“An 18D is a special forces medical course—all SOCM go through it. I elected in.” Harlow’s gaze lingered on Simon a moment longer, the sunshine smile warming the dust that had once been Simon’s heart. The dust felt particularly good, like it was made from glitter and gold flecks rather than the desiccated, barely remembered mess that it was. When Harlow finally looked away, sparing Jayne some attention, that feeling didn’t stop—it stayed. “It’s been a while since I had to rely on anything I learned, and my approach is better suited for the field than it is a hospital, but I’m not totally ignorant about how the human body works… or how to make it work, when it goes wonky.”
Simon hadn’t known that. He’d sifted through Harlow’s background, but hadn’t been ballsy enough to delve into confidential files. While he was certain that he could hack into the naval database if he wanted to, he wasn’t interested in what would happen if he was caught.
“Veryimpressive,” Jayne purred. The sound of his voice blew the glitter from Simon’s soul. “I’d love to see how your medical knowledge stacks up. But first, let’s address the problem at hand.”
Was Jayne giving up on a conquest? Simon propped himself up on his elbows, startled, then regretted having moved so fast. Blood rushed to his head, and he had to close his eyes to hold off a bout of dizziness.
“Shep?” Jayne invited. “Evie? Who wants to start?”
Behind the darkness of his eyelids, Simon saw nothing, but he felt the tension cackle in the air. The conversation that would follow wasn’t going to be an easy one, but hopefully, it’d give them what they all needed to make an informed decision. Action had to be taken, but the details would help shape what kind of action it was going to be.
Evie hummed.
Shep huffed. “I’ll go,” he said. “But before I do, you’ve got to promise me that you’re not going to blame Evie for any of this. It was my idea.”
“This living room is a promise-free zone,” Jayne said flatly. “But we’ll see what we can do…”
“Fine. Whatever,” Shep grunted. “But whatever you think, I’m serious—all of this is on me.”
The dizziness receded. Simon opened his eyes just in time for the story to begin.
* * *
“It started last summer.”Evie had gone to settle in the armchair from the old house—one of the few things Simon and his brothers had been able to salvage before it was taken from them. Shep sat on the floor by her feet, his head rested against the chair cushion. While he spoke, Evie played with his hair. “After Simon and I worked together to set up the gaming PC in my room, I started to poke around inside, you know, just to see if I could find anything.”
The admission turned Simon’s insides to ice. He sat up slowly, hoping that movement might help disperse the chill, but nothing could budge it. Uncomfortable, he wedged himself against the corner of the couch and held his breath. If Shep had found anything…
Simon pushed the thought aside. Hewouldn’thave found anything. It was second nature for him to wipe hard drives and permanently dismantle other storage components before he safely disposed of them. For Shep’s benefit, he’d kept all of his old computer parts in perfect working order, but he’d still have wiped them. He wouldn’t have forgotten something so basic.
Right?
Right?
“And I did find stuff.”
Oh god.
“Really weird stuff. Programs I didn’t recognize, and weird… things. I didn’t even know how to describe it at the time, so I started Googling to see what I could find.”
Simon hadn’t wiped the drives.
He hadn’t wiped the fucking drives.
What else had Shep found? What had he forgotten to clear away? It wasn’t like he kept porn on his hardware—thankfully—but there were plenty of other ways to incriminate himself without Shep having seen a single dick.
“Turns out, Simon was writing codes. Scripts. Really super geeky stuff. I learned a little bit about it, just so I could tell what I was looking at, but for the most part, I let it be. It was kind of boring, to be honest. I’m not sure what, exactly, he was doing with all the scripts I found, but I figured I wouldn’t get any use out of it.”
No, he wouldn’t. Not without connections and more than just a “little” learning.
Slowly, hoping it would be undetectable, Simon let go of a stale breath. Maybe he wasn’t sunk.
“The only thing I found that I didn’t let go of were all these pictures.”
Pictures?
Pictures.
Simon’s lungs tightened, choking him. Had he been drunk the summer he’d helped Shep assemble his custom computer? What the hell had he been thinking?
