Never Bound (The Unchained #2)

9. Chapter 9

9

HIM

“W e had four years together—in secret—before Erica’s family moved and I got sold,” Milagros explained during the four-block walk between the campus and Erica’s and her house. She’d said it was the safest place to discuss what we had come to discuss. “My owners only spoke Spanish at home, so not only was I illiterate, I couldn’t speak English, either. Erica taught me everything—I taught her Spanish, too—and they allowed it, as long as she didn’t take up too much of my time. When you’re both girls, nobody really worries that you might fall in love. They just thought she saw me as a charity case, you know?”

But, she explained, Erica’s father’s job transferred him back East and Milagros’ owners lost a fortune in the recent recession, and—despite Erica’s fruitless pleas to her own family to buy her—sold her off cheaply to a service that sent teams of slaves to do housekeeping for lower-income families who couldn’t afford their own.

“I probably don’t need to go into detail about what it was like,” she said, looking at me meaningfully.

No, she sure didn’t.

Erica, she explained, distraught at having had to let the love of her life go, fought back the only way she could—by joining the SLA, which at the time had been infiltrated by a faction that saw violence as the only way forward. But their plan to blow up every police car in the state failed, of course, and many of Erica’s old associates were tracked down, convicted, and made slaves themselves, sent to toil in mines, farms, and factories. Everyone else went underground. Erica and Milagros kept in touch—for five years—over the same communication network that Maeve and her brother had used.

“She kept telling me she’d come for me,” Milagros said. “I believed her, but she was a wanted fugitive, and I couldn’t let her put herself in more danger for me. I don’t know which of us spent more sleepless nights.” Their luck, so to speak, changed when Milagros had been injured on the job and sent, much like me, to a discount auction, for a reserve price that Erica could almost afford. One of the richer remaining members of the SLA put up the rest of the money and found a proxy buyer to close the sale. Milagros was soon freed—but they’d had to spend another full year in hiding, together, before Erica’s family lawyer managed to convince a court to drop the terrorism charges in exchange for turning herself in, pleading guilty to a lesser charge of vandalism, and paying a fine. “And here we are, right where we started—the campus science department,” finished Milagros. “And soon, I’ll become Dr. María de los Milagros de Ulloa y de la Torre-Giralt-Muller, partially after the Spanish explorer who discovered Ulloa’s ring, but mostly because I’m amused by the idea of some pompous dean having to read all of that out loud at the graduation ceremony.”

Objectively, I found this last fact hilarious, but in reality, I barely heard it. Because at some point in the last hour, I had realized I wasn’t angry anymore. Not at Louisa, anyway. Maybe it was her genuine panic near the telescope when it looked like we were in trouble, grabbing my arm without a thought. Maybe it was my guilt over the fact that the biggest asshole I knew was now terrorizing her with literal death threats, which I blamed myself for—and which wasn’t totally off, given that Corey apparently held me personally responsible for ruining his life, instead of just, you know, looking in the fucking mirror. Maybe it was that even if I technically hadn’t lied to her, it didn’t fucking matter because she still felt betrayed. Or maybe it was the fact I knew she hadn’t reported me to her father and never would. I’d known it the whole goddamn time, really. But like the stupid, stubborn, arrogant motherfucker I was—as stupid as I’d been at fifteen—I still couldn’t apologize. Couldn’t admit I was wrong.

Because if I was wrong, I didn’t have shit. The only thing that had ever made me special—the only thing that had ever made my sad, pathetic life worth a damn, in my own eyes or anyone else’s—was being right . Was being smarter and cleverer and wittier and better than everyone else, even if they never acknowledged it. My childhood had taught me that, and my teen years with the old professor had cemented it.

Although now, I was kind of glad to be wrong. About Louisa’s betrayal, anyway. But only that.

Anyway, much as I enjoyed being in a car, the idea of actually walking somewhere had me even more captivated. Since I’d arrived, my only trips out had been shopping with the housekeeper, to vast retail parks full of big-box stores and fast-food chains, only making me long for the compact, narrow streets of European cities. There, being sent on solo errands meant stealing time to explore the city. Here, it seemed like you had to drive for twenty minutes to get anywhere, and even then it was nowhere worth seeing—except for the mountains, but they never seemed to move any closer. This , however, could pass for a proper city, with its narrow sidewalks and bicycle lanes connecting artisan bakeries and art galleries.

