Chapter 15
All the lights had been turned off except for the one in the range hood, and the apartment was dark and quiet. Zion had obviously gone to bed or had pretended to in the event I might bring Micah up. That was adorably sweet of him, but it left me awash in nerves. It left no doubt about why I’d brought Micah up.
To cover my awkwardness, I opened the fridge. “Do you want a drink?” I unscrewed the top of a bottle of water and drank half of it in one pull.
Then he was behind me, his hands on my shoulders, fingers running down my neck. A chill shot down my spine, and I set the bottle down and closed the door. He spun me toward him and pushed me against the fridge. He kissed me so deep, my legs almost gave out. I took his hand and led him to my bedroom.
He’d carried a kind of canvas messenger bag with him like an old army medical supply bag. I wondered if he kept a pair of spare clothes with him at all times. I wondered how many times he’d hooked up with a girl exactly like this after a show.
Had I been seduced?
If so, I was still under the spell, and I lured him with my own dark temptation toward my lair. I hadn’t been in New York long enough to have brought anyone into my bedroom. It seemed utterly preposterous that this guy I’d met on the street last week, whose pictures I’d seen in my own newspaper, was in my tiny bedroom, about to lay himself in my fortuitously large bed. About to lay me . . .
I sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. Without hesitating, he kissed me, pushed me over, and climbed in next to me.
And my brain caught up with my body, protesting with all the reasons I couldn’t go through with this. Maybe it was my Georgia upbringing, but the logical side of my brain threw up alarms that said, “You’ll never see him again if you let him sleep with you tonight.”
Another part of my brain countered that I’d be the worst kind of tease if I told him no now. He’d sent his driver away. I’d told him I was sure. I’d all but advertised my availability to him tonight.
But how many women had thought the same exact thing?
His thumb pressed against my cheek, and his hand slid around to the back of my head, and then down my neck and across my chest. He only lingered on my breasts for a moment before reaching for the hem of my shirt—the hem that hid my insulin pump attached to a white tube. I grabbed his hand before he could discover it. Even though he knew, mentally, that I was different, it was a whole other thing for him to see me. It wouldn’t be the first time someone turned away, repulsed by the “hospital patient.”
He stopped kissing me and looked down into my eyes. He drew his hands back. “It’s okay if you just want to go to sleep.”
“What?” Had I turned him off entirely already?
“Look. This is a really weird situation. I get that. And I really don’t want to screw it up with you. If you don’t want to do this, I’d be happy just to sleep next to you. I’m obviously attracted to you, but I’m not going to do anything that might make you doubt that I like you.” He traced my cheek. “You’re probably thinking that I picked you up like any one of the girls who show up looking for a night with a musician.”
That was an understatement. I leveled my gaze at him. “It had crossed my mind.”
“If I wanted sex, I could get it. And I know how bad this sounds, but sex has never been something I had to work hard for. You know my track record. I can’t pretend things aren’t what they are. But what I can’t find is someone I just want to spend time with, someone I want to get to know. That’s priceless to me.”
“But why me?”
He scooted over and sat cross-legged next to me, stroking my hand. “I could ask you the same thing. Why me, Jo?”
I’d been so fixated on trying to understand how he could possibly have any idea who I was in only a week that I hadn’t stopped to wonder how I’d developed such a strong positive feeling toward him beyond physical attraction in the same amount of time. This despite fairly damning information I’d assessed objectively. This despite the swarm of queasy doubts that plagued me when I imagined how many casual relationships he’d flown through. Why him indeed? “I don’t know. Gut instinct.”
“Exactly.” He gazed at me with his bedroom eyes and his soft lips turned in a perfect smolder.
I’d never felt so conflicted. I wanted him to kiss me again, but I hesitated. “You know what I want to do?”
“What?” He interlaced our fingers together.
“I want to lie here and listen to you talk. But I am nearly desperate to lay my hands on your skin. I want to get to know you better—but slowly. Can we work something out?”
“Yeah.” He slid in next to me, and we each laid our heads on a pillow. Then he turned to face me, letting me run my hand along his arm and wrap my fingers in his. I found the hem of his shirt and touched the soft hair along his tight abs. I followed the trail up to his chest. If he was dying, he didn’t say.
