“Get some sleep,” Danny says, holding the door open with one hand. “And eat something. You look like shit.”
I snort. “Thanks, Danny.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Comfort and accountability and keeping that monstrous ego in check.” He steps back and lets the door slide closed between us. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Same time tomorrow.”
The elevator drops for a moment before the doors open to my apartment—my penthouse, my gilded cage—and I step inside.
The lights come on automatically, soft and warm, illuminating a space that looks like it belongs in a magazine spread. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, Italian leather furniture in tasteful greys, an enormous kitchen I barely use except for the occasional middle of the night grilled cheese, a bedroom I toss and turn in, guest rooms that never see any use, art on the walls someone else picked out because I couldn’t be bothered to have an opinion at the time.
The silence is so loud, it buzzes.
I stand in the entryway for a moment, letting the quiet settle around me. The mask is still on—I can feel it, that careful blankness I wear in public, the smile that automatically getsplastered across my mug to encapsulate my good boy persona—and it takes a conscious effort to let it slip. To unclench my jaw, drop my shoulders, stop performing for an audience that isn’t there.
And yet, somehow, I keep performing for myself.
The windows are dark mirrors at this hour, reflecting my own image back at me. I look tired, possibly even like shit, like Danny said. I look like exactly what I am, a man who caught a crane today and saved three lives and still feels hollow inside.
I move to the window and stand there, looking out at the city, all those lights, all those lives.
Wondering why I can’t feel any of it.
I sigh and eye the bar behind me. I watched alcohol rip my family apart and swore I’d never become like my mother. My conviction held up well too, until Emma died. Still, I never find relief in the bottle; it never helps me relax or escape, which is for the best when you’re essentially on-call 24/7 forever.
Despite that, I pour myself a glass of ludicrously expensive Scotch and appreciate the burn as it goes down, even though it won’t do a thing to fill that carved out feeling in my chest. I’m about to zip off the top part of my Vanguard suit when my watch beeps and glows green.
I put the drink down and let out a long exhale before I tap the screen. A holographic image of Julia pops up from my watch.
“What’s up, doc?” I ask dryly. “Making sure I go to bed on time?”
She gives me a smirk.
“Yes,” she says without missing a beat. “Making sure you’re not staying up with people you shouldn’t be staying up with.”
I keep the smile fixed to my face, though I feel darkness creep in around my vision. It gets like that sometimes, like my blood turns black and starts seeping through the rest of my system, and with it comes a sense of rage and doom and destruction thatthreatens to take me over completely. I’ve never let it. I’ve also never voiced this phenomenon to anyone—why would I, when they’ll tell me it’s stress and PTSD from oh so many things and insist I need another psych evaluation? I get enough of those as it is.
“Please remind me the last time that happened?” I say.
“You know we don’t keep tabs on you like that.”
Uh huh.
She continues, clearing her throat. “What you do with your personal life is your business, but when it starts to affect your job, that’s a different story.”
When I first became the nation’s superhero, I got a little carried away with the celebrity lifestyle of it all—he money piling up from sponsorships, the instant fame, the worldwide recognition, not to mention the power of being the one entrusted to help clean up a country crawling out of the Dark Decade.
I was also single and felt the need to sow some wild oats. A few of the first women ended up blabbing to the press about my wants and needs, which, luckily, remained tame at the time (in my opinion, anyway), and after that, the NDAs came into effect for everyone I snuck into my penthouse. But it wasn’t long after that I realized fucking a different person each night, even when sworn to secrecy, was compromising things. I could never be my true self with them, never expose my darkest needs and desires, and never have a relationship.
So, I stopped, focused on my role in the world instead. It’s gotten easier to shove my needs aside. I’ve gotten used to shoving down every raw, dark part of me until I’m a completely sanitized version of myself.
“You do remember what we agreed to?” Julia goes on. “The journalist will arrive in a couple of days, and you’re going to be on your best behavior for her. Tell her everything she needs to know.”
Right. The journalist.
Mia Baxter.
Someone whose face keeps flashing through my dreams in the middle of the night.
