Night Owl (23 page)

My cock had zero interest.

I shrugged, and then started to laugh helplessly. The girl turned red.

"Nice try, kid," I said.

I tucked my member away, did up my jeans, and strolled out of the barn. Turns out laughter works as well as tears.

I made two scrambled eggs when I got back to the cabin. I pushed them around on my plate, washing down small bites with bourbon. Somehow, the booze and pharmaceuticals kept my stomach full. I tried to eat throughout the day, but most nights I ended up puking.

No big deal; nausea comes with the territory.

I wrote for a few hours and then I got too drunk to see straight. I'd hit a roadblock in
The Surrogate
. My protagonist was about to make love to the woman he spent half the novel chasing. I wanted to write a steamy sex scene, but the words weren't flowing.

The images weren't flowing.

Usually I could sit back, imagine a scene, and transcribe it. Not this time. I kept thinking about Hannah reading it. I wanted to write it for her.

I tried to reconnect with the passion we used to feel. In my car, in the field, in her room, in my bed. The images were sterile. Hands on skin, mouths locked.

Fuck. What was happening to me? And why was I having Pam feed my novel to Hannah anyway? There was no point. Three months had passed. Hannah and I were definitely over.

I could barely remember the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair.

She had become an idea.

I sent my story to Hannah the way people pray—casting my plea into the ether. A plea to be understood. Looking for the signs.

_____

I woke on the couch. At some point, I had changed into a pair of loose pajama pants. The cold bit at me and I let it. So much of my life now was dumb penitence.

After taking two shots and a Xanax, I called Mike.

Mike was still a decent psychiatrist, even if I didn't trust him. He set me up with meds before I flew out to New York. I called him from time to time. A thirty-minute call to Mike cost me a hundred bucks, but the money didn't matter.

"Hi Matthew. How are you doing?"

"Fine. You know, good. Is it a good time?"

"Yes, sure."

I heard a door close.

"Look, who transcribes your notes?" I said.

"Matthew, we've been over this. I—"

"No, I know. But Hannah's mom, she does that, you know? The transcription stuff. And I was thinking, if she types your notes..."

Mike was one of very few people who didn't cut me off when I rambled. Granted, my rambling worked in his monetary favor. I still appreciated it.

"You know, that would be bad for me," I said. I began to prowl through the cabin. Shadows pooled on the floor. I had no idea what time it was or even what day. I lost whole weeks to the rhythms of drunkenness. "There are things I want to say. But no one can know. It gets onto the internet and everywhere."

The Mike-Hannah's mother connection evaded me. I thought about it a lot. There was Hannah's mother and the medical records. There was Mike, my psychiatrist. They might be conversing, but how could I ever find out?

"I take our physician-patient privilege very seriously, Matthew. Also, as I have mentioned, I dictate my own notes with a voice recognition program."

"Ah, right. That's right. Do you make notes about these calls?"

"Yes, I make short notes about these calls. Let me ask you a question Matthew."

"Shoot."

"Are you taking the Zyprexa I prescribed?"

"No, not really. It makes me sleepy. I take the Xanax."

"I would like you to hold on the Xanax and try the Zyprexa. These fearful suspicions you're exhibiting should be—"

"Fine, whatever. I'll try that."

I smirked and rolled my eyes at Laurence. Classic. Mike was trying to accuse me of paranoia. He did that every time I got close to the truth.

"Anyway, Mike, I have a problem. Basically..." I bounced the ball of my foot against the wall. "I can't get my prick up." I laughed and resumed pacing.

"Okay, help me with specifics," Mike said. I was grateful for his clinical tone. "Are you having trouble sustaining erection, or achieving erection?"

"Achieving, I guess."

"How long has this been going on?"

"About three months. I don't know, maybe two. Since I left Denver."

"Have you attempted intercourse and found yourself unresponsive?"

I thought about the girl in the barn.

"Um, not really." I winced. I needed another drink. "Look, all I know is, I used to wake up with wood almost every day." I ground my teeth. God damn, I wasn't about to tell Mike how Hannah could get me hard just looking at me, how her voice made my cock perk up, how I hardened instantly in her hand.

