gifts to each other's assistants with glittery cards as big as magazines."

Madelynn laughed. "You know what?"

"What?" Katie sniffed.

"I didn't do that this year. I hope you didn't want a vicu?a yarn sweater or a handmade acrostic ring with reclaimed rose-cut gems, because I was feeling… well. I was feeling, and I got you both gift baskets filled with shit for your cats. That I picked out. Pet stores smell horrible. Like meaty hay. No one told me."

April barked out a laugh. "You hate my cats!"

"But you love your cats, and I love you, so return whatever you bought me from Gucci and get me something sentimental, bitches."

To Katie's surprise, the rest of their conversation was good. Having April in her suite and Madelynn on FaceTime, talking and laughing about Christmas, gave her access to a different way of thinking about her Green Bay life and her Los Angeles life smashing together.

Because LA was home, too. Madelynn and April were home.

That's what Katie was thinking about in the quiet suite after April explained that she couldn't stay for Diana's dinner because she had to make a flight to Chicago that would get her back to Los Angeles overnight.

Then, when Katie didn't want to be alone petting cats anymore, she made her way to the main part of the house to find her mom and make amends for her rudeness, and she heard Diana talking to someone.

To Wil.

Wil was sitting at the breakfast bar in a white button-down shirt and dark sweater vest, destroyed jeans, hair damp from melted snow, but what Katie noticed more than those details, which her whole entire self was greedy for, was that Wil wasn't curling her hands around a cup of coffee, though Katie could smell it in the air. She didn't have a plate of Danish or Christmas cookies or a slice of the banana bread Diana had made that morning.

Normally, even if Wil had demurred when asked if she wanted coffee or a treat, Diana would've put those things out just in case. When Diana didn't, it was because she wanted that person to leave.

"Katie!" Diana's smile barely touched her face. "I was just telling Wil you had important company, and she was letting me know that she could catch up with you tomorrow."

Wil, to her credit, didn't hit Diana with an incredulous "pardon me" for handling her grown-woman self in such an obvious manner. She only turned in Katie's direction on the stool and directed a real smile at her that cut a few taut strings in Katie's neck and made her feel like she could, in fact, handle this situation however she wanted to with Wil's blessing.

Wil was asking absolutely nothing from her. It was one of the best feelings Katie had ever had.

"April left," Katie said. "Wil, I'd love it if you wouldn't mind waiting for me for a few minutes in my suite, and I'll be right down."

Diana grasped her own forearm, closing her body language from her waist in a ladylike, classically Diana way. This same physical movement was one of the tells Katie used with Madelynn's people to get a reporter or fan to move along. "I think Wil said she had a lot to do?" Diana said. "Your law school applications?" She looked at Wil, smiling, and now, to Diana's credit, it was a warm smile, which reminded Katie that Diana did love Wil, and so Katie would not have to initiate a nuclear sequence in the next ten minutes.

"I'm happy to wait for you, Katie, so I can say hello and good-bye before I head home. Thanks for keeping me company, Diana." Wil slid off the stool and somehow managed to evaporate into the stairwell with equal amounts of politeness and coolness.

At the last minute, right before she turned the corner to the stairs, she winked at Katie. Which was fortifying.

Once she was gone, Katie noticed the silence first, and then how cold it was in the kitchen. The space around her and her mother felt vast and frozen over. It made Katie so angry—this cold house with its long driveway and its beautiful view, like some kind of grotesque stand-in for the home she used to share with her mom and dad, the childhood she'd lost access to, and the ways that her celebrity was getting in the way of her actual life.

Katie crossed to sit down on the stool Wil had just vacated. She looked over to the living room, where, against the wall, not at all coordinating with a tasteful array of leather and ivory boucle and light wood furniture, was the curved-back mallard-printed sofa from her childhood home.

She reminded herself that things were not all fucked here. She could be angry. She could talk. She could be sad. This was her mom.

"I think what you and April are doing is very exciting," Diana said. Her voice was soft. She didn't want to fight, either.

Then Katie had to deal with a series of unwanted hot tears.

Her mother stepped closer and put her hand flat in the middle of Katie's back. "Sweetheart, you can try whatever you want to try. That's what I mean." She rubbed over Katie's shoulder blades. "You're at such a good part of your life for trying things, because if it doesn't work out, you have years and years of solid work on your brand and building your reputation to fall back on."

Katie knew what her mom meant. She knew where it came from, even, because Katie spoke Midwesterner.

What Diana meant was that Katie had privilege and money and fame, and so nothing she wanted to do could be truly considered a risk.

Because, after all, she could live the rest of her life as Katie Price, with Katie Price's money, even if she never did anything. She was, in the consummate Midwestern sense, safe.

That was true. It was. But it was only true if it was also true that the only things Katie needed to be safe—to be okay—were money and fame.

If she hadn't had that hot obsession with making stories from the first moment a librarian read Madeline aloud during a story hour using different voices and real French.

