At Any Price(31)
I hesitated, as I often had since I’d done so horribly on the MCAT the previous year. Since that afternoon when I’d stared at those results, slowly watching my dream twist down the drain in a whirlpool of suck. I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. “An oncologist.”
He tilted his head towards me, focusing his attention. “Really. Hard stuff. That would take a special kind of strength to deal with cancer patients all day.”
“Cancer is a bitch that needs to get the crap smacked out of it. I intend to stand on the front lines with a big-ass bat.”
He watched my fist clench on the tabletop. “Sounds like it’s very personal to you.”
I took another sip of wine, studied his strong hand resting on the table next to his dinner plate. “It is. My mom had it.”
“She’s okay now?”
I nodded. For the moment. But as close as I came to losing her, there was always the specter of recurrence hovering near. Were it not for her regular inoculation therapy, that specter would be more than just a wispy ghost. But she’d been telling me for months that she didn’t have the money to keep going in and getting treatments. The possibility that she might consider forgoing them entirely almost paralyzed me with fear.
I lifted my eyes to his. They penetrated like arrows.
“That must have been rough on all of you.”
“It’s just us. Me and her. I’m an only child and I have no idea who my father is, nor do I care.”
His expression didn’t change. He didn’t even move. “So Strong is your mother’s name?”
Another sip. “Yep. She’s both my mom and my dad. And she’s done a pretty good job of it, I’d say.”
“I agree.”
“You don’t even know anything about me.”
“I’ve read your blog.” He looked away with a shrug.
I gazed at him with suspicion. “So just how regular of a reader are you?”
An enigmatic smile hovered on his mouth.
“C’mon. Spill it, Drake. How long have you been reading?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, a year or so.”
“A year?”
He nodded while gazing at the ceiling. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“Because you were already freaked out enough when you found out who I was. I wasn’t going to add fuel to that fire.”
“Shit. Then you know a whole lot more about me than I know about you. You asked me questions like you didn’t.”
“How else was I going to get you to open up?”
“And here I thought you were just interested in opening me up in another way.”
At that precise moment, the sommelier appeared to pour us more wine. I blushed crimson, horrified, knowing he’d heard what I said. Adam laced his hands together in front of his face, suppressing his laughter behind them. I shot him a dirty look, which only served to increase his amusement. My eyes narrowed.
“Very funny.” I said, once he left.
He pulled his hands away from his mouth. “Yes, it was, actually. I couldn’t care less about his reaction, but the mortification on your face was hilarious.”
“It’s your turn now. Cough it all up.”
His brows knit. “Cough what up?”
“The goods. Come on. I signed the NDA. It’s not going on the front page.”
He took a deep draught of his wine—the same glass he’d been nursing all night. “What do you want to know?”
I asked him what I’d been wondering earlier. “Why’d you quit college?”
He seemed surprised that I knew that. It was on his Wikipedia page, after all. He’d dropped out after his first year at Caltech. “I wasn’t learning anything new.”
Well, well. He was a boy genius after all. Had I expected any other kind of answer? He cleared his throat and continued. “Sony offered me a lot of money to work for them.”
“They couldn’t wait a few years?”
“Apparently not. I didn’t work for them long, anyway. I quickly learned that the only boss I cared to answer to was me.”
I studied him. So he had issues with authority—professors, bosses. But he’d been a model citizen, no records of arrests or juvenile delinquency. He’d likely had a strong family to guide him.
“Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Did you have a big family?”
He grinned. “That’s a lot of questions.”
I shot him a sweet smile. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“True enough. I was born in Pasadena. I lived in Washington State until my early teens, then came back to California to live with my uncle in OC.”