Chapter 6
SIX
Dutch
My muscles flexed and burned as I pulled my way across the glassy lake. I kept pushing harder, digging for more with each pull of the oar. The burn was the first thing to make me feel alive in too many months to count.
I’d found the perfect rhythm of water and resistance. The glide into the water and the release as the scull shot backward with the power of each stroke. Peace hummed under my skin like a song.
I dug deeper, using my thighs to give an extra length to my momentum.
I didn’t even feel tired.
Maybe I could travel in reverse enough to turn back time to the before.
When my words made sense.
When I didn’t second guess every moment.
When my friend hadn’t stolen from me.
I’d have given him my entire fortune over my words.
I could make more money.
The burn increased as my speed kicked up another notch. Foliage and snow blurred in my periphery. A mix of San Francisco and the new alien place I called home. Icy rocks dotted with snow and manuscript pages half burned with words that didn’t make sense.
Still I pushed.
Still I sliced my oars through the water.
Still I raced away from my truth.
My legs ached with each stretch and bend as I demanded more from my body and the scull.
My chest squeezed as my heart pumped to keep up.
My breath came faster, drawing less oxygen into my lungs.
The sound of scraping intruded on the smooth speed.
I slowed my oar and the scraping became louder. Even louder than the labored wispy breaths on the cold air. The water tilted.
Water didn’t tilt.
As the water rushed into the scull, I gasped and suddenly I was pushing myself off the mattress in a room I didn’t recognize. The scraping noise was followed by a happily barking dog.
I collapsed onto my face into my pillow.
The house in New York.
The mutt who wouldn’t go away.
I turned my head, squinting at the empty space beside me. She was gone. Annoyed at the quick rush of disappointment, I rolled onto my back had to swallow down a groan. My ankle definitely wasn’t happy.
Fair, since neither was I.
Fuck.
I struggled out of the covers, my neck and chest slick with sweat from the dreams. It faded into the ether as most dreams did, but the weight of it stayed squarely on my chest. It was never really gone.
Losing a friendship that lasted longer than any other relationship in my life would do that.
I shoved the blankets and sheets away. Her honey scent drifted up and tightened my chest—and lower. Christ. I didn’t need to think about her now.
It was just biology. I’d tried losing myself in sex—both meaningless and more serious. Both had been a bad idea. Anger lived so close to the surface inside of me, I couldn’t find the softness a partner deserved.
Being touch-starved for six months was just getting to me that was all.
I gingerly slipped off the bed, wincing at my throbbing ankle. It was still tender, but already better than the day before. I hobbled to the window. The sun was higher in the sky than I expected.
How the hell long had I been out?
I fumbled my way to the dresser and opened it to find my phone. I flicked away the handful of messages from Monte and my thumb paused on the one from Bastian.
The one friend I still had.
I left it unread, but caught the gist from the preview. He was checking on me. I glanced at the time and cursed. How the hell was it after noon?
I hadn’t slept ten hours in…months.
I tossed the phone back into the drawer and shut it. The scraping sound must have been the plows coming through. After I took care of my bladder, I slowly limped my way into the hall.
The sound of someone in my office froze me in my tracks.
I stalked down the hall, my ankle screaming, but I just used the pain.
My notebook was beside my laptop, but it wasn’t where I’d left it.
Had she touched it?
I scanned the room, then caught a flash of blond hair behind my desk.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Her head popped up, she had chalk in her hand. “Oh, hi. I was wondering if you were going to sleep the day away.”
“I asked you a question.” My blood pressure rose, the pounding in my ears ramping up with each second she was near my things.
Had she gone through them?
Looked at my notes?
There were only a few pages, but I’d managed a janky outline.
Would I have to start over again?
I limped forward, pushing my desk away from the wall.
Phoebe struggled up from her position on the floor. A pile of chalk was scattered around her. Her green eyes were huge as she scrabbled back. “I was just drawing.”
“What?”
She used the wall to drag herself up and backed into it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I just thought I’d leave a few little drawings to make you…” She swallowed. “I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
“I don’t like people in my stuff.” I grabbed my notebook, holding it against my chest.
“I didn’t touch your notebook. It looked like a journal.”
My fingers shook as I gripped the leather. It was as close to a journal as I got. Scribbles and fragments of ideas.
I didn’t trust typing them out anymore.
I didn’t even trust putting them on my board yet.
It wasn’t like they were even good, but each one was hard won after…
I shut my eyes, dragging in a deep breath.
“Dutch?”
Her voice sliced into me. Hesitant and caring. Even when I yelled at her. Fuck, I was a piece of shit. “Just leave.”
“I—”
“Phoebe, please.”
“I was only trying to help. It looks so cold in here.”
I leaned on the desk to take the weight off my throbbing ankle.
“Let me help.”
“Just fucking go!”
She rushed out and I sagged against the desk when I heard her steps in the hallway.
With shaking fingers, I opened the journal.
The clippings I’d tacked inside were still there.
The missing boy with the haunted eyes that I’d seen in a random newspaper from Maine.
I set the notebook on the edge of the desk, my legs collapsing under me.
I crashed into the chair and opened my laptop.
The lock screen still looking for the first password.
I had another level of privacy that could only be accessed by my face and a code thanks to my Bastian.
The perks of research for one of my books, I’d made friends with an information security expert—his term, not mine.
He hadn’t blinked when I requested the help.
Bastian understood the need to safeguard information, no questions asked.
When I verified she hadn’t looked, I shut the lid and buried my head in my arms. I took deep, even breaths until my head stopped throbbing.
I knew I overreacted, but seeing anyone in my space had triggered me past the red zone.
My hands shook as I sat back. My box of chalk was the only thing disturbed on the desk. Behind it, a tiny, intricate drawing of a porcupine peeked up from behind my power strip.
The fact that she did that with my fat pieces of chalk dented a little of my spiral.
I turned in my chair to where the pile of chalk was scattered on my floor.
The baseboards were a frame for a whole storybook city of flowers, blades of grass, and intricate dandelions in their end stages. The seeds were floating up from her beautiful illustrations into the sky which was my empty wall of blackboard paint.
The wall that felt like it would never be full of my words again.
But the seeds on the vast emptiness activated something in me.
Under it was still that anger.
I swiped the side of my hand through one of the seeds and instantly wished I hadn’t.
Fuck.
I stood and crashed to the floor when my ankle collapsed under me.
The delicate dandelions taunting me as they bent gracefully in the swirls of wind.
The opposite of my rigid, sharp edges.
I hauled myself off the floor with the legs of the desk and left the beauty behind me and through the door, down the hallway.
The house was empty.
A trace of honey haunting the air.