Chapter Twenty-One

Math nerds had a reputation for being boring. As Chris had long ago figured out, sometimes "boring" really meant stable and dependable and responsible, all things he considered positive traits, even if, yes, they weren't very exciting.

Sometimes, though, being responsible got in the way of being the kind of boyfriend he wanted to be. The kind who raced after his distraught girlfriend and left his wallet, phone, and key card behind. He'd dashed to the door, of course. Then he'd thought Key! and turned to grab it, but it wasn't on the hall table, so he ran back into the bedroom, snatched it up, and took off.

By then, Daphne was long gone.

On the elevator, he ignored the responsible voice that said he was in his bare feet and didn't have his wallet or phone. Finding Daphne was more important. Show up in socks and shoes, and it would look like he didn't care enough to run after her.

He padded around the lobby. There was no sign of her. He surveyed the other guests, and picked the one most likely to have noticed Daphne—a middle-aged businessman waiting in the lobby while checking out the pretty desk clerk.

He asked and got a solid no, with a twist of the lips that said the guy wouldn't admit it even if he had seen Daphne.

Next Chris tried the desk clerk, who determined that this might not be information she should give out. He was breathless, shoeless, and asking about a woman who seemed to have fled his hotel room. The clerk was right not to give him anything, damn it.

He went back upstairs and called Daphne.

No answer.

He hesitated, and then tried Sakura. No answer, and he decided not to leave a message saying Daphne had gotten upset and fled. Daphne was too private a person for that.

He'd screwed up. He'd wanted to stand firmly at her side, furious with Milner and anyone else who threatened her career because she'd recognized the potential for industry-based sexism and worked a loophole. He'd meant that she shouldn't have to hide, and he wasn't letting anyone make her feel otherwise. What he'd said was something different.

Milner had called Chris articulate, intelligent, and photogenic. Chris had pointed out that Daphne was all those things, and Milner steamrolled right over him. The guy's attitude and suggestion proved that Daphne had been right sending out her book under a man's name.

Did Milner realize he was a dinosaur, clinging to his old preconceptions? Chris suspected that explained the off-the-record phone call. Milner might be packaging his prejudices as marketing—believing people really did care whether the author was the guy on the cover—but he knew enough not to present his coauthor idea in front of others. For every reader who was disappointed that the author wasn't the guy on the cover, someone else would be relieved that it was a woman writing Theo's story. They'd had that discussion at the book festival.

Milner wanted to scare Daphne into accepting his coauthor idea. If Daphne said it was what she wanted, Lawrence wouldn't argue. If the publishing company's lawyers didn't see an issue with the arrangement, then it saved them negotiating. Everyone would be happy. Except Daphne.

Now that Chris thought about it more, he realized Milner hadn't even made an overt threat. Did he say they'd stop publishing Edge? Did he threaten Daphne's future with the company? No. He preyed on a new author's inexperience to frighten her.

The answer then was clear. Fight back. Daphne couldn't see that because her mind was swirling with worry and dread. She was afraid to take this leap that he absolutely knew she could take.

That meant there was only one thing for him to do.

He picked up the hotel pen and writing pad and started a letter to Daphne.

She'd spent the last hour swinging between the worry that she'd overreacted with Chris and the certainty that she had not. At first, she wanted to brand him a liar who'd said whatever she wanted to hear. That was her anger talking. Anger and old hurt over Anthony reignited by this new pain. She wouldn't let that infect Chris until she was damned sure he deserved it.

Daphne had been upset over Milner's call, and he'd handled it poorly. That wasn't cause to throw a new relationship on the trash heap.

Yes, she said she was ready to start a serious relationship with Chris, but was she really? Or would she flee at the first sign of trouble and take it as proof he wasn't the right guy?

She needed time to cool down and put her thoughts in order, and he needed time to realize he'd said entirely the wrong thing, and if he didn't mean it, then he could take it back. Then they would talk this out.

She went up to her hotel room and opened the door. "Chris?"

The blinds were drawn, the room still. Seeing the adjoining doorway open, she slipped over to it, calling softly, "Chris?"

No reply. She found her phone and started a text. As she did, she noticed a folded piece of paper on the coffee table, with her name written across it.

One second she was moving and breathing and thinking, and the next, everything stopped. When she forced herself to cross those few feet, it felt like moving through deep space, pitch-dark, dead silent, and ice-cold.

