Page 51 of Just My Type
“I know, sweetheart. Go get her.”
I bend and kiss my grandma’s cheek. “Thanks, Cece. And could you maybe keep the whole accidental marriage thing to yourself? Hannah is a little skittish about it. And maybe the rest too? I don’t know how she feels yet about everyone knowing that we’re…whatever we are.”
“And you?” Cece asks.
“I’d scream it from the rooftops if she’d let me, but I want to go at her pace.”
Cece pats my cheek. “Good boy. You’re definitely my favoritetoday. I’ll keep your secret even though the universe is telling me that keeping secrets is bad for my complexion this month.”
I snort out a laugh because my zany grandmother is exactly what I needed right now. “You’re the best.”
“Oh honey, I know. Go get your girl.”
I see Hannah the second I walk out the front door. She’s sitting on my mom’s beloved front porch swing, legs drawn up to her chest and her chin resting on her knees, her pretty, white summer dress that makes her skin glow spread out around her. She’s staring out at the street, and she looks a million miles away.
I approach quietly, laying a hand on her shoulder. She stiffens slightly, but when she looks up and sees me, her entire body relaxes. I take that as a sign to sit down next to her, laying one arm behind her over the back of the swing.
“You okay, Gorgeous?”
Hannah blows out a breath and scrubs a hand down her face. “I’m fine, I just needed a minute.”
With my other hand on her cheek, I turn her face so I can look at her. “It’s okay if you’re not fine. It’s also okay if you don’t want to talk about it. But if you do, I hope you know you can talk to me.”
“I think you might be the only one I can talk to,” Hannah mutters, and her words have my heart leaping out of my chest and into her hands.
“Lay it on me, Han.”
She turns on the swing so she’s facing me, and I drop my hand to hers, tangling our fingers together. “My agent called me just as I was getting out of the car.”
“You have an agent?” I ask incredulously. She really is amazing.
Hannah shrugs, like that’s not the coolest thing in the world. “Yeah. She helped me with the audio deals for my books and a few other things. Foreign rights and stuff.”
“She did a good job. Your audios are killer.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Okay, real talk, what’s your deal with my books? You’re, like, obsessed with them.”
Now it’s my turn to shrug. “I just like what I like. Back to you now. What did your agent have to say?”
“A publishing company wants to buy the print rights to my books. All of them.”
I can feel my grin spread. “Holy shit Han, that’s amazing,” I say, but then I watch as her face falls. “Wait, that’s not amazing?”
She shakes her head. “I mean, it is, but it also isn’t. Because they want to buy all three of my series together. The first two are finished, so that’s easy. But I still have three books left in this current series. And…” she trails off, looking miserable.
“And you’re worried about being able to finish the series.”
“Got it in one,” she says dryly.
“But you’re writing. You told me this morning you wrote a whole chapter last night.” I smile at the memory of this morning. When I got to her apartment to leave her coffee and muffin by her door, she threw the door open and launched herself at me, kissing me breathless and telling me all about her late-night writing session right there on the landing.
“Yeah, but there’s no guarantee I can keep it up. Not for this book and definitely not for two more,” she says glumly.
I hate her defeated tone, and everything in me wants to fix this for her. I reach into my pocket, pulling out the bag of Twizzlers Nibs I have and handing it to her. She looks down at it and back at me. “Why do you have this?”
I lift our joined hands and kiss her knuckles. “Started carrying a bag with me in case you ever needed an emergency Twizzler. I know it’s not the regular ones, but I figured these would do in a pinch.”
She turns and leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder while she tears the bag open and pops a couple piecesof candy in her mouth. I lean my head on hers, sure that I have never been as content in my life as I am sitting on this swing with Hannah, looking out over my childhood street on a soft summer evening. “Thanks for this. I think better with Twizzlers.”
