For all their careful terms and clauses, real life still had a way of pushing against the structure.
It started small.
A missed text here.
A rescheduled call there.
Nothing catastrophic.
But the rhythm they’d fallen into—messages in the morning, a weekly video, dinners when schedules aligned—began to stutter.
Sophie noticed it first on a Thursday night in April.
She sat at her kitchen table, laptop open, event diagram glowing.
Her phone lay on the wood, screen dark.
He usually texted around ten.
A small check-in.
A sarcastic comment about his drafts.
A photo of H.G. Fluffcraft doing something undignified.
Tonight: nothing.
She told herself not to care.
He had a life.
Pages.
Therapy.
Whatever authors did at night besides tormenting characters.
She finished the paperwork on the charity gala.
Stared at the screen.
Checked her phone again.
Nothing.
At eleven, she caved.
SOPHIE: Hey. SOPHIE: Brain still alive?
No reply.
At midnight, she put the phone face-down and went to bed.
Sleep came in fits.
At two, it buzzed.
She fumbled for it, heart already racing.
NATHAN: Sorry. NATHAN: Fell into a scene. NATHAN: Just looked up. NATHAN: Brain half-dead.
Relief washed through her.
Followed by something sharp.
He’d fallen into a scene before.
He usually told her.
Lately, “I fell into a scene” felt like code for “I let myself disappear so completely that I forgot the outside world.”
She typed back.
SOPHIE: Glad you resurfaced. SOPHIE: Drink water. SOPHIE: Sleep.
Three dots.
Then:
NATHAN: Bossy. NATHAN: Goodnight.
She stared at the shortness of it.
The next day, she had a site visit at a lakeside hotel an hour north.
Driving back on the highway, sun in her eyes, she called Lia on speaker.
“He’s ghosting you,” Lia said after listening to the story.
“He texted,” Sophie protested.
“At 2 a.m.,” Lia said. “With three words. That’s ghost-adjacent.”
“He’s on deadline,” Sophie said. “He warned me. His editor’s breathing down his neck. Literally, probably. She lives in New York.”
“I’m not saying he’s cheating or has a secret family in Idaho,” Lia said. “I’m saying this is a pattern. He gets anxious, he burrows. You knock, he answers… less. The question is: what do you need? And are you telling him that?”
She gripped the wheel tighter.
“I don’t want to be another… demand,” she said. “Another thing he feels he’s failing at if he doesn’t respond immediately.”
“You’re not a demand,” Lia said. “You’re a person in his life. A partner. If he can’t hold that alongside his work without shutting down, that’s a thing you two need to address. Not a thing you quietly swallow while making excuses for him.”
Sophie bristled.
“He *is* trying,” she said. “In a way… no one else ever has. He’s gone to events. He’s done summits. He’s… cooking actual food.”
“I know,” Lia said. “I like him, remember? I’m the one who told him not to fuck it up. But he’s also still… him. Patterns don’t vanish overnight. You knew that going in. The question now is: are you going to fall into your pattern? Of accommodating. Of overfunctioning. Of working harder when someone else starts to slip?”
She inhaled sharply.
“That’s… unfair,” she said.
“Or accurate,” Lia replied gently.
She hated that she was right.
She also hated that she was using “deadline” as a catch-all excuse for every twinge of unease.
“I’ll… talk to him,” she said finally.
“Good,” Lia said. “And if he shuts down or gets defensive, don’t back off. You’re not asking him to choose between you and the book. You’re asking him not to erase you while he chases it.”
The phrase stuck with her all afternoon.
Don’t erase me.
That night, when he texted at a significantly more reasonable hour:
NATHAN: You free? NATHAN: Brain is fried. Need to complain.
She answered with:
SOPHIE: Video or voice?
NATHAN: Video. NATHAN: Let me find a shirt without coffee on it.
His face popped up on her screen a minute later.
He looked… tired.
Dark circles.
Hair wilder than usual.
An ink smudge on his thumb.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said.
He smiled, but it was thin.
“Pages?” she asked.
“Hate them,” he said. “Which probably means they’re fine.”
She raised a brow.
“Editor?” she asked.
