Free The Miles Between Us by Laurie Breton Page A

. I’m serious. I’m worried about you. You’ve been distracted lately. Distant. Depressed. Not yourself at all.”
    “I’m not depressed . But the miscarriage hit me hard. I don’t know why. I just need you to be patient with me while I try to work it all out in my head. Can you do that?”
    “Of course I can do that . But promise me that when you see Deb, you’ll talk to her about what’s going on with you. Because you’re starting to scare me.”
    “You worry too much . You worry about things that aren’t real. Phantoms. This is one of those phantom things.”
    “It looks pretty damn real from where I’m standing.”
    “That’s the nature of phantoms . They masquerade as the real thing, but they’re made of sea smoke and half-remembered dreams. Far too insubstantial to be real.”
    “Why is it I don’t feel better about that?”
    “I love you, Flash. You know I do. But this is something you can’t help me through. I have to do it on my own.”
    He sulked . Even in the dark, she could tell that he was sulking. The vibrations sloughing off him were clear and vivid. “Just don’t pull any further away from me,” he said. “Don’t disappear. Because I need you. You’re my true north. And you’re not the only one who has to deal with this.”
    She reached out in the darkness and touched a hand to his cheek, brushed her knuckles along the line of his jaw. His skin was warm, the soft bristle of whiskers satisfying. “Sometimes,” she said, “I feel as though I’m seeing the world through the wrong end of a looking glass. Everything that should look familiar seems small and distant. Distorted. It’s very disconcerting.”
    “Am I distorted?”
    “You,” she said, “are my love. Always and forever.”
    He kissed the top of her head and lay back against his pillow . Just as she was about to fall asleep, she heard him say softly, “You didn’t really answer my question.”
     

 
    Rob
     
    The kid was late this morning.
    Rob killed a half-hour drinking coffee and cleaning up loose ends he’d been too busy to deal with over the past weeks. He worked his way through a stack of paperwork, then called Kitty’s agent about setting up a time for her to come back in and record the background vocals. After that, he and Kyle spent some time playing around, overdubbing the song he expected would be the album’s first single release.
    An hour passed, then two . Finally, he called Drew Lawrence at the record company. “I just thought you’d like to know,” he said, “that your million-dollar baby was a no-show today.”
    Lawrence uttered an epithet . Said, “How late is he?”
    “Two hours . And I find it a little hypocritical, considering that when I took a week off because of Casey’s miscarriage, he had the nerve to call me at home and demand that I get back to work because he was in a big hurry to finish this album.”
    “I’m sorry . Hang tight. I’ll see what I can do.”
    Twenty minutes later, his cell phone rang . It was Luther, Phoenix’s sidekick. Part bodyguard, part babysitter, and part personal assistant, the mountainous black man said in his crisp British accent, “Mr. Hightower won’t be in today. He’s a little under the weather.”
    “Meaning he partied the night away?”
    Luther hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. “That’s not what I said. I simply said he’s not well this morning.”
    “Right . That’s what I thought.” He tapped the pen in his hand against the desk. “Listen, Luther, you’re a good guy. I like you. But I don’t envy you your position. How do you put up with it?”
    Luther cleared his throat, and his sigh carried distinctly over the telephone line. “I’m handsomely paid.”
    “I’m sure you are . But is it worth selling your soul?”
    “He’s not so bad. Once you get to know him.”
    “Really ? Because all I’ve seen is a spoiled brat.”
    “I suppose it would be pointless to say that there are extenuating