If she hadn't broken her feet in pointe shoes and not told anyone so she could perform in the recital.

If that part of her hadn't looked longingly at the cameras and tools and lights and sets for years and spent frustrating hours with directing mentors who weren't certain why she wanted to know this stuff when she easily had everything she could possibly want.

She could fall back on Katie Price. But Katie Price had never been exactly what she wanted. Not all of what she wanted. Katie Price wasn't actually a real person—not to the world, not even to the people she loved.

And it wasn't Diana who had to understand this.

It was her.

Her mother was still rubbing her back. Soothing her. "I know it's wrong of me to want to… manage things between you and Wil. But the thing is, Katie, I'm not sure you've thought about how much capacity Wil has for managing what could happen if the world finds out the two of you are involved with each other."

"Oh." Apparently there were still only a limited number of things that Katie could try.

She shrugged off her mom's back rub and her dangerous and scary remark implying that even knowing Katie, even caring about her, might ruin Wil's life.

"Katie."

"What."

"We're fighting," Diana said gently, "in that way that we fight where I don't really know what's going on."

"If you say so." Katie sighed with obvious irritation. "For the record, I am appalled you didn't give Wil anything to eat or drink."

Diana had the grace to wince. "Well!"

"Very good talk." Katie stood up. "I will look forward to the next one, where we both blubber all the way through the truth of what we were actually fighting about this time."

"I love you," Diana said.

"Don't come downstairs," Katie told her.

She left without looking to see how that landed with her mom. She didn't want to know. She didn't want the hangover from April and Madelynn's talk, she didn't want any of Diana's words and looks and moves, and she didn't want to have to go back to writing her script again in this new world where her retreat was less and less like a retreat and more like a reckoning.

She didn't want to explain to Wil about security and how they pretended like it didn't cause major logistical issues every time Katie only wanted to go to a bookstore or pick out a baby gift herself or fucking drive.

She didn't want Wil—in her scalding jeans with torn-off back pockets—to ever, ever have to run, hunched over, to an open car door, with her hand up to block the camera flashes.

She wanted Wil to stomp, to stride, to wink, to dominate.

She wanted to let herself fall for Wil and let Wil fall for her like the only consequences were what they would've been the first time, if Katie hadn't had to leave for Chicago, if Wil hadn't been on her way to Michigan, if Jasper Greene hadn't been dying, if Katie had never met Ben Adelsward.

When she opened the door to her suite, Wil was standing beside the cat buttons with a purring Trois under one arm, Phil weaving back and forth between her ankles, while Sue insistently poked the treat button and then waited for Wil to feed her one of the Temptations from the bag Diana had left behind.

"Hi," Katie said, her heart huge and frantic and worried and half-gone.

Wil turned around. "Kim Kardashian."

"Is a complicated woman."

Wil smiled a tight smile and set Trois down on the floor. She shook a small handful of treats out of the bag and set a few down in front of each cat, then stepped away to signal that the activity had come to an end. "Kim Kardashian is obsessed with getting people's sentences commuted. She's done a lot of political work, and then she decides she'll be more effective with a law degree, so she got a four-year apprenticeship in California with the exact right people to help her get that done and took the bar until she passed it, like failure wasn't an option."

"Yes." Katie had the impression she'd left Wil alone too long. "Kim is a very driven person."

"What do I even want to do?" Wil asked.

Yes. She had left Wil alone too long.

"That is an overwhelming question to ask yourself." Katie walked over and picked up Wil's hand, pulling her to the sofa. She knew it was dangerous to sit on this sofa with Wil, but she was so beyond caring now that she was in the same room with her, holding her hand. She welcomed Wil's careless solipsism. "When you start to look at it that way."

"I always had in the back of my mind, I guess, that if I did this again, I would go to Michigan. Then that cabal of lawyers at Kettle's are telling me that I could go to Harvard or Yale or UCLA or Northwestern or Loyola or Pepperdine, and all of those places are very different, with different opportunities for mentorship and career paths and where I'd live, and I have no idea how to even begin to make a decision."

Katie moved her body closer to Wil's until she could smell snow and mint and the Wil smell of her neck, which had never changed.

"Katie Kat."

Katie straddled her. Wil's hands found her hips. Katie put her nose against Wil's nose. "You haven't called me that yet." It was her name from the bracelet Wil had made her, the name that only Wil had ever called her. Katie hadn't known she'd been waiting for Wil to say it until it landed and lodged against her ribs, making her chest so tight.

"This is really good." Wil squeezed Katie's hips. "It's much easier not to be frustrated about the future when I can feel how hot your thighs are."

Katie smiled down at her. "Here is the question. Do you want to be a lawyer?"

"Yes. I thought so. Especially after Beanie recently got some hooks in that made things more clear. But then I got caught up with thinking how happy I am being an insurance adjuster. It's not that it's hard to imagine myself being happy doing something else. I guess I want to know that I'll be happier because I'm doing something that's exactly right for me, and that's where I get stuck."