“Also hates them,” he said. “Which probably means they’re good.”
“You’re impossible,” she muttered.
He huffed.
They spent a few minutes talking about the work.
He vented about a subplot that wouldn’t land.
She offered the kind of logistical suggestions that made his eyes light up.
“Move that reveal up,” she said. “Give the reader something solid, then pull a different rug later. Right now you have too many floating rugs. People are dizzy.”
He stared at her.
“How did you get so good at this,” he asked, “when you’re not a writer?”
“I am a writer,” she said. “Of run sheets. Of guest lists. Of emails that could be framed as passive-aggressive art.”
He smiled, real this time.
Then she sobered.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
His expression shifted.
Guarded.
“Therapy voice,” he muttered. “Go ahead.”
“You’ve been… quieter,” she said. “Since the summit. Since the leak. Since… the last date. Not… gone. Just… less. Less texting. Shorter answers. Less… weird midnight shares about your cat stalking imaginary ghosts.”
“H.G. has been lazy,” he said weakly.
“Nathan,” she said.
He sighed.
“You want me to say I’ve been… avoiding you,” he said.
“I want you to tell me if you have,” she said. “And why.”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“Because…” he said slowly, “if I don’t, you’ll… feel it anyway and make up reasons. Worse ones.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Have you been talking to my therapist?” she asked.
He gave her a look.
“She’d like you,” he said. “You could form a coalition.”
“That’s my nightmare,” she muttered.
He took a deep breath.
“I have been… pulling back,” he admitted. “A little. Not because I don’t… want you. Not because I don’t… love you.” The word still made her heart jump. “Because I’m… afraid. Of… needing you too much. Of… relying. Of… making you my… oxygen.”
Her chest squeezed.
“I’m not air,” she said softly.
“Sometimes you feel like it,” he said. “And that… scares me. I’ve gone… without. For so long. On purpose. If I let you in fully, if I let this be… as big as it wants to be, I’m afraid if something happens—if you realize I’m too much, or I fuck up, or the internet eats you—I’ll… shatter. More than I did at nineteen. More than I did when Ethan died. Because this would be… a choice. Not a roof.”
Tears pricked her eyes.
Part of her wanted to rush in.
To say no, that won’t happen, I’ll never leave, I’ll wrap you in bubble wrap and protect you from everything.
She swallowed that down.
She’d learned.
She wasn’t his savior.
She was his partner.
Sometimes that meant saying things that hurt.
“Pulling back doesn’t protect you from that,” she said quietly. “It just… prolongs it. Keeps you in… limbo. Half-in, half-out. It also… hurts me.”
His mouth tightened.
“I didn’t want to… ask more of you,” he said. “You’re already… working. Handling. Scaffolding. I don’t want to become another… plate you spin.”
Her throat worked.
“I appreciate that,” she said. “I really do. But the way you’re going about it—disappearing a bit, texting less, keeping the… hard stuff for your therapist but not sharing even the… small stuff with me—makes me feel like I’m… optional. Like I’m… decoration. A nice-to-have when it doesn’t interfere with the main event.”
His eyes widened.
“That is… not,” he said, voice rough, “how I see you.”
“But it’s how it feels,” she said. “Sometimes. And I’ve had… relationships. Situationships. Whatever. Where I was… that. The convenient planner. The woman who took care of the logistics of someone’s life while they emotionally checked out. I won’t… do that again. With you. Or anyone.”
He flinched.
“I didn’t realize,” he said. “I thought… if I kept some distance when I was drowning, I’d be… sparing you.”
“You’re not,” she said. “You’re… cutting me out. Of the… daily. The messy. The real. You’re giving me… curated updates and… big moments. Not… the middle.”
He stared down at his hands.
“Sometimes the middle is… where the worst shit lives,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “That’s where most of my job happens. That’s where I live. I don’t want to be your… gala girl. The woman you call for the big, dramatic scenes. I want to be… in the middle too. Or at least… know it when you’re there.”
He looked up.
His gaze was raw.
“You want… more access,” he said slowly.
