Chapter Thirty-Three
As Allhan stretched out on his bed in the dark, he was back where he’d started earlier, but he felt like a different male. Again. He was really getting tired of transitions.
Too many of them. Way too fucking many.
Down in the living area, he heard Vishous and Jane talking in low voices. And then the door out into the promenade opened and closed. After that… silence. The kind that resonated into the center of his chest.
Or maybe that was his fucking guilt.
With the quiet pressing into him, he brought up his hand. His cell phone was attached to his palm, to the point where he wondered if he was going to have to have Doc Jane surgically remove it.
Hell, she could take his whole arm if she wanted to.
Seemed like not even a quarter of the penance that should be required of him. After that little pep talk from them? He felt even worse.
With a curse, he turned the phone over and checked the time.
“Don’t do it,” he told himself.
He was not in the right headspace at the moment. Certainly not living the right kind of life. Never the sort of person to do anything romantic—
The next thing he knew, the phone was up against his ear and ringing. And in the back of his mind, he wondered if maybe Denne had deliberately put in the wrong number. Like was a Meineke muffler shop going to answer? The Caldwell Public Library?
Dentist’s office.
Okay, that was stupid. All those human places would be closed now so the only thing he’d get would be voicemail—
“Hello.”
The sound of the female’s voice was like an instant reset, and he blinked stupidly in the darkness.
Then he released his breath in a rush. “Ah, hi. Hi. It’s me. Allhan? We met down by the river last night. And tonight, too. I was—”
Her chuckle was low, and, at least to his ears, sensual. Then again, she could have sneezed and he would still have thought it sounded better than any OnlyFans.
“Do you honestly think I don’t remember you?” she murmured.
“I…” He felt like it had been decades since he’d seen her. “I didn’t want to take for granted that you wouldn’t forget me.”
There was a long pause. So long that he had to worry she was rethinking the whole answer thing. Or giving her number to him in the first place.
“Oh, I don’t know, Al. Those kisses we shared were pretty unforgettable. And as I said, it was the first time I was somebody else’s maiden voyage, so to speak.”
He frowned. “You sound different.”
“Do I.”
“Yes. Are you home?”
As he waited for her to answer, his eyes roamed around the darkness of the bedroom. Though the space was finite, the fact that his eyes couldn’t translate its corners and confines into anything visual made him feel like he was floating in the night sky.
“I’m where I live,” she said eventually.
“Me, too.”
“And where’s that?”
Suddenly, he pictured the yellow Colonial up at street level, and the whole development of tidy houses. The staircase down underground. The promenade that brought him to this residence.
“Nowhere special.” Just the First Family’s sacred address, guarded by the Brotherhood. “You?”
“Same.”
He had to laugh. “Well, I think I am going to imagine you…”
“Where.” She sighed and there was a rustling as if she were moving around. “Where do you see me?”
“Hmmm. Let me think.” There was more shifting, and then a thump thump. “Are those your shoes? Boots, I mean?”
That chuckle of hers came again and made him see her smiling, a flush warming his skin under his clothes.
“Yup, those are boots. It’s been a long night, and it’s time for me to”—she grunted softly—“stretch out.”
“I’m lying on my bed, too.” He sat up in a rush. “Not in a weird way, though. Like, I didn’t call you because I was naked and expecting—”
“Don’t worry. I know you’re too much of a gentlemale for that.”
He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “I am. I swear.”
Or parts of him were. Oh, God. The double-life crap was killing him. Literally.
As he lay back down and fell silent, the quiet between them became as the contours of the room in the shadows, infinite, uncontaining, until he thought that they were both floating in the darkness.
“Is your light on?” he asked. “If you have one by your bed?”
“No, I’m in the dark.”
“Me, too.”
Allhan curled over onto his side, and put the phone under his ear. Closing his eyes, he listened to her soft breathing and thought that it was precious. She was precious. And not just because she was beautiful, and mysterious because she was a stranger, and…
Well, and also not because she was one hell of a kisser.
No, in this moment, she was precious because she dimmed the screaming in his head. For all the things that were eating him alive, she was powerful enough to calm the storm and settle his inner waters.
He had started his journey to this hell he had created driven by so many emotions: Anger, revenge, the need to protect his sister. And things had only gotten darker.
But in this silence, he found a measure of something he had never known.
Peace.
Denne knew she had to get off the phone. She had no right to encourage this male, not with everything that was going on for her. She needed to tell him that she was sorry to have led him on, that she was not right in the head, and that she wished him a good life.
Then she was going to kill the call, block him, and go to sleep.
So she’d be bright and fucking cheerful when she checked in at Sal’s at five—
“What do you do for work?” she asked.