The last time she'd come home to a note on her table, it'd been Anthony's goodbye.

She shook herself. Now she really was overreacting. Chris had realized she didn't take her phone and left a note to say where he'd gone.

She deep-breathed until her heart rate returned to normal. Then she unfolded the letter.

D,

I can't keep doing this. I need to step off the stage you put me on. You belong up there. You wrote Edge, and it's an amazing book. You need to take your place as its author, and that means I need to step aside.

You can do this. I believe in you.

Chris

Daphne stared at the letter. Reread it. Tried to see where she could be misinterpreting, because he would not have abandoned her. Not now.

But she wasn't misreading. He was gone. He'd left her to fix this.

He wasn't just gone temporarily, either. There was no closing "Love" or even "Yours." No mention of calling or texting her. No mention of seeing her later.

He had been as sweet and supportive as he could be, but that only hid the real message.

I'm out of here.

Earlier she'd thought that if he wanted out, he'd say so.

Now he had.

Daphne's stomach clenched, and she ran for the bathroom. She didn't throw up, though. She clenched the sides of the sink and still tried to tell herself she'd misinterpreted the note. Chris would never have abandoned her like this. The note meant he was metaphorically stepping off the stage, but he hadn't actually left. He'd be here, beside her, supporting her when she revealed herself as the real Zane Remington.

Holding herself very still, she stiffly walked through the adjoining door. His things would be here. He would not leave. His bag—

—was gone.

Every trace of him was gone.

She ran to the bathroom and made it just in time.

Chris sat in his hotel room and looked at his phone. Still no call from Daphne. It'd been an hour, and the event was coming up fast, and he'd expected a call.

Was she angry with him? He'd taken that chance when he wrote the letter and switched hotels. He hoped she'd see this was for the best. If he was gone, the publisher couldn't blame Daphne for ignoring Milner's demand that she not come out as Zane. She'd need to step up at the signing and tell the truth. It'd be Chris's fault for putting her in that spot, and he was willing to take the blame.

He just… well, he'd hoped the blame wouldn't come from Daphne herself. He'd given her an excuse to step forward and the gentle push of support to do it.

Still, he shouldn't take her silence as a sign she was angry. Part of giving her that excuse meant it couldn't seem staged. She was being careful.

And maybe a little bit upset?

Shit.

His phone rang, and even when he saw it wasn't Daphne, he still exhaled in relief. Gemma. He could talk this through with his sister, who'd reassure him that he'd made the right choice.

"Another divorce meeting down," she said when he answered. "I'm trying not to think of what these are costing me. I promised I'd call, and I'm making good on that. I expect to be distracted. Give me exciting book tour news so I may live vicariously through you."

He told her about the signing the previous night. Then he gave her a detail-free summary of what happened afterward.

"Oh my God," Gemma said. "You actually scored with the hot novelist!"

"Actually? Wow."

"You can easily charm the pants off women you don't really care about. But when you like them? Awkward teenage Chris comes stumbling out."

"Thanks…"

"Did you tell her how you feel?"

"I did."

"And she feels the same?"

"Seems like it. She agreed to a test run of a committed relationship."

"You make that sound so romantic. Clearly you are not the romance writer in the family. Please feel free to come to me for tips."

"So you're writing again?"

Gemma made a noncommittal noise. "So what's next? Oh, the tour. Right. You have the penultimate signing tonight. Are you all ready?"

Chris sat cross-legged on the bed. "So about that…"

He told Gemma about the threat to expose Zane, paused to enjoy her profanity-laden outrage, and then told her about the calls from Milner, which escalated the outrage and the cursing to new levels. As a college English instructor, Gemma had a truly impressive vocabulary.

"This Milner guy is full of shit," she said. "Admittedly, I know next to nothing about publishing, but it's still a corporation. They won't tank a megaselling book. Or drop a megaselling author."

"Yep, it's all smoke and mirrors. One aging dinosaur roaring against his inevitable extinction."

"And Daphne knows that, right?"

Chris paused. Had he said that to her? He couldn't remember. He must have.

"So what's the plan?" Gemma said. "Please tell me she's going to stick it to the man, in the most spectacular way possible."

"I hope so."

A pause. Three seconds dragged by. "You are with her, right?" Gemma said.