“Can I ask you something first?” His voice at that volume made me willing to answer anything.
“Yeah.” I’d reached his collarbone and tiptoed across it until it ran out, then I spread my hand out and caressed his shoulder.
A small groan escaped him. “Mmm. That feels so nice.”
“That’s not a question.” His neck felt warm and tense. If I didn’t think it would lead to anything more, I would have laid my lips on his skin there. Micah needed kissing.
“I kind of had the feeling at first that you wanted to be with me to get better pictures. When you left me on the sidewalk that night, you said it was because you weren’t feeling well.”
“I hadn’t eaten, Micah. I was afraid I was fixing to pass out right in front of you. I would have rather died.”
He nuzzled the top of my head and kissed my forehead. “I believe you. But then you snubbed me outside the club the next night, and I figured I didn’t stand a chance with you.”
“Micah, I can explain. Wally was out there and—”
He laid a hand on my arm and said quietly, “Let me say it all. I feel weirdly safe right now, and I want to say it all. Okay?”
“Yes. I’m listening.”
“So when you tweeted me about the show, I had a fleeting hope you might be interested. But when I messaged you and you never wrote me back, I figured you only wanted to keep things friendly or professional. Obviously, that was my stupidity.”
“Yeah, I wanted to write you back, but you weren’t following me. That was so frustrating.”
His breath tickled my cheek, and I turned my face up toward him. He met my eyes. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come to my show if you couldn’t take pictures. I thought I’d need to entice you with press credentials.”
I pulled his hand to my lips and kissed his palm. “You still haven’t asked me a question.”
His nervous laughter sounded false, equal parts relief and sadness. “I just want to ask when you stopped thinking of me as someone who could help you with your career and started to see me as someone you might like to spend time with.” I pressed my lips against the ends of his fingers, one at a time. “You have started to think of me that way, right?”
I stopped kissing him and lifted myself up on an elbow. “Are you asking if I’m using you, right now, to advance my career?”
“I’m sorry. It’s Eden in my head. I want to trust everyone at face value, and until tonight, I wouldn’t have asked the question. But now it has the potential to really hurt. So I have to ask it. But I swear, I never will again. If you tell me I can trust this, I will. Completely.”
I poked at my inner sense of righteousness for the How dare he? but I couldn’t find it. It had absconded with my What will the neighbors think?
“Micah, those are fair questions. To be honest, I had the same concerns about you. I thought at first you only wanted me around for the publicity.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, of course.” I laughed my no-duh laugh. “Try to see things from where I’m sitting. You’ve got a solid reputation for soliciting publicity. I thought you brought me in only so I could photograph you at that party.”
“Whoa. I didn’t ask you to photograph my party. You started taking pictures the minute I stepped away.”
“Yeah, you already explained that. But every time you invited me with you, you offered me an opportunity to document it. The press credentials you enticed me with convinced me you only wanted me at your concert for my camera.”
He ran his fingers through my hair and tugged on a strand. “The first time I saw you on the street, I wanted you to lose that camera so I could look at you.”
“And the first time I saw you, I completely failed to do my job. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re terrible at it?”
I jabbed him with my finger. “No. Because you took me off guard. You confused the hell out of me, too. And later, when you kissed me, that was the moment you stopped being anything more to me than someone I’d like to get to know better.”
“Then that was smart of me.”
I poked him again, gentler. “Yes. That was very smart of you.”
He pulled a pillow up behind him and relaxed into it. His muscles lost their tension, and he yawned. “You’re tired. I’ll shut up.”
“No. Keep going. I want to fall asleep listening to you. Tell me a secret.”
“A secret?”
“Not a big secret. Something I can’t find on Wikipedia.”
“Hmm.” He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “Okay. When I was five, I had a stuffed gorilla named Clark.”
“Clark,” I mumbled, yawning.
“I dragged him around so much that one of his arms became longer than the other. My parents tried to wean me off Clark the deformed gorilla when he started to ooze stuffing out the gaping hole in his side. But I wouldn’t forsake my monkey. So I hid him under my pillow. Later when my parents took us on a trip across the country, Clark stowed away in my suitcase. . . .”
