The Things We Leave Unfinished by Yarros, Rebecca (best free e reader .TXT) 📗

“Simple,” she repeated, shifting in my lap but clinging to my shoulders as a tentative smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Simple is good.”

“Simple it is.” For now. What I needed was time.

“Okay. Good. Then we agree.” She pressed a quick kiss to my lips, then slid off my lap. “Oh, you were asking about the original manuscript for The Diplomat’s Daughter, right?”

“Right.” I nodded, feeling more than a little off-balance. We’d agreed that this would be simple? Or was there more inferred?

“I pulled it out of the upstairs closet,” she said, taking a shirt box from off the office bookshelves and putting it on an empty patch of desk. “She has all her originals up there.”

“Thank you.” I knew what she was trusting me with, and on any other day I would have been ecstatic to dig further into the oddest literary puzzle I’d ever stumbled onto, but my head wasn’t quite in the game.

“I have a phone call with the lawyers to finalize Gran’s foundation in a few minutes, so I’ll leave you to it.” She came around the desk and kissed me, quick and hard, before walking toward the door.

“Georgia?” I called out just before she reached the foyer.

“Hmm?” She turned and lifted her brows, so damned beautiful that my heart actually ached.

“What exactly did we just agree to?” I asked. “Between us?”

“A book-writing fling,” she answered with a smile, like it was obvious. “Simple, no strings, and over when you finish the book.” She shrugged. “Right?”

Over when the book was finished.

My hands curled into fists over the arms of the chair. “Sure. Right.”

Her phone rang, and she tugged the device from her back pocket. “See you when you hit your word count.” She flashed me a smile, answered the call, and closed the door all in one smooth motion.

Now our relationship was on the same deadline as the book, and sure, I’d always planned on leaving after I finished, but being with Georgia had changed things…at least for me.

Shit. The one thing I needed to win her over was time, and I was closer to finishing than she knew. Closer than I was willing to admit.

…

I finished the book—both versions—four weeks later. Then I sat in the office and stared at two files on my desktop.

My time was up.

My deadline was the day after tomorrow.

I’d done it, somehow satisfying both Georgia’s requirement and nailing mine, while keeping my contracted dates, and yet there was no feeling of pride or accomplishment, just sheer terror that I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the woman I’d fallen for.

I’d only had four weeks, and it wasn’t enough. Georgia was opening up, but the parts of her I needed to trust me were still boarded up tight. We were still a fling to her. Just when I thought she might change her mind, she’d mention making the best of what time we had, and now that time was over.

My phone rang and I answered it on speakerphone. “Hey, Adrienne.”

“So you’re not coming home for Christmas?” my sister asked, more than a little judgment in her tone.

“That is a complicated question.” I closed my laptop and pushed it to the far side of the desk. I’d deal with my existential crisis later.

“It’s really not. You’re either going to be in New York on December twenty-fifth, or you’re not.”

“I’m not sure yet.” I stood and arranged four of the shirt boxes I’d borrowed on the desk in front of me, then opened and nestled each of them inside their own lids. I was missing something here. Something right in front of me that was driving me up a wall. The manuscripts were from different points in Scarlett’s career. Her edited, published works were smoother, of course, but I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the stylistic differences between her earlier works and the later ones, couldn’t help but wonder if losing Jameson hadn’t just broken her heart, but changed her fundamentally.

Couldn’t help but wonder if the same would happen to me if I lost Georgia.

“It’s only three weeks away.”

“Three weeks and—” I did the mental math. “Four days.”

“Exactly. You don’t think you’ll have the book done by then?”

My jaw flexed at the thought of lying to my sister. To anyone, really. “It’s not about the book.”

“It’s not? Wait, am I on speaker? Where’s Georgia?”

I laughed softly. “Which question would you like me to answer first?”

“The last one.”

“She’s in town, working at her studio.” Georgia had been a sight to behold this last month. She worked tirelessly, overseeing the construction in the front end of the studio, and completing pieces she wouldn’t let me see—wouldn’t let anyone see. She’d set the opening date for her birthday, January twentieth, and I wasn’t even sure I’d be here to see it, which was a swift kick to the gut.

“Nice. I bet she’s loving life out of the tabloids.”

“She is.” Which was just another reason she didn’t want to go back to New York.

“She hasn’t frosted you out yet?” There was a teasing lilt to my sister’s voice, and it wasn’t like she wasn’t aware of the rocky ground Georgia and I had started on.

“You should fly out here and meet her. She’s opening the studio next month with a party. She’s nothing like what you read in the gossip rags, Adrienne.” I sighed, shoving my hands through my hair, then taking the phone with me as I started to pace along the bookshelves. “She’s kind, smart, funny as hell, driven to help whoever she can. She’s never content to sit idle, she’s great with her best friend’s kids, and she has no problem putting me in my place, which I know you appreciate.” I glanced from picture to picture that lined Scarlett’s shelves, pausing on the photo album Georgia had left out. “She’s…” I couldn’t even put her into words.

“Holy shit, Noah. You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

“She’s not ready for anything like