The Things We Leave Unfinished
by Rebecca Yarros
Published by Entangled: Amara
Twenty-eight-year-old Georgia Stanton has to start over after she gave up almost everything in a brutal divorce—the New York house, the friends, and her pride.
Now back home at her late great-grandmother’s estate in Colorado, she finds herself face-to-face with Noah Harrison, the bestselling author of a million books where the cover is always people nearly kissing. He’s just as arrogant in person as in interviews, and she’ll be damned if the good-looking writer of love stories thinks he’s the one to finish her grandmother’s final novel…even if the publisher swears he’s the perfect fit.
Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy” of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century—the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.
But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book—it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes—even if it means destroying Noah’s career.
Genre
Triggers
World War 2 - Violence, Death.
Grief. Divorce/Infidelity in the public eye. Infertility.
After falling in love with the Empyrean series, I knew I wanted to read Rebecca Yarros other work, but as with most books on my TBR, who knew when I was going to get to it. But when I saw that one of her books was on sale during Prime Days, I took it as a sign that it was time to dive into one of her contemporary romances, and bought it.
This.
Book.
Destroyed.
Me.
In the best way possible, of course. I need to be careful here, because I don't want to spoil a single thing about this book. If you haven't read this book yet, it's worth not knowing anything going into it.
I was honestly worried when I realized that this book was two love stories in one. In my experience when I've read other books with a present romance, and one in the past, one romance is more impactful than the other. Doesn't matter how good the writing it - and it's superb in this book - it always happens. It happens here. I was definitely more ... invested ... in her grandmother's love story. It wasn't even that it had more build up than Georgia's romance. It was the setting. The tension. The unknown that occurs when you have two people fall in love in the middle of a war.
Their story itself felt like fate. To the good, the bad, and ugly.
That doesn't mean I didn't like Georgia and Noah's story. Rebecca did a wonderful job making sure that these two stories, while entwined, are different. While Scarlett's story was intense, Georgia's was quieter. It just didn't have the build up that Scarlett's romance did.
One of things that blows my mind a bit is that this is a Rebecca Yarros book. I mean, I loved Fourth Wing, and her writing in those books is also amazing, but I wasn't expecting the depth. Whereas Fourth Wing has it's twists and turns, the characters are fairly straight forward. Given the genre, more emphasis is put into the world building. In The Things We Leave Unfinished, and maybe in her other contemporary's, Rebecca's skills as a writer adds so many layers to these characters.
The way I fell for written characters. The way I laughed, and the way I cried ... blows my mind away.
If you are in the mood for a book that will make you smile, swoon, and cry, I implore you to read The Things We Leave Unfinished. I really need to bump up her other books on my TBR.
How could someone so devastatingly handsome annoy the shit out of me so thoroughly?
Adrienne: "Trust me, but don’t try to flirt your way through, either.”
Noah: “I’m not flirting—”
She laughed.
Adrienne: “I know you way too well, and I love you, but I’ve seen pictures of Georgia Stanton, and she is way out of your league.”
I couldn’t disagree with her there.
Noah: “Nice. Thanks, and I love you, too. See you next weekend.”
Jameson: “Men like me?”
Jameson questioned with a tease in his tone.
Jameson: “Americans?”
Scarlett: “Of course not.”
She scoffed.
Scarlett: “I mean, not that I’ve ever been asked by an American, naturally.”
Jameson: “Naturally.”
And that grin was back, wobbling her knees again. He really was too handsome for his own good.
Scarlett: “I mean pilots.”
She nodded toward the wings on his uniform.
Scarlett: “I don’t see pilots.”
Out of every job in the Royal Air Force, pilots were the most nomadic in regard to where they slept, and geography wasn’t the least of it. They also had a tendency to die with a frequency she couldn’t stomach.
Jameson: “Shame.”
He clicked his tongue. She tugged on her luggage, and he released it.
Scarlett: “It is most assuredly my loss,”
she professed, the words ringing true in her own ears.
