Beneath the Scars

She sighed, her hand flexing in mine. “I was—am—a writer. I’ve self-published a few books.”

“Anything I would have read?”

“I doubt it”—she shook her head— “unless you read romances.”

“Ah, no. Kinda more a thriller, mystery guy.”

“Didn’t think so.” She smirked and I chuckled.

“I was doing okay—not on any of the big best seller lists yet, but I was getting my name out there.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee. “I had been working on a story, a much bigger one, for a while. Two years, in fact.”

“What happened?”

“I was looking for a job—one that had fairly flexible hours, so I could still write. A friend, who worked at a publishing house, told me about a listing for a personal assistant to a well-known author. I thought it would be perfect. I went for the interview and got the job.”

“Not such a good job?”

“No, it seemed fine. Jared was working on a new book. He had finished a series of three books that were huge. All of them best sellers. Expectations were high for his next book. He needed help, not only with keeping up his schedule but proofing his work, etcetera. It was like my dream job.”

She shifted restlessly. “Jared and I became close. In fact, we began dating a few weeks after I started working for him. He was almost relentless in his pursuit.” She laughed, yet the sound was anything but humorous. “I thought he was crazy about me.”

I squeezed her hand that was beginning to tremble a little, knowing we were coming to the crux of her story. “But?” I prompted, keeping my tone gentle.

“The first week I was there, he saw me writing in my book on my lunch break.”

“Writing in your book?”

She smiled sadly. “Unlike most people who use a computer, I liked to write longhand. Old-fashioned, I know, but I could always feel the story more. I had to use a computer all day at the office and I hated it. It took longer, but the words made more sense to me when I did that way. I kept everything to do with the book in an old leather satchel, which belonged to my grandfather. I loved it—he was a teacher and it reminded me of him.”

I nodded in understanding. I also didn’t miss the past tense of “liked.”

“He saw me and asked what I was doing. I was rather shy but told him. A couple days later, he asked if he could see it. Needless to say, I was quite excited that a successful author like Jared would ask to see my work, so I let him.”

“Did he give you an opinion?”

“He said it was somewhat trivial, not a bad idea, but it required a great deal of work. He said to let him know when it was done and he would reread it, make some suggestions, and possibly show it to his publishing company if he thought it had some merit. I was ecstatic.”

“Sounds a little condescending to me,” I muttered, suspicious of where this was going.

Megan tilted her head. “Jared was a true artist: mercurial, arrogant, rude at times, and charming at others. He had fits of anger and could be cutting, then turn around and do something kind.” Her lips turned up in a small grin. “Remind you of anyone?”

I had to chuckle at her wit.

Her face became serious. “But something he was, that you’re not, is deceitful and corrupt.”

I slid closer, my hand closing around the back of her neck, soothing the tense muscles. “Tell me.”

“Jared’s editor was very unhappy with him, which made him unhappy with me—and everything else. His new book wasn’t going well. Compared to the series he had written previously, this one seemed ‘almost juvenile—full of inaccuracies’ according to his editor. I had to agree when I read it—the story line was so disjointed, compared to the outline. Jared blamed everyone around him and became very sullen. He would hole up in his office typing, and cursing away, leaving me sitting for hours with nothing to do, and with so much time on my hands, I finished my own book.”

“You told him?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He said he would read it soon and asked me to leave it with him. The next day, he was back to being Jared. He would take me out to dinner, make me laugh with his stories, and seemed to be better, happier, with his writing. He told his editor it was flowing fast. I assumed he got over his slump; although he wasn’t allowing anyone to see what he was working on. He said he didn’t want to ‘jinx’ it yet.” She shrugged. “Who was I to argue? As I said, I wrote all of my stories longhand and told no one what they were about until they were done. Everyone works in a different way.”