But I didn’t have the wherewithal to care. I was too busy figuring out how to stop the girl in front of me—whose hair and eyes had turned a misty rose, reflecting and refracting the low sun in the shop windows—from drifting out of my reach for good. It wasn’t helping that she jerked away every time I came near. Society not allowing me to touch her was bad enough. Her not allowing me to touch her was an infinitely more painful kind of torture.

Even worse, here Milagros was bouncing along beside us, joyfully emphasizing that sometimes it works out, with no way of knowing that I’d already made such a mess of everything that she might as well have added, except not for you, you irredeemable fuckup.

“Do you speak Spanish?” Milagros asked me as she led us up the walk to a one-story white adobe house set on a quiet side street, the landscaping in its front yard a curated riot of cactuses and palms and a wrought-iron iguana.

“I’m still learning it,” I finally said, like it was embarrassing to speak only four languages instead of five.

“Miracles,” chimed Louisa suddenly, just loud enough for me to hear.

I turned away, pretending to be fascinated with the fishtail cactuses by the steps.

“Your name means ‘miracles,’” she added as Milagros opened the door.

HER

The deceptively large house felt like a living, breathing organism, dense with lush and growing things. Pots hung from every conceivable space on the ceiling, bursting over with stringy vines of all shapes. Umbrella and bird-of-paradise trees curled up from urns on the floor, competing for space with jumbled Southwestern art and towering bookshelves. The airy, sunny indoors flowed into the outdoors, with swings and hammocks among the white upholstered chairs, in whites and tans and other neutrals. The very air felt infused with oxygen.

Out of the corner of my eye, I observed him watching the room out of the corner of his eye. Even here, in Erica Muller’s house, probably the safest space for a slave for 200 miles, he still couldn’t drop his armor. After throwing off the denim jacket, he hovered right inside the door, scanning the place like a computer. I knew by now what he was doing—taking in data on everything and everyone, trying to figure out what he was and wasn’t allowed to do. It was a skill he’d had to hone over many hard years. Milagros helpfully took the jacket and opened a bottle of wine, which seemed to help him relax. And fuck, he deserved to relax. Nobody should have to spend their whole life having to guard against somebody jumping out and punishing them simply for existing.

His gaze, which I wasn’t supposed to be returning, said all of that, and more, and before carefully following Milagros into the kitchen, I looked away, blushing, reminded of our first few encounters when eye contact was a sinful treat to be stolen, squirreled away, and devoured in secret.

“If I were you, I’d need a drink after that,” said Milagros, possibly having noticed that he had also stolen a glance at the impressive wine rack. “It’s before five, so Erica wouldn’t approve,” she said lightly. “But she doesn’t own me.”

I could swear I heard sarcastic laughter from the other room.

“You guys seem to have some kind of weird reciprocal stigmata going,” Milagros said, looking back and forth to the similar puncture wounds on our hands, which had almost stopped bleeding at this point. “I don’t know if it’s a religious thing, a sex thing, or what. I won’t pry. By the way, I hope you don’t mind Spanish white.”

“Verdejo?” he asked.

“Sí.”

Really? For someone who claimed not to speak Spanish, he seemed to be doing okay. His eyes were also now popping over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, especially Milagros’ collection of astronomy books. Then I followed his gaze to the piano. Was I dreaming? Was this really going to happen right now?

“It’s been a while, but may I?” he asked, all scrupulously polite as if he still expected to get his hand slapped, even here.

“Mi casa es tu casa,” said Milagros.

“Gracias.”

Milagros was looking at him skeptically now.

“What?” he said. “I said I was learning Spanish. I learn fast.” He put his glass down, sat on the bench, and in an instant, had a gorgeous-sounding jazz arpeggio pouring out of the keys. “Sorry, I’m kind of rusty,” he explained over his shoulder.

“They say science and music use the same part of the brain,” remarked Milagros idly as he kept playing, a clever, complicated jazz arrangement that I, miraculously, recognized.

And that was because it was “Stardust.” One of the tracks he’d played for me during that mostly futile but desperately cute jazz appreciation crash course he’d put me through, without ever mentioning that he could play just as well as anyone we’d listened to. For a second, I stood there with my mouth open. What the fuck? Where? How? And what would I have to do, who would I have to pray to, what would I have to sacrifice, to be able to stay here forever, listening to him play that over and over again? Because if I could, I was pretty sure nothing would ever be wrong again.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I asked Milagros after she jolted me back down to earth to accept a glass of wine in my awkwardly bandaged-up hand. “How was it? After you were together, I mean.”

