Page 4 of Whenever You Call

“Come on, man. Would it kill you to speak to someone?”

“It’s not happening, Jerry.”

“But—”

“Discussion over. See you Wednesday.”

I shrugged his hand away and turned to leave, not willing to have that conversation for the hundredth time in the last five weeks.

Cole Newman had died, and there wasn’t a damn thing I, Jerry, or any therapist could do about it. He’d died on our watch. In my care. He’d died when he had so much to live for, and nothing would change that. I couldn’t bring him back to his mother, his father, his wife, or his goddamn six-year-old kid. I couldn’t figure out a way to go back in time and do things differently so that when we pulled up outside Cedars, Newman hadn’t already taken his last breath. I couldn’t turn back the clock and stop myself from freezing—from the agonizing memories of my childhood best friend dying in my arms taking over and ruining everything.

All I needed to do now was carry on with life, just like I did the last time, and hope that enough time passed for me to get the damn thing out of my head once and for all. To not take it so personally.

Because right now, my failure felt personal.

The drive back to my one-bedroom condo in Van Nuys would take around forty-five minutes on my usual route, thanks to the standstill morning traffic that seemed to be a permanent fixture on the roads of LA. With my window down, I rested my elbow on the ledge, pressing my index knuckle against my lips as I stared up at the usual sight of bright blue sky and green trees while I waited at yet another stop light. Fifty minutes, and I could be home in bed, stripped down and ready to sleep. I could forget about the graveyard shift I’d broken my back for. I could forget about the guys at the station constantly giving me shit for being a miserable fuck. I could forget about Jerry and his endless need for talks and walks and fucking therapy.

But there was also an alternative. A different option that made me wince inside to think of, but one I did every now and again, anyway. An attempt to purge the dark feeling inside my soul that told me I could have done more.

Driving past Cole Newman’s house in Beverly Hills—the place where the nightmare began—and studying it from afar weren’t the actions of a sane man. I knew that, but something kept dragging me back there. Something constantly whispered in my ear that if I watched over that house, everything would be okay. For what and who, I had no idea, but that shit didn’t seem to matter at this point because nothing made sense anymore. Especially not my thoughts or actions. All I knew for certain was that from time to time I needed to see Newman’s home standing tall in the sunlight without the misery of drugs and death hanging over it. Without the ambulance and fire trucks parked outside, wailing into the night.

“This is a real bad idea, Logan,” I said to myself.

But thirty minutes later, his house sat in front of me on a tree-lined street I’d become way too familiar with, anyway.

The cream building had a classical charm you wouldn’t have expected from a rock star—at least I hadn’t—and it sat on at least half an acre of land, surrounded by greenery that gave them privacy from the passersby, apart from a large, black electronic gate halfway up a thick driveway. From where I sat, only one top-floor window and the roof were visible, but still, I took it all in, committing it to memory, relieved when I saw that nothing was overgrown or unkempt. The window I could see gleamed. The plants lining the pathways bloomed. The driveway remained tidy.

Everything seemed… alive, and something about all that made me feel a little bit more alive again, too.

The world still turned without Cole in it, the same way it had done all those years ago for Dale’s family and me. The people once around him kept on breathing. All existences didn’t end because of one death, and I didn’t know whether that was a relief or a fucking tragedy, thinking about how we were expected to keep on living after losing someone who was supposed to have meant the world to us.

“Fuck!”I growled, slamming my hands on the steering wheel. “Get agripof yourself, you pussy. You can’t go on like this!”

I exhaled heavily and shook my head in annoyance before I leaned forward to start the engine, only to glance up just in time to see a white SUV rolling to the edge of Newman’s driveway. The front windows were rolled down enough so that, when the driver turned left, I could see her behind the wheel clearly.

Hannah Moore.

The widow.

She was real, and she was there, not just a headline on the front cover of a magazine. Not a distraught wife plastered across the news, carrying her child on her hip who had buried her face in her mother’s neck to hide her grief. Hannah was there in front of me for the first time, wearing dark shades and driving up the same road I needed to take to get myself home.

I should have held back and waited for her to disappear out of sight. I should have driven back to my condo, locked the door on the world, and let every thought of Cole, Hannah, and anything to do with this sorry mess die once and for all.

And I almost did.

I almost waited until I lost sight of her…

But then that familiar itch to check on everything Cole had left behind grew stronger, and before I even realized what I was doing, I pulled up behind her at the next stop light in the Subaru Outback I’d inherited when my pa died a year earlier, looking out of place among the gleaming supercars of The Flats.

My heart hammered in my chest, and a cold sweat formed on my spine.

Things were going too far.

I should have turned around, taken another route home, leaving her well alone.

This was fucking toxic. I shouldn’t have held any guilt over Cole’s death, but it was there, as I followed a woman who didn’t even know I existed, to a destination I had no place going, that I realized I was screwed…

Because I did have guilt.

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