“Hello?” Ty paused. “Hello? Suzi? How are you?”
Brian sidled closer, not sure what would be worse, talking to her or not talking to her.
Jason sat down on the bed. “Logan said they’ve shut down the website, and they’re suing everyone and their brother.”
Ty frowned as if he was trying to do trigonometry in his head. From the sound of his questions, he was getting very short, direct answers. Not at all the chatty Suzi they knew.
“What about Suzi?” Marc asked.
“Logan said she went into shock. They had a doctor come look at her.”
“A doctor?” Brian asked. Now, it did feel like someone had reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. Poor Suzi.
“Logan said she was catatonic when he told her. She threw up, and then she wouldn’t move. Doctor said she was acting like she’d been raped.”
Rudy crossed himself.
“Brian’s here. Did you want to talk to him?” Ty shoved the phone at Brian.
Brian grabbed it before Ty dropped it. “Hello Suzi?”
“Hello.”
What did you say to someone who felt like they’d been raped? “You need anything?”
“No.” Her voice was thin and distant. She almost sounded stoned. Had they drugged her?
“You know if you need anything, you can just ask.”
Ty walked out of the room.
“I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Well…” He glanced at Jason, trying to figure out what to say, but Jason backed away as if he thought Brian was going to hand him the phone. “At least it’s off the Internet now. Not many copies could have gotten out, right?”
“It’s a download. All the pirating sites Jim checked have it.”
Whoever Jim was. Savitar’s head of security? “Yes, but you can get that pulled down.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“What d’ya mean?” He heard the soft, wet sound of her licking her lips and then a sigh. She liked being smart. Fortunately, he’d never minded having things explained to him. He knew how Internet pirating worked, but if it made her feel better, he’d listen. As long as she was talking and sounding like herself, she could talk about anything she wanted.
“As long as one person has the file on their computer, they can just post it as another torrent. It’s the head of the hydra. We cut off one, and two more sprout.” Her voice was sounding warmer, more like her.
He sat down on his bed beside Jason. “So as long as somebody has it, anybody could get it.”
Jason snarled at him.
“Yeah,” Suzi muttered, sounding at least fifty percent normal. “Though I can’t understand why.”
She wouldn’t. Unfortunately, Brian was stuck between wanting to see how beautiful she was when she made love and sick over the fact that weirdoes were spying on her for their jollies. “People are nosy. Your publishers are probably loving this.”
“They’re in shock.”
“But it’s good advertising.”
“Good is relative.”
“Didn’t you say all advertising was good advertising? Scandal, death, all that stuff is good for sales.”
Jason buried his face in his hands, obviously certain that Brian had lost it.
“I don’t think it was as bad as that.”
“It’s relative,” he said.
She almost laughed.
“Candy said you were at a movie. Was it any good?”
“It was wonderful, but I’m required to say that because a friend of mine is in it. Logan fell asleep.”
“He fell asleep?”
“At least he doesn’t snore. It was a period piece. Not his thing.”
“We were just about to watch a movie.”
“I’m sure Logan would rather have seen the movie you guys are watching than the one we saw. I liked it, though.”
“You like Keats.”
“I love Keats.” He thought she might be up to ninety percent normal. Now, she mostly sounded tired. “Did you get my email?”
“I haven’t looked today.”
“I sent you a story yesterday.”
“It’s not romance, is it? You keep trying to trick me into reading romance.”
“You’d like my romance.”
“I don’t read romance.”
“Fine. It’s not romance.”
Now she sounded like the girl he adored. “Good. I need new reading material. I’m in the middle of a divorce, and I’m depressed. I need something creepy to cheer me up.”
“You’re depressed? My life just went through a blender,” she grumbled playfully.
“You know if you need something, you just have to ask. We’re in—where are we?” he asked Jason. Jason shrugged. “We’re on tour, but if you need anything.… Have you talked to Tessa?”
“Jason’s sister? She called not long before you did.”
“See, the Touchstone machine is already working for you.”
She laughed. The genuine, lovely Suzi laugh. “Did you want to talk to Logan?”
“Sure.” Brian didn’t want to talk to Logan, but couldn’t think of a delicate way to escape it. “Just remember. If you need us, just call. I mean it.”
“I know. Something about you and oxygen, right? Here’s Logan.”
Brian grinned. She remembered that comment about him being her oxygen. Good. If things ever did go south between her and that idiot who couldn’t manage to protect her, he’d be right at the front of the line.
“Hi Brian,” Logan said. A door closed on his end of the phone.
“You talked to Tessa?”
“She was doing her fire-breathing lawyer thing. I’m glad I’m not on the wrong side of her. I heard you ask about sales. We’ve both had an uptick. Suzi’s been out of it, so I’ve been talking to people. Shitty way to make sales.” Logan’s misery leaked through the phone, making Brian feel bad for him, too. No way had Logan rigged this. “Hey, thanks for talking her down.”
Making a phone call in the middle of a crisis? A buck or so. Getting to be the guy who talked her out of shock? Priceless. “S’nothin’. She’s all right then?”
“She comes and goes. Sometimes, she’s just like normal, and then five minutes later she’s wigged out again. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown when I told her.”
