The Lookout’s Ghost

Prologue

My entire life changed on a cold Tuesday in January.

“Why weren’t you there to pick me up from the airport, Josh?” I asked, throat scratchy.

He clenched his jaw. I used to think it looked sexy. “Reece. Let’s not do this right now. You should rest.”

I couldn’t really rest, though—not after all the steroids I’d just swallowed. And I wanted answers.

Weight braced against the kitchen counter, I threw back the last of my pills, grimaced, and chased them down with a big gulp of water. God, if they didn’t kill me directly, the taste sure as fuck would.

No, I thought. I refuse for that to be the last thing I eat before I croak.

My last meal should be something good, like pasta. Or tacos. Or beef tips and gravy over mashed potatoes.

Fuck, when was the last time I ate mashed potatoes?

My stomach roiled. Too bad I was far too queasy at the thought of consuming anything more than a handful of saltine crackers right now.

Double vision was a bitch.

Steroids were a bitch.

My boyfriend forgetting me at the airport because he was probably fucking someone else was a bitch.

Finding out I had multiple sclerosis at thirty-four years old was a mother-fucking bitch.

I set the glass on the counter and watched as an identical ghostly image drifted up toward the right before I blinked, snapping it into place.

It drifted again… Blink. Back into place.

Two water glasses… Blink. One.

Progress. A day and a half ago, I couldn’t even do that.

I should go lie down.

“Tell me why you weren’t there. I need to hear you say it.” Why was I so calm? I should be crying, or maybe screaming. I’d already done both, but not because of him.

The room spun when I turned. Both Joshes stood in the kitchen doorway, shoulders up around their ears.

Blink. One Josh.

He didn’t reply. He stepped aside when I shuffled by, one hand braced against the wall while I made my way toward the stairs. I took one step up and stopped, leaning heavily on the railing while the carpeted floor tilted beneath me.

Woah. Too quick.

Josh rushed forward and grabbed my arm. “You always do this. You steamroll in at the worst possible moment. We don’t need to talk about this right now. You don’t need to talk about this right now.”

I let out a humorless laugh. “And you always do that. Dance around the fucking question. Now just give me a minute.”

Forehead braced in the hand not supporting my weight, I suddenly felt very heavy.

I wanted to sleep. The kind so deep that for just a few seconds after I woke up, I wouldn’t remember who I was, where I was, or any of the awful shit life had thrown at me in the last forty-eight hours.

That sleep would evade me for a while, though. My body vibrated as the steroids kicked in. Twelve hundred and fifty milligrams worth. Twenty-five pills a day, for three more days. Enough to kill a horse.

Well, not really. Or not enough to kill me, anyway, and while I was a big guy, I didn’t weigh more than a horse.

They would, however, stop the double vision. The neurologist had said so, anyway. “But you might experience trouble sleeping,” she’d followed up regretfully.

Like that was the extent of the hellscape I found myself in.

When I felt steady enough, I slowly climbed the rest of the stairs with Josh’s help and shuffled into the bedroom. With a heavy sigh, I sat on the edge of the mattress, mussing the perfectly made duvet.

Josh leaned against the doorframe. The wood creaked under the weight of the guilt twisting his symmetrical face, cast in deep shadow.

“Well? Where were you?” I asked, already tired of this conversation.

Josh pinched his brow and sighed, shaking his head. “Reece…”

That was answer enough.

I already knew—before I left for the conference. Before I ended up in the hospital. Before my entire future imploded—scattered in the wind by a diagnosis I still hadn’t even begun to wrap my head around.

I’d suspected he was having sex, and maybe a relationship, with someone else for a few weeks.

Lying awake in the dark, staring up at the ceiling while he slept soundly next to me, I’d seethed that it was never actually the ones who did something wrong that struggled to sleep—it was the rest of us, left to deal with the fallout.

Imaginary scenarios fueled by resentment and rage played like a movie in my head.

I’d shake him awake, confront him, and make him confess.

I’d eviscerate him with my words, watch the sharp rebuttal die on his tongue, and kick him out of our home in the middle of the night—my home, he’d moved in with me after I bought the place, goddammit.

I’d feel so smug and self-satisfied as I slammed the door in his face.

I never actually did any of it.

Instead, I’d ignored the signs—the showers after he returned from running errands, taking his phone into the bathroom with him so I wouldn’t be able to snoop through his texts.

