Chapter Fifty-Three Fractures
A few hours after she and Aaron returned to the Tower, Evie walked into her apartment and dropped onto her couch with a groan.
Her head was pounding, and she rolled over, burying her face into the back of the sofa.
The room darkened as HELIX recognized she wasn’t feeling well and closed the living room blinds, blocking out the late afternoon sun.
“Thanks.” The cushion muffled her voice, but the AI responded with a quiet “you’re welcome” anyway.
Evie knew why her head hurt, and the knowledge only added to the tension behind her eyes. She hadn’t heard from Alex all day, and she was not going to be the one to reach out, despite how much the silence fed her anxiety.
It was her instinct to smooth things over and steady the boat. She hated feeling like people were upset with her, and she had to keep reminding herself she hadn’t done anything wrong. She communicated clearly. It wasn’t her fault he was choosing to ignore what she told him.
She must have drifted off because the next thing she knew, HELIX was talking to her, and the sun had dipped below the city skyline. She sat up, pressing her face into her hands and rubbing her eyes.
“I’m sorry, HELIX, can you repeat that?” Her mouth felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls in it while she slept, and she stood to get a bottle of water from the fridge.
“Mr. Turner is requesting permission to come to see you.”
Evie groaned and, for one brief moment, seriously considered saying no.
“Is Tommy or Nissa home?” She had never consciously decided not to fix things with Alex before and had no idea what to expect. Thorn was away on a mission, but knowing Tommy or Nissa were close by would make her feel better.
“No, but Mr. Denton is in the dorms.”
“Okay.” Aaron being close helped settle her. “Let Alex come up, and if he starts yelling at me, ask Aaron to come to my apartment.”
Evie went to open the door for Alex, but when she did, he just stood there staring at her. Feeling her headache flare, she turned without a word and walked back to the kitchen to find her ibuprofen. She almost shut the door in his face, but wanted to get this over with.
He followed her and sat at the island, staring mutely. Now thoroughly irritated, Evie glared at him.
“Did you seriously come here to continue the silent treatment in person? Because if that’s the case, you can leave and not come back.”
A flash of panic crossed his face, and she watched realization settle over him that this wasn’t a fight he was going to win.
“No, I came to talk. I was waiting for you to start.”
“Why would I start?” She scoffed as she found the pills and shook two into her hand, wondering what kind of mental gymnastics he’d done to come to that conclusion.
“You walked out of my apartment this morning.” He folded his arms and stared at her like that alone explained why she was at fault.
“You weren’t talking to me,” she reminded him as she took both pills and washed them down with water. “Why would I stay where I was being ignored?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer for that, and his cheeks flushed. She could practically hear his brain scrambling to find something to throw back at her.
“Just admit you’ve been putting off the hike on purpose!”
Evie walked past him and sat down on the sofa, resting her head on the back and watching the shadows drift across the ceiling as he followed her into the living room.
“Do you know what I did today?” she asked softly. “I spent the day with a man whose wife was killed, driving him to the funeral home to make arrangements for her cremation and memorial.”
She looked at him and saw his face go a little pale, which sparked a sharp, guilty satisfaction.
“Do you know what I should have been doing today?”
Alex slowly shook his head, his defensive posture dropping.
“I should have been working on one of the four tech requests I’ve had in the last three days. I average two to four requests a week. Someone comes to me, tells me what they need, and I create the schematic for a prototype and send it down to tech to build.”
“I’m about ten requests behind, and to get caught up, I’m asking Tommy to work with me this weekend so we can plow through them and make sure nobody else dies. So I’m very sorry if a hike, something I’m only doing to make you happy, is not number one on my priority list right now.”
“If you’d just actually communicate these things with me…” His voice took on the faintest whine, and Evie held up her hand, stopping him cold.
“I do communicate these things with you. I’ve told you I’m overwhelmed and under a lot of stress. I got special permission to tell you what’s been going on, and you immediately turned it around and said I wasn’t communicating, then stopped talking to me.”