“I want… honesty,” she said. “If you need to pull back for a few days to hit a deadline, tell me. Don’t disappear and pretend you didn’t. If you’re spiraling, tell me ‘hey, I’m in my head, I might be quiet,’ not ‘sorry, I fell into a scene’ like that explains everything. Let me… be there. Even if it’s just… knowing. Not fixing.”
His jaw worked.
“I’m not… used to that,” he said. “Letting someone… witness. Without… expecting them to… solve. Or… judging when I… flounder.”
“I’m not them,” she said softly.
He made a low noise.
“No,” he said. “You’re… you.”
Silence fell.
Not empty.
Heavy.
“I’ll… try,” he said at last. “To… let you in more. Even when it feels… dangerous.”
Her heart eased a fraction.
“Okay,” she said. “And I’ll… try not to… overfunction. Or to make your… quieter days about me. I have my own… patterns. I know that.”
He snorted softly.
“Therapy coalition is strong with us,” he said.
She smiled, watery.
He watched her for a beat.
“Have I said… yet,” he asked quietly, “that I’m… terrified of how much I don’t want to lose this?”
Her throat closed.
“Yes,” she said. “And… same.”
He exhaled.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
They shifted the call back into lighter territory after that.
He showed her a scene he was actually proud of.
She shared a ridiculous client story about a couple who wanted their wedding cake to be a functional chocolate fountain.
But the crack they’d exposed stayed.
Not a rupture.
A line.
Visible.
A reminder that the roof still needed checking.
That only made it stronger.
If they didn’t ignore it.
***
A week later, the internet decided to test them again.
This time, it wasn’t a leak.
It was an interview.
Eleanor Chase did a follow-up podcast episode about the summit and the StreamWave event.
It was, as always, sharp and thoughtful.
She praised his honesty.
She dug into the ethics of turning pain into content.
She applauded the way he’d called out the machinery.
And then, near the end, she said, almost casually:
> “We talk about Nathan as if he’s a monolith, a storm in a glass house. But what struck me watching him now was the way he’s building… relationships. There’s a woman named Sophie Turner who appears at the edges of his events. She’s not just his planner. She’s his… counterbalance. His equal in stubbornness. Watching them was like watching tectonic plates shift. Something’s changing. I, for one, am curious to see where that goes.”
The internet went predictably feral.
Ship tags trended again.
Opinion pieces popped up on minor culture sites: THE WOMAN TAMING OUR FAVORITE RECLUSE.
He texted her a screenshot of one headline.
NATHAN: I hate this. NATHAN: And… I don’t.
She stared.
SOPHIE: Which part?
NATHAN: The part where they talk about you like an accessory. NATHAN: And the part where they… see something that feels… real. NATHAN: It’s… invasive. NATHAN: And validating. NATHAN: I hate that it’s both.
Her chest squeezed.
SOPHIE: I get that. SOPHIE: I don’t love being reduced to “the woman who fixes him.” SOPHIE: Even if part of me goes, “at least they see some of what I do.”
There was a pause.
NATHAN: You are not “the woman who fixes me.” NATHAN: You are… the woman who stands next to me while I try to fix myself. NATHAN: Big difference.
Tears pricked her eyes.
SOPHIE: Thank you. SOPHIE: For saying that.
NATHAN: If anyone writes otherwise, I’ll put them in a book and make terrible things happen to them.
She laughed.
SOPHIE: Violent, but appreciated. SOPHIE: We can’t control the narrative out there. SOPHIE: We *can* control how we talk about it. SOPHIE: To each other.
NATHAN: You and your therapy coalition. NATHAN: Fine. NATHAN: Talking.
They did.
Through leaks.
Through ghost-adjacent nights.
Through interviews and offers and the slow, deliberate building of something in the spaces between.
The cracks never fully disappeared.
They weren’t supposed to.
They reminded them the roof was real.
That it needed attention.
That they were not, could not be, perfect.
Only honest.
Only willing.
It was enough.
Most days.
On the days it wasn’t, they had each other.
And Rafe.
And Lia.
And parents and therapists and Howard and Miranda.
And a house on a mountain that, for all its glass and ghosts, was becoming—slowly—less of a lair and more of a home.
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