“But you stopped the guy who did it.”
“We shut down the site, but the jackass is still out there. He didn’t get away with a big payday because it immediately got pirated, so we figure he’ll pop up again. When he does, our security guy wants to crucify him live on network television at prime time, but I think we’re going to have to settle for a civil suit.”
“Maybe we can catch him in a dark alley.”
“Yeah, you can hold him for me.” Logan paused, and Brian could hear the other man cracking his knuckles through the phone. Logan was a lot more freaked out about the whole thing than he was playing at. “I can’t believe she didn’t leave me. I can’t believe some dickwad taped us. And seriously, it was just a spur of the moment thing. We never do stuff like that. What the fuck is next?”
“If I were you, I’d just be careful.” Brian clenched his teeth. Logan better fucking be careful. Suzi couldn’t take too much of this shit.
“Yeah. That’s at the top of the list.”
“You’ll have to start paying a lot more attention to one another. You’re all you’ve got out there.” Brian was starting to feel like Logan’s dad.
“Yeah. I’m thinking about moving back to Rochester. LA is such a fucking fish bowl.”
Brian swallowed against tightness in his throat. If they moved to New York, he’d never have a chance to see Suzi. They couldn’t meet up for coffee or go catch a movie like they had been. “You could do that. You know, we’re going to England to record in a few months. You guys will be on the road by then. She could come along with us.”
“Yeah, maybe. I’ll
ask her. Thanks for calling. We’ll keep you posted.”
“Talk to you then.” He hung up.
“She’s all right?” Rudy asked.
“Logan says she has good times and bad ones. I think she’ll be fine with time. Logan is thinking about moving to Rochester.”
“Might not be a bad idea,” Jason said. “I know I feel a lot more relaxed in WVA. Everybody in Potterville is looking, but they aren’t staring the same way. You know what? I bet a nice little getaway would be good for them. Suzi would love to go back to my place out there.” Jason grabbed his phone and walked out dialing. Marc followed him.
Brian sat on his bed. Meeting up with her all the time in LA was excruciating, anyway. If she was on the other side of the country, he could limit his pain to a couple times a year.
Chapter 13
Present
Logan stopped outside the office door and took a deep breath. Picking a therapist out of the phone book was starting to sound stupid. Suzi would have researched it. Asked around for recommendations. Studied credentials. She was going to ask him how he picked his therapist, and he was going to have to tell her he found the name in the phone book. No wonder she thought he was an idiot. Maybe he should scratch this and start over. Do it right.
But it had taken two weeks to get this appointment, and he was going to WVA in a month. If he didn’t show up with some serious therapy under his belt, Jason and Cassie were never going to let him near Suzi. They would kick his ass all the way back to New York and fix her up with some nice guy who wasn’t going to break her heart on a routine basis.
That might not be such a bad thing. Suzi didn’t deserve all the shit he put her though.
Logan opened the door before he chickened out. The reception room was small with soft beige furniture and a coffee table fanned with magazines. The receptionist smiled. “Mr. Fitzpatrick? Good afternoon. Dr. Kennedy will be with you in a minute. Would you like something to drink while you wait?”
“No thanks.” Logan sank into a chair. Her desk didn’t have a panel across the front so he had a perfect sightline under it. Her skirt rode up to mid-thigh, and great thighs they were. She either jogged or spent a lot of time in a gym to get those gams. No stockings. Stockings had their appeal, but the idea of her long, bare legs was pretty fucking appealing, too. She wore standard high-heeled pumps, black, but she only had on one. Her legs were crossed and she was dangling the other shoe from her toes. Nice toes, too. Purple polish. Good feet, nice arches, soft heels. Suzi had hard heels because she was barefoot most of the time. She buffed them to keep them from being scratchy, but they were still tough.
Suzi. Jesus, he was sitting in a therapist’s office to save his relationship with Suzi and was checking out the receptionist.
Logan slouched to the other side of the chair so the arm of the couch blocked his view under the desk. He should have brought something to read. Some save-the-world shit about feeding starving kids or housing the homeless. Something that would impress the therapist so she’d help him get Suzi back.
A door opened at the side of the office. A woman came out, sniffling, and walked by without acknowledging him or the receptionist. Logan leaned his elbows on his knees. He’d written a lot of new material since he’d sobered up. The record company had been real flexible about them delaying their album. Toby thought they were looking for a reason to break the contract.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick? Dr. Kennedy will see you now.”
Logan stared at her for a second before he stood up. Was that a smirk she was hiding? Was she going to be on the phone the second he walked through the door to tell all her girlfriends about the screwed-up celebrity who was in with the doc right now? Maybe they’d make a date to meet for drinks after work so they could talk over Cosmos, or whatever the hot chic drink was at the moment, about what he’d worn and what a jerk he must be to have lost Suzi. They’d probably pull the video up on their phones so they could watch her run out on him again. He swaggered through the door. Never let ‘em see you sweat.
Dr. Kennedy stood up. And up. She had to be over six-foot. Her brown hair was short and threaded with gray, and she had biceps like a quarterback. At least he didn’t have to worry about hitting on her. “Hello, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Or would you rather I called you Logan?”