She shouldn’t go. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to. Longing resonated through her like a church bell, hitting hard and loud, only to come again in softer echoes the longer she stood there looking up at him. Was every American as handsome as he was? Surely not.
Jameson: “No, I mean it’s a shame that I’ll have to resign. I do love to fly.”
A corner of Jameson’s mouth quirked a little higher.
Scarlett: “I’ll go to dinner with you,”
Scarlett blurted, mentally cursing her sister’s gleeful little smirk.
Jameson: “Are you going to make me turn in my wings first?”
He smiled, and her stomach filled with another zing of electricity.
Scarlett: “Would you?”
she challenged.
His head tilted to the side.
Jameson: “If it got me a dinner with you…I just might.”
Georgia: “Now I spend my days in Gran’s office, sorting through a mountain of paperwork.”
Subject closed. Noted. I resisted the urge to dig—for now.
Noah: “Ah, paperwork. My favorite way to spend the evening,”
Georgia: “Well, you’d be in heaven, because it’s a hot mess. There’s. So. Much. Paperwork,”
she groaned.
Noah: “Ooh, I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Fuck. I winced and mentally calculated how much I was about to pay in a sexual harassment lawsuit. What the hell was wrong with me?
Noah: “Shit. Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.”
So much for treating her like a friend from college.
Georgia: “It’s okay.”
She laughed, and the sound hit me like a freight train to the chest. Her laugh was beautiful and left me smiling for the first time in days.
Georgia: “Well, now that I know what turns you on,”
she teased, and I heard a creak in the background that I recognized. She’d leaned back in the chair.
Georgia: “Honestly, it’s fine, I promise,”
she managed as her laughter simmered.
Jameson: “We’re going to face it all head-on. Your parents, the war, the whole Royal Air Force,”
he said with a flash of a smile.
Jameson: “We’ll do it together. You are mine, Scarlett Wright, and I am yours, and from this second on, we don’t keep secrets.”
Noah: “Do you have any idea how childish it is to keep hanging up on someone you agreed to partner with?”
he asked with a voice so smooth and unbothered, it only irked me more.
Georgia: “The satisfaction it brings me is more than worth what could be seen as a lack of maturity.”
Or maybe I was simply reveling in the fact that I could hang up. That I wasn’t at anyone’s beck and call for the first time in six years.
Noah: “On that note, how about we end in a beautiful orchard, where they’re picnicking—”
Georgia: “Noah,”
I warned.
Noah: “Only to have Jameson stung by a bee—no, dozens of bees, and he’s allergic—”
Georgia: “It isn’t My Girl!”
Mom’s eyebrows hit the ceiling.
Noah: “You’re right, so let’s talk about how to really give them a happy ending readers can root for.”
Georgia: “Goodbye, Noah.”
I hung up.
Mom: “Georgia!”
Mom gasped.
Georgia: “What?”
I shrugged.
Georgia: “I said goodbye. Don’t worry. He’ll call back tomorrow, and we’ll start all over again.”
Hazel: “You know what would help?”
Mischief lit her smile.
Georgia: “So help me God, if you say a pedicure—”
Hazel: “You should jump Noah Harrison.”
I snorted.
Georgia: “Yeah, okay.”
My temperature rose just thinking about— Stop it.
Hazel: “I’m serious! Fly to New York for the weekend, hash out the book details, and get laid.”
She smiled when Peggy Richardson dropped her jaw, clearly having heard us as she walked by.
Hazel: “It’s basically multitasking. Nice to see you, Peggy!”
Hazel even waved. Peggy adjusted the strap of her purse and continued down the street.
Noah: “Why would I what?”
I asked again.
Noah: “Why would I take care of you?”
I guessed.
Her gaze flickered my way.
Noah: “Because, contrary to popular belief, I’m not that big of an asshole, and you look like your dog just died.”
I tilted my head.
Noah: “And both my mother and sister would kick my ass if I didn’t.”
I shrugged. Surprise flared in her eyes.
Georgia: “But they’d never know.”
Noah: “I try to live most of my life like my mother will always find out what I’ve done.”
