Chapter 18 Achilles Come Down
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ACHILLES COME DOWN
HAZEL
My life is a literal joke. It’s a whirlwind, and I honestly have no idea what is happening anymore.
I stand in Zack’s kitchen with his little brother, and I watch as the two of them work to keep their interactions civil.
But coming from a foster home where I had to teach myself to be hidden and make sure I wasn’t in anyone’s way, I know when people are hiding shit.
And they were definitely hiding shit.
I distract myself by watching Zack cook.
He had joked the food might be “barely edible,” but the way he moves is careful—practiced—like he’s done this a thousand times.
The pasta water is salted correctly. The sauce is simmering at exactly the right temperature.
He chops basil with the quick precision of someone who knows exactly how sharp his knife is—like he knows how to use that knife in ways that would get him put on some sort of list. I tilt my head as his practically-silver eyes glance at me.
“Okay,” I say finally, pushing off the counter so I’m standing instead of swinging like a kid. “I need to know something.”
Zack looks up from the pan, one eyebrow raised, wooden spoon in hand. His brother glances at me, too, like he’s relieved someone else is breaking the tension.
“What do you want to know?” Zack asks.
“A lot,” I say, laughing because the alternative is letting the confusion swallow me whole.
His look is cutting, but he lets me continue.
“But let’s start simple. How do you know how to do…
literally everything? You cook, you fix things, you know all this random technical stuff.
You knew where to find me, and I know you did more regarding everything with Ley and Cameron. What is your job, actually?”
He freezes for a half second—again, so small most people wouldn’t notice, but I do. His brother looks away, suddenly fascinated by the spice rack.
Zack sighs, like he’s deciding whether to tell me the truth or put up another wall, and trust me, the guy is an impenetrable fortress. Then he sets the spoon down and leans back against the stove, mirroring the way I’d been leaning against the counter, a perfect black brow lifted.
“I’m a computer engineer,” he says. “That’s the official title, anyway.”
I narrow my eyes. “And the unofficial one?”
He huffs out a soft scoff, one that may be considered a laugh, knowing him how I do now. “Persistent, aren’t you?”
“You’ve been with me for days now. I’d think by now you’d know that I don’t take no for an answer.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. The words I know are swimming around in his disgustingly beautiful head are at the tip of his tongue, but he does something that shocks me: he turns around to stir the sauce and actually answers me.
“Okay,” Zack says. “Unofficially? I…solve problems. Digital ones, mostly.”
“That sounds suspicious,” I say.
“That was intentional.” He pushes a hand through his hair, suddenly looking younger, or maybe just more honest. “Look, I’ve been working with computers since I was a kid.
By the time I was twelve, I could take apart a system and put it back together blindfolded.
When I was fifteen, I started…exploring. ”
“Exploring?” I echo, trying not to smile at his careful word choice.
He gives me a look. “Yes, exploring. Networks, security, the kind of things I wasn’t supposed to be touching.”
“So, you were a hacker.”
His silence answers for him.
“You were?” I ask softly.
He hesitates. “I still dabble.”
I take that in slowly. “And you’ve been doing all this for…how long?”
“Twenty years,” he says. “Half my life, basically.”
The room goes quiet except for the soft simmering of the sauce.
I don’t feel scared. I don’t feel intimidated. If anything, something inside me clicks into place—like a puzzle piece that finally understands why it’s been the wrong shape in every foster home kitchen I’ve ever stood in.
“You could’ve just said that from the beginning,” I tell him.
“Most people don’t take it well,” he replies. “It tends to freak them out.”
“I grew up around people who hid knives under pillows,” I say with a shrug. “A guy who writes code and cooks decent pasta isn’t going to scare me.”
That makes him smile—really smile this time—warm and unguarded, like the tension in the room releases all at once. He’s got dimples? Jesus fuck, am I in trouble—and it seems like I’ve done something that seems almost impossible.
His brother looks between us, eyebrows raised, but for once he doesn’t seem annoyed. Just…relieved? It’s a weird feeling being in this kitchen with their little unit—I feel like an outsider.
“Now sit back down,” Zack adds, turning to stir the sauce again. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
And somehow, in this tiny kitchen filled with secrets and simmering pasta, I feel more at home than I ever have before.
I know I’m fitting myself into this dynamic, and I’m worried because I don’t know what I’m getting myself into at this point.