My throat started to burn. I rubbed my jaw.

"I just need some fucking Viagra," I snapped. "I need to get off, alright? I need the release. I'm going crazy."

"Medication is an option," Mike said, "but I can't prescribe treatment to a healthy young man without doing a workup first. Erectile dysfunction is often the result of organic—"

"Meeting over." I ended the call and tossed my phone onto the couch.

A healthy young man.

Maybe Mike had a point. Maybe my dick would be more interested in life if I stopped drinking myself into oblivion. Somehow, though, I doubted it.

I opened a bottle of beer and sat at the kitchen table. I ran my pen along the spiral ring of my notebook. I could skip the sex scene, come back to it later. But how would I handle the rest of the novel? The sex wasn't exactly incidental to the plot. Fuck.

I'd deleted the pictures of Hannah from my phone months ago. I didn't deserve to have them, and I knew she wouldn't want me looking at them. Still, I tried to remember them as I moved a hand between my legs.

I tried to remember that first time when we were strangers on the internet.

Hannah. You should let your robe hang open.

And the second time, when I saw her picture and grew hard looking at it.

The third time, in a motel in Montana.

God, you're perfect. Lie down. Put the phone near your ear. I want you to have both hands free.

I remembered her dark, heavy hair strewn across my thighs. Her fingertips brushing my cock for the first time. Her mouth, the bend of her knee. The sunlight on her eyelashes.

Beneath my hand, my cock didn't even twitch.

I hurled my bottle across the room. It crashed into the wall and beer and glass rained down. Laurence bolted to the corner of his cage with a loud thump.

"Sorry," I mumbled. "Fuck, sorry Laurence."

I shoved my notebook away. I stood and went down, my ankle twisting under me. The pain was a blessed relief. The floor rose to meet me and I tumbled right through it, down into the river of forgetfulness.

CHAPTER 24

Hannah

_____

MY FLIGHT OUT
of DIA was delayed, which gave me more time to wonder how totally I'd lost my mind.

It didn't, unfortunately, give me time to back out. Not with Nate shadowing me like a bodyguard. The asshole had neglected to mention that his travel plans included us flying east together and then driving five hours from Newark to Geneva.

I was looking at nine hours of quality time with Matt's brother.

As if this weren't awkward enough.

"Hannah, please," Nate said, trying for the twentieth time to extract my carryon from my shoulders. I grasped the straps of my backpack.

"I've got it," I snapped. I shot an acid look at Nate and he frowned. Ugh, I felt instantly penitent. These rich... arrogant... presumptuous... good-looking assholes! How could they be so infuriating and so pitiful at the same time?

Pity and fury: the same emotions I felt when I thought about Matt.

Matt, the man I was going to rescue.

It was the first weekend in October, which had given me about one week to mull over Nate's request. And I did pretend to mull, though my decision was made the moment I heard Matt was drinking.

I approached Pam about the time off. As usual when Pam didn't want to discuss something, she barely looked up from her computer.

"Yes, it's fine Hannah. I've already spoken with Nathaniel about it. I'll be in LA that weekend and Laura is in Chicago. We'll shut down the office."

"The thing is," I said, "I'm not sure how long I'll be gone. It might take longer than one weekend. I don't really know."

"Yes, it's fine. It's all fine, Hannah. Believe it or not, I can survive without you."

Pam glanced at me. Fuck, she probably thought I was fishing for a paid vacation, which I definitely was not. Thanks to Nate, I had five thousand extra dollars in my bank. I wondered if Pam knew about that. I wondered if Matt knew. Maybe it was Matt's money.

Ugh, these conspiracy theories had to stop.

"Great, okay. I'll... I'll email you if it looks like I'll be gone for more than a week, but I don't think that's going to happen."

"Fine. Sounds good Hannah."

Pam's tone and posture said I was dismissed. I lingered by her desk until she was forced to glare at me.

"Yes, Hannah?"

"Have you been in touch with Matt?"

I thought I saw something pass through Pam's expression, but it was gone before I could decipher it.

