Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sylvie got home from work and dumped her things in her room.
It had been another crappy day, the latest of many in the last few months.
Nothing seemed to go right. Her codes were buggy.
Her focus was inconsistent. Even her photographic memory had been erratic.
Today, she’d completely botched the video analysis Max asked her to do.
Priyanka had swooped in and finished it for her.
I need my mojo back, she thought. Though she didn’t know where to find it.
She started up the stairs to check in with Ethan and find out what he wanted for dinner.
Then she heard a voice she hadn’t encountered in a long time—not in person, anyway. She ran up the rest of the way to her cousin’s apartment.
“Faith?”
“Sylvie!”
Faith leaped up from the Ethan’s couch, her long blond hair flying. She tackled Sylvie in a hug. “It’s so amazing to see you. Look at you.” She pulled back and held Sylvie at arm’s length. “You’re so beautiful.”
“I was thinking the same thing about you. What on earth are you doing here?”
Sylvie had written to her former high school best friend over four months ago, just before all that happened at Charles Traynor’s house. Since then, she and Faith had been exchanging texts and talking on the phone several times a week.
Faith had told her how sorry she was for cutting off contact between them.
She’d gotten stuck in a loveless marriage at nineteen, right after Sylvie left, for reasons that she still hadn’t shared.
Faith had just hinted at a shotgun wedding and some traumatic events.
But she’d always regretted losing her best friend.
Sylvie couldn’t deny that the rejection still hurt, even after Faith’s explanations and apologies. But she’d wanted Faith back in her life more than she wanted to hold on to some pointless old grudge, especially now that she understood the real story was complicated.
“I left Jon.”
“Oh. God. I’m sorry.” They settled onto Ethan’s couch, holding hands.
“I’m not.”
Faith smiled at both the cousins. She’d always had the whitest, straightest teeth Sylvie had ever seen. Like a dentist’s commercial, which fit because Faith was a dental hygienist.
“Do you two realize this is the first time I’ve left Texas? I feel so free. I want to see everything. The beach and the Hollywood sign and Rodeo Drive. I want to go clubbing on Sunset Boulevard.”
“Okay, slow down,” Ethan said, laughing. “You should pace yourself.”
“Tell us what happened.”
Faith swept her hair over her shoulder and twisted it around her hands.
“My marriage had been a mess for a really long time. But I kept trying to fix it, even though it was a losing battle. Talking to you lately, Sylvie, it gave me the courage to finally choose my own happiness. You and Ethan have done so much with your lives. I can’t wait any longer to have the life I want.
And there was just no way I could ever have it back home. ”
“Wow. Okay.” Sylvie was trying to be happy for her friend. But she didn’t think she should be anyone’s role model.
Just leaving everything behind and starting over? It was going to be brutal. She didn’t know if Faith was truly prepared.
“You realize how rough this is going to be, right? My life is nowhere near perfect. Actually, it sucks at the moment.” Oops. Maybe that was more honesty than Faith needed. Unless it was exactly what Faith needed. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change her mind.
Ethan glared at her. “But we’re proud you’re taking this step, aren’t we Sylv? Leaving is probably the hardest part.” He patted Faith’s hand.
Sylvie snorted. “You think so? It should be the hardest part, and I used to think it was. But then more difficult things just keep coming at you. And then something great comes along, something beautiful and amazing, the thing you always wanted, and then the universe snatches it away again and breaks your heart.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“And you’re right back to feeling lost again. ”
Ethan jumped up from the couch. “Okay, I think Sylvie’s had a long day. Let’s get some dinner and discuss this later.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the stairs. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m being realistic.”
“No, you’re putting your problems onto Faith. Maybe listen to her before making this all about you?”
“Ugh, tell her I’m sorry. I’m… I don’t even know lately.”
“Apologize yourself—later. You need a time out.”
She went into her room and fell onto the mattress. Ethan shut the door.
A while later, the hinges squeaked open.
“Can I come in?” Faith asked.
“Yesh.” Sylvie’s face was mashed against the pillow. She didn’t have her glasses on, so Faith was a blur across the room.
“Ethan tells me there’s a guy.”