“Awful,” said Milagros, probably expecting the shock on both of our faces.

“Oh.” Scratch the thing about the sacrifice.

“We fought all the time. Given that I just got out of slavery, it should come as no surprise that I was constantly accusing her of being controlling. But I was just as hard to take. I was like a rebellious teenager sometimes, testing the limits. But deep down I was just scared of losing her. After all, she let me go once, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it happening again.”

“Same here,” called Erica from the other room. I stretched my neck to see where she was seated, which appeared to be a wrought-iron patio table strewn with papers, scrolling on a laptop. Behind her, doors opened to reveal a white brick wall covered in overgrown leaves and vines, walling off a garden that looked like it could have contained a deck and maybe even a swimming pool, tiny as it was.

Erica rose from the table and entered the kitchen, eschewing the wine and pouring herself a glass of lemon-infused water. “She had the world at her doorstep for the first time in her life. Why would she stay with me when not only was I a fugitive who was keeping her from the free life she deserved, but I’d already abandoned her for the five years when she needed me the most? Worse, I knew that if I tried to force her to stay, I’d be as bad as her former owners. After all, I had been complicit. My family owned slaves, too.”

“But the great thing is, even though she came from them, she wasn’t them,” said Milagros, shooting Erica an unmistakably loving gaze. “She learned and grew and changed. She had a pilgrim soul.”

“So did you, you know,” chimed in Erica again matter-of-factly. “And I hate to interrupt couples’ therapy, but I think—among other things—I just found out what happened to your former gardener.”

HIM

Pilgrim soul. I didn’t believe in souls—or pilgrims, for that matter—and yet I thought about that phrase as I surreptitiously watched Louisa chew on a curl, observed purple hummingbirds flicker between the flowering vines, and tried to shake off the weirdness of drinking wine at a table with three free women. Oddly enough, it was the second time in my life I’d been invited to do that, but it was the first time I’d done it without being ordered to, and without the women in question clearly being more interested in tasting me than what was in their glasses.

For a wide variety of reasons, I decided that likely wasn’t the case here. Which was why I could still devote part of my mental energy to figuring out where I’d heard pilgrim soul . It was probably in one of the dense volumes the professor had ordered me to plow through after he was satisfied that my literacy was up to par—and that usually only left me longing for chemistry and physics again. Either the Bible or Shakespeare, I decided. Didn’t that account for like half of English literature?

“According to this, he’s no longer a slave,” Erica said.

“The gardener ?” I practically spat out a mouthful of Spanish wine, much as I hated to waste it. “Are you fucking kidding me? Someone freed that disgusting psychopath? Unbelievable. Well, it’s official. There’s no justice in this world.” But as outraged as I was, it was worse to watch Louisa shudder to think of the man who had taken delight in terrorizing her—for years, from what I’d gathered—unleashed on the free world. And to not be able to do anything to ease her worry.

“Well, to be fair, I don’t know if he was freed, necessarily,” said Erica calmly. “He’s just no longer being actively tracked by the slave database.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Does it say ‘location unknown’? Like my sister?”

Erica peered at the screen. “As a matter of fact, it does.” She looked back at me. “You said you thought they might be physically removing the microchips, which is a solid theory, given what we know about the girl found in the desert here—according to my well-placed source in the medical examiner’s office, the injuries to her arms and back would be consistent with trying to locate a chip. By the way, do you have the bracelet?”

I’d told Erica about Maeve’s bloody bracelet over the phone, but I hoped she wouldn’t make me produce it again. It had been bad enough to have to show both Max and Louisa. I knew the hope was in vain. I’d examined it a little since then because I had to, though it made me sick to look at. But so far, it was the best physical “evidence” we had. I produced it from my pocket and placed it in the center of the table. Exhibit A.

Erica leaned forward, her eyes narrowing as she examined the bracelet closely. “Look at this,” she murmured, fingers tracing the grooves, unflinching. She wasn’t like Louisa, I realized. In her years in the underground, she’d seen worse, no doubt. “The blood … it’s somewhat fresh, isn’t it? This wasn’t done with surgical precision but in haste.” She lowered her voice slightly. “Possibly during a struggle.”

I turned to her sharply. “Is she—”

“I think she’s still alive,” she said quickly, and I believed her. I had no doubt that sparing my feelings was fairly low down on her list of priorities, if it was there at all. “The fact that this was done hastily suggests they were interrupted or rushed.”