"Yes. He's still my author. We communicate from time to time."

"How is he?"

I closed my eyes; I didn't want to see Pam's withering glare.

That woman is a shark
, Matt once told me, but Matt was a tiger and Nate was a hawk. They were all dangerous. They all lived in the rarefied air of the successful and, now more than ever, I felt like a child.

A child in the dark.

I kept wondering—how dare they? How dare Matt use me and lie to me? How dare Nate swoop in and bribe me into helping his brother? How dare Pam treat me with such cool indifference when I was going to save her bloody author?

God, but I was in love with Matt.

My heart quickened as I stood in Pam's office and felt the anger and heat of my love. I didn't need five thousand dollars to go to him. The money was an insult. And I wasn't doing Pam a favor by going to him. And he sure as fuck didn't deserve me going to him.

I was going to him because I loved him and because love is unstoppable.

"He's seen better days," Pam said quietly.

My eyes flickered open.

Pam wasn't glaring. Her expression had softened and she wore a small frown.

"He becomes someone else, Hannah. Someone I don't know. He's difficult to know as is, but—" She ran her fingers over the keyboard. Emotion made her restive. It did the same thing to Matt; it did the same thing to Nate. I felt triumphant in my simple ability to be human.

"But you tell me." Pam cleared her throat. "You go out there and you tell me how he is."

I blinked and nodded.

"I will," I said, "I promise."

I hurried out before the waterworks started. Pam needed me. So did Nate and Matt. Why couldn't they admit it?

I packed on Thursday after calling Nate and agreeing to his plan. He did a poor job of concealing his relief. I tried to return his money, but he shut me down. He told me to pack for cool weather. He told me he would give me a lift to the airport.

It wasn't until he picked me up that he told me we'd be traveling together.
Asshole.

Our flight boarded forty minutes late.

Nate grinned as I stowed my backpack and gawked. I stretched out my legs.

"Is the legroom to your liking Miss Catalano?"

I blushed.

"I've never flown first class."

"Ah. It really is the only way to fly."

I glared out the pill-shaped window. Yeah, the only way to fly if you can afford it.

I wanted to chatter as we took off and hit waves of turbulence—I'm a nervous flyer—but I'd given Nate the cold shoulder one too many times. He closed his eyes and zoned out as the cabin rattled.

I studied his face.

Again I was struck by his resemblance to Matt. Nate's hair was black, though, and Matt's was the color of sand with brilliant highlights and darker shocks. I remembered the feel of those silky strands sliding through my fingers... while we kissed... while he went down on me.

Fuck.

I was not going to New York to leap into Matt's bed. I was going to New York to try to help him, and then to get on with my life.

When I thought Nate was dead asleep, I pulled out my copy of
The Silver Cord
.

I'd been rereading Matt's books over the last three months. Contained within his sentences, coded in his words, was the man I loved and all the secrets he'd kept from me. Reading the books was like hearing his voice. His wit, his sarcasm, his mercurial moods, and then his unusual, forlorn wisdom—it was all there.

On Friday morning I had telephoned Pam to ask if there were any new pages from
The Surrogate
. Jane Doe's writing arrived like clockwork on Thursdays, but we hadn't had an installment for two weeks. I was hoping for pages to read on the plane. There was nothing, though, and no explanation from Pam.

How annoying. The author was stalled on a scene I was dying to read, and dreading too. The sex scene.

Nate flipped over the cover of my book.

"Nate!"

I jumped, jerking it away.

"Sorry, I wanted to see what you were reading."

I shoved
The Silver Cord
into my backpack.

"Now you know." My face heated.

"Yes. That's one of my favorites of his."

I peeked at the immaculately dressed man beside me. I was flying comfortable in leggings and a teal tunic top. Nate was flying like a Wall Street executive in a gray suit and golden tie with an Eldredge knot so perfect that I wanted to stare at his throat.

When Nate wasn't annoying the hell out of me, he intrigued me. What did he do? I'd noticed his heavy wedding band. Did Sky men cheat on their wives, or just their girlfriends?

"Is it true?" I said. "That it's sort of... about your family?"