Chapter Thirty-Seven
Thirty-seven
My first thought as the figure moves toward me is whether I can fight. But it’s Dane, wet hair plastered to his head. His eyes are dark and wide, and he’s panting. He looks absolutely feral.
Despite everything, the broken trust and the betrayal, I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful.
“Are you supposed to be out of the hospital?” I ask.
“Are you supposed to be driving with that cast?” he counters.
“No, and she’s on pain meds and not supposed to operate heavy machinery,” Luca yells unhelpfully from where he and Xhan are watching from the open door to the house.
Dane gives a small shake of his head and sags back against the open door of the car he arrived in, taking the weight off his leg. Water streams down his face, dripping off his fingers.
“God, this rain!” A young woman with short pink hair and a heavy Spanish accent hurries around the side of the car.
She is trying to cover her head from the rain with her purse and failing.
She sees me and yells, “Zoe! I am so glad to meet you finally! I’m Araceli.
Dane, get in the house. Both of you! Get inside!
” She runs toward the house to join Luca and Xhan in the doorway, protected from the rain by a small overhang.
Dane ignores her and takes a wobbly step toward me, using my open car door to stabilize himself. He reaches out and brushes away a rivulet of water from my cheek with his thumb. As far as getting water off me, it’s ineffectual, but the gesture is tender. It makes everything in me jump and hum.
“Have I interrupted your getaway?” he says. There’s delight on his face in his raised eyebrows and smile that I think he’s trying to suppress.
I want him to know how angry I am, but this isn’t the place to do that. So I nod. “I was going to burn rubber as soon as I could figure out how to close the car door with these dumb splints.”
He smiles fully, and we stare at each other for a long, stupid moment. I can’t not drink him in.
“Please come inside, you guys,” Araceli calls, hugging herself against the cold. “It’s not good to get your plasters and bandages wet like this! I’m going to have to drive you back to the hospital, and they’re already pissed at us as it is. Luca, help me get them inside.”
Luca doesn’t move.
Dane looks at them and then back at me. He doesn’t say anything, and I know he’s leaving it up to me. But I also sense he isn’t going in the house alone.
I hesitate. I don’t want him thinking that discharging himself from the hospital and showing up here in the rain mean I forgive him.
But if we’re going to talk, we can’t do it like this.
I grumble, “Fine.” As soon as I start to clamber out of the car, Dane reaches to help and Luca spurs into motion, racing down the short stairs to assist both of us.
We are a wet, limping pile as we stumble into the house.
Xhan has towels ready for us. “Idiots.” She helps me out of Luca’s raincoat, and Araceli tries to help Dane, but he shrugs her off, making it difficult for her to towel him.
“You both need to get out of those wet clothes,” she says in a stern tone.
“We’ll leave,” Xhan says, handing Luca’s raincoat to him, who nods his agreement. “Okay? We’re leaving. Give you some privacy to talk.”
She grabs Araceli, and the three of them leave the house, running through the rain to the car Dane and Araceli arrived in. Once they’re gone, it’s utterly quiet, except for the hushed beat of the rain on the roof. I don’t know what to say, but I’m pretty sure Dane needs to start talking.
He gives me a sheepish look. “I might need help getting out of these pants.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure you do.”
He turns to limp down the hall, and he looks so pitiful hanging on to the wall for support that I’m forced to take his arm.
We hobble into my room, and I get out shorts and a T-shirt from the drawer with his clothes and put them on the bed.
I start to help him out of his soaked shirt, but it’s a struggle for me, and I give up.
“Thank you,” he says softly, even though I did nothing. He pulls off his shirt, and the sight of him bare chested does that dry-mouth thing to me. I avert my gaze. I don’t need that distraction while I’m deciding how to feel.
He unbuttons his sodden pants and shoves them down his thighs. I do suck in my breath, but it’s because his thigh is a bandaged mess. He stands in front of me in boxer briefs, and I do my best to keep my eyes on the bandage.
“I’m fine,” he says. “The surgery was minor.”
“You probably need that changed,” I say.
He shakes his head, and when I hand him the shorts, he waves those away too. He braces his wounded leg on the bed and reaches out to help take my shirt off. I allow it because it’s so difficult to get the shirt off around the cast.
Then my leggings, which are trickier because they’re molded to my skin.
“Lie down and I’ll pull them off,” he says. I get on the bed, and he begins easing them down my legs.
