She pressed a slim phone into my hand followed by a business card with my name already printed on it in heavy black ink. “Clients from 3D’s are asking for you. Some of them will call this number.”
I blinked, unsure, fingers curling around the card. “Why are you doing this? You’re breaking the noncompete clause.”
Her laugh was low, cutting. “Oh, I’m not worried about it, and I told you. I’m a good samaritan.” She turned, about to leave the café, then looked over her shoulder, gaze sliding past me and landing on Lincoln.
He was measuring her, shoulders squared, ready to snap. Then she tipped her chin at him. “Lincoln, Lincoln…. You’re looking at some interesting files at home. Give me a call if you ever want insight.” She slipped another card into my palm, this one different—sleeker, stripped of any company ties, just her name and a number.
“That one’s for Lincoln. We’ll all be in touch, yeah?”
“About what?” I asked, confused.
“About all these clients that want to work with you.” She winked at me. “Toodles, people. Don’t break your heads thinking.”
Before I could reply, she was walking off, perfume trailing sharp in the air.
“What the fuck was that?” Lincoln asked me.
“I think I just got myself some clients to pull me out of this hole.”
When I looked at the phone, there were twelve voicemails and seven texts. Presumably all clients who want me to work on their marketing strategies.
Finally, a fucking break.
I was wokenup by a loud crash in the middle of the night. So jarring I didn’t move, just lay there on my bed, eyes opened, staring into the shadows dancing on the wall in front of me. almost thought I was imagining it, settling back to sleep when another thump reverberated through my room. I startled, whirling around to stare at the wall behind my headboard just as another one came.Thump. The sound was too muffled to be coming from the bathroom, which meant it must be coming from the room on the other side—Lincoln's.
Panic rose up in me, sharp and unrelenting. He’d fallen. Gotten dizzy, dropped on the spot. My heart clenched. Blood seeping into the rain-covered asphalt flashed in my mind. Would another hit to the head be what crashed through this strange, fragile routine we’d built? He’d remember whatever I’d done to make him hate me this much. Right when I felt like I could do this, right when I had started to feel, dare I say, settled.
I rushed down the hall and pushed the door open without knocking. Lincoln stood in the middle of the carpeted room, shirtless, loose shorts hanging low on his hips, eyes wild and desperate as he searched for the next target of… whatever this was. His gaze zeroed in on a basket on the bottom shelf of a small table, skin stretched tight over his muscular chest as he yanked the basket and upended it onto the floor. My gaze lingered on the strip of hair leading up from his waistband, his abs contracting, before it gave way to the rougher patch across his chest. A rush of heat crept to my cheeks, and I averted my eyes to the floor.
“Nina, crap.”
I coughed and shifted on my feet, thinking I’d have to work harder to stop imagining running my fingers through the hair on his chest. The room itself, though, pulled me sharper than any of that. Emptied drawers, clothes and papers scattered in piles, shoes shoved aside, hangers cluttering the floor. He’d torn through the room like a man possessed, or perhaps a man hollowed of memories.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” An explanation that didn’t add any clarity. He went back into the closet again, the lines of his back flexing as he bent toward the lower drawers of the dresser, raw energy spilling off him.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His head snapped toward me, eyes feral and bright blue. His jaw clenched and unclenched, a tic of frustration before he dragged both hands through his hair. The anger within him traveled along his shoulder blades, knots forming as he moved, and never releasing. There was spark of tenderness when his eyes met mine, and my own tension loosened. This frustration was not directed at me, but at some gnawing, shapeless thing inside him.
“I can’t find it,” he said, voice rough. “The album. The one I made with my mom. It should be here. It should be right here.”The way his voice cracked on that last word pulled something tight in my chest. “I’d have never gotten rid of it. Ever.” His voice cracked some more. “That, I’d never do.”
For all the wreckage of the room, what he wanted wasn’t anger or destruction. He was reaching for pieces of himself, clawing for proof of a life he couldn’t remember, or maybe proof it’d been different at one point. Turned out, Lincoln was as lonely as I was. He’d seen it.“That woman couldn’t care less about me. Vinny hasn’t bothered to visit.”Lincoln needed a tether: the only one left was his mom.
I stepped inside, mindful of the chaos, offering him my hand, and softened my tone. “Okay. Let’s look together.”
He took it with the same urgency a castaway would cling to a lifeline thrown at them.
“Did you check under the bed?”
He shook his head. We knelt on the carpet until we found a box. So similar to the box I used for the few mementos I still own of my parents’. That same box I’d thought lost once, same one he’d taken from me. I wanted to hold it against him then, everything he’d done. We were so similar,why? Though, with him holding the box close to his chest, it was easier than I thought possible to be in the present with him and lose track of the past.
Sitting on his left, I saw it. Ink swept over his ribs. A small bird mid-flight, its wings unfurling into a musical staff. The lines weren’t heavy or harsh, just fluid, accompanying the scattering of notes from the song I knew so well. The whole thing looked ready to fly off his skin and sing. My hand was on it before I could stop myself. The skin moved with the draw of his breath, making the bird itself seem alive under his skin.
“Why do you have this?” I whispered.
His eyes fluttered closed, and another time, maybe I would have marveled at the way goosebumps raised over his torso andarms. For now, all that mattered was the bird. The bird from “Songbird.”My dad’s favorite song. The song to which we’d met. The song to which he’d tortured me with.
“Why?” I raised my voice.