Sylvie groaned. “There was. And there is. Sort of.” Nic, her heart whispered. A flood of tears responded, gathering in her throat.
“That’s not mysterious at all.”
She swallowed down her emotion and tried to explain.
“I met someone through work. I really liked him, and he liked me. But if you think you and I have family issues, it’s nothing on him.
He had to leave to try to deal with it.” That was the grossest oversimplification Sylvie had ever made, but she didn’t want to get into the drama surrounding the Syndicate.
“Just recently, he wrote me again. He wants to talk. But I don’t know if I can. ”
She got her phone and showed Faith the message Dominic had written her a week ago.
It made her cry every time she read it—because she heard his sorrow in his words, and she felt the same thing in her heart.
But she still couldn’t see a path forward.
He hadn’t mentioned where he was living or what was really going on in his life.
Faith’s expression showed everything she was thinking as she read Dominic’s text. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. But I don’t see a response in the thread. Haven’t you written him back?”
“Not yet. I want to. But it’s so complicated.”
“Why?”
“It’s not just him. It’s me.”
Faith sat on the edge of the bed. “How so?”
She struggled to pull her thoughts together. For the last several months, she’d been trying to figure this out.
And then, suddenly, the words just came.
“Some things have been missing from my life for a long time. But I thought I was satisfied. I have a great job, friends. Then I met Dominic, and I realized it was okay to want more. I thought I could actually have it. He’s the reason I wrote back to the card you sent.
I wanted to give you a chance, even if I was afraid of getting hurt again. ”
“Then I owe him. I’m so glad you did.”
“But there’s still my family back home. My brother and sister have written to me and tried to call over the years, and I never respond. Why haven’t I given them the same chance? What am I even so afraid of?”
Since she’d left home, Sylvie had convinced herself she was the one who was brave. That her family was to blame for being scared of anything new or different.
But it had been her choice to hold onto her anger and resentment all these years. And to lie to herself, pretending she was over it.
She didn’t know about her parents, but her siblings clearly wanted her in their lives. Maybe they were sorry for their mistakes. But she’d never given them the opportunity to prove it.
“You’re afraid they’ll disappoint you again.”
“Am I? That would just confirm what I already thought of them.”
She always said people didn’t really change. After meeting Dominic, she allowed that sometimes people weren’t able to be their true selves. They could make mistakes and have regrets later.
Sylvie hugged her pillow. “But when my family let me walk away when I was nineteen, they were telling me I wasn’t good enough.”
“So you’re afraid if they reject you again, it’s because of you?”
Tears welled from Sylvie’s eyes and slid down her cheeks. Faith scooted closer and circled her arms around Sylvie’s neck.
“What if they were right?”
Back then, Sylvie had called to tell her parents she was dropping out of the University of Texas a few days before she’d done it.
They’d listened in stony silence and hung up on her.
They hadn’t tried to argue or beg her to stay in Texas.
They’d simply washed their hands. Like she wasn’t even worth the breath it would take to tell her they loved her.
Even Dominic’s family hadn’t done that. The Cranes had tried to shape him into someone else to suit their needs, but he’d always had a place among them.
Sylvie remembered why she’d first been drawn to hacking—the egalitarianism.
It didn’t matter who you were or where you’d come from.
The hacking community would accept you based purely on the quality of your coding and the creativity of your solutions.
She’d hidden behind the anonymity of her computer screens ever since.
There, she knew she’d belong because no one truly knew her as an individual.
They only saw the evidence of what she could do.
“In a way I’ve been hiding since the moment I left home. I thought I was accepting my true self by running away, but I wasn’t, because I almost never showed it. Not completely. I was always holding something back.”
Maybe that was why physical pleasure had eluded her for so long. She’d reached a climax with Dominic because he’d come the closest to seeing and accepting her entire self, the good and the bad—because she’d let him. With him, her brain could stop stressing and thinking and just relax.
But having an orgasm hadn’t fixed anything about her. She was still struggling with the same issues.
Dominic had wanted to accept her, but she hadn’t accepted herself.
“Oh my god. I think I get it now. Thank you.”
“You’re thanking me?” Faith laughed. Sylvie loved her friend’s laugh. Bubbly and musical. “I didn’t do anything.”