I do know, though, that I’m doing things that me ten years ago would’ve never thought possible.
I feel like that’s pretty poetic, and there’s no going back anymore.
Sitting around the table, we talk and laugh.
It feels so…normal. Like everything that has happened this past month wasn’t even real—like we are living in this safe little bubble.
And frankly for the first time in far too long, I feel joy.
Actual real happiness that fixed itself around me.
As if the universe knew that I was feeling this way, Sam excuses himself, and the bubble of safety we had around us vanished.
The quiet settles over us as Sam disappears down the hall, and I swear I feel the universe tugging at the edges of this fragile peace.
I poke aimlessly at a stray noodle on my plate, the warmth of the kitchen fading the longer Zack avoids looking at me.
Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t want the moment to die. I don’t want him to go back to being the lock-box version of himself, the guy with walls so tall I can only see the shadow of him behind them.
So of course, I ruin it.
“So,” I say lightly—too lightly—like I’m tiptoeing through a minefield and pretending it’s grass. I feel like I can’t give my sunshine right now, it’s too heavy. “Where exactly are we headed tomorrow? You said we’d get answers…about Leyla and Cameron.”
I lift my eyes and watch the shift happen in real time.
It’s like someone flips a switch inside him.
One second, he’s still that soft, almost smiling version of Zack—shoulders loose, fingers tapping the table like he’s thinking about music or code or something safe.
The next second, everything in him tightens.
Shoulders lock. Spine straightens. His jaw clenches so hard I see the muscle jump.
There he is. That fucking fortress again.
He doesn’t answer immediately, which is its own kind of answer.
“Hazel,” he says finally, his voice lower now, controlled in that way people get when they’re trying not to break something delicate. “We don’t have to talk about that tonight.”
But we do. God, we really do.
“We kind of do,” I say. “Because you’re the one who said we’re leaving at sunrise. And I’m not just blindly following you into…whatever this is. Not without knowing where we’re going or why.”
His eyes flick up. They’re steel again. Cold in a way that still somehow makes my chest hurt.
“I told you,” he says. “We’re checking a lead.”
“A lead on whether Leyla and Cameron are actually dead,” I say, softer.
Zack flinches, a momentary thing, but it’s his own language that I’m starting to understand.
And for a second, I think he’s going to open up—really open up, like he did earlier in the kitchen. But then he looks away. His hand curls in on itself on the table, knuckles whitening as he releases a slow measured breath.
“Hazel,” he says again, this time with that warning edge he gets when he’s trying to keep control. “Can we…not do this right now?”
I just want him to like me, to trust me. I lean forward, elbows on the table, ignoring the cold knot forming in my chest. “You can talk to me, you know. I’m not going to fall apart.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?” I push. “Because you keep doing this thing where you let me in for half a second, and then you slam the door shut. And I get it, I do. But I’m here, Zack. I’m trying. You don’t have to keep shutting me out.”
He finally looks at me. Really looks.
And the expression on his face isn’t anger. It isn’t annoyance.
It’s fear.
Not the panicked kind. Not the running kind. The deep kind. The kind that sits in your bones when you’ve already lost too much and can’t afford to lose more.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.
“You’re not,” I say, even though technically he kind of is.
His mouth pulls into a tight line. “Hazel. What we’re walking into tomorrow…it’s not something you can unsee. And it’s not something I want to drag you into any deeper.”
“But I’m already in it.”
He closes his eyes for half a second, like the truth physically pains him.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You are.”
His hands are shaking. Just a little, but enough.
I reach out, slow enough that he could pull away if he wants to—which he does; his hand flying off the table like my touch is a burning stove.
I swallow hard, pretending it doesn’t feel like a punch to the ribs as he fully shuts me out.
“Zack,” I whisper.
But he’s already retreating behind the walls again, shutters slamming down one by one, until I can practically hear the lock turning. His eyes close for a millisecond, as if just being around me is painful for him.
“This is how it has to be,” he says, his voice flat. Controlled. “For tonight, just…let it go.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. But something in my chest fractures. The bubble is gone—that little bit of warmth and light that was surrounding us—like the morning light that would bring the new day.
Just like that, I’m back in a kitchen where everyone is hiding something.
And Zack is a fortress again, staring down at his empty plate like it holds all the answers he refuses to give me.