Status Updates From A Showgirl's Rules for Fall...

I appreciate an offer for ending, or potentially ending, a book with heartbreak and walking away, but Phoebe is much stronger than I am. She walks away because she deserves better and I can’t do that.

"Some things just don't make any sense. Sometimes letters don't arrive. Sometimes people fail you. Sometimes hearts get broken. Sometimes people just can't love you the way you want them to.
Fact, unlike fiction, gets messy. And this part of the story is just that. Messy."

“But my story and Evelyn's—and Thomas's and Armitage's—are like vines climbing up the side of a stone wall. So intertwined, you can't pull them apart without ripping out the roots. I can't pull at the end of my story without finishing theirs first.”

“They were two people bound by rules. No contact outside of working hours. No recklessness. No love affairs. Rules, rules, rules.
Perhaps it was time to see how it would feel to finally break them.”

They both want to be undeniable. For Thomas/Tom, he wanted to be too powerful to be denied, much like when a duke’s daughter ran after knowing he really wasn’t Clement

“His life, his agency, his future—not to mention Clement's memory—they had all been sacrificed on the altar of the Ridleys' vanities and ambitions and longings and shames.”

Now this feel more accurate: anger rage demanding “how did this” after policy brutality (also the whole arrest/raid part is probably necessary to the story, then Thomas’ character development too)

The sick “nursing trope” scene feels really forced. He had no idea the extent of the sickness, just got a text and rushed over. It feels like this was added as a box to check. Not something that feels natural in the progression of the relationship

Innuendos galore

"At the risk of scandalizing you even further, attention is currency for women. Particularly women like me. If I'm not a spectacle, I'm invisible. And invisible women can't earn a living."

“It was one of Evelyn Cross's hats. She'd been photographed and sketched in it dozens of times, with its distinctive confectionary swirl of pink feathers and paste diamonds…

This hat that made me feel like I was wearing a cloud and a halo all at once, like I was a heavenly body gracing this sordid earth with my luminous presence.
I'm sure I didn't look beautiful. But damn, did I feel it.”

Evidence of an erection? She said BET

Butler log. Urgent request. Hasty retreat. Locked bedroom. What else could you assume came from the meeting?

"I want something..." At that moment, his vision caught on the illuminated stage...
He barely breathed the end of his sentence.
"Something undeniable."

At center stage, a blonde beauty stood in a gown constructed entirely of flowers. She was a woman of Amazonian height, sturdy-legged, and proportioned like a goddess of bounty.

"People used to love us for being so delightfully scandalous. Now, they think we're unfashionable or dangerous or both. The moralists are coming after you with pitchforks. The slender snobs are coming after me with diet food.“

So maybe a book inside of a book ( with the same title)