Page 48 of Kill Your Darlings

To my shock, he leaned in, his whisky-scented breath warm against my ear.“You care about appearances.Picture this: you, in your beautifully tailored tuxedo, passed out cold in the banquet room.”

I raised my head to glare at him.

Finn’s gaze was steady, serious, kind.The kindness was the reason, against my better judgment, I’d let myself start to care.

In the midst of these jumbled reflections, the wet counter seemed to give way, the room tilted sideways.

“Whoa…” Finn caught my arm, saying under his breath, “Okay.Going up.”He said it like an old-fashioned elevator operator.

This time I didn’t—couldn’t—argue.My eyes rolled back and I was vaguely aware of Finn sort of ducking down, so that my arm fell across his shoulders.He locked his hard, muscular arm around my waist, and straightened.After a confused stumble, my feet found the floor, and I woozily allowed myself to be steered out of the restroom.

Finn held me up with a kind of impersonal efficiency that made it easy to detach myself from the proceedings and simply follow his lead.One foot after the other.The floor was still seeming to dip beneath me, and I had to hang on tight.

We must have taken a service hallway because we awkwardly navigated a corner and suddenly it was quiet and the lights were dim.No one around to witness me stumbling along like a drunk on his last legs.Beneath my lashes, I could see the carpet heaving up and down and two pairs of dress shoes narrowly avoiding colliding with each other.My vision tunneled, but I had the impression that Finn spoke to someone and then we got on a…service elevator?

Where the hellwerewe?Flickering fluorescent light…steel walls…the faint hum of machinery…and, distressingly, the smell of detergent and distant kitchen grease.

My knees buckled.Finn’s grip tightened.“Hang on,” he coaxed.“Just another minute.”

I closed my eyes, turned my face into his shoulder, and the feel of his arm around me, the lingering scent of his shower and aftershave were familiar and comforting.Tears stung my eyes, and I told myself it was the migraine, but it was also that I missed him so much, that I wanted so much more than kindness, that I wanted time to rewind to that sunny afternoon in my loft apartment when I had stupidly, foolishly believed my dreams were coming true.

The giant box of elevator lurched to a hard stop, and I gasped as nausea rose once more.

Finn squeezed me.“Just about there,” he promised.

The door rolled up and we stepped out into another quiet service hallway.It felt like we’d been wandering through a maze for hours.But then we rounded a corner into another empty hallway and the door to Grand Bay Suite was right there.

It seemed like a miracle.

“Thank you.I’m okay now…” I let go of Finn, feebly pawing my pockets for my room key.

For a terrified moment I thought I’d dropped it downstairs, but Finn, still keeping his arm around my waist, reached into the front pocket of my trousers with casual familiarity and withdrew the plastic key card.

He tapped the key card to the door lock, the sensor turned green, and he shouldered open the door, helping me inside.

I winced at the wall of bright light.

The living room lights were blazing and my gaze fell on a trail of discarded shoes…socks…jeans…sweater…T-shirt…boxers leading from the entryway to the bedroom.

“If publishing doesn’t work out you could always try out for quick change artist,” Finn remarked.

Hand up to shield my eyes from the light, I reeled away from him, heading straight for the little guest bathroom off the entry hall, slamming the door behind me.

A dreadful couple of minutes passed while I tried to cough up the pain—there was nothing left to offer to the porcelain god—just more shaking and sweating and heaving.The harsh glare of the overhead light made it a special kind of hell.For a weird second, I felt out-of- body, like I was standing over myself watching that shuddering, sick misery.

“God oh god oh god…”

I was praying that Finn had gone while the going was good, but when I wobbled out of the bathroom, I could just make out his shadow moving around the suite, drawing the drapes.The lamps were all out.There was only a sliver of moonlight to light the way.

I said huskily, “Thanks, Phineas.I really am okay now.I just need to—I need to sleep.”

His shadow walked up to me and wrapped warm arms around me, folding me in, and I let go.I leaned against him and started to cry.

I didn’t want to.He was the last person to whom I wanted to show weakness.

It wasn’t—obviously, I felt terrible, but this wasn’t even the worst migraine I’d had.That particular honor belonged to the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2016.This—this was a contender, for sure, the experience made more richly mortifying by Finn being there to witness it all.But really, it was just the cumulative effect of…everything.Finn on the beach that morning.The day’s revelations compounded by the previous day’s revelations and the stress of the merger-that-was-really-a-buyout and someone wanting to blackmail me or maybe kill me, no, probably kill me…being in Steeple Hill again, in that house again…

There’s something wrong with you.

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