Close to Home

by Nolon King

  “Even Mom,” Corban added.

  “She figured it out in time.” Adam wasn’t quite sure how she’d realized it, but he was grateful she had. If Selena hadn’t been there, Adam would’ve barged in and Dane would’ve shot him. No small talk, distractions of flattery, or hope. No reason for Dane to delay his spree.

  It was awful watching Selena try to seduce the boy, to convince him that they could run together and that she would help him stay ahead of the cops, even though he’d known it for a ruse. That had been his nightmare for weeks. Selena leaving him. Deciding to start over with a younger man who didn’t share the same sick fantasies. Humiliating him by choosing that little shit because she knew Adam couldn’t stand him.

  He should’ve known better. From now on, he would.

  If there was a from now on.

  For all he knew, this would be the straw that snapped the back of their marriage.

  And if Selena was done with him, what would he do?

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Selena woke with a sweet, metallic taste at the back of her throat.

  Why didn’t someone turn off whatever kept beeping?

  She blinked into the blurry glare, which slowly sharpened into a white-tiled ceiling.

  She tried to turn her head, but didn’t have the energy for such an impossible effort.

  She willed her eyes to cut left and saw a translucent tube dangling from a saline bag on a metal rack.

  I’m in a hospital.

  That explained why she could barely feel her body. Painkillers. Or anesthesia?

  She eased her eyes over to the right, saw a nurse in purple scrubs passing the open door. Then a doctor, in a hurry. Then a woman with a small, crying child.

  “Hello?” she croaked.

  No one heard her.

  She swallowed, the walls of her painfully-dry throat sticking together, making it even harder to call out. Where was Adam? Where were the boys? Did they all hate her so much that they wouldn’t come to see her, even if she might be dying?

  Was she dying?

  She remembered Dane’s smirk as he shot her in the shoulder.

  Adam’s horrified attempts to stop the bleeding.

  Dane, about to kill Adam too.

  Adam, on top of Dane, with her favorite knife.

  Then what?

  The beeping got faster — her pulse racing, she realized — as she struggled to remember who had won.

  It must have been Adam. Dane wouldn’t have called an ambulance to save her, not after she’d clearly taken her husband’s side.

  Unless he got spooked after killing Adam. If Sharpe interrupted Dane, that could explain why she was still breathing.

  But the thought that Adam might not have survived was too awful to contemplate.

  Because this was all her fault.

  She should’ve seen what Dane was up to, and turned him over to Sharpe long before anyone had a chance to leak her journals online, exposing Adam and ruining the boys’ lives.

  She should’ve realized it after the first murder, and stopped him before he could kill ten other people, including that girl whose only crime was becoming the unwitting focus of Adam’s fantasies.

  She should have recognized the signs of Dane’s sickness well before it drove him to his first kill. She’d been mothering him since his own mom died while he was still in grade school. She should’ve known he was a potential serial killer before he realized it himself.

  But she’d been so terrified of becoming a failure. It made her self-obsessed. The people around her — not just her family and friends, but the very killer she’d been profiling — stopped being people to her. She’d been treating them all like stepping stones to the career she craved.

  In doing so, she not only lost her shot at that coveted line of work, Selena also lost her family.

  Because she had to tell Adam the truth. Even if he forgave her selfishness, how could he forgive her for lying to him all these years about what he was?

  She’d let him think he was a monster, because otherwise she would’ve had to publicly admit that her bestselling book was based on a mistake. To sacrifice all of her professional credibility in a single stroke.

  If Selena could go back and do it again, she would have told the truth.

  Because no career was worth losing the one person who understood her better than she understood herself.

  Adam never hesitated to call Selena on her bullshit.

  He’d sacrificed his professional dreams to make hers happen.

  Most important of all, he’d proven that he’d do anything to protect their children. Even kill for them, and prove to the rest of the world that he was the person he’d spent his entire life trying not to be.

  She didn’t deserve him.

  “You’re up.”

  Adam.

  She tried to sit up, but barely managed to lift her head off the pillow.

  You’re here, she couldn’t say, because her parched vocal cords would only make a raspy wheeze.

  He appeared in her peripheral vision as he approached her bed. Set his coffee on the bedside table, picked up a cup with a straw poking out of the top, then carefully lowered the cup until he could slip the straw between her lips.

  She sucked, and a cool, delicious stream of water burst onto her tongue, wetting her throat as she swallowed.

  Several gulps later, he withdrew the cup.

  “The boys?” Selena whispered.

  “Safe. They’re staying with Elliot.”

  Thank God. “Dane?”

  “Staying with Detective Sharpe.”

  The relief was intense enough to spin the room. Or maybe that was the drugs.

  She tried to reach for him, but her arm wouldn’t move. “Are you—”

  “Visiting hours are over, but I bribed a nurse to let me come back for a few minutes anyway.”

  “My fault. Adam, I’m so sorry—”

  “Enough. You need rest.”

  “You’re not a serial killer.”

  He didn’t look surprised.

