Prologue
Zachary
Three Years Ago
“Another?” the bartender asks.
I look at the dregs left in the glass. “Not yet. Pacing myself.”
The bar is packed, the liquor strong, the music and chatter loud enough to drown out my thoughts for a while.
I hate New York. I liked it as a kid, when my father would bring me with him to the office and show me off like a circus monkey, then take me for shakes at Serendipity after, or let me choose whatever toy I wanted from FAO Schwarz.
Funny, that I’m here to sign off on his successor, tying a bow on the life he led before he’s even cold in the ground. Funnier still that he gave instructions to have the funeral at the ranch in Arizona, when my mother will just sell it once enough time has passed. She can’t stand that place.
“Whiskey sour!” a voice calls over my shoulder, a hand stretching out with a twenty-dollar bill.
I clock the pretty braided bracelet on a slender wrist, and the little tattoo of a dove just below it. But it’s the number embellished on a flat, blue glass bead that holds my attention: 59. The number of my station. And the initials on the next bead over, MDT. Mark Dale Turner.
My dead friend.
“I could dance around naked and still wouldn’t get served before midnight,” the same voice mutters. Familiar, but one I haven’t heard in a long time. Seven years, give or take.
I turn, and there she is: a piece of Crown Hill transplanted into this busy dive bar down a back alley in the West Village.
A decade older than the college girl who once answered the door in the tiniest shorts I’ve ever seen, who mostly made herself scarce after that whenever I’d pick her brother Mark up to head to the Academy or out to the bar.
Unlike me, however, the years have been very generous to her; time has practically stood still.
Her black hair is held up in a clip, her glasses are designer, framing eyes the color of those blue beads on her wrist. Eyes that I remember all too well, widening at the sight of me on her porch, though her glasses weren’t as expensive then.
She’s wearing trousers that cinch her waist and a floaty shirt rolled up to the elbows, the collar open enough to reveal the curve of full breasts, a gold necklace practically inviting my gaze down.
I called your house after the funeral, but you were already gone, I want to say, but it seems too much, too soon, when I haven’t seen Summer Turner in about seven years.
I remember her mom telling me she’d gone back to college. I guess she never went back home.
“Summer?” Her name seems like a safe bet.
She flinches as if I’ve struck her, her blue eyes widening once again as she takes a long, hard look at me. “Zachary Murphy?”
There’s a breathiness in her voice, like she can’t quite believe it.
I turn to the barman. “Two whiskey sours, thanks.”
“I… uh… was just about to do that,” she mumbles, as someone tries to muscle past her.
I grab her by the arm and pull her closer, sliding out of my seat at the bar so she can have it. She stares at my hand on her arm, then her gaze lifts to mine, a thousand emotions playing out on her beautiful face, her mouth opening and closing without a single sound coming out.
She was always the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, though I wouldn’t have told Mark that; he’d have kicked my ass if I’d said anything close to that about his sister.
She still is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“You’re… here,” she says, at last.
I nod. “Temporarily.”
“How come? The FDNY need some extra hands on deck?” She laughs awkwardly, the amusement not quite reaching her eyes. I imagine it’s a hard topic for her to joke about.
“My father died,” I say with a shrug. “I had to sign some things in person at the New York office. And I had to check something before I head back to Crown Hill.”
Her throat bobs, and she looks toward the bar in desperation, like she needs that whiskey sour pronto. “You’re still… there, then?”
“I am.”
“Well, that’s… um… good for you.” She pauses. “And you’re still married? You have a kid, right?”
I smile tightly as the drinks arrive. “About to get divorced, actually. But yeah, I have a kid. A daughter. She’s six.”
And if Anna thinks she’s going to get her claws into my girl, she’s got another thing coming.
It had been a hell of a day, to be honest, fielding funeral calls from caterers and florists, then signing off on my father’s replacement, who just so happens to be the man that my wife—soon to be ex—has been fucking.
It won’t last, it never does, but I figure that three affairs is probably where I draw the line on being made a fool of.
Staying for the sake of my daughter isn’t enough anymore; I’m taking my girl, this time.
I don’t tell Summer that, though.
“It’s been a while, huh?” I say instead.
She nods, her shoulders relaxing slightly, as she reaches for the glass of whiskey sour and passes the other to me. “It has.” She takes a sip. “You look good. I like the… uh… tattoos. You didn’t have so many last time I saw you.”
“You didn’t, either,” I reply, lightly touching the dove on her wrist.
She smiles and doesn’t pull her hand back. “I’m never getting another. I barely got through this one.” Her eyes seem to shine as she peers up at me. “How did you manage to sit through so many? Do they… I mean, do you have them all over?”
“Just the arms and across here.” I move my own hand over my chest. “A couple on my back. Have you been here all this time, then?”
“In this bar? No.” She gives that soft, breathy laugh again.
“In New York? Mostly. I graduated, figured New Jersey didn’t have much to offer me, so bit the bullet and moved into a tiny fifth-floor walk-up in Williamsburg with two friends from college.
I still have the friends, but I’m pleased to say I don’t have the tiny walk-up anymore. ”
“New Jersey?” I frown. “I thought you went to college here in New York.” I almost say Mark’s name, but don’t want her to close off again, so I rephrase. “That’s what I was told.”
“You were misinformed by about fifty miles,” she tells me, that smile fading for a moment, before it transforms into a glitter of amusement. The kind that comes from a good memory, not a sad one.
