“Again, didn’t ask.”
“I hate you.”
“Uh huh. Come on.”
Reluctantly, I followed her to the living room, where Callan was setting up containers of takeout on the coffee table. He looked up when I entered.
“Hey, Landry,” he said, offering a gentle smile. “Nice to see you vertical.”
“Don’t get used to it.” I sank onto the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. “I’m only here because your wife forced me.”
“She does that.” He handed me a container. “Pad Thai. Extra spicy, light on the bean sprouts, extra lime on the side. Just how you like it.”
The familiar smell of my favorite comfort food triggered a surprising pang of hunger. I took the container, murmuring a quiet “thanks.”
“So,” Callan began, settling into the armchair across from me. “Ani filled me in on the app situation.”
I shot Anica a betrayed look.
“Don’t give me that face,” she said, dropping beside me on the couch. “He specializes in tech. We need his big brain.”
“What we need,” I corrected, stabbing at my noodles, “is to drop it. It’s over. Done. Let Hudson have his stolen glory.”
“Or,” Callan countered, “we could fight back. I’ve been looking into this from a tech perspective, and you might have more of a case than you think.”
“I deleted everything, or didn’t your traitor wife tell you? All the proof is gone.”
Callan actually laughed. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to actually delete something permanently? Files don’t just disappear. They leave traces, backups, footprints.”
“Cal’s right,” Anica added. “And don’t tell me you didn’t save anything to the Knot Your Average Wedding server.”
“I might’ve, but I can delete it there too,” I muttered. Despite my dramatic declaration about deleting everything, I hadn’t been thorough. Couldn’t be thorough.
“Plus,” Callan continued, “I might have set up an automatic cloud backup of your work files six months ago when I updated the security systems for Knot Your Average Wedding servers.”
I stared at him. “You what?”
He shrugged. “I always err on the safe side with technology. I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs lose everything to crashed hard drives. Honestly, I’ve lost too much because of random crashes.”
“So my dramatic delete-and-burn session was...”
“Therapeutic but ultimately ineffective,” he finished with a small smile. “I can recover pretty much everything whenever you’re ready.”
The knowledge that my work wasn’t actually gone should have been a relief. Instead, it just underscored how pointless my outburst had been.
“I don’t want it back. It’s not just about the work or the evidence. It’s... it’s about me. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore.”
“Have what?” Callan asked.
“The fight. The passion. The belief that any of it matters.” I shrugged, the gesture as empty as I felt. “What if I go through all of this, and we win, and I still feel... nothing?”
Anica and Callan exchanged a look, one of those married-people telepathic communications. Damn, I hated them.
“Then we’ll deal with that when it happens,” Anica said finally. “But right now, we’re just asking you to keep the door open. Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.”
“Is it temporary, though?” I looked between them, suddenly desperate for reassurance. “What if this is just... me now? What if I never get back what I lost?”
“Then you’ll build something new,” Callan said simply. “But you won’t know until you try.”
