by Anah Crow
Even first thing in the morning, Nick was composed and together and perfect. Like a visitor from another planet, somewhere Holly caught glimpses of in the sky in the right light, somewhere Holly couldn’t even get to if he had a rocket ship, because he had no idea where it was. But Nick came to Earth and visited, or at least he had now, and that was more than Holly deserved.
“I have to,” Nick admitted, letting go and stepping back. “I can’t leave if I don’t. And you’re never going to figure out how to follow the rules if I don’t let you try.”
“I know. I don’t want you to have to stay. You’ve done enough already.” Holly wandered over to the kitchen, shoving his heart down in his chest where it belonged. “I’ll be okay. I was for a long time.” He got a mug and poured a cup of coffee.
Holly couldn’t believe he managed to eat breakfast, even once it was gone, but he did. Afterward he did the washing up while Nick worked for a while. If Nick didn’t make sure the research was done, the story wouldn’t seem like it was worth the trip he’d lied about taking.
Then they scoured the tiny apartment to make sure Nick hadn’t forgotten anything, erasing every bit of his presence from the place except for the phone on the counter with the numbers he had programmed into it. It was time for him to go. Even though Holly would see him again in a few days, he felt as forlorn as when Nick had graduated from college.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nick said, wheeling his suitcase down the short hallway. “We’ll have lunch, day after tomorrow. And you can call me if you need anything.” He stood there, looking at Holly. Just looking.
“I’ll text you if I fuck up, yes,” Holly said, slowly following Nick to the door. He didn’t want Nick to have to explain himself to Caroline. “Go on.” It felt like as soon as the door closed, the floor was going to fall out from under him. He had his hands in his pockets because he was afraid they were going to shake.
“I’ll see you in a few days.” Nick looked at Holly for another long moment.
“You will,” Holly promised. The idea he could pick up and leave now got squashed the second it surfaced. Go back to L.A. and miss lunch with Nick? Wasn’t going to happen.
Nick rewarded him with another smile flashed over his shoulder, and then he slipped out the door and closed it behind him. Just like that, Holly was on his own. By himself for the first time in more than a week.
Holly could go anywhere. Do anything. He went back to the kitchen and got his medication out of the cupboard, then carefully counted out the number of each he was supposed to take. Allowed to take. He washed them down with the last inch of coffee in his mug. He abandoned the mug on the edge of the sink and made his way back to bed.
Anywhere to go, and nowhere he wanted to be. The only thing that would make him less bereft—the only thing that wouldn’t mean letting Nick down before he’d even caught a cab to go home—was sleep. Holly hugged one of the pillows to his chest and closed his eyes. If he stayed really still, he could remember what it had felt like as he’d woken up this morning. He clung to that as hard as he was hanging on to the pillow until, finally, he slept.
***
Nick slipped into the backseat of the cab and stared at Holly’s fourth-floor window before closing the door. Holly would be fine; he knew that. Holly was a grown man, and Nick couldn’t hover over him every moment for the rest of his life. It wouldn’t be fair to Holly. And he already had a life with Caroline, one that had been put on hold so he could help Holly get this far. It was time to go back to that life now.
Nick ignored the regret and yearning tugging at him and pulled out his phone to call Caroline. He got the machine, but that would be enough. “The plane just landed. I’ve got my luggage, and I’m catching a cab now. You can put away the mace. I’ll see you soon.” He hung up and gave the driver an address across town. Time to go home.
The driver gave him a look, eyebrows raised, but didn’t comment on the lie. When the cab pulled in front of his building, Nick climbed out and waited as the driver unloaded his suitcase from the trunk.
“Thanks,” he said and handed over enough cash to cover the ride, plus a little extra for the quiet.
The elevator ride to his apartment was too long. Too short. Nick didn’t know. He felt completely off balance, and it was all his own fault. He gave a quick knock on the door—warning, so Caroline wouldn’t mace him in the hall if she hadn’t gotten the message—and then let himself inside.
“Hello, dear.” Caroline’s voice floated to him. “How was your flight?”