I nod and sip my drink. It’s strong and it hits the spot. “So, what do you do? You’re dressed like you’re some high-flying professional.”
And I wouldn’t mind undressing you or seeing those tiny shorts again.
She’s Mark’s little sister. I should remember that.
He might be gone, and she might be right here looking like that, and it might be the previous whiskeys talking, but I should remember who she is.
Should be careful of that fact, in case I get burned.
“Let me guess,” I continue. “Finance? No, you don’t look wired enough for that. Business? Fashion? Advertising?”
A full laugh ripples from her, her hand pressed to her chest as her neck arches back, and my lips itch to kiss that curve. “My accountant would probably like me more if that was true. Unfortunately for you and for him, you’re way off.”
“Film? Media? Law?” I rack my brain for city jobs, a world away from the sort of quiet work that goes on in Crown Hill. “You’re a PA? An assistant manager? Hell, a manager of something?”
Her smile is bright enough to hold back the shadows of the shitty day I’ve just had, and it feels good to be the reason she’s laughing.
Honestly, when she saw me, I figured there wouldn’t be much laughter at all.
I am the reason her brother isn’t alive anymore, after all, though everyone insists there was nothing else I could have done.
“A writer,” she says, putting me out of my guessing misery.
“A writer?” I raise an eyebrow. “Anything I might’ve read?”
She shrugs. “Depends how often you walk past The Briar Patch Bookshop.” A shy smile transforms her into a sultry creature that’s going to be hard to resist. “They’ve got my books in the window, on full display, all the time. I keep asking my parents to tell them to take them down.”
“I’ll be sure to drop in next time I walk by,” I tell her, meaning it.
“And you’re still at the… station?” she asks, her voice catching.
I lean in closer. “I think I answered that already.”
“Yes… yes, you did.” She bites her lip, and I know that if she does it again, I’m not going to be able to keep from kissing her.
I thought I needed a couple of drinks to unwind after the second worst day in my thirty-two years, but I’m starting to think it’s her that I need, instead. A night in her bed, getting lost in her, those long legs that I remember so vividly, wrapped around me, drawing me in.
If nothing else, maybe giving her something new to write about.
“How’s Crown Hill these days?” she says, shuffling a little closer on her bar stool, until her leg is touching mine.
“I don’t care about Crown Hill,” I reply. “Tell me more about these books. What do you write about? What stories do you tell?”
She clears her throat. “I mostly write non-fiction about fishermen in the Arctic, the history of the postal service, and biographies of Confederate leaders.”
I blink, taken aback. “That’s… an interesting selection.”
There’s that smile again, slyer than before, a glitter of amusement coming into those beautiful eyes a second before she bursts out laughing.
“I’m kidding.” She grins, and moves so that if she wants to be any closer to me, she’ll have to spread her thighs.
“I write romantic thrillers. Which, if you knew me better, you’d find hysterical and oh-so bitterly ironic. ”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Trust me, it’s tragic,” she insists, and her thighs do part a little, as if she wants me nearer.
“I still don’t believe it.”
“Buy me a few more of these, and I might tell you why you should believe it,” she says, drinking down the rest of her first glass.
I should make my excuses and head back to the hotel alone. I should wish her well and leave it at that. But she’s smiling and she’s warm and she’s a piece of home, right here in this godforsaken city. So, I catch the bartender’s eye and order another round.
* * *
Summer
My mind slowly unfurls from the dream of Zachary Murphy in my bed, his skin hot against mine as his ragged breaths meet mine in a slow, lazy kiss, my hands wandering over the inked marks of his tattoos while he’s still hard inside me, my body trembling from a third orgasm.
I haven’t had sex in months. I haven’t had sex like that in years, if ever.
It was exactly what I needed, at the moment I needed it the most.
I remember falling asleep in his arms, teasing him a little by shifting my backside against him, certain that once we’d both rested awhile and slept off some of the whiskey sours, there would be more where that came from.
But there’s no heat there now as I emerge from sleep and roll over in the hotel bed.
“Zach?” I call out quietly, trying to spot a light coming from the bathroom door.
No one answers, and there’s no telltale glow, just a barrage of reasonable explanations that rattle in my head. Desperate.
I sit up and pull the covers to my collarbone, suddenly shy, which seems stupid considering what he and I have done already. “Zach?”
I reach for the bedside lamp, and as the hotel room solidifies in the soft amber glow, I see it: a note on the pillow where he should be.
It’s folded, my name on the top, keeping whatever’s inside from my view.
Schrodinger’s note: whatever Zachary has written can be both good and bad, the romance of tonight both dead and alive, so long as I don’t open it.
But I do. Of course, I do.
Something came up, it says in neat handwriting. I had a great time, little dove.
My tattoo burns where he kissed it, and my face burns right along with it.
I thought he was safe. Considering our history, I didn’t think he, of all people, would do this to me.
But he’s dined and dashed, and any hope I had of getting some inspiration for my new book has darted out of the hotel room with him.
When I told him my romantic life was tragic, I wasn’t just talking about my actual romantic life, but that of my characters, too. When my well runs dry, so does theirs and, right now, there’s a drought.
For a moment, I thought he might be the one to get the creative juices flowing again, becoming exactly the sort of protagonist that my readers would gobble up, giving me the means to write what I know, and all that.
But as I stare at the note, it feels like he’s just poured a ton of cement on that writer’s block instead, becoming the very last thing that I needed. Typing ‘The End’ on my hope of inspiration.