She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“I absolutely don’t,” he ground out. “I just... I don’t know. Didn’t realize you were Sherlock fucking Holmes.”
“Enola,” she said meaningfully. “Enola Holmes. God, you’re so old.”
He stared, blank. He had no idea who that was.
“The point is,” Paige said blithely, “you could go. I don’t need you around every single day anymore. And Maria and I are applying to NYU. That’s Aubrey’s alma mater, isn’t it? If we get in, I could live right down the street from you. You’d never be rid of me. And best of all, you’d be happy. We both would.”
He blinked furiously. Oh, fuck. He was going to cry again. He dug his fingernails into his palms, anchoring himself to the pain until the urge passed. He didn’t need to go scaring any more passing mothers.
“It’s not that easy,” he said hoarsely.
“Why not?” Paige’s smile reflected the Christmas lights, like she had a mouth full of sunshine. “You know, Aubrey told me this thing, once, when we were out at the farm. ‘If life puts something in your way, go around it. If it knocks you down, get right back up. If it sticks you—”
“Oh, Jesus,” Nick groaned. “Not you, too.”
“What? Don’t you think she has a point?”
An ache coalesced in his chest. Yes, she had a point. Maybe. But when he considered going to her, asking to be enough for hernow, panic spiraled along his nerves. The mere thought made him feel like he’d run into a solid wall, one deep withinhim. One he tried not to look at, but couldn’t help breaking himself against from time to time.
Paige peeked up at him. “Or is it not really me you need permission from? Is it... yourself?”
He sucked in a breath.
Surely it couldn’t be that easy, could it?
37.
Aubrey was staring out her office window. Again.
She reeled her attention back from the glittering skyline and faced her computer. It was getting late. Probably too late to still be at work, considering her database had debuted two days ago and run smoothly since, and she was still utterly exhausted from the three-week stint of constant coding and lack of sleep.
But she had no desire to go home to that single-bedroom apartment where the radiator knocked and the upstairs neighbors continuously reminded her of how empty her bed was at night.
Maybe she should give herself a reason to go home. Maybe she should get a cat.
She ran her eyes over the code she’d spent the past half hour wrangling with. Or not—a cat would mean one more thing to take care of, and she couldn’t even seem to care for herself, these days. She hadn’t done Pilates in weeks. Since returning to Osos, she’d poured every ounce of effort into getting the database fixed, and managed to do so just under the deadline. The program had gone live, and the upgraded algorithm had already identified a potential eight-way donor swap—which, if it succeeded, would be the first of its kind. But while Jeff and hercolleagues were busy clapping her on the back, Aubrey kept wondering where her heart had gone. Maybe she’d left it in one of those roadstop trash cans on the bus journey back from Indiana. Maybe some hapless cleaner had found it afterward and wondered who on earth had left such a sticky mess.
A knock interrupted her maudlin line of thinking. Jeff stood in her doorway, his dark hair staging its usual mutiny against his efforts at combing. His tie hung askew and a smile lit his face. “Burning the midnight oil? Still?”
She hummed. “Nothing better to do.”
“Well, you could always go over your speech for tomorrow. You get that buttoned up yet?”
Tomorrow. What was tomorrow?
Oh, right. The gala. The one at which Osos was awarding her the Innovation Cup. Privately, she figured they were doing it to make a very visible apology for what had happened, but at least Jeff seemed genuinely thrilled that she’d be getting recognition.
She forced a smile. “That’s what I’m working on right now, actually.”
Not true. She’d put exactly zero thought into what she would say tomorrow.
“Great. Glad to hear it. See you at the party, then?” He rapped a friendly good-night against her doorframe and went whistling down the hallway. Off to his wife and two small children, who would probably piledrive him with hugs the moment he walked into his house. Meanwhile, she was fantasizing about cats.
Aubrey squeezed her eyes shut and jabbed her fingers against her closed lids. God, what was wrong with her?
With a gritty sigh, she wheeled her chair back and gathered her things. She didn’t have to go home, but she didn’t have to stay here, either. Maybe a walk in the cold would do her good. A movie. Dinner out.