Louisa still looked concerned, though she didn’t say anything.

“They wouldn’t need to hurry if she weren’t alive to resist,” I explained cautiously. “And believe me, Maeve, for someone who loves fairies and unicorns so much, is a hell of a fighter when she wants to be.”

“But we do need to act,” broke in Erica. “This kind of violence, it escalates. We don’t have much time if we’re going to get to her before …” Her voice trailed off. All right, so maybe my feelings weren’t totally unimportant to her. “Anyway, to regrettably bring us back to the gardener, if it’s the same people, it’s not unreasonable to think they might have given him a similar treatment.”

“Well, if that’s the case, at least we can take comfort in the fact that he suffered horribly,” I remarked, hoping the dark humor might coax a smile out of Louisa as if it could possibly be that easy. “Wait,” I said. “Who was his last owner? Please say Max Langer.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but it wasn’t a ‘who.’ It was a ‘what,’” said Erica.

“Damn,” I said wistfully. “I thought we had him.”

“Specifically, a company that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere. Except for one place.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Here.” She turned the screen to face us.

“Two-eleven Cholla Avenue?” Louisa read aloud. “Whose address is that?”

“According to real estate records, up until his death, it belonged to one Gerhard Langer.”

“Max’s father?” she asked.

Erica nodded.

“Oh, fuck yes,” I exclaimed.

Milagros smiled from behind her wine glass.

“For what it’s worth, many of us in the abolitionist community have also been suspicious of Max Langer for some time.”

“Really?”

Erica pressed her lips into a firm line. “Let’s put it this way. He wouldn’t be the first corporate bigwig to loudly espouse progressive values while secretly undermining them at every opportunity,” she explained. “Now about that warehouse that was transferred to your father.”

Louisa slumped low in her chair in shame.

“It doesn’t mean he’s involved,” I said quickly.

Louisa’s eyes immediately snapped toward me. What?

“He’s a slave owner,” said Erica. “That’s not meant to be a reflection on you, Louisa, but it puts him under suspicion.”

“Not necessarily,” I spoke up. Louisa was still gazing at me, lips parted in unconsciously sexy surprise, and it made me suddenly frantic to keep her attention. As if I’d lured a shy chipmunk out of her burrow and was now desperately throwing out nuts and seeds in her path to win her over before she scurried out of my reach again. Even if one of the seeds had to be defending the guy who owned me, whipped me, and granted me roughly the same level of personhood as his programmable kitchen appliances. “That is to say, um—what’s to prevent Langer from lying to him about what’s going on? Maybe Langer thinks that with all his debts, he’s so desperate for a big score that he won’t look that closely at what his partner’s really doing.”

Both women looked skeptical.

Erica cleared her throat. “Look, Louisa, I know he’s your father, and you love him, but—”

“This isn’t up for debate,” I cut her off. “I know Louisa, and she knows her dad. If she says he’s not involved, I believe her.”

The girl across from me was still hunched low in her chair as if she were in a plane that had been nosediving into some mountains—but someone had just pulled up on the throttle.

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

“Besides,” I continued more energetically. “If Langer bought the gardener, he owns at least one slave, so at the very least, he’s a liar and a hypocrite. It’s not much of a stretch to think he’s not being honest with her dad, either.”

If you’d only bothered to ask, I could have told you that.

Of course Louisa could have told me that. The problem was that a week ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. I believed it now.

Erica, for her part, looked from me to Louisa—two equally determined expressions daring her to disagree—and reluctantly gave in. “Well, we don’t have any substantial proof that he’s involved, so for now, we’ll operate under the assumption that he’s not.”

Louisa heaved a sigh of relief.

“However, I’ll have you note that any slave can be looked up by typing in their number, which you know. What you may not know—because the pro-slavery lobby doesn’t want you to—is that there’s a reverse lookup, where you type in the owner’s name and it gives you a list of which slaves, if any, they own. And I’m afraid Max Langer isn’t listed in that database. Either personally, or through any of his companies. However.”

“However?” Louisa asked. She was leaning forward now. But she wasn’t looking at Erica. She was looking at me in an almost normal way.

“However,” Erica continued in a tone that would have sounded at home in her lecture hall. “We’ve known for some time that people with the means set up shell companies offshore and purchase slaves using those. That way, the owners won’t be publicly associated with slavery when doing business in places where it isn’t legal or popular. So the fact that he isn’t in the database isn’t the final word. But of course, those accounts are untraceable, so for now, we’ve hit a wall there.”