"Not exactly." He told her about the letter.

"I'm sorry," she said when he finished. "Could you repeat that? You cannot possibly have said what you just seemed to say. You did not—not—abandon Daphne in a crisis."

A spark of anxiety ignited his worry, but he snuffed it out. "It wasn't like that," he said. "I gracefully bowed out and let her take center stage."

"By letter? Not by conversation and a mutually agreed-upon plan where you'd pretend to storm off and she'd be ‘forced' to reveal herself, thereby avoiding any repercussions from sticking it to the man."

"I…" He took a deep breath to calm his racing heart. "Daphne's scared, understandably. But I know she can do it, so I gave her a nudge."

"She's an adult, Chris. Not a child who needs nudging."

He winced at Gemma's tone, which seemed to be getting sharper by the word. "I—"

"Also, you didn't nudge. You threw her off the damned deep end and told her to swim. You knew she was scared, and you threw her in."

The worry ignited again, only for him to stamp it out. Gemma was misinterpreting the situation.

Only she wasn't. Because that was exactly the right analogy.

Daphne was afraid of swimming. Would he throw her off the deep end? Absolutely not. Daphne was afraid of standing up in front of readers and admitting she had written the book they loved. And he hadn't just thrown her in. He'd thrown her in… then turned and walked away.

Sink or swim.

Holy shit.

"Where are you?" Gemma snapped.

"In a hotel. A, uh, few blocks from where we were staying."

"Does she know that? Tell me she doesn't think you came back to Vancouver. Tell me the note was clear that you were close by, and if she wanted to discuss this, she could."

"I…"

"Tell me you at least made it clear you weren't actually walking away. Leaving her for good."

"Of course. I…" He struggled to remember the letter. "I… I might have forgotten… Shit."

"For god's sake, Chris. How can such a smart guy be so—" She inhaled, cutting herself short. "Okay, that doesn't help."

"I thought I was being supportive," he said weakly. "I know she can do this, and I want her to take the credit she deserves. She wrote an amazing book."

"She did. And she chose not to come out as the author. That's why she hired you. It's not your place to decide when that ends, just like it's not the place of an asshole publisher or a bratty teen blogger. Supporting Daphne meant listening to her and helping her work it through. Did you try that?"

Daphnehad tried that. She'd wanted to talk about it, and he'd refused and told her what to do.

"I screwed up, Gem," he said, his heart pounding. "I screwed up so bad."

"Yes, but not so badly that you can't fix it. When's the event?"

He checked his watch. "Just over an hour."

"Call her. Now. Work this out."

The event was in one hour, and Daphne needed to pull herself together and decide how she was going to handle it. Pulling herself together meant she had to stop beating herself up for the mistake she'd made the previous night. For the mistake she'd been making for days now. Falling for Chris Stanton.

She thought she'd been careful, protecting her heart, but she'd let her emotions run roughshod over common sense. She'd told herself there was no place for love in her life right now… and then proceeded to fall in love anyway.

She'd blame Chris, whether he deserved that or not. He was too good-looking, too smart, too sweet, the whole damn package. Maybe it wasn't love after all. Maybe it was lust and ego. A guy like that wanted her? Swoon.

He wouldn't be the first person to claim he totally supported his partner's career and then decide she didn't know how to handle it. Just like Anthony wasn't the first person to say he valued his partner's close family ties and then get angry when those ties diverted her attention.

Was Chris gone for good? She had to presume so. Like her, he'd been swept away in the moment.

They'd enjoyed their time together. Had some really great sex. And then went their separate ways. Which was what she wanted from the start.

Someday she'd be ready to share her life with someone. For now, she had to focus on her career.

And that really was what she needed to focus on tonight. She'd heard briefly from Lawrence. She'd told him what Milner proposed, and he'd said to leave it with him. She'd wanted more, but asking for reassurances felt weak and needy.

Tell me there's another option. Tell me I won't lose my career over this.

Lawrence was working on it, and she had to let him do that while she concentrated on the event. She hadn't told Lawrence that Chris was gone. That wasn't an agent issue; it was a publicist one. She needed to speak to Sakura. But first, she had an event to prepare for.

Daphne climbed into the car and was relieved to find Sakura there. She'd realized she hadn't spoken to Sakura since that morning, and it was entirely possible she didn't have a publicist anymore, especially since she'd turned off her phone after calling Lawrence. She'd needed her head clear, and had been afraid Chris might call… and equally afraid he wouldn't. Better not to know.