The updated password when I finally had sneaked a hold of his phone.

The fact that I couldn’t remember the last time he asked me to fuck him, and that he rebuffed me anytime I felt inclined, which was seldom.

Maybe that was what Josh meant when he said my timing was always shit—I pushed now, but I hadn’t then.

Had he wanted me to? Would he have preferred it if I fought for him? Begged him to stop sleeping around and stay loyal to me? Promised I’d be a better man, a happier person, a more attentive boyfriend, if only he’d stop letting the guy he met God knows where stick his dick inside him?

Truthfully, I wasn’t ready to know, then. I wasn’t prepared for how disruptive a breakup would be to my life.

I was self-aware enough to recognize how unfair that was—to know we were a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, postponing the inevitable only for when I was ready for the explosion.

It’s also unfair to fuck other people when we were meant to be in a committed relationship.

Well, yeah. There was that.

“How’d you meet him?” I asked dryly, genuinely curious.

Another sigh. “We work together.”

The confirmation made me feel nothing. Empty. Huh. “Wait, was he that blonde who eye-fucked you all night at the holiday party? What was his name? Brad? Brett?”

“Brock. And yes, that’s him.”

I snorted. Brock. My boyfriend of a year and a half cheated on me with a guy named Brock? Had my life suddenly transformed into a season of The Young and the Restless?

Although, in my defense, I had pushed a little, then. Not in front of the guy—I wasn’t that thick, as Josh liked to call me.

My big, chubby, forest man, he used to say.

I couldn’t remember if I’d ever liked the endearment. Actually, I wasn’t sure it’d ever really been one, coming from him.

I had liked reminding him I had three degrees—one more than him. He may be the fancy Range Rover-driving corporate lawyer who fucked guys at work named Brock and judged my Great Clips haircut, but people called me Doctor West.

Not the kind that was any help on a plane, though. Only the kind that knew too much about trees.

No, I’d waited until after the party to question the heated looks between them. But Josh had dismissed it, so I did to. I’d never understood the point in worrying over whether someone would steal my partner. If they wanted to go, then I didn’t want to be with them anymore, simple as that.

Although maybe if I had pushed a little more, none of this would’ve happened.

Maybe if I’d confronted him right away and ended a relationship that ran its course long before that night, the anger, hurt, and anxiety over what came after a break-up at thirty-four years old wouldn’t have bottled up so much.

Maybe it wouldn’t have triggered my immune system to attack itself, eating away at the protective layer around the neurons in my brain.

Maybe it wouldn’t have caused me to wake up two mornings ago after three grueling days of networking at a conference, only to find the hotel room slowly spinning around me.

I’d had a pretty low-key evening the night before, choosing to grab a couple of po'boys—when in New Orleans—to eat alone in the room rather than suffering through another group dinner. I’d washed them down with a Coke and a bottle of water.

Blearily rubbing my eyes the next morning, I’d blinked, only for the hotel furniture to stubbornly remain in duplicate.

Chalking it up to stress from travel and the conference—my two graduating master's students had given great talks on their thesis research—I’d fumbled through packing and arranged transportation to the airport, hoping the double vision would go away on its own.

It only grew more intense.

By the time I’d landed back home in Missoula, Montana, the spinning made me nauseated. I’d stumbled around the small terminal—decorated more like a Great Wolf Lodge than an airport—and did my best to avoid looking like a fucking security threat, sat down, and called Josh.

Over and over. He never answered.

Panicked, I’d called my dad. When he picked up, I’d shut my eyes, pressed the heels of my palms into my sockets, and cried.

“Reece? Reece! What’s wrong? What happened?” he’d asked, frantic. Something shuffled around in the background, like he’d tossed aside whatever he was doing.

Through shallow inhales, I asked, “Will—you—come—get—me?”

“Where are you? Do you need to call an ambulance?”

“No.” I heaved a deep breath and collected myself enough to speak in full sentences.

“No, I don’t need an ambulance. I’m at the airport.

Josh was supposed to come and get me, but he’s not answering.

I just can’t see, Dad. Everything’s double.

Spinning. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know what’s happening to me. ”

“I’m on my way.”

My father, Michael West, the law-abiding, Eagle Scout troop leader, never drove above the speed limit.

It’d made me want to claw my face off as a teenager.

Still did, on occasion. But he’d sped through the mountain pass that morning, trekking north from his house three hours over the Idaho-Montana state line in record time.