  “I know. When I saw what Dane did to that girl … I could never do that. Whatever I am, it isn’t that.”

  “Hematolagnia.”

  Adam looked confused.

  “You have a blood fetish,” Selena said.

  “There was blood everywhere when I found her.” He grimaced. “More than I’d ever imagined.”

  “The association between blood and sexual arousal,” Selena paused to catch her breath after stringing so many words together, “probably formed when you saw Charlotte die.”

  “I have a new association with blood now. You, dying on our kitchen floor.” Adam shuddered. “And I’m done with that.”

  But she wasn’t done apologizing. “I’ve been a terrible wife.”

  “This isn’t the time—”

  “You’re right, I put my career first.” Another gasp for air. “I neglected you. And I neglected our sons.”

  “You did.”

  “I was terrified I’d be a failure—”

  “—because then both of us would be.”

  That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. “A lot of people would kill to be a successful comedy writer.”

  And that wasn’t how she meant to say it.

  But he burst out laughing.

  He stopped, and she tried again. “Please forgive me. Because I’ve been so obsessed with being right, I did everything wrong.”

  “You’re not the only one who needs to apologize. I put everything on you. Made it your fault when I couldn’t control myself. Expected you to save me from myself.”

  “If I’d been honest with you—”

  “I’d still have needed a foot up my ass to make me see I’ve wasted years wallowing in self-pity. I’m sorry.”

  The nurse in the purple scrubs stuck her head into the room. “Shift supervisor’s coming back from her break in ten. I need you outta here.”

  Adam smiled and scooped up the hand with the IV attached to it, carefully l
ifting it to kiss her palm. Selena couldn’t feel the pressure of his hand on hers, thanks to all the drugs, but she could feel a ghostly warmth where his lips touched her skin.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he promised. “Someone named April left about fifty messages on your cell about a meeting you apparently walked out of. She wants to know where to send the contracts.”

  What? They still wanted her to do the web show?

  “Also, I want to bounce some book ideas off you.”

  Selena’s head was spinning, and this time she didn’t think it was the drugs. “Book ideas?”

  “I’ve been pissing and moaning about how I don’t have the stage presence to make it big.” He looked embarrassed and happy in unison. “But I’m a comedy writer. And I’ve been writing for everyone but myself.”

  She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought to suggest it to him before. “I’ll tell Sam. Whoever he recommends to rep comedy will be the best.”

  If her career was over, at least she could help him with his.

  Chapter Seventy

  Adam signed his name with a flourish and handed I Am Patient X to the last fan in line, a heavily-pierced, blonde twenty-something whose psychedelic skull tee was neatly tucked into black leather pants. “I hope you enjoy it.”

  The girl squealed a nearly incoherent thank you, blushed, and ran off to join her boyfriend, who’d been watching the exchange with feigned indifference from the bookstore café.

  He suppressed a smile as he capped his blood-red Sharpie. He could’ve shrunk away from the whole Patient X thing, but he’d decided to embrace it instead. His memoir mixed brutal honesty with a heavy dose of gallows humor. Because that’s what people would talk about anyway. Better to take control of the conversation, have it on his terms.

  He’d expected the sneers of those who felt that his memoir glorified violence, the emails from people who considered him human garbage for being able to think such things. But he’d been surprised at the fetish community finding something valuable in his musings. Fans turned up at every signing, confessing to thinking they were alone, that they were crazy … monsters even. Thanking him for shining a compassionate light onto a seldom-discussed topic by sharing his experience.

  Knowing that he’d helped people made last year’s humiliating ordeal … not better, but something he could live with, even if he never lived it down.

  Now that he’d gotten the book everyone expected him to write out of the way, he was free to focus on his secret project: a darkly-comic novel about a sociopath in love. It was biting and raw and wickedly funny — at least, that’s what Selena had said. He’d rewritten it twice, based on her feedback, but he couldn’t tell if he’d made it better or worse.

  Maybe it was time to take the standard advice to set it aside and write something else. Get some distance so he could look at it more objectively.

  Someday he would be known for his writing, not for the blood fantasies in his old journals.

  As he tucked his spare pen and the few remaining bookmarks into a duffle bag, he saw Selena heading toward him.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Sold out.” He couldn’t help grinning at her as he held up his hand, twisting the fingers into a claw for “signer’s cramp.”

  She grinned back. “I’m so proud of you. Your first book’s sold more copies than all of mine put together.”

  It didn't matter how many copies he’d sold. Only that she was proud of him.

  “I have news.” Selena bit her lip. “I wanted you to hear it from me first, before we talk to Sam and the others.”

  Uh-oh. Was some whack-job suing them over something he’d said in his book? Or had the deal with those bigshot producers fallen through? Maybe Sam had called to say they’d been put off by something in his memoir. Maybe he’d been too honest. He didn’t care for himself, but the thought that his book might hurt Selena’s career made him sick to his stomach.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Trauma’s interested in your book,” she blurted.

  He blinked. “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “Not your memoir. Your novel. I mentioned it to Sam last week.”

