Chapter 39
Upon returning to Portland, Varen decided it was time to move back into her own home.
After hiring a security team to sweep the room for bugs – of which they found two, one behind the TV and the other in a bedroom lamp – she hired a different company to start a bodyguard detail for both her and Nala.
So whenever Nala went to work, some guy in a black hoodie followed her.
The only saving grace was that her work cut back her hours and now left her more grateful than ever that she had Varen to take care of her for now.
I don’t have the mental ability to find a new job. I don’t have the time, either.
Varen worked for two days before announcing to her team that she was taking at least another week off.
While Nala was not there for the uprising that almost caused, she did hear Varen haggling new benefits to make up for her not being there.
“If it’s a dire emergency,” she told Andrew, “I will deal with it. Otherwise, don’t bother me. I have a very personal project that demands my attention right now, and I will be using all my work energy on it.”
Nala found out soon enough what that was.
It began with a single computer on the dining room table. Parts splayed across the surface, and when Nala asked, Varen simply told her she was building “a very powerful machine.” As someone who had no idea about that sort of thing, Nala left her to it.
Then another computer appeared. Then a high-powered laptop was unearthed from Varen’s bedroom closet. How many computers does this woman have? Nala had seen her work laptop plenty of times. She was always working on some code, answering emails, or surfing the web before bed.
Varen had three computers set up at the dining room table – banishing Nala to eat her meals on the couch – and a large, brightly lit box that she revealed was a security device.
Naturally, Nala assumed this was her security.
Soon enough, she found out that the box wasn’t meant to protect a damn thing at all.
The screens were almost always black, with green, white, and yellow typescript appearing whenever Varen touched her keyboard.
Sometimes, she had to get up and type on another computer.
Other times, she brought in the bodyguard and asked him to help with moving a large piece of equipment that was too big for Nala to help with.
What in the world is she doing? She said this was her big plan for taking down Ravenwood.
So far, all she saw Varen doing was working on a huge program to do…
something. I really wish I understood this shit.
Nala couldn’t help. She spent those first two nights on the couch, either playing video games or pretending to be fascinated with TV shows.
Yet whenever a commercial came on, she sat up, staring at the side of Varen’s head as she sat in a hoodie and jeans like she did every time she was home.
Sometimes she became so wound up in frustration that she ripped off the sweatshirt and kicked it across the room.
Nala had seen nerds explode before. Most of those nerds didn’t have toned arms or a billion-dollar company at their disposal.
So when Varen wanted to punch a hole in the wall because her project wasn’t going the way she wanted, she got up, went to the corner, and gave her punching bag a good one-two.
Then she would come back, sit down, and get back to work.
Leave her alone. When Varen was done for the night, she would go take a shower and pull her small laptop into bed for some “light research.”
Nala would cuddle next to her, ask her how she was doing, say something about herself, and go to sleep with a laptop glare in her face.
Sometimes she tried to help Varen relax.
Because, well, a girl had needs. So did Varen, surely, but either she was getting off in her shower or she had mastered the ability of completely turning off her libido for the time being. Jealous. Nala wished she could do that.
The only time she completely relaxed with Varen was when she put her laptop down early and welcomed Nala’s hand around her thigh.
She got something in return, but she had to mostly take care of herself when Varen wasn’t around.
One time she got so loud up in the bed while Varen was on her computers down below that she called up to Nala to please be quiet.
Nala yelled back at her to put on some headphones.
So she did. Heavy metal eked through the loft.
Heavy fucking metal.
Three days of this passed. Nala was the only reason Varen ate. She brought her takeout and homemade things like soup and wraps. Varen thanked her halfheartedly, her attentions so fully focused that Nala didn’t have a snowman’s chance in Miami of getting through to her.
Finally, one night she slumped on the couch, taking a breather and complaining about her wrists. Nala used the opportunity to crack through Varen’s addled brain.
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
She opened one eye and looked at Nala, beyond tired. “What? No. Why? Have you? Oh, God, Nala, don’t tell me this is when you reveal you have a kid somewhere.”
Nala stuck out her tongue. When that didn’t make Varen smile, she tried a different, simpler tactic. “You okay?”