Corner of my mouth tugged upward.
Noah: “In reality, she usually does anyway, and the lectures last for hours. Hours. And as for the other parts…well, she never needs to know.”
Georgia: “Gran would have liked you,”
she mused quietly.
Georgia: “She wasn’t a fan of your books, that’s true. But you, she would have liked. You have just the right mix of arrogance and talent that she would have appreciated. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that you’re pretty. She liked pretty men.”
Georgia rubbed at the back of her neck. It was long and graceful, just like the rest of her.
Noah: “You think I’m pretty.”
I grinned, raising my eyebrows. She rolled her eyes.
Georgia: “Out of all that, you dwell on pretty.”
Noah: “Well, if you’d said sexy, handsome, well-endowed, or body-like-a-god, I would have dwelled on those, but you didn’t, so I’m just making do with what content I have.”
I tossed my water bottle in the recycling bin at the end of the island.
Georgia: “It’s not you.”
She sucked in a breath, then glanced back up at the rock wall.
Georgia: “The last man who promised to keep me safe screwed his lead and dropped me on my ass. But I’m sure you already know that. Everyone knows that.”
If I’d been the serial killer she’d joked about, Damian Ellsworth would have been my first victim.
Georgia: “And after today…”
She shook her head, the edges of her mouth trembling.
Georgia: “Today just isn’t a good day for the whole trust fall thing. So let’s get going.”
She forced another smile, then took off up the trail.
Noah: “Why did you quit sculpting?”
What? My pace slowed, but he matched it.
Georgia: “Damian asked me to put it on pause and help him get Ellsworth Productions off the ground, which made sense. We were newlyweds and I thought I was helping to build our future. It was still art, just his form of art, right?”
I shrugged at the naive thoughts of a twenty-two-year-old girl. Georgia: “And then pause became more of a stop, and that part of me just…”
The right words had always failed me in this topic.
Georgia: “…dimmed. It went out like a fire I’d forgotten to tend. The flames dwindled so slowly that I didn’t notice until they were nothing but embers, and by that time it was the rest of my life that had gone up in flames. There’s not a lot of room for creativity when you’re focused on breathing.”
I could feel his stare, but I couldn’t meet it. Instead, I sucked in a breath and forced a smile.
Georgia: “I think it’s coming back, though. Little by little.”
When he turned toward me, his expression had softened, sadness filling his eyes.
Noah: “This is where she waited for him.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle and nodded.
Georgia: “I used to think their love was built into it. That’s why she always had it repaired, never rebuilt.”
Noah: “She was the ultimate romantic. Look at this place…”
He studied the gazebo.
Noah: “Can’t you feel them here? Can’t you see them happy in some other fictional realm of possibility? Some other branch where the war doesn’t rip them to shreds?”
I swallowed, thinking of Gran—not the way I remembered her, but the way she looked in the photograph, wildly, recklessly in love.
Noah: “I can,”
Noah went on.
Noah: “I see them cutting a little landing strip into the meadow so he could fly, and I see them with half a dozen kids. I see the way he looks at her, like she’s the reason the seasons change and the sun rises until they’re a hundred and one years old.”
Noah: “Georgia, can’t you see it? It’s in every line of this place. This isn’t a mausoleum, it’s a promise, a shrine to that love.”
Georgia: “It’s a beautiful story,”
I whispered, wishing that had been their fate…or mine.
Noah: “Then let them have it.”
She brought her eyes to meet his questioning gaze—as if this man had anything to worry about. He was just as carved as any of the statues she’d seen, but so very warm under her hands.
Jameson: “Well?”
he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Scarlett: “You’ll do,”
she deadpanned, fighting the purse of her lips.
He huffed a laugh, then kissed every thought from her head.
Scarlett: “I love you, Jameson.”
She brushed those locks back just to watch them fall again. Out of every sensation bombarding her body, from the feel of his strong thighs inside of her much smaller ones, to the wisp of cool air across her exposed breasts, the swell of love—of unfettered joy—in her chest flared the brightest.
