Page 51 of Faking the Heat

Sterling is the first man who has ever actually respected my ambition. Derek never really saw me. He saw a trophy to be polished and displayed, a supporting character in the story of his own upward mobility. He wanted me to be successful enough to look good at a gala, but not so successful that I eclipsed him. Sterling sees the work. He sees the grit and the late-night frustration and the way I chew my lip when I'm trying to find the perfect shade of slate gray. He doesn't want to save me from my career; he wants to be the one holding the ladder while I climb.

I walk back into his bedroom and sit on his side of the bed. The scent of him is everywhere, on the pillows, in the air, woven into the fibers of the sweatshirt I'm still wearing. It's an intimate, emotional weight that feels heavier than the physical closeness of the last few nights. I reach for my battered sketchbook on the nightstand and flip to a fresh, white page.

I usually draw landscapes when I'm stressed, the jagged lines of the Chicago skyline, the way the lake looks when the wind whips it into whitecaps, or the industrial symmetry of the L tracks. It's safe. It's distant. Landscapes don't look back at you. They don't demand anything.

But today, my hand moves with a mind of its own. The graphite scratches against the paper, guided by a memory that is more visceral than visual. I find myself sketching the broad palm of a hand, the blunt strength of fingers, the specific way a knuckle curves when it's holding a coffee mug. I draw the line of a jaw that hasn't been shaved in twelve hours, and the way a brow furrows in a moment of quiet defense.

I stare at the page, the pencil still pinched between my fingers and realize what I've done. Kayla was right. Although I’ll never tell her this. I've stopped drawing the horizon. I've stopped looking for the exit. Every line I make now, every shadow, every curve, every cross-hatch, eventually, inevitably, forms… him. I'm not just staying in his loft anymore; I'm living in the space he's carved out for me, and for the first time in my life, I don't want to leave.

Chapter twenty-three

Incident Report

Sterling

There is a form the department makes you fill out after a shift like this one, and I have been staring at the same field on it for twenty minutes.

Narrative. That is what the box is called. You put the facts in the boxes above it, times and addresses and vitals, and then at the bottom there is a rectangle the size of a postcard where you explain what happened in plain language. I am good at this part. I have written hundreds of them. You keep it short and you keep the adjectives out and you write it like somebody’s lawyer is going to read it in three years, because somebody’s lawyer probably is.

Patient presented with acute anaphylaxis. Patient self-administered epinephrine prior to arrival. Patient was Cassandra Reyes, with whom I spent three weeks last autumn, and when she put her hand on my forearm in that penthouse and asked me to stop by after shift I felt nothing at all, a flat dead space where a spark used to be, and it frightened me more than the call did.

I cannot put that in the box.

I put the tablet down on the small stand beside my bed and stare at the ceiling.

It is 1:14 a.m. The bunk room is dark and smells like laundry soap and three sleeping men, and I have been lying here for an hour with my phone face down on my chest running the same loop, and eventually I do the thing I have been not doing since ten o’clock.

Becca picks up on the fourth ring.

“Somebody’s dead,” she says.

“Nobody’s dead.”

“Sterling. It’s two-fourteen here.”

“I know what time it is there.”

“Then you understand why my first guess was that somebody’s dead.” I hear her sit up, the rustle of a comforter, the small put-upon grunt she has made getting out of bed since she was nine years old. “Okay. Nobody’s dead. Go.”

“You were on shift today.”

“I was on shift for fourteen hours and I’m back at six, so please understand that I love you and I’m also going to fall asleep on you if you take the scenic route.” A pause. “Which you’re going to. I can hear you taking it.”

I sit up and put my feet on the linoleum. The exit sign over the door throws everything in the room a dim red.

“It stopped being fake,” I say.

The silence on the other end goes on long enough that I check the screen to see whether the call dropped.

“Okay,” Becca says carefully. “I want to be sure I’m hearing you correctly. Because I already knew it was fake. You told me that in a bathroom while you were buttoning a shirt you bought because of something she said once about thunderclouds. I warned you about this exact outcome and you told me it was a tactical maneuver.”

“I remember.”

“You said you were mitigating the vibration.”

“Becca.”

“I’m establishing the record. You said, and I want to be precise, that you were holding the line so her life didn’t go up in insurance claims and disappointment.”