Fuck.
“IT. Information technology, that is—but I’m sure you know what the initials stand for.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I don’t know how to do this.”
“Talk? You’re doing a pretty good job of it.”
“I’m nervous. Which is not a great look when you’re a guy trying to…”
“Trying to do what?” She heard her own voice get lower. Not in volume, tone. “What are you trying to do, Al?”
It was amazing how a person could tear in two and still remain in one piece: Half of her was all no-contact-no-involvement for so many reasons, but a deeper part of her was searching for exactly the kind of pull she felt now.
Unlike with everything else going on in her life… she wanted to be on this phone. She wanted to talk to him.
Al was signal, when she was surrounded by noise.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I want to impress you and I wish I had game. I should have paid more attention to the experts when I had the chance at the club.”
She thought about what he’d told her earlier, about the males who had been killed.
And she found herself wanting to know more, and not because she was morbidly curious.
She wanted to help in some way. But that was not the kind of thing you threw into a phone call.
Not unless you wanted to blow it up—also, what if Al got upset?
He could hang up and she wouldn’t know whether he was okay.
For some reason, she couldn’t live with that.
“Game is overrated, Al.”
That was when the sideways arrived. One moment, she was coloring inside the lines, recognizing that she was where she was, and he was a normal guy who deserved so much more than being led on by the likes of her.
The next, she was remembering the feel of his lips against her own, so tentative—until he got the hang of it.
And fuck, he was a quick learner.
“What do you do at Sal’s?” he asked.
That knife he’d deep-sixed, she thought. God, he’d saved her ass, hadn’t he.
“Just office work. I’m the manager, I guess you’d call it. Pay the bills, settle the accounts, approve the staff schedule. That kind of stuff.”
“That’s a nice job.”
“Yeah, I guess. So do you work on computers, like fixing them when they’re broken, or going inside of them?”
“I’ve never heard it put like that.” His laugh was soft, and she pictured him smiling in the moonlight even though he was indoors. “And I work inside them. I guess you could call me a hacker. AI hasn’t taken over all of the jobs, especially not with the systems I work with.”
“What systems are those?” Jesus, add a basket of bread and two beers and they were doing the date thing. “Do I even know what a system is?”
And t’On was worried about her having too much contact with the outside world? Fuck no, she had no clue what she was saying here. But it didn’t matter. She just liked hearing Al talk.
“I work with private networks, doing security and data analysis. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re an expert, aren’t you.” She laughed when he didn’t respond. “And I’m guessing you’re really smart.”
The next pause that followed made her think she’d offended him somehow. Hard to imagine how that was possible with a compliment, though.
“I used to think I was,” he said roughly. “There was a time when I thought I was the smartest male on the planet.”
“Not anymore?”
There was another stretch of quiet. “I grew out of that fallacy. Just because I can break into any network and get AI systems to mine for data patterns more efficiently than everybody else around me doesn’t mean I’m super intelligent.
It just means that I’m a machine, in a way.
A machine surrounded by people who are actually living their lives. ”
She thought of what she’d agreed to do for her parents. For the s’Hisbe.
“I know exactly what that feels like,” she whispered.
“You do?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want that for you.”
The image of him staring out over the river to that glass house came back to her.
She could picture every detail of his profile, the set of his body, the focus that stilled his breath and likely even his heart.
There had been great pain etched into his features, and it was clear that he would do anything to protect his sister, to the point of laying down his own life for her.
She felt the same way about her parents.
“You’re a male of worth, you know that.”
His voice cracked. “God, I wish that were true.”
“It is.”
“Well, I’ll say this, Denne. If there is ever anything I can do for you, just tell me what you need. Anything.”
The vow was both earnest and powerful, and it unlocked something inside of her: Even though Allhan was all but a stranger, he was different because… he made her feel different.
“Else,” she tacked on.
“I’m sorry?”
“Anything else. You’ve already helped me, haven’t you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said softly. “Not for that knife stuff.”
She shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. “I really do—”
“Oh, God,” he blurted. “I can’t get you out of my mind.
I think about you even when the world feels like it’s falling down around me.
I close my eyes and I’m back in that forest, staring into your eyes, seeing your face in the moonlight, watching the cold breeze move your hair.
I smell your scent, I hear your voice, I feel your presence.
And it’s the very best part of my night, my day, my hour, my minute—”
As the rush was cut off abruptly, Denne swallowed a curse and sat up. Then wondered if the connection had ended.
“Al? Hello?”
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I shouldn’t have said all that—”
“Yes,” she interrupted. “You should have.”
Fates save them both, but… she felt the same way about him.