Page 19 of Ex Somnis

I pick up. “Miller.”

“Ridge. Finally. Why can’t you answer your fucking phone? We need to…”

“I’m not writing the book.”

Silence comes from the other end for at least three heartbeats.

Yeah, I’m shocked as well, buddy.

“I’m sorry?”

“The book.” I turn my head to glance at the shelf with my last published book on it. “I won’t be writing it.”

“Ridge.” Miller’s silence chokes out a reaction of surprise and ends up somewhere between shock and composed as he continues, “Your contract?”

“Yep.”

“Your career?”

“Also aware.”

“You can’t just… fuck. Listen, maybe I can talk to them again, negotiate some more time for you. You’re not the first author with writer’s block. We can…”

“It’s not a block. Not anymore. I just have better things to do.”

A longer silence follows, and I can picture him at his desk with the expression of a man who has worked with difficult writers for twenty years and thought he’d seen the range.

“Better things,” he repeats in disbelief.

“More important things,” I confirm.

“I have stuck my neck out for you three times this year. Told them the block was temporary, that you were worth the wait. If you walk on this contract, I can’t sell that story again. Not for you, and not for the next guy who needs it.”

That should sting more than it does.

“Then don’t sell it.” I shrug. “Tell them the truth. Tell them I’m done.”

“What changed?”

Her. Everything. All of it.

“I’ll call you when I’m less busy, maybe,” I mutter, then hang up.

I lie there for a moment, waiting to feel something, and don’t. That is either a sign I made the right call or a sign something in me has come loose, and I’m not qualified to assess which right now.

Either way, I don’t have time.

I’ve been trying long enough to reach her in the dreamscape alone, and for three nights I’ve hit the same wall. I can feel her, the thread of her like a compass needle that won’t stop pointing north, but I can’t close the gap.

I’ve been running this like a solo excavation, thinking that enough force in one direction from one man will eventually wear through. But a compass needle doesn’t need to hit harder. It needs more of them, pointing at the same thing from more places, until triangulation does what one man alone can’t. More entry points, more of us converging on her from every side we can manage.

Meaning, I can’t do this alone.

I hate that sentence more than most things.

I’ve been doing things alone for years, since the one person who might have known how to help me decided that a friendship with me was a liability and stopped answering. I’ve been building a very comfortable, very functional anger out of it. Apparently, now that’s going to have to change.

But given the big picture, Paul is the easier problem, not because five years of silence is easy, but because he knows the dreamscape and can actually be useful in it from day one.