Even though I had my own desk now, I couldn't escape the occasional conversation in Alec's office about his brother. No matter how concentrated I pretended to be on the manuscripts.

"Would you say that nudging Miles to consider my offer is going well?" Alec's voice sounded uninterested like he was asking as an afterthought, but I knew better.

My new desk, complete with a leather swivel chair, was only a few feet away from his but at least I had the illusion of freedom, writing notes without imaging him inspecting everything with his classic unimpressed look.

I didn't know any more than Alec did about Miles's future plans. Though Miles acted like an open book, he had intentionally stapled pages to ward off curious eyes from the more personal chapters of the intricate story he probably was.

It also didn't help that Alec's assignment was the last thing on my mind any time I was near his brother.

I already had so much to keep in my mind during those conversations. That list included keeping myself from smiling whenever he shot me his resident killer smile. It also featured protecting my brain from invasion whenever he gave me the I'm-trying-to-figure-you-out look. But, most importantly, denying any suggestion that arose in my brain that I didn't hate Miles Whitman.

"Well, it's definitely a challenge," I replied, finally remembering that I hadn't answered out loud yet. "He's not very easy to read." I assumed he knew that already about his own brother. The reason why he believed I could get through to Miles was a mystery.

I hadn't mentioned to Alec that his brother hadn't written in forever and didn't seem to be on the right path to start writing again. Although Miles never said it was a secret, it didn't feel like something I should say myself. I'd leave that particular fun task to him.

Piles of lengthy manuscripts and a modern pencil holder were our desks' only decoration. We were working through mountains of them every day—one teaspoon at a time—but new stacks were introduced whenever it felt like we were making progress. Olivia was sure to stick her head in and announce incoming loads.

One major perk of this internship was that I got to see the behind-the-scene angle of selecting among hundreds of submitted manuscripts. It made me dread the day when I would have to go through that process, though if I were to listen to some of Mr. Crawford's worst pep talks over the years, very few of us would ever have to worry about that.

The comment made me smile now, but I knew it would come and haunt my nightmares tonight, whining for my attention.

"Just one this time," Olivia said, right on schedule to render our progress void as she walked into the office to hand it to Alec.

He took the manuscript with care as to avoid brushing her fingers in the process.

"Thank you." It was nothing more than a mumble, and I didn't think she could hear more than a vowel from it.

Maybe if she took the pain to reconstruct all the dissected vowel sounds she had caught on to this week, she could build a legitimate sentence out of it.

As I had been doing ever since I started working with Alec, I didn't comment on it, and we went right back to work after she left. If we'd have to see each other at least three days per week for the rest of the summer, I couldn't make things uncomfortable by commenting on his painfully visible crush on Olivia.

I was sure it wouldn't take too long for Alec to catch up to the feelings that ran miles ahead, leaving him panting somewhere close to the starting line. He had read enough books about love to pass for an expert.

Besides, I didn't have the best track record with relationships, as Thomas and my other whopping two-week-long relationships could testify.

My experience with love was somewhere between unsatisfactory and completely irrelevant. I wasn't at all qualified to play amateur matchmaker.

I would mark that as the only item on my list of good calls made so far this summer, next to the increasingly long list of bad ones I couldn't justify. It was better than nothing.

➷➷➷

Miles Whitman had issues—and they extended far beyond his writer's block.

For one, he liked to eat his pizza with a fork, as I soon found out when he joined me at the isolated table where I was enjoying a fruit cup during lunch.

His very presence there had taken me by surprise. I assumed he wouldn't step anywhere near his brother's building if he got the choice.

His hand lingered on the seat across from me. "May I join you?"

I had no desire to make a scene in the quiet cafeteria by choking on my grapes, so I nodded instead of attempting an answer.

He fell into the chair and entertained himself by picking at the cheese layer of his slice of pizza with the plastic fork.

"So you're saying you walked through the entrance, and nothing happened?" I started on the sentence I had already prepared in my mind while chewing, and Miles looked up from his food.

I continued, excited at the idea of making fun of him to ease the pressure I felt from being next to him. "No sudden and painful death? What about the vultures you believed would peck out your hair if you approached the doors?"

"You really commit, don't you?" he said, with a brief smile, as though something about the setting kept him from displaying his usual smile.

"I don't know any other way to live."

The cafeteria always brought out the best mood I could muster. It was one of the few well-conditioned rooms and, therefore, the most prepared to compete with the summer heat.

Besides, my grades from every other class besides Mr. Crawford's were soaring.

"What are you working on?" he asked, pointing to the pencil in my left hand that hovered above a page, ready to duck somewhere to hide from having to answer Miles's question.

"Oh, it's nothing. It's for class," I said, as I wished in some obscure part of myself, tucked away between arteries and blood vessels that he would assume I meant a math class or something.

"Your writing class?" he asked, showing more discernment than I had given him credit for.

