“It’s bad,” Lee sighed.
“I saw the review bombs,” she went on. “And the comments all over social media. I’m surprised you haven’t shut down your accounts yet. I would have.”
“Oh, that?” Lee had almost forgotten about all the abuse. Which just made it more obvious what really mattered in the whole situation.
“Oh, that?” Diana repeated incredulously, looking at him like she was worried he might implode. “Are you really okay, honey?”
Lee let out a shaky, laughing breath. “I feel like I’m in danger of losing the love of my life,” he said.
“Oh.” Diana nodded, an entirely different expression taking the place of her concern. “So you love him.”
It sounded like a simple, obvious statement, but it was far from it. Diana had him pegged. She was his best friend, so of course she did.
“I do,” he admitted. “And right now, I think he’s furious with me.”
“Why would he be furious with you?” Diana frowned.
“Because his agent knows Jerry Turnbridge, who told her that I had signed to write a tell-all book about him. Which I didn’t, by the way.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. In fact, I told Jerry Turnbridge to get stuffed earlier today.”
“Wow, Lee.” Diana’s eyes went wide. “You really are in love.”
“I really am in love,” Lee sighed, sagging against the back of the bench. “And the man I’m in love with is hurting and thinks I was part of causing that hurt.”
“But you weren’t,” Diana argued. “At least, not intentionally.”
“I wasn’t,” Lee agreed. “But he’s not really speaking to me right now.”
“He cut you off?”
Lee winced. “Not entirely. But I’m getting one-word text answers when I check on him.”
Diana hummed, her brow furrowed in thought. “I don’t think the situation is hopeless. He wouldn’t answer you at all if he wanted nothing to do with you anymore.”
“And we kissed before we parted the other night,” Lee added that important bit of information.
Diana brightened at once. “That’s it, then,” she said, looking as though everything was solved.
“It’s far from it,” Lee said, hopelessness settling over him as if he was an old woman in the park to feed crumbs to the pigeons. “I feel like I’m inches away from turning into one of those characters who dresses in their wedding gown and sits by a window for the rest of their lives.”
“Aaw, sweetheart,” Diana said, genuinely sympathetic. “We can’t let that happen. I don’t care who the man is. You love him, and it really does sound like he loves you.”
“I thought he did,” Lee sighed.
“He does, I’m certain of it,” Diana insisted. “And we know how to handle these situations. We’re romance writers, after all.”
That made Lee laugh. “We are that.”
“No, I’m serious.” Diana’s enthusiasm grew by the second. “We know how to handle this. If you were writing a character who was going through this same thing, how would you handle it? What would you do?”
“I don’t know. My hero would probably swoop in on a dragon and whisk his lover away to a magical land for hot sex.”
Diana laughed. “Close, but not quite. You’re almost there.”
“Am I? I don’t have any spare dragons lying around.”