“Logan’s fine.” He shook her hand and sat down in the big brown leather wing chair across from the one she stood in front of.
“Would you like something to drink?”
Was this a test? Did his choice mean something? Did it mean something if he said no? “No, thanks.”
“Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
Logan frowned. “I sent in all the paperwork.”
“I know. I just want to hear it from you.”
Logan shifted. The paperwork had been a pain in the ass. He didn’t want to go over all that crap again. “I’m Logan Fitzpatrick. I play guitar in Savitar. I’m thirty. Thirty-one.” Dr. Kennedy had a calendar over her desk. He squinted at it. “I missed my own birthday because I was hammered. I missed hers, too.”
“Whose?”
“Suzi’s. The reason I’m here. The reason I keep breathing. It was her birthday, and I was too drunk to notice. Jesus, I’m an idiot.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because isn’t that like a woman’s biggest pet peeve? Their guy forgets their birthday. I always remembered hers. It’s ten days before mine. I always did something big. This year was supposed to be a haunted castle tour thing in Spain and Portugal. We wouldn’t have even been home yet.” Logan lolled his head against the back of the chair. “I didn’t even remember to say happy birthday when I saw her.”
“Because you were hammered.”
“Yeah. When I came home after the party, the house was just too empty, so I started drinking. I didn’t stop until she came back to get her stuff.”
Dr Kennedy leaned forward. “Why do you say ‘The Party’ like that?”
“Because it was The Party where she caught that groupie sucking on my fingers and took off with that fucker Cherney.”
She nodded.
“It wasn’t my fault. She didn’t let me explain. I went to the bar to get Suzi a Coke. She doesn’t drink. Well, not often. The results are usually pretty bad when she does. Gillian went with me because she’s a groupie and there’s no getting rid of her. When we were walking back, somebody bumped me and some of Suzi’s Coke spilled on my hand. Gillian said she’d take care of it, took the Coke, grabbed my hand, and stuck my fingers in her mouth. It was an accident.” He jumped up and started pacing the room. “I knew I shouldn’t have been anywhere near Gillian. I knew Suzi wasn’t feeling good that day. That’s why I got her the drink. I thought it would make her happy. She didn’t tell me she was pregnant. I was trying to do the right thing, and it just got all screwed up.”
“You sound very defensive.”
“Of course, I’m defensive. Every fucking person in the world has decided I’m the biggest jerk in the universe. Have you read the comments on the YouTube video? There’s pages and pages of people talking about what a dick I am. They’re even trying to pin that sex video on me again. I had nothing to do with that. Why would I risk it? Especially when we could have just set up a camera in the bedroom.”
“Did you ever ask her to?”
“What?”
“Put a camera in the bedroom.”
“No. That shit’s for amateurs. It’s too dangerous, too. Computers get hacked, and the videos end up online. I wouldn’t risk that with Suzi.”
Dr. Kennedy folded her hands on her notepad. “How did you meet Suzi?”
“I emailed her. She wrote this story about a three-hundred-year-old vigilante witch who goes after this guy. He’s a high school basketball coach, and he’s screwing all the little girls. These girls hire Desdemona to take him out, and she tears him up. It was the hottest, scariest thing I ever read. She wrote a whole bunch of Desdemona stories, but that was the firs
t one, and after I read it, I emailed her. We emailed back and forth for a while, and when my tour went near her town, I put her on the list, and the minute I met her I never wanted to be away from her.” Logan dropped back into the chair.
“But you were on tour.”
“We emailed for a couple more weeks, and the next time I had a break, I went to her place, and we packed her shit into a U-Haul and moved her in with me. She tried to finish her college, but between my schedule and her publishing schedule, it was impossible, so she dropped out before she graduated.”
“How did her family feel about this?”
“They went ballistic. She’s an only child, and her dad never wanted her to leave home. She hasn’t spoken to them since.”
“Did that put a strain on your relationship?”
“Shit, yeah. I mean, it could have been worse. I was living in LA at the time so I wasn’t near my family, and none of my friends were near their families, so it wasn’t like she was the only one. And then the next summer we went to record with Jason Callisto. His wife is from this little town so they sort of adopted Suzi. Everybody who meets Suzi loves her.” Logan smirked. “She was always way too good for me. I knew I was going to lose her someday.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she’s really nice and smart and so fucking talented and really…good. Suzi is just a good person. And I’m not.”
“Do you think she loved you?”
“Yeah. I know she did. I just couldn’t figure out how to hang onto her.”
“It sounds like you were trying.”
“I was. I really was.” Logan clenched his hands. At least the therapist was on his side. “But she never wanted much. Suzi isn’t a material girl. Expensive jewelry made her nervous that she’d lose it. She was always afraid she’d spill something on designer clothes. The only thing she let me get her was a Tesla car, and she left that behind. It’s sitting in the garage. All I could do was…drug her with sex.”
Dr Kennedy’s eyebrows went up. “Drug her with sex?”
Logan swallowed. “It was stupid. I knew it was stupid.”
“No, please explain.”
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