“What about this Resi that my sister mentioned?” I pressed on. “The one she claims is going to free us all? You said you found something on her, too?”

“I’m getting to that,” Erica replied. “You told me you zeroed in on Langer because he and some of his executives were in Brussels when your sister went missing. I contacted one of my colleagues in Europe to comb through some news items from around the same date, and I’m going to show you what he sent over. Let’s see if the same thing jumps out at you that did at him.”

I scanned the screen. “Tresa Hahn,” I said finally. “Felony sexual assault and soliciting a minor.”

“Tresa?” Louisa asked.

“It’s German,” I explained. “Resi is a nickname.” I sighed. “I knew it sounded too good to be true. Turns out Maeve’s valiant rebel leader is actually a sexual predator.”

“You’d be surprised at how often that turns out to be the case,” remarked Milagros.

“The case never went to trial, let alone made headlines,” Erica went on. “She paid a fine and left the country a week later. Somebody pulled some major strings for her. You probably don’t need three guesses as to who. However, what’s even more interesting is the home address she listed on the police report.”

“Two-eleven Cholla,” I said. “Same as the late, unlamented Gerhard Langer.”

Erica nodded. “My guess is that if your sister is anywhere, it’s not at the warehouse. It’s at that address. The warehouse may just be another stage in whatever the grand plan is.”

“Grand plan? So you think Resi is actually working with Langer? Why would she have helped Maeve and the other girls, in that case? Unless that’s also part of the grand plan?”

“Will you two stop saying ‘grand plan?’” demanded Louisa. “We don’t even know if there is a grand plan.”

“Oh, there’s a grand plan, all right,” I said confidently.

“Your guess is as good as mine as to why she helped them, or at least let them think she was helping them,” continued Erica.

“So you think there’s no rebellion in the works? Maeve was lied to?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Erica neutrally. “But we’ll know more once we check.”

“Check? We?” I asked.

Erica rolled her eyes. “Yes, we. That’s what I was going to explain on the phone before you went off all half-cocked, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

Milagros, who so far had mostly observed, turned to Louisa with a thoughtful sip of her wine. “Your boy here seems to have a real problem with accepting help,” she said.

“He’s not mine,” Louisa said automatically.

That didn’t sound good.

“He’s his own.”

That sounded okay, actually.

Erica continued, “If you’d stayed on the line long enough, I would have told you we have people who specialize in these kinds of things. Free people, who have better methods available to them than those available to you and your sister,” she said. “Such as running away and going into permanent hiding.” She peered critically over her glasses.

“I don’t recommend life on the run,” Milagros remarked. “It may sound glamorous, but you can only dye your hair in a gas station sink so many times before it loses whatever appeal it once had.”

Erica continued, “If we can locate her, we can get her somewhere safe where you can still see her. In the best-case scenario, we work with lawyers who might even be able to prove that she was freed. Either way, no one will hurt her again. You have my word.”

It all sounded incredible. Better than I ever could have hoped for, frankly, and more help than I ever expected to be offered.

I turned to Erica and took a deep breath. “I appreciate everything you’re offering. More than I can say. And the information. But actually saving her is something I have to do myself. Maeve is my sister. I tracked her this far, and I’m the one who needs to find her.”

Erica sighed, exasperated. “I don’t know how else to put it, but this isn’t about your pride. We’re talking about your sister’s safety. Her life.”

“I know that better than anyone.” Selfish, ungrateful bastard. I’d be lucky if Erica didn’t snatch the wine out of my hand and kick me over the back fence. But I didn’t stop. “Which is why I can’t just sit back and let someone else handle it, no matter how capable they might be.” I pushed back my chair. “Look. I need to be the one to look her in the eyes and tell her she’s safe now. That I’m here for her, and that I’ll always be here for her. I failed her once before. And I can’t—I won’t—let it happen again.”

Milagros, however, looked at Erica with an expression only the two of them understood. She placed a gentle hand on my arm. “This isn’t just about Maeve, though, is it? It’s about you too.”

“Well—”

“No one’s saying you can’t be involved,” Milagros continued. “But let Erica and her team help. They have resources and experience that could make—”

“I think I can explain,” said Louisa.

Three heads turned to look at her instantly.