“Long.” Nick closed and locked the door, then put his jacket and shoes in the hall closet. “Not too bad, though.” He followed the sound of her voice into the living room. “How was your week?”
“Lovely.” Caroline was sitting in the middle of the floor on a yoga mat. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing what had to be a yoga shirt and yoga pants, because Caroline certainly wouldn’t wear anything else to do yoga. The image on the television was of a young woman frozen halfway through dropping her forehead to the floor between her knees. “Didn’t miss you at all, don’t worry. I think there’s some leftovers from La Traviata in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“Thanks. I ate on the plane. Maybe in a little while.” Nick picked up his suitcase and waved it around. “Don’t let me interrupt. I’m going to go unpack.”
“Cleaning’s back on schedule,” Caroline said cheerfully, picking up the remote and shooing him off with it. “So no excuse for leaving dirty things around.” Pointing the remote at the TV, she resumed her program. Nick could hear her muttering dire things as she attempted to copy the woman on the screen.
Once Nick had unpacked and put everything back where it belonged, put everything back to normal, back the way it was supposed to be, he settled in at the corner desk in the bedroom to work. Usually he did his work in the living room, but he didn’t want to interrupt Caroline’s personal torture session—at least that’s what yoga always looked like to him. People twisting their bodies into unnatural poses didn’t look like exercise or pleasure.
“I thought you just spent a week working, Mr. Addison.” Caroline slid her arms around his shoulders from behind and kissed his cheek. She smelled warm and sweet, not sweaty. Caroline didn’t sweat, not since she’d quit the field hockey team when she graduated from college. “What’s all this going on here?”
Nick didn’t let himself think about the way the scent wasn’t as green and savory as he expected, the way the arms weren’t the right shade of tan. Instead he leaned back in the chair and smiled at Caroline, trying to sink back into this life, his real life. “Just letting you finish that torture you call yoga.”
“You’re not a very good hero,” she pointed out, bending to kiss him on the mouth this time. “A good one would have rescued me from that DVD.” And gotten his ass kicked for it two seconds later, and Nick knew it. “But I forgive you,” she added and then kissed him again.
“You’re very generous.” The lips were too lush, too soft, and God, Nick had to stop this. He had to stop thinking about—just stop. Anything else was going to drive him crazy, because he couldn’t have it anyway. He opened his mouth under Caroline’s and kissed her slowly, relearning her mouth with every lick and brush of lips.
“I am feeling very giving today,” she said, catching him around the wrist with one hand and drawing him out of the chair. “If you’d like to take advantage of the offer.”
Nick was lucky. Caroline was a beautiful woman. People sometimes said they were more like siblings than husband and wife, the way they both had such dark hair and dark eyes and pale skin. Caroline’s features were more delicate, with a hint of somewhere warm and distant that was completely at odds with her cool, brisk personality. For all that she could be mannish, as she described it, in her actions, there was nothing masculine about her curves. And she was always direct about what she wanted, from coffee to sex.
“I would.” Nick slid his free hand from Caroline’s hip to her breast, ruck
ing up the snug yoga shirt as he went, so all he touched was bare skin. He was very lucky.
Chapter Six
“Great story!” Max gave Nick a high-five and danced off to his office with a printed copy of the article Nick had thrown together to explain his sudden absence. Apparently interviews with Senator Ingalls’s interns were a hot commodity now that the story about her husband’s affairs and abuse of power had broken.
Nick was having trouble focusing on his success, though. His mind kept slipping back to the fourth-floor walk-up a few blocks away, wondering if Holly was okay. Finally, at lunchtime, as he was walking out of the building to pick up a hot dog from the cart on the corner, he gave in and called.
“Hello?” Holly’s voice was thick and tight.
The sound made Nick’s gut twist, and he stepped out of the path of the crowd and stood back against the building so he could focus.
