Page 131 of Happy After All

Writing is how I learn about the world and myself. People who are like me and people who aren’t.

Very few people would ever understand that, but Nathan does. He had to write a whole book about his wife, about her life, in order to sort through everything he experienced. He writes books about the military that help him make the good guys better than they are. He worries about writing romance, because he’s scared it will hurt him, like the one in his real life.

I get it. We get each other.

Yes, we connect with our grief. We also connect with how we see the world. How we filter it. How we figure out everything we feel by writing it.

He’s also so good in bed it’s unreal. He makes all the other sex I’ve ever had seem like sad warm-ups, while he’s the main event.

With him, it’s like in my books.

Straight out of my fantasies, off the page and into my bed.

The next time someone tells me sex in romance is unrealistic, I’ll pity them.

When we finish the signing, Christopher is gone, and I realize he had to go do his reading.

Maybe we won’t get to have our conversation. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I thought it was important, but my big realization was just ... I’m glad I spent the day with Nathan. Talking about what we love, our books. Meeting readers and interacting with them.

Nathan is being occupied—against his will, maybe—by a pair of zealous women who are each holding a stack of his books and talking to him very intently.

“The thing is,” one of them says, “if you think about it, Tanner wouldn’t have done that.”

Nathan is nodding. “I did write it that way, though.”

I stand up from the table after everyone is gone, and I start moving some of my remaining books back into a box, when I see Christopher come into the side of the tent.

“Amelia, do you have a minute?”

“Oh. Yes.” I straighten. I glance over at Nathan, who is still getting a lecture on the mistakes he’s made in his own series. I got an email like that once, but he’s basically getting the full screed in person, and he’s handling it well.

“Is . . . Jacob Coulter your . . . fiancé? Husband?”

“No,” I say, and I don’t offer an explanation. “Congratulations. On the engagement.”

I don’t know if I mean it, but I’m glad I can say it.

“Thank you,” he says. “That’s not how I would’ve chosen for you to find out about that.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Who could have predicted we would end up in the same place at the same time quite like this?”

“Yeah, that’s ... My agent used to know Reigna? I guess she taught him how to do the soft-shoe.”

I nod. “That sounds about right.”

Silence lapses between us for a moment. “Congratulations on the books. You always kind of wanted to do that.”

“Thank you.”

It’s desperately awkward for a second. I start trying to grab words and piece them together. I start trying to figure out what I should say to him. What monologue will fit just right. The triumphant scene where I make him grovel for all he’s done wrong.

Then he takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Whatever I was going to say is just ... gone. I didn’t expect that.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I handled everything with us in a way that was just ... There wasn’t a worse way. I’m sorry.”

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