Chapter 2

“By doctor’s orders or your own?” Jenna’s glare was colder than the wind.

John leaned forward, kissed Jenna on the cheek, and turned towards the glass doors of the airport. “Be good, Jen. And get back in the car before you freeze to death. Mom would kill you if she saw you out here in that jacket.”

“I can park,” Jenna called. “Come in and sit with you?”

“No time.” He kicked the silver disc that would operate the automatic door. “Flight’s probably already boarding.” He slipped through the half-open door. “Drive safe.”

“And what do I do if Sam calls?”

John bit back the reaction to tell Jenna she could invent new ways to penetrate the man with large, unforgiving objects, and pass them on to Sam in graphic detail. Instead: “He won’t.”

“But if he does?”

“He won’t.”

She was still standing beside the open trunk when he turned to walk away. She was worried. They all were: his agent, his parents, and his friends; her husband Mark, and probably both their terriers andtheir entire tank of fish. Not that he could blame them. It hadn’t been a good year. He’d always been able to use his writing to get him away from his problems, a retreat of sorts, where he could work things out in his head before having to deal with them. So, when the words had abandoned him, be it in retaliation for the pills he’d taken too frequently, or because his brain was too busy focusing on the images of horror that kept playing through it, John had thought he was going to lose his mind. Confusion had become depression. Panic escalated into obsessive-compulsive behaviour. He was no longer ‘that crazy writer.’ He was just fucking crazy.

“But this iswriting,” John mumbled, staring at the flight board and trying to make his eyes focus on the words that would tell him where to go. “It’s still writing.” After all, what biography wasn’t spiced a bit here and there? Perspective was everything. And if Mr. Parker Chase—actor-extraordinaire, supposed-charmer, but potentially more-of-an-egotistical-dick-than-his-agent-would-like-anyone-to-know—was willing to let John be the one to offer that perspective, then it didn’t matter that the story wasn’t fiction. Or romance. Or even working its way towards a happy ending. He could live with the compromise just to be at it again. For the time being, at least.

* * * *

“Can I give you some assistance?”

John startled and turned his eyes away from the tray he’d been fighting and up into the aisle. A pretty attendant smiled patiently, her perfect white teeth all but glowing in the overhead lighting that John had attempted again and again, each time as unsuccessful as the previous one, to get to shine without glare on his laptop screen. “I can’t get the thingy to go back up,” he said, trying for apologetic and ending up far closer to the side of whiny. He cringed back in his chair when the attendant reached forward. “I mean, I can get it up. I just can’t get it to stay there.”

A chuckled snort sounded from the row behind him and John frowned. He looked at the attendant, saw her smirk, and heard his own words in his head again. He closed his eyes and ran his palm over his face. “I mean the tray thing. I can’t get the tray to stay up.”

“Yes, sir.” She pushed the tray in place and smiled. “That should do it then. If you could just fasten your seatbelt…”

John shot her a one-finger gun with a sideways smile. “That one I can do.”

He made an elaborate show of clicking the belt closed, grinned at her “Excellent,” and once again slumped back in his seat. Then, as an afterthought, he shoved his fist over the back of his chair and gave the snorter behind him the finger. If he was lucky, the man wouldn’t be a line-backer with a talent for martial arts; if he wasn’t, oh well. His pride deserved the retribution.

* * * *

You said there’d be a car? John pressed send on the text and looked around the airport for something he might have missed the first thirty times he’d looked. He’d gained three hours on the flight, a concept that registered on his phone and his laptop just fine, but that didn’t do a damn thing for his body. Five hours in a plane was still five hours in a plane, and though the sun was just starting to think about setting, in John’s head it was nine P.M. Most days, by that time, he’d already be dropping Zolpidem on his tongue and washing it down with half a glass of Merlot.