Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,32

off. How did I even describe Saint? I couldn’t talk about the way he smoldered because she would tease me mercilessly about uttering the world “smolder.” But it wasn’t my fault. There was no other way to describe the man’s energy, apart from smoldering. And not even entirely in a sexy way. Equal parts scary and sexy way.

Okay, a little scarier. To even admit in my own head I was scared said something about his presence.

“He’s my neighbor,” I said finally.

“Yes, well, even in the wilderness, you have neighbors,” she replied, sounding annoyed. “Lucky you had one, maybe you’d still be out there, slowly dying of dehydration.”

“Your concern is touching,” I deadpanned.

“I’d be concerned if you were still out in the woods, slowly dying of dehydration,” she countered. “Which you are not. Therefore, I’m merely curious about this neighbor that you’re not elaborating on. And since you are the queen of elaborating, I know that means that there is a story here. When Magnolia is silent, there’s shit going down.”

“There isn’t shit going down,” I lied.

Her silence called my bullshit.

“I need you to write a script.”

“Oh, honey, there’s no drug invented for what you have,” she teased. Katy. Teased. I got amused, concerned, and teasing all in one conversation. Was the world ending?

“Don’t I know it,” I muttered, swigging a generous mouthful of whisky.

“You’re okay?” she asked suddenly. “This wasn’t some bungled suicide attempt, but instead of tying rocks to your ankles, you wandered into unfamiliar woods in the winter.”

I laughed. “No, I’m far too narcissistic to do something like that. Plus, Virginia Woolf did the whole, rocks in body of water thing. I’d be original.” I paused. “I guess I was just showing myself what I was willing to do instead of write. Plus, you’re the one who told me to do it.”

Shifting blame seemed the easiest thing right now, rather than the truth.

“I didn’t tell you to trip over your own feet and get yourself carried to safety by a mountain man,” she snapped.

I rolled my eyes.

“Do you love it?” she asked, suddenly and sharply. There was an aggression to the question.

“What?”

“Your work. Writing.” Again, the words were packed full of hostility that had been lurking inside of her for some time. Even over the phone, I could taste how stale it was, how powerful.

I considered the question, since she was urging for an answer, an honest one. Did I love my work?

Well, first, I didn’t consider it work. It was this thing I did that somehow made me money. Essential to my survival. Was breathing considered work?

But I knew such an answer was bordering on cliché and not what she wanted.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I love it how a person like me can love something so ugly, twisted and maddening.”

“I don’t know what that feels like,” she said. The abrupt loss of the aggression so pungent jarred me. She sounded smaller. Weaker. A stranger.

“Love? Or madness?” I asked, half-joking, uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation.

“Either of them,” she said. “I don’t really know what deep emotion feels like. Maybe apart from exhaustion. I’ve worked so hard, and on such little sleep for as long as I can remember, I’ve morphed a physical manifestation into an emotional feeling. My only one at that. I get about four hours of sleep a night. All I think about is the next patient, the next rung in the ladder, the next challenge.”

This description suited my friend pretty darn well.

This self-reflection did not suit her. I never thought of her having these cliché kinds of thoughts and needs. Or at least, I didn’t ever think she’d be the kind of person to share such things.

“Katy?” I asked, suddenly concerned about my seemingly iron-skinned, coldhearted friend.

“It’s nothing,” she said. I could hear her shaking herself out of whatever that was, even over the phone. “I’m just overtired and under caffeinated. I need to release some sexual energy. I’ll call a number in my book. Drink a latte. Operate on someone’s frontal cortex. Everything will be fine.”

Katy was the one woman I knew of who successfully had sex like a man. Better than a man. She didn’t learn their names. She ranked them by looks, efficiency and sexual prowess. She didn’t bother with occupation, or financial status, not in that book. Yeah, she had two books. Sex and dating were transactional to her. I was halfway sure she had a mild form of Asperger’s, because she was so uninterested in human emotional connections. But