Page 2 of Always a Chance
He stared at me for a long moment, running a hand through his graying hair. Finally, he pulled open a desk drawer and retrieved a book. My gut clenched, telling me I wasn’t going to like whatever he said next.
“My wife introduced me to this author.” He dropped the book on the desk, and all I could do was stare at the familiar cover. “She’s currently the hottest author in romance, but a part of it is that she never does interviews in person. There’s a mystery around her. She’s done signings in the city before, but any questions from reporters receive answers from her publisher. I have been trying to get an interview for two years with no luck.” He tapped the book. “Read this. I want every one of our digital writers to tell the news with as much emotion as Trinity tells a love story. That is how we keep theChroniclealive.”
Read this.They sounded like such simple words. Yet, he didn’t know what seeing that name on a cover did to me. Of course I’d read the book. I’d read every single thing Trinity ever wrote, even a few unpublished stories back when they were just written by someone I knew.
Mr. Irons was still talking when an idea came to me. A bad idea, one I knew was a mistake before I voiced it.
“I can get the interview.”
He froze, his mouth popping open. “Talia, this isn’t the time—”
“If I get it, can I keep my job? Will that be enough for the board?” Part of me wanted him to say no, to tell me this interview wouldn’t change a thing. Then I could forget about it, forget that, for a moment, I’d come very close to ripping open the wounds I’d long since thought healed.
Mr. Irons drummed his fingers on the desk. “I don’t know how you plan to manage it, but this paper would be the talk of the city.” His lips pursed. “I think that would save your job.”
I tried to smile, to feel anything other than pure dread at the thought of taking one last chance to preserve the life I’d built. There was no turning back now. I swallowed past a lump in my throat and twisted a rigid black curl around my finger.
“Okay then.” It was time to go home.
* * *
“Hey, baby.”Barrett greeted me as soon as I entered the Greenwich apartment we shared. “You’re home early.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about my horrible, craptastic day, but it never came out. Despite living together for almost a year now, we weren’t more than a surface relationship. I knew it, and he did too.
“I have an article to work on; figured I’d do it from the comfort of my pajamas.” It was an easy enough lie, one he wanted to believe.
When I moved in with Barrett, I hadn’t had anywhere else to go. My roommate was getting married and moving to Staten Island, and there was no way I could afford our fifth-floor walk-up on my own. Barrett offered me a room, and he was a friend. The relationship was more a proximity thing than anything else. I didn’t do deep relationships. I didn’t do love. It was too easy for it to destroy a person.
I pressed a kiss to Barrett’s cheek. “How’s work going today?”
He shrugged. “Same as always.” He owned a consulting company, a rather successful one, and worked from the office off his bedroom. “I should get back to it. Dinner tonight?”
“Sure.”
He gave me a shy smile and headed back to the office.
I kicked off my shoes and walked toward the windows that gave me a better view of the city than I ever imagined I’d have. Sometimes, I had moments where this life didn’t feel like mine. But the city, it always had.
It hummed with life, a hive protecting its colony of bees. So many lives happened here, so many stories. And yet, mine felt over before I ever arrived.
Walking into my tiny bedroom, I went to the bookshelf, where every one of Trinity’s books sat glaring at me, never letting me forget. It was a different girl who’d loved the person behind these words, a different girl who’d thought maybe they’d loved her back.
That girl wanted to be a writer who chased dreams, told great stories. How had she become this person? One who wasn’t sure she believed in anything anymore.
Her phone ringing stole her attention from the shelf, but the name flashing on the screen wasn’t someone she could face right now.
It’s okay, she said silently to the person on the other end.I’ll be home with you soon.
2
JOHNNY
“There’s my favorite girl!” I grinned when I walked out onto the back porch of my mother’s house and caught sight of Gigi next door.
Gigi whipped her head around, a goofy smile on her face. “I thought you were coming to see me yesterday.”
Guilt wound through me, and I stepped into the grass to cross to the fence that separated the two yards. “I meant to, I swear.”