Katie smiled and kissed Wil's pale blond eyebrows and the line that sank between them when she was distressed. "All of what you just told me is so much better than you even think it is."

"Why is that?" Wil shifted beneath her, putting more of their bodies in close contact and sending up a pulsing ache between Katie's legs.

Katie wanted to lick her. "Because, Wil, you're already happy. You're good at being happy. That means that a lot of different kinds of life will make you happy."

"More." Wil leaned forward, and her hands on Katie's hips slid up to her waist, and Wil's hot, beautiful mouth was on Katie's neck.

More.God. Katie closed her eyes against the shivery, hot, glorious sensation.

"Do you think you could be happy working as an attorney?"

"Yes."

"All of these schools, at the end, do you get to be a lawyer?"

"Yes." Wil's voice was getting a little bit lower every time she answered one of Katie's questions, making the heavy pulse between Katie's legs pound a little bit harder.

"They teach you all the kinds of law you need to know, not just one special kind you pick out right this minute because you figure out exactly what makes you happy?"

"Yes." Wil sounded distracted now. Katie had slowly moved her hands to the sides of Wil's breasts, soft under the wool of her vest, and Katie watched how her touch made the hollow in Wil's throat sink and felt her hands tighten on Katie's hips.

Yes.

"So if you make the stakes of this decision as big as they go, then what happens is you leave Green Bay to go to a school that teaches you how to be a lawyer, and you learn about different kinds of law while experiencing what it's like to live in a new location and meet new people…"

Katie stopped because Wil had picked up Katie's hands to move them over her breasts. Katie rubbed her thumbs over Wil's nipple and Wil let out a gasp, which led to Katie licking behind Wil's ear. Katie broke out in shivers all over. It took her a moment to remember what she'd even been saying.

"… and then you either pick what kind of lawyer you want to be and you are a happy lawyer, or you decide it's not for you and return to Green Bay, where you cheerfully resume your career as an insurance adjuster, having had an exciting adventure."

She sounded breathless. Wil was making her breathless. She wanted to kiss her. Katie sank her hands into Wil's hair and put her mouth next to Wil's. Felt her breath on her own lips.

Katie licked her lips.

Wil moaned.

God. God.

She forced herself to stay with their conversation. It was important, and she wasn't allowed to kiss Wil because she knew, too, that Wil would be the only person she would ever want to kiss, and, worse, if Wil kissed her back it would be to tell Katie the same thing, and this, right here, wasn't there yet, and wouldn't be there ever. This was a manifestation of yearning they hadn't been able to name years ago. It was honoring that yearning. It was an obliteration of the reality of April on her way to the airport and Madelynn delightedly spinning bad news and Diana upstairs trying to decide whether to bake or run the vacuum because of where Katie had left things with her. It was what Katie wanted, only what she wanted, nothing she didn't want.

She could have this. She could.

But she could not kiss Wil Greene.

"You're in a win-win situation," she said breathlessly. "There are no wrong decisions."

But there were for Katie. So many wrong decisions, everywhere she turned.

"That seems too simple." Wil was flushed, her blue eyes liquid, the patch of freckles under one eye darker than it usually looked.

"Because maybe the very biggest decisions usually are," Katie whispered.

Then she pulled off Wil's vest, because she'd reassured Wil with something she didn't believe in for herself.

Only for Wil.

The buttons on Wil's white button-down weren't buttoned under the vest. They'd slipped from the placket, and Katie could see Wil's sheer pale nude bra and bright pink blotches painted over her skin.

"Katie," Wil breathed.

She leaned down and kissed Wil's throat, her neck, her collarbones, every kiss lasting longer, getting closer to Wil's mouth by traveling up her jaw, over her cheekbones. Wil's hands had moved to thread through Katie's hair and thumb over the sides of her neck, a precursor that meant Katie could feel the ache of what Wil's mouth on hers would be like. She wanted it. She wanted it utterly. She wanted to kiss Wil and for Wil to kiss her and for it to mean everything that it would mean, and for that to be exactly, exactly what made both of them happy, always.

It was this thought that made Katie press her lips against Wil's forehead, her thumb already on Wil's lower lip, so that she would stop.

Because she was not in a win-win situation. There were wrong decisions in front of Katie. Her life, her celebrity, meant that it was possible at every moment, every day, to make the wrong decision and hurt someone.

Katie eased back. "I'm getting a box of tools FedEx'd to me tomorrow to film your kiss." She said it to remind Wil, to remind herself, that Wil still kissed other people. "It's going to be a step up from your usual production values, so you should prepare yourself."

Wil shook her head as Katie eased herself off her lap, then followed Katie with her body until Wil's face was in her hair and her arm around her, making Katie melt and despair. "I didn't prepare for you," Wil said, her voice still low, unguarded enough that Katie knew she was confused, at least a little hurt, but here. Right here.

Katie huffed out a laugh and squeezed her eyes shut.

You couldn't have prepared for me,Katie thought. You can't.

But her heart still insisted it was simple.