His matte black claws tapped against the laminate table top as he watched her take a desperate sip of her coffee. It tasted terrible, but in a familiar way that soothed the soul.
Pushing the plate of toast toward her with a knuckle, he asked, “Going by your timeline, it sounds like you stayed together after he left your project. How did that work?”
She kept her eyes on her fingers as she sorted through the packets of jam to find the orange one she liked. Carefully peeling the wrapper off of the top, she answered, “Norman was more of a consultant. His specialty is in manufacturing and sigilwork, which we didn’t have a lot of use for until recently, when we could apply our theory to a practical generator model.”
She set the packet down and reached for a slice of barely warmed toast. Ripping off a corner, she dipped it into the jam before taking a small nibble. Her throat was dry as asphalt when she swallowed the bite down.
“I’ll be honest with you, Kaz,” she continued in a more subdued tone. “The reason I don’t think he’s your suspect is because he was one of the people who never really believed we could do it. Sure, he helped us out in the beginning, and I thought over time he would see that we had something, but it wasn’t until that think tank approached him that he seemed to actuallycare.”
“And that’s why Idothink he’s a suspect,” Kaz replied. He folded his arms onto the table and leaned forward, gaze never wavering from her face. “You booted him from the project just as he realized its potential. Can’t you see why that would be a motivator?”
Atria’s stomach turned. Dropping her torn chunk of toast back onto the plate, she asked, “But don’t you think the timing is strange? He left the project three years ago. We dated for two years after that. Why in the world would he do something like thisnow?”She shook her head. “And with what resources? He’s a great scientist, but he’s not wealthy. Every cent he has goes into his research.”
“I don’t think he’s the one who put the bounty on you. I think he’s the one who sold you out as soon as he knew you had a finished product. Science takes money. Do you really think someone that devoted to his research would, say, turn down a million dollars in exchange for his ex?”
No, she didn’t want to believe that.
Norman had been stoic and often dismissive of her feelings, but she knew for a fact that he feltsomethingfor her. He’d felt enough to practically beg her to bond with him, and though she’d gone out of her way to respect his privacy after their breakup, she knew he still had feelings for her. Atria felt the seeping from him even when he had his arm around a doe-eyed fey woman who looked like she worshipped the ground he walked on.
Even so, Normanhadalways been exceedingly ambitious. He’d spent most of his career desperately trying to crack the code of m-enhanced robotics — the ever-elusive dream of the m-droid.
It was a cutthroat field, and more often than not she found herself disquieted by his intensity when he explained his failed experiments and theories. She understood and respected passion — indeed, that was where they bonded most — but something had always felt… off to her.
Regardless, she didn’t have all the facts. Until she did, Atria was not about to condemn a man she had loved for much of her adult life.
Saying as much to Kaz didn’t go over well.
A heavy silence hung over them as the waitress brought out their food — two heavy platters of sausage, bacon, chicken fried steak, and all manner of hashbrowns, biscuits, and pancakes. It was a shocking amount of food, but Atria was delighted by all of it.
“I can’t tell you how much I need comfort food right now,” she told the waitress as she settled the plate down in front of her. “This looksincredible.”
The waitress gave her another wink. “The chef is one of my mates, so I’ll let them know you’re happy. They’ll be tickled.”
Atria shot her one last smile before she dug into her food, her eyes carefully averted from Kaz, who stabbed his fork into a sausage link with so much force, it nearly exploded.
Her reprieve from Kaz’s interrogation lasted roughly the time it took her to finish one pancake and three strips of bacon.
“Tell me why you broke up.”
Reaching for her mug, Atria reluctantly answered, “We didn’t spend that much time together. We were both incredibly invested in our work, which is why we were so good together, but after a while I got a little sick of it. When I asked for us to change things, maybe move in together, he jumped straight to bonding.”
She toyed with the smooth handle of her mug before taking a bracing sip of burnt coffee. “I felt like it came out of nowhere, but I could see his logic when he explained it. If we were bonded, we wouldfeelcloser. We could both get what we needed — his need for independence and my desire for intimacy.”
Atria paused, waiting for him to say something, but when the silence dragged, she looked up from her plate to find Kaz frozen, a forkful of scrambled eggs lifted halfway to his mouth.
Slowly, like he was having to mentally will each individual muscle to move, he lowered his fork back down to his plate.
His expression and aura were disconcertingly still when he asked, “And did you bond with him?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t be here with you,” she answered, giving him a puzzled look. “There’s no way I would have been able to spend that much time away from someone I shared a witchbond with — which I explained to him. He thought we could keep things as they were, but I knew better. A bond makes you… It makes you needmore,not less. I begged him for small changes in his schedule, date nights, more than…”
Her cheeks heated again. Kaz didnotneed to know that she and Norman had fantastic sex, nor that it had been just about the only thing keeping them together for the last years of their relationship.
It was the only time she ever feltcloseto Norman, so she’d thrown herself at him whenever the opportunity arose. The worst part of it was not that their relationship was built on sex, but that she’d often had to beg him to touch her, to give her any scrap of attention. Part of her had always suspected it made him feel powerful — like his desire for her was a weakness, and making her beg was a way of taking power back. That distorted view of sexual intimacy was the primary reason she had been celibate for so long.
There was no way she would admit that to the half-orc staring her down from across the table. Especially when that orc had been the one to break that celibacy not twenty-four hours prior.
“Anyway,” she continued after clearing her throat, “it didn’t work. He refused to change his behavior, and every time I asked, he only got more belligerent about bonding. He even offered to marry me the last time, thinking maybe mysentimental sideneeded somethingsillylike that.”