I nodded. "I've been struggling." I pushed the notepad towards him before I could think twice about it and evaluate the reasons this choice was a bad idea.

His eyes scanned left to right as he read the page without a word. It gave my brain just the time it needed to get to work on overthinking all the things Miles was probably not even thinking about.

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to know what he thought of it or whether it would be better if I didn't pile up negative feedback on top of Mr. Crawford's.

"Don't tell me what you thought of it," I told him before he could even consider saying anything.

"How would that help?" His fork twirled in cheese as he continued to stare at me.

The fact that he didn't seem to understand the concept that there was a pre-defined limit on eye contact per second was another one of Miles's issues.

"I'm resourceful—I'll find a way to turn the audio frequencies of your silences into something helpful."

"You have a rule book where your head should be," Miles said, looking back down at the paper before sliding back across the table to me.

"That counts as talking about it."

"Well, since I accidentally started, I might as well give actual advice," he said, allowing his fork to fall onto the plate without finishing his pizza.

"What?" I asked, half-expecting him to give me the all too common speech on writing with my heart.

"Be messy."

"What?" I repeated. The unexpected advice echoed like a silly joke in my ear.

"It's good writing. It's this paragraph's rough draft, and it's already the most polished thing I've seen. Your character's acting like a reasonable human being. What you need to do is to make a mess. Cause significant damage that the character cannot repair on their own. Break somebody's heart. Make it hurt."

I glanced around me to make sure that no one within earshot misunderstood him for a disturbed psychopath. Everyone seemed to be carrying on with their tasks.

"So, why are you here today?" I asked, quickly changing the subject before he could add any mention of heart.

"I'm technically babysitting for a friend. She was dying to see what the Whitman publishing company looked like. And I'm everyone's friendly makeshift babysitter without a day job, so here I am."

"Well, where's the kid?"

"I should know that, huh?" Miles laughed when my eyebrows shot up. "I'm kidding. She wanted to say hi to Alec. She should be here in a minute."

Silence crawled to fill the space between us as it waited for the next person who'd know how to kill it.

"So, what's your next stop, Kelly?" When he noted the confusion I was sure was visible on my face, he added, "After college. Where will you be?"

College. Publishing Deal. Non-stop writing. Death. That was the plan as I had always seen it. But, if I were to believe my grades in creative writing, this order I had taken as a given back at the start of college would soon need a tweak.

"Things are not exactly settling into the tiny boxes I made for them," I told him. "But it's just a matter of time. There's still time to fix things."

His warm gaze remained on me, poring into my skin. He was not rushing to interrupt me, waiting for more.

I paused, then the truth slipped past my lips before my brain could catch up, "I don't know."

Miles was practically a stranger. Maybe that was why I didn't think twice about admitting out loud to him the things my mind had been ruminating over in the dark when my brain knit a trap around me with no exit.

I knew we'd soon return to our respective worlds, and he wouldn't be there to hold the truth over my head.

"Good," he answered, surprising me. "It's even better when you don't know."

I didn't ask him to explain because, in a way, I thought I understood his statement. Not knowing—not caring—gave me fewer things to worry about.

I wouldn't stress over getting an agent and getting published after graduating. Not knowing acknowledged that it was possible that none of these things would happen according to plan and that I could still be fine even if they didn't.

Or at least those were the exact words of the career counselor Mr. Crawford had forced all his students to see, freshman year.

"It's just a reminder," Mr. Crawford had said, "that few people have succeeded in this field you think you want to dive into. This is the perfect time to decide if writing's just a hobby for you—it will save all of you unnecessary pain, and it will keep me from wasting my time."

"Yeah," I finally said, agreeing with Miles.

He smiled in response, a perfect replica of the one I had seen in the parking lot. I had half a mind to plan all my sentences, hoping that they would evoke that reaction from him every single time.

"Hey!" a childish voice called out, charging into the otherwise peaceful cafeteria, disturbing everyone else's silent reflection time.

The child walked up to our table. She didn't seem any older than six, and the t-shirt she wore was twice her size, rolled up at the sleeves. A real fashionista.

"Uncle Alec promised to make my story popular," she told him. She handed him a small page visibly ripped from a Toy Story-themed journal where The End was the largest phrase on the page.

"He did, huh?" Miles read her scribbles and grinned at her. "Soon to be a classic," he said with no hesitation, giving her back the piece of paper.

The girl gave him a wide smile that showed some missing teeth. She turned to me, and I recoiled, leaning back in my seat in what I hoped was a subtle movement.

"Kelly, meet Hazel." Miles's tone was casual, but I could see sense the curiosity behind his words.

I knew he was expecting a specific reaction from me—a look of horror, the sound of my breath hitching in my throat, anything he could link to what happened in the park.

It gave me my number three on the list of Miles's issues: He believed he was clever enough to read me.

So I mustered the most impassive expression I had in store for high-pressure moments like this one and stared into Hazel's eyes.

"It's a pleasure."