Jameson: “I love you, too,”
he promised.
Jameson: “More than my own life.”
She felt spent and utterly, completely sated as her lips curved upward.
Scarlett: “If I’d known you were capable of that, we wouldn’t have waited.”
He laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest into hers.
Jameson: “I’m glad we did. This has been the best day of my life, Mrs. Stanton.”
Scarlett: “Mine too.”
Her heart leaped at her new name. She was well and truly his.
Scarlett: “I just wish we had time for a honeymoon.”
As it was, they were both on duty in the morning.
Jameson: “Every night of our lives will be our honeymoon.”
He caressed her cheek.
Jameson: “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making you deliciously, wonderfully happy.”
Scarlett: “You already do.”
I signed a contract that I’d complete the book, and I would. But keeping my word meant getting closer to the only woman who made me want to kiss the shit out of her as she drove me up a wall.
Georgia: “I hate you,”
I snapped, but reached for the hold. He’d taken me to a climbing gym a half hour away, so it wasn’t like I was dangling off the side of a mountain, but still. I might have been tied into the harness, but he held the other end of the rope.
Georgia: “You think you’d be better at metaphors, being a writer and all. Put your life in my hands, Georgia,”
I did my best Noah impression.
Georgia: “Look at my superior climbing abilities and pretty face, Georgia.”
Noah: “Well, at least you still think I’m pretty.”
Georgia: “You suck!”
Again, I reached for the next handhold, placed my feet, and continued upward.
Georgia: “I guess I just don’t see how this is going to help solve our plotting issues, considering I’m going to kill you as soon as I get down from here.”
I blinked a few times, then looked down again.
Georgia: “I’m supposed to just lean back and trust that you won’t drop me on my ass?”
Noah: “Exactly.”
He grinned shamelessly, and for the first time, I didn’t find it all that charming.
Georgia: “What if the rope breaks?”
His grin faded.
Noah: “What if there’s a massive earthquake?”
Georgia: “Are we expecting one?”
My biceps screamed in protest as I held myself there, perched on the damn wall like a lizard.
Noah: “Are you expecting me to drop you?”
Georgia: “It would make it easier on you to finish the book,”
Noah: “There’s some truth to that. And I’m sure the story behind the murder would really drive sales."
The pond. The gazebo. The hunting cabin. Scarlett’s eyes drifted shut for the length of a deep breath.
Scarlett: “Poppet, owning those places will not bring him back.”
Constance: “If you lost Jameson, and you had a chance to keep the first house you lived in at Kirton-in-Lindsey, even if only to walk through the rooms to talk to his ghost, would you?”
Georgia: “There’s a warning, a sound your heart makes the first time it realizes it’s no longer safe with the person you trusted.”
My jaw flexed. She turned another page, another black-tie affair.
Georgia: “It’s not as clean or impersonal as a break or a shatter. Besides, those are easy to repair if you can find all the pieces. Truly crushing a soul—now that requires a certain level of…personal violence. Your ears fill with this desperate”
—flip—
Georgia: “rasping”
—flip—
Georgia: “gasp. Like you’re fighting for air, suffocating in plain sight. Strangled by life and someone else’s shitty, selfish decisions.”
Noah: “Georgia,”
I whispered as my stomach turned, my chest pulling tight at the agony and anger in her words, pausing over a picture from the red-carpet premiere of The Wings of Autumn. Her smile was bright but her eyes flat as she posed at Damian’s side like a trophy, both generations of Stanton women at her right. She was freezing over right in front of my eyes, each picture a little colder than the last.
Georgia: “And the thing is,”
she continued with a little shake of her head and another mocking smile,
Georgia: “you don’t always recognize that wet sound for what it is—an assassination. You don’t register what’s actually happening as the air disappears. You hear that gurgle, and it somehow convinces you that the next breath is coming—you’re not broken. This is fixable, right? So you fight, holding on to whatever air there is.”
Her eyes filled with unshed tears, but she raised her chin and held them back as the pages flew by with every sentence.
