Chapter 32
Will
I stood outside the data center security checkpoint at exactly eight p.m., watching employees stream through as their shifts ended. The adrenaline had faded from my mad dash to get the cameras back online within the maintenance window, but my brain was still racing.
How many times had I already told myself no one would suspect anything? It had only been a half-hour, but the contingency plan continued cycling in my brain: If anyone noticed the brief outage, you’ll confess you disconnected the feeds to make out with your wife. Ronnie will back you up.
I couldn’t shake the image of pressing Brie against the server rack. The hunger in her kiss, the way she’d hooked her leg around mine. For a moment, it hadn’t felt like cover at all. It had felt like—
Focus, Will. One crisis at a time.
I pulled out my phone and texted her on the Mnemis app: Where are you?
As if summoned by my message, Brie appeared around the corner from The Bridge corridor. She moved with a new confidence, which I barely recognized in her.
She tapped her badge at the security exit and joined me.
I took her hand and leaned close, whispering in her ear.
“We need to go back to our room before we eat. I need to talk to you.” I pulled back slightly, maintaining the intimate proximity.
“Smile like I just whispered something sexy to my new wife—it’ll go with our cover of making out in the server room. ”
A small giggle escaped her, and she managed a convincing smile for anyone watching.
I hurried her through the corridors toward the Reef. Once inside our room, I spun her to face me. “What did Claire say?”
“She wasn’t even in The Bridge when I got back.” A frustrated frown crossed her face. “I was relieved I didn’t have to make excuses, but apparently no one’s seen her since she left the Atlantic server area.”
“That’s odd,” I said, unease prickling at me. “Ronnie said she was furious. Where would she go?”
“No idea, but…” Brie’s eyes lit up, and she pulled me toward the white noise machine.
“Not only did I find the photos of Scarlett, but I found an email about Dad. A trail about someone depositing fifty thousand dollars into his account before his arrest.” She tossed her phone onto the desk.
“And there were dozens of other files. I got some uploaded, but I barely scratched the surface of what’s hidden on their server. ”
“You need to be more careful next time.” I looked her square in the eyes, just as I had to pull her away from the KVM.
How many times had she gotten so deep into a problem that she needed a physical reminder of reality?
“If security had caught you accessing those files, that’s as far as it would have gotten.
We’d be done. You’d have seen the information, and we’d have little to no evidence. ”
“But they didn’t catch me,” she said, tapping a finger against my chest. “Because you were there.”
Something in her posture shifted. The excitement about the mission mixed with something softer, her eyes holding mine a beat too long.
She shifted her pointed finger on my chest to her whole palm.
We’d been in these close quarters for five days now, dancing around what had happened on the beach, pretending nothing had changed.
The kiss we’d shared in the server room told me that everything had changed.
And I was done ignoring it.
“Brie.” I stepped closer. “The kiss—”
“Was an effective cover.” She said the words too quickly, as though she’d been repeating them to herself. But she didn’t remove her hand from my chest.
“Was it?” I closed my fingers around her hand, surprised when she let me after all the time she’d spent avoiding me in private. “Because it didn’t feel that way to me.”
Her eyes searched mine, uncertainty flickering across her features.
Outside these walls, we played the adorable couple; inside them, we’d maintained the careful fiction of friendship, tiptoeing around the electricity that sparked between us whenever we got too close.
“You would have done the same with Ashley if she hadn’t broken her arm. ”
“That would have been for cover.”
“Will—” Her voice hitched, brows drawing down.
“I’ve been thinking about this for days,” I said softly, moving another step closer. “About us. About what we could have if we stopped running from it.”
She didn’t step back, but a war raged in her eyes—want battling fear.
“The truth is…” I dropped my voice as I pulled her hand down to place it on my hip. “I want to kiss you again. Not for the mission. Not because someone might be watching. Because I’ve wanted to for years.”
For a heartbeat, we stood frozen, my words hanging between us. Then suddenly we were moving toward each other at the same time.
Our lips found each other. It wasn’t the calculated kiss on the beach or the urgent cover in the server room. This was years of suppressed longing finally breaking free. Her hands traveled around my lower back as she pulled me closer.
She made the same sound against my lips as she had on the beach. The whimper—full of hunger and desperation—went straight to my cock.
Brie wanted this. It was so clear.
My fingers found their way to the lower rim of her glasses, pushing them up onto her head, and I backed her against the wall.
Her hands fisted in my shirt as if she couldn’t get close enough. The taste of her, the feel of her curves pressed against me, the way she responded to every touch—it was everything I’d dreamed and more.
