Chapter 16
Sadie
The train is almost empty when I head back into the city.
Even though my mom clearly doesn’t love Jake, she’s been with him for a reason, and I’ve just rained a load of extra problems down on her head.
She’s made so many sacrifices to give me a decent upbringing.
Maybe if they don’t fire me when I come clean about my degree and I press on with software, I could support us both.
Still, the thought of her having to do some sleuthing with people in the projects …
ugh. She always taught me to keep my head down and not go poking around.
When I leave the station, I hitch the weight of my backpack farther up my back.
I picked up as many extra books from my mom’s that I could fit in, including my old set of The Lord of the Rings with the fold-out maps my mom found at a garage sale.
The streets are dark and sultry with the late-night heat of the summer.
I hope James has gone to bed. I’m not sure I could fend off a load of questions tonight, and he has an uncanny knack of getting me to spill all my secrets.
The apartment is in darkness when I let myself in through the front door, and I pad through to the open-plan kitchen for some water.
“Good night with your mom?” a voice asks from the shadows.
“Arrghh!” I almost jump out of my skin.
“Sorry, sorry,” James says, and I can just make out his head and curls above the back of the couch from the light coming in from the windows behind him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I press my hand to my thumping heart. “What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”
“Thinking. I started on a sci-fi marathon with Mr. Karen, Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two, but I don’t think he was too impressed with the gigantic worms.”
Grabbing a glass from the cupboard, I fill it from the tap and then walk over to where he’s slumped on the couch. I can just make out the shape of a bottle and another drink on the coffee table as I lower myself beside him and set mine down.
“What time did you get home?” I say.
“A couple of hours ago. I’m really sorry about how drunk I was yesterday,” he adds quietly.
“Gah, don’t be. You’re allowed to let off steam every now and again. Sounds like Jane was trying to impose all sorts of stuff on you. It’s your life.”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding.
I glance at my watch—11 p.m. My eyes scud over the bottle and his drink. “Rough day?”
He lets out a long sigh and then leans over and turns on the light on the side table. His face is pale.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” he mumbles, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees, then rubbing his eyes behind his glasses.
“Cut out for what?”
“Leading a team.”
A hoarse laugh catches in the back of my throat. He’s joking, isn’t he?
“I completely lost my temper with a couple of the guys today. They’ve implemented something that’s fucked up a whole load of the software.
I don’t know why they wrote it the way they did.
Maybe they misunderstood. Perhaps they weren’t briefed correctly.
Whatever. It’s going to make us late on delivery and …
I don’t want to deliver an important upgrade late, right after I take over the team.
” He glances over his shoulder at me. “Christ, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. ”
“How about we have a pact that what gets discussed in the apartment stays in the apartment?”
His eyes flicker over my face. “Sounds sensible.”
The fridge in the kitchen clicks and hums in the quiet, and for a staticky beat, I imagine having a nice, easy, fridge-life.
The girl’s code pulls in air, cools it, and pumps it out again, as she hums to herself.
“Des always seemed to handle things with the team so graciously,” he adds, leaning back next to me against the cushions again.
I snort. “He was always losing his temper, James.”
“But most of the time he didn’t. I mean, he was lively and excitable but …
” He trails off. “I stayed late to dig into how bad this problem might be and how much time it might take us to put it right. It’s weeks of work.
And I’ll need to do it, because no one else understands the low-level language in the phones like I do. ”
“Shit.”
He shakes his head, picks up his glass from the table, and takes a sip.
“Can’t you teach some of us, James?” I add. “You can’t run interference on the software alongside running the team and the company as well when Jo goes on maternity leave.”
“I know. But it’s a huge job to bring everyone up to speed.”
“I’d be happy to learn.”
His eyes slide toward me, and he gives me a half smile.
“I love working at Williams Security,” I say. “I’d work on anything you wanted me to.”
He stretches out his hand and takes hold of mine, giving it a gentle squeeze before putting our hands together on his thigh, and I stare down at my hand under his.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re amazing?” he says.
No. I don’t think so, except perhaps my mom, and she’s biased.
“I know it doesn’t solve the problem, but …
” I trail off as I shift back so I’m leaning against the back of the couch like he is.
I can’t put any space between us because my hand is still locked beneath his, so I’m tucked along his side, his smooth palm on the back of my hand.
hand. His thigh is rock hard, and every inch of him is touching me from shoulder to elbow.