Yes, the head-in-the-sand strategy wasn't very mature, but she had to protect herself right now.

Daphne closed the car door, and Sakura frowned over at her.

"Where's Chris?" Sakura asked.

"He's… not with me," Daphne said.

She tensed for Sakura to ask whether Chris was meeting them at the bookstore, but Sakura only gave a distracted nod.

"We need to talk anyway," Sakura said. "You and me. Without him."

"Sure."

"I want to know why you did it."

"Why I…?"

"Pretended to be a male author. Hired Chris. I might be able to guess, but I want to hear it in your words. From the top."

Daphne did just that. When she finished, Sakura stared out the side window for at least five minutes. Then she said, "Figures."

Daphne couldn't read her tone and said carefully, "It figures that…?"

"That you'd go from ‘can't get an agent' to ‘half-million-dollar deal' by putting a guy's name on your manuscript."

"It wasn't just that," Daphne said. "I tweaked the synopsis to emphasize the survival aspects and remove the hints of romance. Also, I said I—Zane—had an MFA, which I don't."

"How much of the book did you change?"

"None."

Sakura shook her head. "Figures."

"I can't say that a man's name made the difference," Daphne said.

"Of course not, because if you even suggested it, there'd be pushback. Prove it, they'd say. You can't prove it. Maybe your agent would have read it with your name on it. Maybe it would have sold just as well and been marketed the same. I can tell you it wouldn't have been marketed the same, but then I'd be asked to prove it, and I can't do that, either, because it's not like I have an email saying to treat you differently because you're a guy. I know it made a difference. It might—God help me—have subconsciously made a difference in how I pitched your book."

Sakura looked at her. "You didn't plan to pass yourself off as a man when you started writing the book. It was an act of desperation."

"Desperation and wine," Daphne said, forcing a wry smile.

"And you were afraid if you came out, you'd lose your shot at getting published."

Daphne nodded.

"So, like you said, you and your lawyer friend decided to hire a guy for a few photos, maybe an interview or two."

"It got out of hand," Daphne said.

"By which time, it felt too late to do anything. Which it was, to be honest. Give me the option of having you come out prepublication or posttour, and posttour would have definitely been my choice." She exhaled. "Okay, so where do we stand?"

Daphne told her about the second call from Milner. She wanted Sakura to be shocked, even angry, but the publicist only shook her head.

"I don't know how that guy still has a job," she muttered. "He had some massive hits twenty years ago, and now he just coasts. When Alicia wanted to buy Edge, he came in strong. Others said postapocalyptic young adult was dead, but he insisted Edge was different. By which he apparently meant that a man wrote it."

Again, Daphne wanted to ask what Milner could do to her career. But that wasn't Sakura's job, no more than Chris going AWOL was Lawrence's concern.

Which led to…

"Chris isn't meeting us there," Daphne said.

Sakura frowned at her.

Daphne gave an abridged version of the story, basically that they'd argued over the next move and Chris decided she needed to step forward as Zane. Then he left so she could do that.

She'd worded it carefully, letting none of her hurt seep in, casting Chris in the most neutral light.

"So you two agreed on this?" Sakura said.

Daphne hesitated, but as much as she wanted to protect Chris, she wasn't taking a hit for him. "We argued, I walked out, and he left a note."

Sakura stared at her. "What a dick move."

Maybe this should have felt like validation, but Daphne wanted someone to tell her it wasn't so bad, that maybe he'd even done the right thing. Except he hadn't, and she knew that.

"That is some patronizing bullshit right there," Sakura said. "People that good-looking always have a fatal flaw. Or fifty." She stopped. "You guys are over, right?"

"Seems so."

"Whew. Then I can insult him all I want. And now we'll put him aside and focus on you. His leaving puts you in a very awkward but also advantageous position."

"Not quite seeing the advantageous part," Daphne murmured.

"He disappeared before a signing. We can't get hold of him. Well, we don't want to, but let's go with ‘can't' since no one will requisition our phone records. The show must go on. Therefore you must reveal yourself as the author and even Milner can't fault you for that."