Georgia: “You fight and you thrash because this fated, deep-rooted thing you called love refuses to go down with a single shot. That would be far too merciful. Real love has to be choked out, held under the water until it stops kicking. That’s the only way to kill it.”
She flipped again and again, the album a color-streaked kaleidoscope of photos she’d obviously chosen with great care to send Scarlett, constructing the lie of a happy marriage.
Georgia: “And once you finally get it, finally stop fighting, you’re too far gone to get to the surface to save yourself. And the spectators tell you to keep swimming, that it’s only a broken heart, but that little flicker that’s left of your soul can’t even float, let alone tread water. So you’re left with a choice. You either let yourself die while they accuse you of being weak or you learn to breathe the goddamn water, and then they call you a monster for what you become. Ice Queen, indeed.”
Scarlett: “I don’t know if this baby is a boy or a girl. I think it’s a boy, though I can’t explain why. But in this moment, I can imagine a boy with Jameson’s eyes and his reckless smile, or a girl with our blue eyes. Right now, I’m in love with both, basking in the possibilities. In a few days—at least I’m hoping it’s a few days or I swear I’ll explode—I’ll know.”
Constance: “And you don’t want to know?”
Constance arched an eyebrow.
Scarlett: “Of course I want to know. I will love my son or my daughter with all my heart. I already do. But while I’ve entertained both possibilities, only one is the truth. Once this baby is born, that part of the story is over. One of the scenarios I’ve spent the last six months imagining won’t come true. That doesn’t make the outcome any less sweet, but the truth is, when a story is finished, no matter what kind it is, the possibilities are gone. It is what it is, or it was whatever it was.”
Constance: “So be kind to your characters and give them all a happy ending. That’s better than anything they’d have in the real world.”
Scarlett stared at the hatbox.
Scarlett: “Perhaps the kindest thing I could do for the characters would be to leave their stories unfinished. Leave them with their possibilities, their potential, even if they only exist in my own mind.”
Jameson: “They bombed Americans!”
Scarlett: “And you think I don’t know what it feels like to have my country torn to bits by bombs?”
She tapped her chest.
Scarlett: “To watch my childhood friends die?”
Jameson: “That’s why I thought you’d understand. When England went to war, you put on a uniform and fought because you love your country just as much as I love mine.”
Scarlett: “I don’t have a country!”
she shouted, then spun to face the window. He saw her face crumple in the reflection of the window, and his stomach sank. Shit.
Jameson: “Scarlett—”
Scarlett: “I don’t have a country,”
she said softly, turning to face him,
Scarlett: “because I gave it up for you. I loved you more. I’m not British. I’m not American. I’m only a citizen of this marriage, which I thought was a democracy. So pardon my surprise when it turns out to be a dictatorship. Benevolent, yes, but a dictatorship nonetheless. I didn’t fight free of my father’s control to have you step into his shoes.”
She scoffed and gave him a sarcastic, bitter smile.
Jameson: “Honey…”
He shook his head, searching for something he could say to make this better.
Scarlett: “It’s not just you anymore, Jameson. It’s not even just us. You can be as reckless as you want when you’re in the cockpit—I know who I married. But there’s a little boy upstairs who doesn’t know there’s a war going on, let alone that it now spans the globe. We’re responsible for him. And I understand wanting to fight for your country—I gave that up for us, too. Please don’t treat me as less than equal because I chose this family twice. If you wanted a wife who would do nothing more than cook your meals, warm your bed, and have your babies, then you chose the wrong woman. Do not mistake my sacrifices for smiling compliance."
Georgia: “I learned not to need you a long time ago, right around the time I realized that other mothers didn’t leave. That other mothers came to soccer games and helped their daughters get ready for dances. Other moms picked out costumes for Halloween and bought pints of ice cream for broken teenage hearts. I may have needed you at one point, but it passed.”
She jolted like I’d slapped her.
Mom: “What would you know about motherhood? From what I’ve read, you lost your husband over that issue.”