Varen put a hand against her outer thigh. “I’m fine. Tired.”
“Do you want kids someday?”
She snorted. “Not right now, that’s for sure.”
“But… like…”
“It’s neither here nor there.”
Nala tilted her head as if she could read Varen any more than usual. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it? Should we talk about this?”
“Not right now we shouldn’t.”
Nala rolled her eyes. “Typical. Here we are, getting ready to take down the big baddie so we can ride off into the sunset. You go back to work. I go back to… I dunno. School? Another job?”
Sighing, she flung herself back against the couch.
“I had a pregnancy scare in my last relationship. He didn’t want to talk about it, and I had to deal with all of those emotions by myself until my period finally showed up. Made me think, you know? About if I wanted to be a mom one day. If I wanted to…”
Her voice trailed off, but her thoughts didn’t.
Varen held her gaze with two icy eyes. “Fine. The whole kid thing is a bit of a sore spot with me. I’ve never been pregnant, but I’ve got a history.”
“Why?”
It took Varen a while to respond. When she did, her hands were to herself, and she stared at the ceiling as if looking in Nala’s direction was suddenly the worst thing possible.
Oh, boy. Here we go. “Desirée was pregnant in the first few months of our relationship. We weren’t exclusive-exclusive. I was seeing another girl here and there, she had a casual boyfriend. Eventually, she tells me she’s pregnant, and the guy skips town.”
Varen shrugged. “I did a lot of soul-searching. Desirée wanted to keep it, even if it meant losing me too.”
“I see…”
“She had a miscarriage four months in.”
“I’m sorry.” What else could Nala say?
“I took it harder than she did, honestly. When she told me, I think she had already started moving on. We hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks because she went home to tell her family while I had to stay behind and work on a project. And, you know,
so I could think about our relationship and if I could be that person for her. It happened while she was there before she even had the chance to tell her mom.”
“Damn.”
“So by the time I found out… well, I had surprised her with a diamond ring. Fuck, that’s when I proposed to her. Right after she told me.”
Shit.
“I was still adjusting to the idea at the time. Here I was, still feeling like a kid even though I was older than my mom when she started having kids. I spent more time feeling nauseous with worry than I did focusing on my work.
When I was finally faced with either becoming a co-parent or losing Desirée, I realized nothing scared me anymore. I loved her. I wanted to be exclusive with her. I wanted to marry her.”
The scoff in Varen’s throat wasn’t out of disgust.
It was a call to the past through the air that reverberated here, then, and now.
“I knew it would be hard. I knew that I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved Desirée, and having a family with her seemed natural. I was in the mindset that I was going to be a parent and I would have to provide for my family… so I worked hard. Every day I thought about that kid.
I didn’t know if it would be a boy or a girl, but I knew it didn’t matter. It would be different either way, but I would love them no matter what… that’s what I felt in my heart.”
Nala pushed her body toward Varen’s. Their fingers entwined. “I’m sorry.”
“I guess I don’t deal with grief well. I will never know how Desirée felt about losing the baby, but she seemed to bounce back a lot easier, and she was the one carrying it. I had no physical stake in it. All I had was this image in my head and the words of my mother growing up.
When we talked about it later, I told Desirée I would like to try again when we were ready. We would do whatever it took to start a family together.”
“You’re a good person, Varen.”
She wrapped her arm around Nala, kissing the top of her head. “When you asked me that, all those emotions came back. You’ve got me thinking about those days.” She shook her head, mussed hair falling onto her shoulder. “Don’t mind me. I’ve been thinking way too much lately.”
“What are you working on over there?”
Varen glanced at her setup on the dining room table. “Do you want to see?”
“Sure.” Nala wasn’t sure she would understand it, but she was willing to try.
They got up, Nala still thinking about Varen’s past.
I didn’t know Desirée had been pregnant and miscarried.
No wonder Varen was so attached to her and grieving so hard after so long.
First, she lost a child who never had the chance to be born, and then she lost the mother, the woman she loved and wanted to make her wife.
Nala still thought of these things as she stood behind the dining room chair and looked at a screen covered in white numbers and words.
“Is this some sort of program you’ve been writing nonstop?”