But then something changed. Her grip loosened, and I knew her fears were creeping in. Her kisses became tentative, and though her body still strained toward mine, her brain was pulling back.
She broke the kiss slowly, her forehead resting against mine.
“No,” she whispered between labored breaths. Was that to me or to herself? “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?” I stepped back only enough to see her clearly, keeping my voice soft. My dick urged me forward, protesting at the loss of contact. “You want it, too. I know you do.”
She slid slowly along the wall, out of my grip, her face contorting as though in pain. She wrapped her arms around herself, creating a barrier between us. “Because it’s a terrible idea. We’ve been through this before, Will. We know exactly how this ends.”
“We were kids.” The memory of her sneaking out of my workshop surfaced—her embarrassment when my mother showed up, her refusal to look at me, the weeks of awkward silence that followed.
“Nineteen isn’t kids!”
“We were virgins, Brie. It’s normal to be awkward after your first time.”
“No, we were stupid!” She threw her hands up sharply, her voice rising. “We thought it wouldn’t change anything, but it did, and it almost broke us apart.”
“Brie, keep it down.” I glanced at the door, imagining people listening in. “These walls aren’t exactly soundproof.”
She ignored me, her voice climbing another notch.
“Every change in my life has led to pain. Every. Single. One. My father goes to prison—my entire life is destroyed. We move to Halifax—I become the traitor’s daughter that no one wants to talk to.
You go to London—I spend a year alone, without you. Shawn leaves me—”
“Your life wasn’t destroyed,” I countered, making a quieting gesture. “And if your family hadn’t moved to Halifax, we never would have met.”
She rolled her eyes, her hands cutting through the air. “Oh, great argument. One good thing amid a lifetime of loss.”
“It’s more than that.” I moved closer, trying to catch her arm as she began pacing again, but she sidestepped me. “Think about what you’ve accomplished here. You hacked into a system you thought was impenetrable. You gathered intelligence no one else could. That’s change, too.”
“I was forced into this job!” Her voice cracked. “Another unwelcome change!”
“Brie, please,” I urged, “keep your voice down. We don’t need the entire data center knowing our business.”
“Why not?” She gave a harsh laugh and sank onto the bed, her voice dying down. “All married couples argue, don’t they? Adds some authenticity.”
I knelt in front of her, taking her hand, trying to find the moment we’d had against the wall.
“You should understand better than anyone,” she said, holding my hand instead of yanking it away. “First your dad, then you find out about your mom. You essentially lost both of your parents at once. You had to leave everything behind to take care of her.”
The words struck deep, finding the raw places I’d been tamping down for the past year.
She’d aimed for maximum impact and found it. “Tell me change isn’t poison.”
“Yes, all those things happened,” I said quietly. “But what if I hadn’t found out about Mum yet? What if she’d been alone, confused, forgetting to eat or take her medications? You can’t just wait around and hope things will go back to the way they were. Change happens, Brie. That’s how we grow.”
She shook her head fiercely. “You weren’t there when I needed you. When Shawn left me, I had no one.”
As much as I’d wanted to tell her the breakup was for the best, I was there for her.
“I was on video calls with you every night for three straight weeks. I listened while you cried. I told you that you deserved someone who valued you properly, who saw how incredible you are.” I remembered her tear-stained face on our call after it happened.
And how much I’d wanted to reach through the screen to hold her.
“And then you didn’t speak to me for three days. ”
Her eyes glistened, but no tears fell. It had always taken a lot for her to cry. No doubt, years of Evelyn’s influence. “Because you were talking about my relationship like you understood it, when you weren’t even—”
“I understood enough to know he was wrong for you,” I interrupted, my voice rising despite my earlier caution. “Just like I understand that right now, you’re letting fear keep you from something that could be incredible between us.”
For a moment, she stared at me, and I could almost see the calculations running behind her eyes, the same way she processed code and algorithms. Her walls slammed back into place.
“We agreed, Will.” She slipped her hand out of mine and crossed to the desk, grabbing her phone with shaking fingers. Her voice was flat, final. “We agreed it was a mistake and it could never happen again.”
“No, Brie.” I remained crouched in front of the bed, barely able to look at her.
Some piece of me, deep inside, wanted to lash out.
Wanted to point out how every one of her boyfriends had sucked up to me at first, then warned me to stay away from her.
Wanted to tell her how work was the only thing that got me through the past year, because she was always on the video calls.
Wanted to tell her to stop being so fucking scared.
But all I had in the end was the truth. “You decided it was a mistake. You made me choose: friendship or nothing.”
She stood frozen, her mouth falling open. Was this honestly a surprise to her? Did she not remember how everything had happened?
Instead of answering, she turned and left.