“Holly, it’s Nick. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry. I was sleeping and I left the phone across the room.” There was the sound of Holly’s body hitting the bed. Nick couldn’t believe he recognized it. “What day is it?” Now Holly seemed panicked. “I didn’t miss lunch, did I? The fucking meds…”
“Shh.” Nick wished he could reach out and calm Holly down with a touch. “It’s okay. It’s only Monday. I’m heading out to get lunch. I was calling to see if you wanted to join me. I know I said tomorrow, but…” He hadn’t been able to wait.
“I’m not even dressed. If I knew antidepressants were like this, I’d never have wasted my liver on booze,” Holly said wearily. “If I meet you for lunch tomorrow, then I can’t miss my appointment with the shrink in the morning, because I hate lying to you.”
“It’s not an either-or proposition.” Nick looked at the sea of people flowing around him, crashing and ebbing against the intersections before moving on. “You have to go to the gym anyway.”
Silence for a moment. “I hate you,” Holly mumbled. It didn’t sound very hateful. There were times, Nick knew, when Holly had hated him. And then there were times he said it and it sounded like something very, very different. “Where are we having lunch?”
Nick hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “The Westway,” he decided. “Over on Ninth. Should I meet you there?”
“Yeah, I’ll find it.” Holly was making quiet noises that were probably him wriggling out of his pajama pants without getting out of bed again.
God, Nick really shouldn’t know what those noises were, and he wasn’t thinking about the visuals that went with them. And he shouldn’t know how Holly’s hair smelled when it was damp from sleep, how bitter it was when Holly was sick and how spicy and honeyed it was when Holly was well. Nick’s head hit the wall behind him, and he scrubbed a hand over his face, reeling his mind in from all the places it shouldn’t be going.
“Great,” he managed. “I’ll see you there.” He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket, then threw himself into the crowd and let it carry him along.
The diner was crowded, but Nick got a table in the back. He pulled out his phone to check his email but ended up staring at the door instead, watching for Holly.
He didn’t need to wait long. Holly slipped through the crowd, pushing his sunglasses up to reveal how worn and gaunt he still was. He looked drugged and on edge all at once, the grace and confidence gone from his bearing and movements. When he caught sight of Nick, the relief on his face was naked.
Nick found himself holding a hand out to Holly before he’d even realized he was standing up.
Holly’s cold fingers slid against his palm, and then Holly was clinging to his hand. He was wide-eyed and short of breath, anxious through the drugs. Nick had never expected to witness Holly being stripped bare over and over like this. He had always known there was something lurking under the surface, whatever drove Holly to be so maddeningly Holly, but he hadn’t expected it to be this broken tangle of bones and nerves.
“It’s okay,” Nick said, guiding Holly to sit with him without letting go of his hand. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.” Jesus, he’d only been gone a day, and Holly was a mess. Weren’t the pills supposed to help? Nick was going to call the damn shrink as soon as Holly calmed down and ate something.
“There’s a lot of people,” Holly pointed out. He seemed shaken. He’d always waltzed through a crowd as though they weren’t there, as though all those eyes on him were something he deserved. “I was feeling okay this morning.”
“Just…” Nick wasn’t sure what to do, how to make it better. “Focus on me. It’s just you and me, having lunch. No one else matters.”
Holly did what he was told, literally, turning to look at Nick again. His gaze locked on to Nick’s face, and the tension drained out of him. Holly exhaled slowly and then managed a smile. “Yeah, you’re right.” His death grip loosened, and then he let go. “You’re right.”
Nick couldn’t let himself bask in the warmth that filled him when Holly looked at him that way, like he was the whole world.
“Of course I am,” he said. “It took you long enough to work it out. Now, do you want to have a look at the menu, or do you know what you want to eat?”
“You can order for me,” Holly offered. “You know I’ll probably just pick the deep-fried arsenic and ice water with broken glass if you let me do it myself.” The way he smiled was vintage Holly, cheeky and on the verge of laughter. For a moment he was cured, like magic.
“No complaining, then.” Nick couldn’t help but smile. It was so good to see Holly teasing again.