“Look, Erica, I know you’re the expert on this stuff,” she continued with a quiver of stage fright in her voice that reminded me why I was the supposed actor and not her, “and I’m just an ignorant college girl. Before I met him , the most rebellious thing I ever did was skip school to go stand in line at a designer sample sale. I-I don’t know what all this might involve, or what we’ll need to do. And I know that just by allowing us to be here at all, let alone helping us, we already owe you more than we could ever repay. But this is something he’s got to see through—for Maeve, yeah, but also for himself. The weight he’s carrying around since he lost her—it’s heavy. It’s really—” She paused to suck in a delicate breath, her shoulders shaking. I mean, knowing her, it didn’t surprise me that she was crying. But it did kind of surprise me that she was crying right now . Okay, maybe that didn’t surprise me, either. But I did wonder why it seemed to be suddenly coming from someplace very personal, and I did feel like shit for not being able to comfort her. But I didn’t dare. Not yet. “It’s really heavy. I’m sorry.” She looked up like she was afraid Erica was going to kick her .

But she didn’t. Instead, she nodded. “I completely understand,” she said.

“You do?” Louisa squeaked in surprise.

“I do, and I’m sorry. I was blinded by my own privilege. I wasn’t listening.”

I pushed back my chair and stood. “Lou, can I talk to you in the kitchen?”

HER

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I said immediately, thinking he was about to scold me. As if he weren’t always the one getting scolded by everyone. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say—”

“It’s not that,” he interrupted. “I’m glad you did. It’s just—why are you here?”

At some point in the last hour, I realized I wasn’t angry anymore. It wasn’t about him coming back. It wasn’t about him sticking up for my father. It wasn’t about whether he meant what he’d said. Though whatever his other opinions on the man might be, I suspected he did. It wasn’t even that when I heard him talk about his sister like that, I suddenly understood everything he’d done for her and why.

It was about the fact that he was trying. And now—if I couldn’t make it right, if I couldn’t put the shattered smithereens of whatever we’d had back together again—I could at least try, too.

Too bad it was looking like I’d fucked it up. Again. “What?”

He stood there, in the shelter of the trailing vines hanging from wicker baskets, speaking in a slow, dark voice. “Seriously, Lou, why are you here ?”

I hadn’t been expecting that. Ridiculously, I felt embarrassed. Denuded. Disarmed. Like maybe I shouldn’t be here. “I … I thought it was obvious?”

“No, it’s not obvious,” he said, absently fingering the heart-shaped leaf of a curious philodendron vine that had drifted in front of him. “And here’s why. My mother was raped and left to die. My sister was abused. Their innocence was stolen. They didn’t get to be children. They weren’t even considered people. Their lives were thrown away like garbage, and I couldn’t stop any of it,” he said. “Meanwhile, you had the opposite. Everything in this world was designed to make your life a fairy tale. From your birthday cakes to your prom dresses to your college education to your fucking furry pink pillows, as much as I hate to bring those up again.”

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“Which you could be lying on right now, doing your nails or something. But you’re not. You’re here . You’re in the last place in the world you have to be, and it could ruin your life if anyone knew why. And none of this is an excuse for why I said what I said, or why I did what I did, and after this, I’m going to start apologizing like a motherfucker the way I should have done two days ago, but for now, I’m just saying this so maybe you can help me understand the crazy question that keeps running through my head. The one I can’t get over. Why are you here? ”

He flicked away the vine in frustration. And the hand in the hair; I knew that was coming. And I also knew this wasn’t rhetorical. He was genuinely demanding an answer. He looked baffled, almost stricken, trying to comprehend that one scientific equation that just didn’t compute, no matter how many hundreds of different ways he tried to write it out so it did.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I just am.” Which was true, although it wasn’t the whole story about why I was here, or why I’d been crying in front of Erica. “Does everything have to make sense?”

“Yes,” he insisted. “Everything does.”

“Oh, please.” But I knew he meant it. And my tutor couldn’t be argued with when he got like this. When he found a problem that needed solving, nobody was allowed to give up until it was solved. I’d learned that the hard way.

“No, I’m serious,” he continued. “According to science, everything has to make sense, and if anything doesn’t, it’s only because we don’t yet know the exact theories that explain it. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” he finished. “Someday, when you’re a doctor and someone is suddenly healed and they claim it was a miracle, are you just going to take that at face value?”

“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “Yes.”