  The bottom dropped out of his brain. “Okay, I’ll write up a synopsis—”

  “I sent him the draft.”

  Holy shit. “It wasn’t ready.”

  She bit her lip again. “I knew that’s what you’d say.”

  “So you sent it to him behind my back.”

  Selena nodded, managing to look ashamed and defiant at once. “He loved it. He thinks Dominic and Melinda Shelly will love it too. If you’re willing to turn it into a series.”

  If he was willing to turn it into a — was she kidding? It was a dream come true. And she’d just handed it to him on a silver platter. Okay, a silver platter of mild betrayal, but the sting of knowing someone had read his novel before he’d been sure it was good enough was already fading. Sam loved it.

  Sam, who only took on the best of the best as his clients, loved his first novel.

  “I know it’s not the career you’ve always wanted. It won’t be you in front of the camera, making people laugh. But it’ll be your ideas. Your words.”

  Did she really think that mattered to him anymore?

  “A wise woman once told me that I should know who I am, without ever limiting myself to anyone else’s idea of who I should be.”

  Selena smiled at hearing her own words quoted back at her. “And if you still do want to be on camera, there’s something else.”

  “You’re finally ready to make some amateur porn?” he joked, because he hated the idea that she’d managed to get him a pity gig doing standup. Yes, he’d held the career he couldn’t have over her head when they’d fought in the past. Clung to the idea of being the next George Carlin long after it was obvious that his talents lay elsewhere.

  It was time to move on.

  “The Shelleys have asked if we’d like to do a show together. A lighthearted look at the psychology of serial killers. Some serious in-depth analysis, but presented with humor.”

  “You know I don’t have the charisma for stage work.”

  “You wouldn’t be there to make jokes, you’d be there to represent an educated viewer’s perspective.”

  “So you wouldn’t want me to be funny?”

  “I’d want you to be yourself. It would be you and me, having an insightful conversation about a case. Be as witty as you want to be. Or you can punch me up and I’ll be the comic relief.”

  “Sam was on board with this?”

  “Sam suggested it.”

  “After you hinted that you wanted it?”

  “After he read your novel. He said it was clear from your characters that you have a deeply-nuanced understanding of human nature that would make the show more accessible to the layperson.”

  Never in a million years would Adam have ever thought this could happen. He’d always seen Selena as the one who belonged in the spotlight. Seen himself as someone who’d been relegated to the shadows. Someone meant to play a supporting role.

  But why couldn’t he be both?

  “So … what do you think?”

  “You and me, working together?” Adam grinned. “I think we’re going to kill it.”

  The Bright Lights, Dark Secrets Collection continues…

  When down-on-his-luck actor Orson Beck receives a mysterious invitation it might be the chance to revive his career … or kill it forever.

  As his newfound fame and fortune grows, will Orson destroy everyone he’s ever loved to keep it?

  Click here to get your copy of Red Carpet Black.

  A Quick Favor …

  If you enjoyed this book, please take a moment to write a review on your favorite bookselling platform so other readers can enjoy it too. It would mean a lot to me.

  Nolon King

  Want More?

  Sign up for the FREE newsletter and get a free copy of the King & Wright novel 12.

  Join
the list and be the FIRST to get the latest news, sneak peeks at what’s coming next, and free books and short stories. Our subscribers make our careers possible, and we’ll never spam you.

  GET YOUR FREE BOOK NOW!

  Author’s Note

  The best things in my life come from having no ego.

  Parenting is usually a joy, because I’m not trying to win arguments with my wife or my children. Collaboration with the books and the stories I help to create is fluid and beautiful, because no one is counting ideas. I was a successful copywriter before I turned to fiction, thanks to years spent ghostwriting — a field where it’s your job to disappear behind someone else’s voice, and ego will keep you broke.

  As a ghostwriter, I had to deliver my best work a hundred percent of the time, and always keep my name far away from the finished product. No matter how much praise that work might receive, it wasn’t mine once the invoice was paid. My hand and words were invisible, my influence nonexistent.

  And yet that invisibility opened so many doors in my life. Without it, I would never have created a company built on collaboration, where ego would keep us from telling great stories. Those experiences gave me the knowledge base required to create an environment founded on generosity and support. Just last week, one of our master storytellers writing under the pen name Sawyer Black said, “If I said it during a story meeting, it’s fair game.”

  Because like all of our other storytellers, he doesn’t waste time counting his ideas.

  Close to Home explores how self-destructive the unrestrained ego can be. Each of the point-of-view characters in this book is stuck in some way, because no matter what they do, they cannot get their egos out of the picture enough to grab what they truly need in life.

  Selena’s ego is out of control when it comes to her career. She’s sucking up support from her family without giving anything in return, then justifying her selfish side of each of these relationships by telling herself that she’s doing it all for them. Not unlike Walter White in Breaking Bad, who spends five seasons, from episode one to a few minutes before the end of the series finale, telling the viewers, his wife, and everyone who will listen — especially himself — that he’s doing it all for his family.