When the waitress approached their table, he ordered a bacon-cheese omelet for Holly, with a strawberry cup and a glass of orange juice.
“I’ll eat your potatoes,” he said, forestalling any objections, and then went on to order blueberry waffles for himself and a cup of coffee for each of them. As she walked away, Nick turned his attention back to Holly, eyebrows raised, waiting for a reaction.
“You can eat more than my potatoes,” Holly said, batting his lashes and looking coy.
Nick laughed, rolling his eyes. That was Holly. That was what he wanted to see. Holly being Holly, relaxed and flirtatious.
“That, you’re allowed to say no to.” It was a joke, Nick reminded himself. Holly had been teasing him like this since grad school, and it had always been just a joke.
Holly made a face, then stuck out his tongue. “No one ruins a good idea like you do,” he shot back.
“I’m not your type, remember?” The waitress returned with their drinks, and her presence prompted Nick to smile, softening the comment.
“I keep forgetting.” For a moment, Holly wasn’t laughing. “Then again, I don’t think anyone’s my type these days. Just as well.” There was the smile again, maybe not as bright. “I think you said that was a no.”
“I did.” Nick hadn’t been sure that particular rule—no random sex—had sunk in, though. Apparently it had.
And so had the presence of Nick’s ring, the symbol of Holly’s commitment to following Nick’s rules, if the way Holly was twisting it around the middle finger of his left hand was anything to go by. Nick couldn’t ignore the way that made him feel. The heat racing through him wasn’t anything as simple as relief because Holly was acting like himself or pleasure because he was following the rules. Nick shifted in his seat and took a long drink of his coffee, wishing he’d thought to order a cold drink instead.
Every turn of the ring wound Nick tighter, and nothing he did made the heat fade. He knew he had no place preventing Holly from connecting with other people.
“If you’re actually interested in someone,” he said, trying to dispel his tension by setting Holly free to find someone else, “but not if it’s just to pass the time or make yourself feel better.”
“I don’t think I’ll be interested in anyone anytime soon.” Holly looked at his fingers as though he’d only just realized what he was doing. “It never works out quite the way I think it will. Not in the good way.”
He set Nick’s ring properly on his finger, then reached for his coffee.
When the waitress came back with their food, Nick took the opportunity to distract himself by watching Holly eat. Some distraction—Holly’s lips parted, the fork slid in and every thought flashing through Nick’s head needed to stop.
A crash from the back—nothing too loud, just a stack of dishes losing an argument with gravity in some dishpan—startled Holly into dropping his fork. His breath caught and his lips got tight and pale with anger. When he picked the fork back up, he stabbed it through a strawberry. It was like the noise had broken the spell and the tension was ramping up in him again. It wasn’t fearful this time; this was all frustration.
“This can be done any fucking time,” he said flatly.
That was enough to bring Nick back to earth. Seeing Holly so easily startled and frightened was painful. He reached out and caught Holly’s hand, stopping the fork on its path to Holly’s mouth.
“Hey. Look at me.” When he had Holly’s attention, Nick smiled his approval. “Good. You’re good. It’s just us, remember?”
“You shouldn’t even have to be here. I’m sorry.” Holly’s expression was more hurt than sorry, as if Nick being there was painful, but he did as he was told.
“I want to be here.” Nick squeezed Holly’s hand, gently, then let go.
“You always know what’s best for you.” It was a statement, but the flicker in Holly’s eyes said he wasn’t so sure. Still, he didn’t argue. He just nodded and bit into another strawberry.
Nick had no idea what was best for him. Or rather, he knew, and it didn’t seem to matter. He let it go, though, and cut into his waffles.
Chapter Seven
Having a new cell phone came with one huge disadvantage: Holly needed to give his number to his family, or at least Emile. Emile, his father’s assistant for the last fifteen years, was often his only connection to the family. He liked Emile, and not just because Emile could always get money to him, no matter where Holly ended up. Emile never lectured about Holly’s long absences, never asked questions. That didn’t stop Holly from feeling guilty, but at least it was all self-inflicted.