“I wish I hadn’t,” I admitted. Grumbled really. “It seemed like such a genius move at twenty-four to start my career in the public eye. But now, I’m theirs.”
“I know. And I know you’d get out if you could. But everyone’s watching, which means you gotta keep your nose clean. That morality clause was the only way Blackbird Books would take you after that arrest, and they’re your last shot at a Big Five publisher.”
“And I did what they wanted. My nose has been squeaky clean ever since.”
A small smirk, a more feminine version of mine. “Thanks to your brother keeping you.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t act so put out. He does it because he loves you.”
Theo snorted from the other room. Ma ignored him.
“I know you’ve got a streak in you, but you’ve gotta keep it put away. Make a box for that, open the lid, and put that urge inside.”
I sighed and reached for her hands, feeling her bones shake, her muscles firing against her will. “I’ve been good for almost two years, Ma. I’m not gonna break my streak now. Plus, if I can get Amelia to help me and we get an story moving, I’m gonna be locked up until it’s done.”
“If she even agrees,” Theo said from the living room, his eyes on his phone.
She let out a sigh of her own, her smile cautious. “Am I gonna meet her? This girl who’s gonna save you like Saint Michael?”
I chuffed at her comparison of Amelia to an archangel. She wasn’t far off, if my intuition was right, which it almost always was. “Ma, you know you can’t meet her,” I said gently.
“She’s a reporter,” Theo added.
“She’s a book blogger, dude,” I volleyed. “She’s not dangerous.”
Theo made a derisive noise.
“My gut says she’s good.”
A snort. “Because that’s never gotten you in trouble before.”
“It’s gotten me into fights maybe, but I have no trouble with girls.”
Theo looked up with the sole purpose of laying a heavy look on me. “Vivienne Thorne.”
Those guts I prided myself on clenched at the mention of the reporter’s name. The reporter who I’d made the mistake of sleeping with without any kind of contract.
The reporter who I’d woken up to find trying to break into my computer.
“That was a mistake I won’t make again. I was drunk, and drunk Tommy isn’t always smart Tommy.”
“Well, I hope this works, honey. I hope she can help.” Her eyes softened even more, now with worry.
So I offered a smirk, squeezing her hand before pushing off the island. “Don’t worry, Ma. I always land on my feet.”
“Like a black cat with thirty-one lives.”
I laughed, pressing a kiss into her hair as I passed. She leaned into me, patting my hand cupping her shoulder.
“I love you, Ma.”
“You too, Tommy.”
I strode into the living room, swiping my jacket off the back of the couch with a jerk of my chin at Theo. “Keep me posted about tomorrow, would ya?”
He jerked his chin back. “Yeah, you got it.”
“I’ll see you guys at dinner,” I said over my shoulder, heading for the door.
And with their goodbyes at my back, I stepped outside.
I took a hard left and trotted up the cement steps of our brownstone in Greenwich Village. It had been my first big purchase with the obscene advance I’d gotten for my second series. The first thing we’d done was renovate, converting the ground floor to a walkout for Ma. She was already supposed to use a walker, though I didn’t think I could pay her to actually get behind it. And eventually, she’d be bound to a wheelchair. Ground access was nonnegotiable.
I brushed away thoughts of the future, the plague of imaginings of how much worse it would get for her. And there was nothing I could do but take care of her as best as I was able.
She’d always taken care of us, even when things were tough. Especially after my dad left. The busybody bitches in the neighborhood were relentless. Rumors spread about her like wildfire. Her coffee friends quit inviting her over. I still remembered her loneliness in a time when she’d already been abandoned.
Fucking gossips. The truth didn’t matter to gossips.
Better to control what they thought than leave them to their own devices.
I slipped my key in the lock. Theo had taken the second floor of Ma’s place, and the upper two floors were mine.
I barely made it through the door when Gus barreled into me, seventy pounds of slobbering, happy, hairy golden retriever.
“Heya, bud.” I grabbed his face with both hands and gave it a good mussing.
He arfed his hello at an ear-splitting volume before getting back on all fours and taking off for the living room for a tennis ball.
Otherwise, the house was silent as a tomb.
I immediately turned on music. A gritty guitar riff slipped out of the speakers installed in every room of the house, even those empty ones I never used.
It was too much house for me. I used three rooms—the kitchen, my office, and my bedroom. The other rooms could have been part of a model home, and the only person who stepped foot in them was my housekeeper.
I wandered upstairs and into my office. Took a seat at my desk and opened my laptop, pulling up the shitty, half-baked stories to print them off one by one. If Amelia was willing, I’d have her critique them and help me figure out if any of them were viable. I needed a plan, which had never been my strong suit. Theo planned. I was much more comfortable winging it with blind optimism that everything would work out. It always had before.
This was bound to, too.
But a plan wouldn’t hurt.
Amelia rose in my mind. She’d agreed to help me, which was saying something. I’d been a pariah ever since my contract with Simpson and Schubert was thrown in the dumpster fire that was my arrest and subsequent scandal. It had taken an inordinate amount of coercion to persuade another publisher to take me on, and Blackbird was the last of the Big Five to give me a chance. And that was only granted on a mountain of conditions.
First and foremost being a morality clause.
Keep your nose clean. That part had proven easier than dealing with my long-past deadline. If I stayed home, trouble couldn’t find me, and I couldn’t stumble into it. Because that was always when it happened—a drunken stumbling into a fight where my mouth would write checks that my ass absolutely could and would cash.
But if I had no book, it was all moot.
My printer spit out page after page of garbage in a lonely room in Greenwich Village. My mother sat with shaking hands on one of the floors below me, her well-being in my hands. And my brother fixed my life for me with cell phone in hand because that was what he did.
That was what we all did. We took care of each other.
And if I could get Amelia’s help, I might be able to find a way to fulfill my obligations so I wouldn’t let them down.
Insta-famous
Amelia
It took the entire train ride to Midtown for my skin to return to its natural shade of oatmeal.
But my mind couldn’t process the afternoon as easily as my body could metabolize my adrenaline. As I wandered into the USA Times building, avoiding all possible eye contact, I replayed the exchange for the thirtieth time in as many minutes.
Thomas Bane wanted my help.
I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so astonished. Stupefied really.
I was starting to wonder why I’d agreed now that I was out of his blast radius. Maybe he’d fritzed my brain. Scrambled my frequency. It almost felt like warfare. Chemical warfare, and his primary weapon was pheromones.
I didn’t stand a chance.
The elevator was wall-to-wall people, from delivery guys to a pack of suits with briefcases, with me in the middle, tiny and pale and absolutely out of my element.
I muttered, “Excuse me,” weaving around people to exit once the doors opened, only slightly relieved to have open air. Because that open air buzzed with frenetic energy.
People zipped around the office, which hummed with the sounds of clicking keys and chatter, rustling papers and commotion. I thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t had to actually interview here. When my blog had gone viral, Janessa Hughes had reached out to invite me to blog for the paper as part of their Fiction Reviews column.