Page 86 of The Muse’s Undoing

She tries to put an arm around my waist as we leave, but I don’t want her touching me. “I’m fine,” I tell her again, more firmly this time. My cane hits the doorframe on the way out, causing a loud crack and a yelp from Ravenna, but I remain upright.

She argues when I insist she gets into the car first, but eventually she goes, and I slide in next to her.

“What was that?”

“A panic attack,” I mumble.

“Does that happen a lot?”

“I spent nearly a decade in active war zones. It happens.”

“Do you need me to stay the night with you?”

I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. The aftereffects of an acute panic attack are a little like coming down from an orgasm except without all the pleasurable components. It’s a sharp adrenaline spike and a steep drop, but instead of a warm tingling sensation in the cock and sense memory of someone’s skin beneath your hands, it’s a shadow of nausea, a lingering tickle in the limbs. All the primary symptoms muted but not gone, and the worst part—the threat that they could take back over at any moment and really mean it this time.

“I need to be alone,” I tell her.

“I’m not sure you should be.” She strokes my arm, and that also feels wrong. It’s someone else’s job. But he doesn’t want it anymore…

I allow her to hold my hand and lean against my arm while I stare out the window as the crowds of Midtown give way to the relative quiet of the Upper East Side. The car eventually pulls up to the Eastmoor, and I get out.

Matthew appears in the doorway, taking in the sight of the two of us, sparing a two second a glance at Ravenna before leveling his stormy blue gaze at me. I feel it like paddles to the heart. He doesn’t speak to me, and I’m shaken by that as he walks in front of us to call the elevator.

I watch his hand, his long fingers pressing the up button, his wrist making an appearance from beneath his cuff, and I desperately want to reach for it, but he walks back to his desk, taking it from my sight.

It cuts like betrayal.

In the elevator, Raven insists on coming up to my place.

I allow her as far as the door.

“I can’t,” I tell her, trying to let her down easy.

“Look, I don’t know what happened tonight, but I get that it’s probably complicated. I’m here if you ever want to talk. I care about you, Fischer.”

I swallow the growing lump in my throat. “Thank you. That’s sweet.”

She leans in and gives me a soft, non-sexual kiss, which means she does have the ability to read a room. “Good night.”

Once I’m safely inside, I let out all my bottled emotion in one loaded blast. Lifting my cane, I slice it through the air, hitting the vase of flowers in the entry hall and sending it shattering in shards to the floor.

Exhaling, finally, I walk on broken glass to my room and collapse on the bed.

22

MATTHEW

I’m still angry when I get to Maggie’s the following morning. She wants me to walk with her and Stuart to the appointment with the florist. I don’t want to go, but she insists she needs my “artistic eye.” As if her ability to compose a setting is in any way inferior to mine.

“What’s the matter?” she asks when I come in.

“Just tired,” I grunt, taking off my jacket in the entryway and hanging it up.

I’ve been sleeping like shit. I’m desperate for rest. For sex. To shut off my brain. To leave the goddamn country for years like he did. I jerked off in the shower when I got home last night and then again this morning, but it didn’t help settle me down. Probably because of the subject matter I used to get myself over the finish line. I can’t think of anything but him.

But I guess I’m the only one with that problem. When he didn’t text me after the night we kissed, I went back to the Bronx, thinking I’d give him some time. But our communication has been awkward and lacking this week, and it’s always me reaching out. I’m scared to ask for more, worried what he would say—more worried he’ll say nothing. I figured our insecurities were feeding off the other’s and one of us would have enough eventually. Until last night when he came in with Ravenna.

I’d seen her out the door four hours prior. She asked how she looked. Told me she had a date. She was fucking beaming. Granted, neither one of them were smiling when they returned, but they were together. And I’m in the dark. I fucking hate this.

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