As I snuggled against him, his quiet voice in the dark lulled me. What felt like a moment later, my alarm went off, and it was morning.
* * *
Micah’s arm lay across my waist, his hand tight across my belly. Snuggled against him, I hated to move, but Zion was already up and about, cooking breakfast. He wouldn’t wait around for me forever, and I didn’t want to have to ride in to work alone. So I carefully slipped out from under Micah and hunted around for some clothes to carry out.
When I clicked the door shut behind me, Zion stopped what he was doing, spatula held aloft as though he were in the middle of casting a spell. “Are you still wearing your clothes from last night?”
The door opened behind me, and Micah stepped out, wearing his bright blue skinny jeans and looking like he’d spent the night in a tent. His disheveled hair made him seem more real than he had since I’d met him, and I bit my lip at how endearing such a little thing could be. He yawned and said, “Good morning. Is it time to go to work?”
For a moment, I stood paralyzed in suspended animation. Should I kiss him or play it cool? But he rubbed his eyes, stretched and yawned, scratched his side, and then staggered over to the kitchen.
Zion asked, “You want eggs?”
“I don’t want to trouble you. Could I just get some coffee?”
While they talked, I slipped into the bathroom and checked my appearance in the mirror. My makeup had turned against me in the night, and my hair defied gravity. I brushed my teeth and did what I could to tone down the horror of morning me.
Coffee was brewing when I came back to the kitchen, and I fetched the mugs.
While Micah excused himself to use the bathroom, Zion reached into a drawer, pulled out my glucose meter, and dropped it on the table. “Sit. You’re pushing yourself too hard,” he warned.
“It’s been a weird week. I’m fine.”
“Look. Your mom said, ‘Don’t you leave her, Samwise Gam-gee. ’” He clutched at his chest dramatically. “And I don’t mean to.”
I put on my best Irish accent. “Do you mean to share the load?”
He grew serious. “If I could carry it for you, I would, Josie. I hate that you have to work so hard just to hit normal. And you gave me a scare last week. And then again last night . . .”
“I was fine, Zion. You totally misread my reaction.” I dropped my voice a little. “If you’d heard what Micah had said to me . . .”
He sighed. “I heard enough in the car. You sure he doesn’t have a gay brother somewhere? Beautiful and thoughtful.”
“Mmm, yeah, he is.”
The toaster dinged, and Zion plated our breakfast. I tested my blood sugar while he set everything down on the table.
Micah returned, looking like he’d also tried and failed to salvage his hair.
I’d already taken a bite of my toast when he sat beside me. “By the way, I’m having lunch with your sister today. Should I tell her you said hey?”
He sipped his coffee for a second before responding. “Can you maybe not mention this to her until I have a chance to? I mean, I don’t think she’ll get bent out of shape, but I’d rather be the one to talk her down.”
“Won’t she be mad that I lied by omission?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything.”
Before I could probe further, Zion sat down and cajoled Micah, hoping to convince him into coming to the office with us. “Imagine the look on Andy’s face if you walked right in with us. He’d piss himself.”
Micah wisely excused himself, saying, “That’s like asking a murder suspect to just stop into the precinct for a couple of questions.”
“But think of the hijinks!” Zion changed course. “Could I take pictures of you eating breakfast with Josie?”
I choked and coughed. “NO! God, no!”
Micah leaned back, smiling. “Let me crawl into her bed first.”
Zion laughed. “Maybe if you draped her blanket over your bare body?”
My eyes bugged out. “Now you’re trying to take advantage of the boy for your own sick entertainment.” I acted put out, but the image of Micah half-naked in my bed left me regretting my decision to put him off the night before. On the other hand, I loved that he hadn’t made any attempt to convince me to change my mind. And that was worth a little morning-after regret. Better than regretting the reverse.
Micah’s poor beleaguered driver arrived and carried him out of my life. But I was armed with his phone number, his email address, and a promise that he’d contact me later in the day.
When Zion and I got to the office, Andy had assembled everyone together for some kind of stand-up meeting. The second we came through the door, he said, “Are we all clear?”
Everyone nodded and went to their workstations. I glanced at Zion. “What was that about?”