“Oh, come on .” He turned away in exasperation as if this personally offended him. “Slow learner, have I taught you nothing? You’re an intelligent person, Lou. How could you possibly—”

“But I would, okay?” I interrupted. “There are things that can’t be explained by science or anything else, and I’m not going to stand here and try to explain them because they can’t be explained . Hell, maybe science is a miracle. Or maybe miracles are just another kind of science. But it’s not your job, or my job, or anyone’s job, to have it all figured out this second, as much as we would like it to be. And fuck, if you want to talk about logic, why do you think it doesn’t make sense that I’m here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because it doesn’t make sense that you’re here?!”

I sighed. “See, there you go. The gambler’s fallacy again. As smart as you are, you keep falling for it.”

There was a bit of curiosity on his face now, amid the confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Look, as humans, we all want things to make sense, so we invent patterns where none exist. We convince ourselves that past events affect the probability of future events, even when they don’t. Like thinking that just because you’ve lost the last five hands, you’ll keep losing,” I said. “In other words, just because nobody was ever here before doesn’t mean nobody was ever going to be.”

He swallowed, obviously thinking about it in a way he hadn’t in the car, given that we’d both been watching our lives flash before our eyes.

“Okay. Okay, but—” He didn’t finish his sentence, and I was close enough now to see that the sleek muscles in his neck were taut, shoulders and chest moving up and down arrhythmically; the whites showing around his beautiful eyes. Strayed far from home, into territory he didn’t understand. But he was trying. Oh, he was trying so hard .

“Because, listen,” I continued, my voice gentler. “You think there has to be a reason for everything. I know you, and I know how you are, and that’s fair. But I think that you think, like the gambler you are deep down, that the reason is secretly because I want to own you. Because with people in your past, that’s been the reason. That they want to punish you or control you or hurt you, which would in turn leave your sister hurt. And I fucked up because I made you think that I did want to do those things. But I don’t. And I know I don’t. I didn’t know it before, but now I do. And I’m sorry, and now I guess it’s my turn to make a whole fucking embarrassing apology speech.”

“You don’t—”

“Yes, I do. I’m apologizing because I was wrong. Too.”

He actually smiled at that.

“Anyway, that doesn’t answer your question because that’s not the reason I’m here. And I may not know what the reason is, or maybe neither one of us is ready to hear it, but I do know this. Yes, you stupid fucking idiot, I want you. But I would never ever want you like that. And that’s why you get to fuck up. You get to fuck up with me. You get to be a complete fucking dick in every way imaginable, rather like you were today, and I am not going to punish you .”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m going to get angry, of course. I’m going to scream and yell and call you a stupid idiot and tell you to get your fucking act together, but I am never going to punish you, trap you, or cage you. Because I’m not your owner. And I never will be. And I never could be. And if I ever try to be, call me the fuck out on it, okay? Because the only way I ever could own you, you could own me just as much.”

His voice was shaky when he finally got out a complete sentence. “The world doesn’t say that.”

“Fuck the world. I’m saying it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now kiss me.”

A smile, at last. “Is that an order?”

“You’re damn right it is.”

Laughter. Actual laughter. “Do I have to call you out on this one?”

“Nah, I’m calling mys—”

“Good enough.” His kiss cut me off. I melted into it, never so grateful to be able to finally stop talking.

His relief matched mine. I could feel it in the way every muscle of my body seemed to uncoil as he clutched me. It took only seconds for his mouth to be everywhere, pressing behind my ear, tonguing my throat, nibbling on the upper part of my spine, and for his hands to be up completely under my bra, straining at the elastic, not even yet having reached my nipples, and yet still sending every follicle of skin leaping to attention after having been asleep for days. And the happily tearful, quivering wetness between my thighs only echoed it all.

“You make one hot detective, by the way,” I whispered in his ear, fingers tugging gently at the strands of golden silk brushing his neck.

“So do you,” he whispered back. “Do you know what I would do to you right now if we weren’t in your professor’s kitchen?”

Just as I was about to tell him to go ahead and do it anyway, a gentle knock on the doorframe prompted us to separate immediately because dammit, habits were hard to break.

“Hey, it’s been half an hour. Have you guys made up yet?” Milagros popped her head in, looking from one flushed, well-kissed face to the other. “Okay, that’s a yes. So can I interest you in a taco, a joint, or both?”

We exchanged glances. “I’ve never—” he began.

“Had a taco?” Milagros supplied.

“How did you know?”

“Wild guess,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Well, you’re in for a mind-altering experience.”