“Yeah.”She held out her hand.“Want the detailed play-by-play instead of the highlight reel?”
He didn’t move.
“Thought not.”She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window, the cool glass feeling good against her throbbing temple.“If you don’t mind, can youpleasefinish this goddamned lecture and take my ass home so I can kiss my baby and get yelled at by my husband?I can’t even get drunk because I’m pregnant, not that it would help, because there’s not enough goddamned brain bleach in the whole fucking world to make me unsee what I saw.I’m not trying to say what I saw was worse than what you went through at the lab, but what I did was to make sure we don’thavea repeat of the lab to need to deal with in the future.”
Finally, he started the car.As they wound their way out of the airport parking garage and toward the interstate, she hoped she could find a way to wipe these memories from her brain.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t.This is a fucking good reminder of the power I hold and to make sure I don’t misuse it.
ChapterThirty-Five
Ken
Icannotfuckingbelievethis shit.
Oh, wait, I can.
Ken was finally starting to realize that Dewi viewed many problems as nails.Most problems, if he was being honest.
And she was a hammer that usually tackled all nails in the exact same way.
Including this problem.
She wasn’t just a hammer, either.She wasn’t some dainty, tack hammer, or a basic, all-purpose finishing hammer, or a claw hammer, or even a framing hammer.
No, Dewi was one of those humongous sledgehammers they used on the home improvement shows to knock down walls.
Yes, he’d obviously underestimated how helpless she’d felt about not being able to participate in the search for Peyton, or help take down the lab—and how upset she was at a visceral level that he’d been pulled into that and was working on the computer surveillance, too—but goddammit, this was beyond the pale.
Even for her.
I never should’ve told her about the data.I should’ve kept my mouth shut, dealt with it with Peyton, and then handed it off to him.
He fought the urge to pace the house until he finally received a text from Peyton.
I’ve got her.I’ll bring her home.I want to talk to her first.ETA 60min +/-
Relief so sharp and piercing it felt painful filled Ken.He collapsed onto the sofa, his phone in his hand.
He stared at Lyssa, where she lay blissfully sleeping on her quilt.Ken thought about that night, which felt like an eternity ago, when he sat in the booth at the sports pub with his onion rings while grading papers.He’d assumed nothing more disruptive than the onion rings chattering at him in the middle of the night lay in his immediate future.
And then Dewi walked up to him.Not only did his life change, but his entire understanding of the universe at large flipped on its axis and dumped him on his head.
He’d thought after Lyssa was born—not counting him secretly flying to the UK—that life would settle down.
This wasnotsettling down.
Not even in the same universe as “settling down.”
Is “settling up” a phrase?
It damned sure felt like it should be.At least where Dewi was concerned.
They’d talked after she’d brought Manuel Segura here to the house to kill him without asking Ken first.
They’d talked when he returned from the UK.
They’d talked just a couple of weeks ago when he—stupidly—told her about the data.