“It feels like you planned this,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I called the weather and asked it to send torrents of rain so I could peel wet clothes off you.”
“And so you could get into bed with me, pretty much naked,” I point out.
He shrugs. “It was a buy one, get one free.”
I shake my head to avoid laughing, which I know he wants. His expression smooths out, the smile disappearing from his eyes. He pulls back the covers and gestures for me to get in.
“I can’t,” I say. The hurt slides back in like a heavy fog.
He takes in a deep breath. Looks at his feet, like he’s centering himself.
“Zoe. First things first. I was never, ever going to bring you to meet ProtoDark. Ever. Yes, that was the deal at the start. But things changed.” His eyes are full of emotion.
He opens his mouth to continue but can’t. He shuts it.
“What things changed?” I prompt. I cross my arms over my chest and try to forget I’m standing here in my bra.
He doesn’t answer, like he’s trying to work out how to say it. “You. The way I felt about you.”
“And what did you think would happen when you told me the truth?” I resist succumbing to the pleasure deep in my middle at his words. Feeling some way about me doesn’t erase that he agreed to do it.
He shakes his head, his face devastated. “This. You standing here, unable to get in a warm, dry bed with me because you’re hurt. Because I hurt you. It was the worst feeling in the world watching you realize it in that cottage. And it’s even worse now.”
“It’s not so hot feeling it on my end either.”
He looks miserable. I want to absolve him. I want to reach out a hand and cup his jaw and kiss him and let that be my response. But that will do neither of us any favors.
“I don’t have a lot of people in my life who I can trust,” I say.
He blinks. “I know.”
“So you agree to bring me to ProtoDark,” I say, and he winces at this continued questioning, but I’m not letting it go. I can’t. “And then you meet me in Madrid.”
“Right. I went to find you at your conference session, and then Howland showed up, and he made it so easy.”
I think about how he persuaded me to get on the train by sharing the story of that woman at Georgetown who played the Enigma Challenge.
“Was the story about the professor who was deleted true?” I ask. “The one who was fired because no one believed that she hadn’t falsified her degrees since there was no record?”
“Everything I’ve told you is true. It’s what I omitted that was the problem.”
“What else have you omitted?”
“Nothing else.” He limps over to me and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “I’ve told you the bad things I’ve done.” He meets my eyes. “Most of it, anyway, but the things that count. There’s nothing else important.”
I sigh. I’m cold, and that bed is looking better by the second. I cave and move to get in, but when he starts to climb in beside me, I hold up a hand. “No. Stay there.”
He halts and stands by the bed. “I was attracted to you in Madrid, but after that I was a goner. I saw how smart you are, how much I liked being around you. Talking to you. Sleeping next to you every night…there was no way I could survive that unscathed.” His voice cracks on the last word.
“So an unattractive, unintelligent person in her own room would have been okay to turn over to ProtoDark?”
“No, of course not,” he says in a chastened tone.
“And then?”
“By the time we arrived in Paris, I knew I was fucked because I was so into you and there was zero way I was turning you over. I didn’t know how to tell you that they’d approached me to begin with.
I’ve spent every moment since trying to decide how and when to tell you.
And then when Allard took you on the trail to Loch na Sealga, not only were you physically hurt but I’d caused you an entirely different sort of pain.
” He shakes his head. “I can’t believe I let it get that far. ”
I try to think about what I would have done if he’d told me in Barcelona or Paris or even Edinburgh. Would I have walked away from him? The reality is I might not have—because I wouldn’t have wanted to.
“I wish you had trusted me enough to tell me,” I said. “We could have avoided all of this. But now I don’t know if I can let it go.”
He looks truly miserable. “You’re right. I should have trusted you earlier. You had to trust me the whole way through this, and I didn’t do the same. So I get it if you…” His voice breaks. “I get it if you don’t want this. Us.”
I hear—and worse, feel—the pain in his words and eyes as he realizes what his omission cost him. He looks so miserable, and I can see goose bumps on his skin because he’s standing there in his underwear, freezing.
I pull back the covers. “I’m not deciding anything, but get in.”
He hobbles over and eases himself down onto the bed. He takes care not to touch me, and I appreciate it.
“It’s a big ask for me to believe you,” I tell him.
“I know. I know it is.”
We are quiet. I’m trying to decide if the hurt is worth hanging on to.