Noah: “That’s uncalled for,”
Noah moved, but I leaned back against him. I shook my head with a small laugh. She had no idea.
Georgia: “Everything I know about motherhood, I learned from my mom. I didn’t get it until recently, but I do now. It’s okay that you didn’t know how to raise me. It really is. I don’t blame you for being a kid with a kid. You gave me a really great mom. One who came to the games, helped me pick out dresses for prom, listened to my hours of chatter without batting an eye, and never once made me feel like a burden, never wanted anything from me. You taught me that not all moms are called Mom. Mine was called Gran.”
I sucked in a stuttered breath.
Georgia: “I’m okay with that.”
Noah: “Some things you have to fight for, Georgia. You can’t just walk away and leave it unfinished when it gets too complicated. If I could fly off and fight the Nazis to win your love, I would. But all I’ve got to battle with are your demons, and they’re kicking my ass. Keep that in mind while you’re reading those endings, the good and the…poignant. The epic, rare love story in this room isn’t Scarlett and Jameson. It’s you and me.”
Scarlett: “Do you think it will always be like this?”
He palmed her backside.
Jameson: “An insatiable need to get each other naked?”
Scarlett: “Something like that.”
She grinned.
Jameson: “God, I hope so. I can’t think of anything better than the honor of chasing you out of your clothes for the rest of my life.”
He wiggled his eyebrows and she laughed.
Scarlett: “Even when we’re old?”
She brushed the back of her hand over his jawline, rough with stubble.
Jameson: “Especially when we’re old. We won’t have to keep it quiet for the kids down the hall.”
Scarlett: “I’m not taking the phonograph.”
It was the one point of contention between them.
Jameson: “Record player, and my mother told me to bring it back.”
She quirked a brow.
Scarlett: “I thought your mother told you to bring it back with you, alive.”
She ran her fingers through his hair, committing the feel of the strands to memory.
Jameson: “Tell her I’m sending it home with my life, because that’s what you and William are. You are my life.”
Georgia: “Goodbye.”
I walked to the door and held it open.
Georgia: “Give my best to Paige and…what did you name your son?”
Damian: “Damian, Jr.”
Georgia: “Of course you did.”
So why tell you, now that I’m gone? Why lay this truth at your feet when I trusted no one else? Because you, more than any other Stanton, need to know that it is love that brought you here. I’ve never seen another love like Scarlett and Jameson’s. It was one of those fated lightning strikes, miraculous to see up close, to feel the energy between the two when they were in the same room. That is the love that lives in your veins. I’ve never seen another love like I had for Edward—we were twin flames. But I’ve also never seen another love like I had for Brian—deep and calm and true. Or another love like William’s for Hannah—achingly sweet. But I have seen the same love that I had for William the day I stepped onto that plane. It lives in you. You are the culmination of every lightning strike and twist of fate.
My thumb trailed across the names on the cover. One, I’d known since birth but never met, and the other I’d met in this very spot and would know for the rest of my life.
Noah: “I can tell you how it ends,”
Noah said in my ear as he came up behind me, his voice low and his arms warm.
Georgia: “Can you?”
I leaned back, brushing a kiss over his jaw.
Noah: “I heard the ending was even a surprise to the author on release day.”
I grinned shamelessly.
Georgia: “Huh. Imagine that.”
Noah: “Much more satisfying sex scenes than his normal books, too.”
I shrugged. He scoffed.
Noah: “Have you read his latest? Pretty sure he got ahold of some excellent inspiration.”
Georgia: “Hmm. I’ll have to check it out.”
Noah: “I’d be happy to give you a private reading.”
I laughed so hard, I almost snorted.
Georgia: “Okay, that was just bad.”
Noah: “Yeah. Definitely not my best."
Woman: “I came all the way from Cheyenne, Wyoming,”
she said with a grin.
Woman: “My sister’s holding my place in line. Have you seen him? He’s gorgeous.”
She lifted her brows.
Woman: “Seriously.”
Georgia: “I definitely wouldn’t kick him out of bed,”
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