I’ve never sat so close to James, pressed into him like this.
I suck in a deep breath as he squeezes my fingers.
“It’s helpful to chat about it,” he says.
My heart flutters like a trapped bird. Maybe I’m not totally useless in this fancy-ass downtown apartment. I’m not sure I’m helping with whatever’s going on with him and Jane, but perhaps I can contribute more to the company and listen to him talk.
“How were things with your mom?” he adds.
Crap. He’s just told me about his problems with work and … and … my eyes start to go tight, and I blink rapidly at the bottle on the table.
“Uh …”
“Was your stepdad there?” he adds.
I shake my head. “He’s an asshole,” I say.
“He seemed like one when I met him, if I’m being honest. And after that, too.” His eyes skim over my cheek. The bruise has all but gone now.
But even though Jake is an asshole, he’s pretty harmless compared to a lot of the people in the projects.
People who live ordered lives with kind people around them—who aren’t sick or broke or shut out by a lack of qualifications—don’t really get it.
Don’t understand what it’s like to spend every day paddling like crazy just to keep things from sliding farther downhill.
It’s funny what you become used to, what slowly starts to feel normal.
Jake’s inappropriate comments, his laziness, and the way he uses our money, all feel normal to me.
It’s only now that I’m away from it that I can see how wrong it is.
Did I do the right thing telling my mom that he touched me? I’ve got a terrible feeling I didn’t.
“Sadie?”
James squeezes my hand, and I turn to look at him. His face is turned toward me, long dark lashes fringing his eyes behind his glasses. Even in the dim light, I can see that they’re not a continuous blue; they’re full of different patterns like a lattice: a pale ring around his pupil.
He tilts his head. “Would it be inappropriate to give you a hug?”
What?
“N-n-n-no.”
Before I can say anything else—like Are you crazy?
—his arms come up and wrap around my shoulders.
I lift my hands and rest them on his back.
It’s meant to be friendly, but my body is off and running.
He’s solid and warm and so real, heart beating against mine as his chest presses into me and then retreats as he breathes in and out.
With my nose pressed into his shoulder, all I can smell is clean soap and pine.
And I slowly melt into him. You’re supposed to be saving his life, remember? Can a hug do that?
“I’m sorry about your stepdad,” he mumbles, and a gust of air whispers across the top of my head. “I’m really glad you’re here. Thanks for being an awesome listener.”
The girl’s code winds golden strands around the boy and girl, binding them together.
He pulls back. “You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to with me, Sadie. Okay? But I’m happy to listen if you ever want to talk.”
“Same,” I say, “and thank you.” The space he gives me to be myself makes me feel as light as air.
I’m more myself now that I’m not living with Jake running me down and getting in my head.
I’m opening up like I’ve escaped from under a rock.
I could never tell a guy like James Royce about how I grew up—he already knows too much about Jake—but just the idea of having someone to talk to? I appreciate that more than I can say.
The warmth of him pressing into me lingers as he stands and stretches then picks up his glass from the table.
“I need to go to bed,” he mumbles.
“Yeah. Me too.”
He puts his glass in the kitchen sink and then hesitates in the entrance to the corridor, then gives me a tired lopsided smile. “Night, Sadie.”
“Night, James.”
I wait until his bedroom door clicks shut before I move.
How much would I have liked that hug to mean something else?
It made me feel safe, but my heart is still thumping and I can feel the sharp thrill in my bloodstream.
For a second there I forgot who we are and how carefully I’ve been pushing the attraction away.
The apartment settles around me, all soft hums and shadows.
I rinse my glass and stand at the sink, watching the water run over my hands.
Beyond the window, the city stretches out in a scatter of lights, and my reflection floats faintly over it, half there, half not, like I’m still learning how to take up space.
Everything feels precarious. My mom. Jake. My job. The lie I’m carrying like a stone in my pocket. One wrong move and it could all come tumbling down.
But beneath that, there’s something else. The strange relief of being seen, even if it’s just a little. Of sitting with someone in the dark and not having to explain myself. Of giving and receiving.
I pad down the hall and close my bedroom door.
Tomorrow I’ll have to face all the problems again, but tonight, for the first time in a long while, I feel a little looser.
I hope James feels that, too. And as I slide under the sheets, the city breathing outside the window, I realize that for the first time I don’t feel like I’m just surviving.
And that feels like the start of something new.