“Exploring?” I echo, trying not to smile at his careful word choice.
He gives me a look. “Yes,exploring. Networks, security, the kind of things I wasn’t supposed to be touching.”
“So, you were a hacker.”
His silence answers for him.
“You were?” I ask softly.
He hesitates. “I still dabble.”
I take that in slowly. “And you’ve been doing all this for…how long?”
“Twenty years,” he says. “Half my life, basically.”
The room goes quiet except for the soft simmering of the sauce.
I don’t feel scared. I don’t feel intimidated. If anything, something inside me clicks into place—like a puzzle piece that finally understands why it’s been the wrong shape in every foster home kitchen I’ve ever stood in.
“You could’ve just said that from the beginning,” I tell him.
“Most people don’t take it well,” he replies. “It tends to freak them out.”
“I grew up around people who hid knives under pillows,” I say with a shrug. “A guy who writes code and cooks decent pasta isn’t going to scare me.”
That makes him smile—really smile this time—warm and unguarded, like the tension in the room releases all at once. He’sgotdimples? Jesus fuck, am I in trouble—and it seems like I’ve done something that seems almost impossible.
His brother looks between us, eyebrows raised, but for once he doesn’t seem annoyed. Just…relieved? It’s a weird feeling being in this kitchen with their little unit—I feel like an outsider.
“Now sit back down,” Zack adds, turning to stir the sauce again. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
And somehow, in this tiny kitchen filled with secrets and simmering pasta, I feel more at home than I ever have before. I know I’m fitting myself into this dynamic, and I’m worried because I don’t know what I’m getting myself into at this point. I do know, though, that I’m doing things that me ten years ago would’ve never thought possible. I feel like that’s pretty poetic, and there’s no going back anymore.
Sitting around the table, we talk and laugh. It feels so…normal. Like everything that has happened this past month wasn’t even real—like we are living in this safe little bubble. And frankly for the first time in far too long, I feel joy. Actual real happiness that fixed itself around me. As if the universe knew that I was feeling this way, Sam excuses himself, and the bubble of safety we had around us vanished. The quiet settles over us as Sam disappears down the hall, and I swear I feel the universe tugging at the edges of this fragile peace. I poke aimlessly at a stray noodle on my plate, the warmth of the kitchen fading the longer Zack avoids looking at me.
Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t want the moment to die. I don’t want him to go back to being the lock-box version of himself, theguy with walls so tall I can only see the shadow of him behind them.
So of course, I ruin it.
“So,” I say lightly—too lightly—like I’m tiptoeing through a minefield and pretending it’s grass. I feel like I can’t give my sunshine right now, it’s too heavy. “Where exactly are we headed tomorrow? You said we’d get answers…about Leyla and Cameron.”
I lift my eyes and watch the shift happen in real time. It’s like someone flips a switch inside him. One second, he’s still that soft, almost smiling version of Zack—shoulders loose, fingers tapping the table like he’s thinking about music or code or something safe. The next second, everything in him tightens. Shoulders lock. Spine straightens. His jaw clenches so hard I see the muscle jump.
There he is. That fucking fortress again.
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is its own kind of answer.
“Hazel,” he says finally, his voice lower now, controlled in that way people get when they’re trying not to break something delicate. “We don’t have to talk about that tonight.”
But we do. God, we really do.
“We kind of do,” I say. “Because you’re the one who said we’re leaving at sunrise. And I’m not just blindly following you into…whatever this is. Not without knowing where we’re going or why.”
His eyes flick up. They’re steel again. Cold in a way that still somehow makes my chest hurt.
“I told you,” he says. “We’re checking a lead.”
“A lead on whether Leyla and Cameron are actually dead,” I say, softer.