Andy said, “With me, Jo.”
Somehow I’d devolved to rank newbie in a little less than a week. I entered his office, unprepared for whatever he had on his mind. “Sir?”
“I’ve asked Derek to cover anything regarding Micah or Eden Sinclair from now on. I think you have a conflict of interest.”
“What? Why?”
He pushed his iPad toward me, and I saw the back of my head as I ascended the stairs in the bar, a couple of steps above Micah.
“Did you expect me to take pictures? I wasn’t even on the clock!”
He rolled his eyes. “Jo, you’re paparazzi. You’re always on the clock.”
I fumbled in my bag for my camera. “I did shoot some pictures from last night’s show.”
“Are you kidding? Micah’s a pretty face, and we can always use provocative pictures of him. But his band is low interest news.”
“I’ve got some with his fans in a private meeting after the show.”
He thought about it. “The problem with you, Jo, is that you think like an amateur. Fans in a private meeting? Every single person in that room will have already tweeted a half dozen pictures.”
“You wanted me to get closer. I have.”
“That’s what’s so frustrating. You’re right where I want you.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You, Jo. You’ve gone native.”
I chortled. “Native? Seriously?”
He thumbed toward the office where reporters with bloodshot eyes scanned their computer monitors for any sign of a lead. “You find yourself in a position all of them only dream of and you’re not taking advantage. You’re hanging out with Micah, but I can’t count on you to bring me anything you might learn about him. Or his sister.” He pinched his fingers together. “I’m this close to sending you out to cover the airports.”
“No. Andy. Not the airports.” I’d lose my mind.
“I think you might need to take a step back, regain your focus. You’ve been wandering around, haphazardly stumbling across half stories.”
“I got you the L.L. Stylez story.”
He gave me a what-planet-are-you-from wide-eyed stare. “You got me the raw materials. I had to mold it into something provocative.” His shoulders relaxed with a sigh that seemed somehow calculated. “I’m giving you opportunities to grow. I just need you to give me something I can work with.”
“I’m trying, Andy. I honestly don’t know what more I can do.”
He pushed his tablet toward me. “Did you see this?”
It was a picture from the set I’d taken at Hervé’s party five days before. I raised my eyes to meet Andy’s. “I looked through all the pictures.”
“Right, but did you see this?” He laid his finger and thumb on the photo and spread them to zoom in further. As soon as he did, I knew which picture it was. The group in the original photo was of no interest, but Andy had brought the scene in the background forward, cropping out the people who’d been in frame. The resulting picture showed Adam standing behind Eden with his arm wrapped around her. His hand lay on her stomach. My stomach dropped.
“I’m not sure what you’re seeing.” If he ran a story about Eden’s pregnancy now, she’d never speak to me again.
Andy tapped his finger right on top of Eden’s belly. “The ring. Adam’s wearing a wedding band. Look.”
I exhaled and looked closer. Sure enough, there was a band on the fourth finger of his left hand. “I see.”
“How did you miss that?”
“I wasn’t looking for it.”
He stared at the photo, chewing on his upper lip. Finally, he put down the tablet, and said, “This would be a huge story, if we could prove they secretly married.” He tapped his finger absently on his desk. “I’ve been through all the pictures, trying to get a good view of her ring finger. I can tell she’s got a ring on, but is she wearing two? Is she wearing an engagement ring and a wedding band? I can’t quite tell.”
I wanted to tell him it was none of his damn business, but sweat beaded his lip. He looked like a junkie in need of a fix. If I didn’t intervene, he might start digging through their trash and find out even more than he’d bargained for. I needed to throw a stick out for him to chase after.
“I’m going to see her today. I’ll look at her rings. Okay?”
He lifted his hand to his forehead and rubbed his temple as he worked through his options. His lizard-like tongue ran over his lower lip, and he came to a decision. “Okay, sure. I’ll give you another shot. If you can bring me that story, I’ll let you keep your freedom, maybe even let you keep reporting on the Sinclairs. But if you can’t do it, you might as well head straight to JFK after lunch.”
Caught between two terrible options was no way to live. But what other choice did I have if I wanted to keep my job?
“I’ll get the story,” I promised.