She was completely done. She needed him to either take accountability or leave.
“Just because you don’t know the details doesn’t make what I’m telling you any less true.
I violated my non-disclosure agreement by telling you things you have no business knowing.
You’ve known since we started dating that I’m not allowed to talk about my job, and as the Chief of Security Operations, you should understand that. ”
His expression shifted from defensive to contrite and ashamed.
“Look, Alex, I love you. But if things you’ve known about since day one are suddenly a problem for you, then I don’t know what to tell you because it’s not going to change.”
Alex sighed and sat beside her, running his hands through his hair.
“Of course, they aren’t a problem. I’ve just been feeling like you’re distancing yourself from me.
I want to spend time with you, but constantly hearing about how tired you are and that we’ll do this together soon is hard.
You promised we’d do this hike, and you’ve put it off for two and a half months. ”
“I understand that,” Evie said, holding on to the last threads of her temper.
“But all I’ve asked for is some understanding of how difficult things are right now.
When you worked nights and did all that overtime to save for your trip, did I ever complain that I only saw you for an hour every five or six days?
Or when you were working toward your promotion, did I complain that we only saw each other once or twice a month?
No. I was happy to see you and made the most of it.
Now the shoe is on the other foot, and all I get is arguments and silent treatment. ”
“I have a harder time not being with you than you have with not being with me.” He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“I get upset when I’m looking forward to seeing you, and it gets cancelled at the last minute.
Or when you ask if we can stay in and watch a movie, even though I was excited to do something active together.
And I love cuddling you, but the lack of sex lately has been hard on me, too.
But you’re right. I should have been more understanding and supportive.
I know you don’t want to hurt me and wouldn’t do these things if you had another choice. ”
He pulled her against him and kissed her temple.
“Let’s watch a movie and enjoy each other’s company tonight. I’ve missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” Evie murmured, wondering why she still felt like nothing had actually been resolved.
**********
The next few weeks flew by. They held Paula’s memorial, which went as smoothly as Evie had expected.
Paula seemed to have gotten her personality from her birth mother, tilting the scales in the Nature vs.
Nurture debate firmly in Nature’s favour.
While most of the contractors tried to brush it off as grief, Evie firmly believed Paula’s bio mother was batshit crazy.
The first thing Cecilia did was try to have Paula’s adoptive parents and siblings thrown out of the memorial service by screaming that they had made her baby girl strip to get through University, which led to them firmly telling her that they had four other adopted children to raise.
While they’d had a college fund for her, there wasn’t enough in it to pay for four years at Harvard, and they weren’t going to take away their other children’s funds to pay for Paula.
In the end, Tommy arranged for her adoptive family to have some time with Paula’s urn so they could pay their respects, while Evie texted Aaron for his ETA so he could give them the glass sculpture with Paula’s ashes.
She managed to keep them there by bringing them into another room and explaining that Paula’s husband was on his way and had something for them.
They met him in the parking lot, but when he tried to give them the glass hummingbird paperweight, they declined, saying they came to say goodbye, but Paula would not have wanted them to have any part of her.
They did agree to meet him for dinner before flying back to Massachusetts, which made him happy.
Evie pulled Aaron aside before he went into the funeral home and told him what had happened when Cecilia saw Paula’s other family, and he groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Of course she’s acting like a maniac,” he muttered. “Guess I need to prepare to be called a murderer, huh?”
“Yeah, probably.” Evie rubbed his arm sympathetically. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin slightly before walking inside.
Cecilia didn’t yell and scream at Aaron, though. She walked up to him and jammed her finger into his face.
“I know you killed her, you sick son of a bitch.” Her voice was a low hiss, full of venom. “You wanted to keep her barefoot and pregnant, forced her to get an abortion and go on—”
Whatever Paula had been forced to go through, they would never know, because when Aaron heard the word abortion, he grabbed Cecilia’s wrist and pushed her finger out of his face. She froze, her eyes widening in fear.