“Yeah. Wow.” He drove with one hand, the other loose in his lap.
“So,” Aubrey ventured, after a few blocks.
“So.” He flicked a glance at her. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”
Her stomach clenched at the reminder. “Yeah.” She told him about the database, the damage David had done to her algorithm. “People’s actual lives depend on me being at work on Monday.”
He nodded along, as if none of this surprised him. Maybe it didn’t. “And now what? You’re asking me to look you up in two years?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”
He drove in silence for a minute. Only after he blinked back whatever emotion that summoned did he answer. “Okay. I can do that. I’ll come find you. I don’t care if you’re in Timbuktu, I’ll come. But I want you to know I don’t expect anything. In the meantime, you should date. Go meet people, go—”
“Stop,” she cut in. “Don’t ruin this.”
Because she already knew she wouldn’t date. She wouldn’t even look at another man. She understood now that she never really had, that she only lovedthisone and always would, until the day he came to claim her again.
Still, she could tell by the set of his mouth and the slope of his shoulders that he didn’t believe in them the way she did. He didn’t trust that she’d be waiting for him.
She’d just have to show him, then.
After another block, she cleared her throat. “How’s Paige doing, by the way? Is she okay after... everything?”
His mouth bent up at the corner. “Is it weird that I like it when you worry about her?”
“No. You care about her. It makes sense that you would like me caring about her, too.”
“I do,” he said. “I really, really do.”
“So? Is she okay?”
“Sort of.” His smile dimmed. “We haven’t talked about it, yet. I mean, she knows I’m not her dad. She’s figured that out. But I don’t know if she wants to know who the real guy is, and I’m not going to dump it on her unless she wants me to. So we’ve just been kind of... dancing around each other, knowing we have to talk and not knowing how to do it. Though I did get an incredibly awkward phone call from her biology teacher after she finally turned in her assignment. He said he’d had no idea that Paige was adopted and he felt like an idiot for not realizing he shouldn’t be handing out assignments like that one.”
She reached for his hand. “That sounds unpleasant.”
He squeezed her fingers. “It wasn’t fun. I barely held back from telling him he’d fucked up my entire life. But I’m pretty sure he got the idea, anyway.”
The thunk of wipers filled the ensuing silence. “Do you wish you hadn’t found out?”
He blew out a long breath. “I don’t know. The truth hurts, but maybe pain’s better than ignorance. It’s not new, anyway. And I like knowing I didn’t cheat on you. Thinking I had tortured me. You have no idea.”
She gazed at him. He caught her eyes for a brief moment before returning his attention to the road.
“So you weren’t with Tansy that night?”
“No. Apparently she tried, and I told her no.”
A dark, hollow ache rose inside her. Some part of her almost respected what Tansy had done for her daughter. Almost. But the rest would hate her forever.
“What about you?” he said, after another block of silence. “Are you okay? With the whole Gallant thing?”
She barked an acid laugh. “No, not really. He was writing me love letters. Letters he hired some guy on the internet to write. Which... maybe sounds familiar?”
Nick froze, drifting halfway into the other lane before correcting the truck’s path. Luckily, there were no other cars on the road.
“Are you kidding me?” The words leached out of him, low and smooth and dangerous, a knife sliding through the dark.
“I wish I was.”
