instantly, his hands broke free of the railing and he was falling backward. He tried to hit a step and missed. He crumpled down the concrete steps, hitting them one at a time until he landed down on the sidewalk. On his side, groaning in pain, his eyes shut.
“Is he dead?” Amelia asked.
“No. Just dead drunk. He won’t remember a thing in the morning.” I looked back at her again. “Do you want me to bring him inside?”
“No,” she said. “Let him sleep out here.”
“You deserve so much better than this life,” I said.
I made it down one step before Amelia said my name.
I turned one more time and she was right there. Almost my height because I was down a few steps.
The look in her eyes was the only hope I was able to feel in a long time.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Amelia leaned forward and kissed my cheek.
She gasped, quickly turned and ran back into her house, shutting the door behind her.
I grinned and walked down the steps and stepped over Amelia’s drunk father.
I touched my cheek.
How the hell could a girl leave me this happy in a world of hell?
Chapter 28
The List and the Heart
NOW
(Amelia)
“Did you see your article online?” Grace asked me as she dipped a tea bag into a steaming mug.
“No.”
“Didn’t Bel email you?”
“Probably. I didn’t check it. I don’t check it.”
“You don’t care?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s just… I don’t know.”
“She told me she talked to you about doing other things.”
“Not really interested at the moment,” I said.
I was completely focused on sliding a pen through my thumb and pointer finger, letting it hit the table and flipping it over to do the same thing.
Over and over.
A notebook was open and next to me, but nothing had been written.
I was stuck in a thought I couldn’t make sense of.
Not to mention I was unable to get the look on Josh’s face out of my head as he dropped me off to get my car. That little headstone at the cemetery was something important to him. And when I saw the Del, I instantly wrote this intense story that wasn’t true. I had jumped hard and Josh was pissed at me.
“Amelia, what’s going on with you right now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “This is just how I write.”
“You’ve been sitting there for an hour.”
“So? You don’t know what goes on in my head.”
“So, you’re working?”
“Totally,” I said.
Grace smirked. “I don’t believe that for a second. Maybe you should face your fear.”
“Of?”
“Everything. Go into a bookstore. Face the fear that you should have been there. Or call up your old agent and yell at them. Or just write whatever is on your mind. You’re actually free, Amelia. There is no pressure on you to write. So write whatever you want.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t know the ending.”
“Make it up. That’s your job.”
“Not this ending…”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Is this because of Josh?” She switched eyebrows, trying to get me to laugh. “Are you hot for him?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re lying to me.”
“You have no idea where that goes. Maybe I should have never showed up to that gallery and tried to interview him.”
Grace didn’t respond.
She just frowned.
That part was true.
If I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have stepped right back into Josh’s world or back into the world of how I used to feel. Even if my body still tingled and ached in a certain way, the path was steep with twists and turns that seemed to never end.
And what was I supposed to do? Keep going after him, demanding more and more about his life? I’d forever look like a cheap writer begging for a story and that’s not what I wanted.
“What are you working on?” I asked Grace, wanting to change gears a little.
“I have a call in a few minutes. Wonderful woman. Going through a rough patch. She’s worked in health and fitness her entire life. Got injured and was set back and feels useless now. Her husband left her for a younger woman too. She’s terrified of what that is going to do for her image. So, I’m helping her mend. All the way around.”
“Wow. That’s hard.”
“It’s life, Amelia. Life is hard.”
I glanced around at the cat pictures on the walls. Sometimes Grace would say something that really mattered, but then I’d look at the cat stuff and it would just creep me the hell out.
“I’m having her make a list of five things on her mind each day,” Grace said. “Something small to