Sakura tapped into her phone. "I'll prep a message right now. I'll say Chris took off, but we presumed he'd still make the event. Then, at the last minute, we realized he wasn't going to and you had to come out. I'll hit Send at the actual last moment, so it notifies everyone but doesn't give Milner a chance to stop you."

"Do I have to come out?" Daphne said, her voice quiet.

Sakura frowned over. "What else can you do?"

"Say Zane is sick? I have the bookmarks and such. I can talk about Edge, apologize, give out swag… Oh! And I have bookplates." Daphne rummaged through her bag and withdrew the box. "About a hundred bookplates that Chris signed before the tour for people who didn't have a book yet."

"But this is your chance," Sakura said. "This is the perfect excuse to—"

Sakura's phone buzzed. She glanced at it and swore. "Work. Let me take this. I won't lie and pretend Chris is with us, but let's hold off on the rest."

As Sakura took the call, Daphne sunk into her seat and into her thoughts.

Chris had discovered a flaw in his plan. Well, two flaws. First, it presumed Daphne would answer her phone. His calls had gone to voicemail, and his texts sat in Unread, meaning she probably had her phone off. That was fine. He knew where to find her. He just had to get to the bookstore.

That led to flaw 1.5, which presumed he could hail a taxi from downtown at rush hour. He eventually managed to snag a rideshare, but by the time it got him to the store, it was fifteen minutes to showtime.

Then came flaw number two: presuming he could sneak in undetected and talk to Daphne.

Waiting for his rideshare, he'd considered this and affected a disguise. He shaved off the beard shadow, left the glasses behind, and wore Chris clothes—jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. Yet the moment he stepped into the bookstore parking lot, two college-aged women did a double take. That did happen, so he told himself they weren't recognizing him as Zane… until he overheard them whispering about whether they could skip the line and ask him to sign their books now.

Chris slipped off in search of an alternate entrance. It was a big-box store, which meant he had a chance of finding one, but the only doors were into the café or the store, both up front. The side loading dock was firmly shut. He even tried knocking on it. Noticing a fire escape ladder, he considered climbing onto the roof and searching for a way in, but he wasn't James Bond, so that seemed unwise.

He was running out of time.

He had to speak to Daphne. Apologize, definitely, but right now, he needed to let her know he was there and give her the choice: Did she want to admit she wrote Edge or have him take over for another night? That was why he couldn't just stroll in as Zane. If she'd decided to come out, then he had to let her keep the excuse that she'd had to step up because he wasn't there.

Finally he gave up, pulled down the brim of his ballcap, put on his shades, and slid in through the café door. He made his way as fast as he could into the bookstore and then circled around the outer aisles, where he grabbed three books as customer camouflage.

From there he followed the rumble of voices. It didn't take long to find the crowd. It spilled from the event area into all the surrounding aisles. As he backed up into hiding, he overheard three teens passionately discussing the book, and his heart swelled.

This was what Daphne deserved. A packed store of ardent fans.

She deserved to be the one up there signing the books, the one answering their excited questions, the one basking in their passion for her story.

But she also deserved the choice of when—or even if—she did that.

That was when he saw Daphne, being led by someone from the store, and she looked absolutely terrified.

Yeah, because you abandoned her. You shoved her off the deep end, said "swim," and couldn't even stick around to make sure she didn't drown.

He was here now. If he could get her attention, they could delay the event start and give her the chance to choose.

He slipped around the bookshelves, only to find he couldn't get to her. Couldn't even see her.

He heard the store staff member making an introduction, and he eased through a few groups until he could see the podium.

Daphne stepped up, and Chris's heart plummeted. If she looked terrified before, she looked petrified now. She stood there, frozen, staring out at the crowd.

Go to her.

Rescue her.

"Hello," she said, her voice wavering. "I'm, uh, Daphne. I know I'm not the, uh, person you're here to see but, uh, Zane… Zane couldn't be with us tonight."

A rumble went through the crowd. Someone near him said "What the hell?"

"I'm so sorry," Daphne said. "He—he's unwell, and… And I know that's a disappointment but, uh…"

He couldn't do this. He could not stand here and watch Daphne drown in the pit he'd thrown her into. She wasn't ready to come out as Zane. She could only claim he was sick and face the mutiny alone.

Which he was absolutely not letting her do.

Chris yanked off his ballcap, popped the lenses from his sunglasses, and strode toward the podium to save her.