I’d often laid awake at night and wondered what he might have been like if not for that war, for that woman. But I’ve come to realize that the kind of violence he showed me was something that came from inside of him. It was there no matter what happened to him. Without the war, without the woman, it might have been worse. He might have targeted us all instead of just me.
David shifted, reaching down to adjust one of his legs.
Two broken people. I couldn’t imagine a statement that could be truer.
“Can I ask you something personal?”
“I think we’re beyond the point of having to ask such a thing. What do you want to know?”
“Why aren’t you married? Or why don’t you have a girlfriend at least? You’re a fairly good looking guy.”
He laughed. “Only fairly?”
“Maybe a little more than fairly.”
“But not as buff and sexy as my brother.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I see the way women look at him.”
“He’s not married either.”
“No.” David grew quiet for a second. “His fiancée was killed in Afghanistan.”
“Really?” I sat up a little so I could see his face. There was honest grief in his eyes that spoke more of his relationship with his brother than anything he could ever say.
“She was CIA and they were on some mission together, doing some sort of research on a corrupt politician, when they got separated. He never saw her again and the government declared her dead after a quiet—but thorough—investigation.”
“That’s sad.”
David nodded. “Sadder than what happened to my fiancée.”
“And that is?”
“She couldn’t handle this.” He slapped his hand against his dead thigh. “She came to Austin right after the accident and waited until the doctors brought me out of the medically induced coma they’d put me in. Then she told me she couldn’t spend the rest of her life with an invalid.”
“Wow! What a bitch!”
David laughed, but it was a sad laugh that had little humor in it.
“Yeah, well,” he said, “that was when the doctors thought I’d severed my spinal cord. After Ash arrived and insisted on bringing me back to Los Angeles where he knew doctors were doing incredible things with spinal injuries, it was discovered that my spinal cord was intact. I just had inflammation that was pinching off certain parts of it, causing the paralysis. I called her, told her what they’d said, but she had already moved on. She got married to some dentist while I was still in the hospital.”
I touched his face and let my fingers linger on his jaw. “She didn’t deserve you.”
“Maybe.”
“Can you imagine what it would have been like if you’d married her before the accident? You’d have been destined to either a life of resentment or a nasty divorce.”
“I suppose.”
“No doubt about it. This accident saved you from misery.”
He snorted. “That’s an interesting take on the whole thing.”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you? And you don’t have an ungrateful wife tearing you down. I think that’s a win-win.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
I kissed him lightly against the lips. “One thing you should know about me…I’m always right.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to remember that.”
I kissed him again, my lips lingering on his. Then I settled back down against his chest.
“What did you do for the FBI?”
He took a deep breath, the movement moving my head as if I was lying on a waterbed or something.
“Mostly reviewing information, writing reports. That sort of thing.”
“Then how do you know so much about me and the other hackers I used to work with?”
“I started out in the cybercrimes division. But it didn’t last long.”
“Why?”
“I was good at it. My supervisors were concerned I might get in over my head.”
“Or they were afraid you’d do something they couldn’t control.”
“More than likely.”
“Were you involved in taking any of us down? We had a lot of people arrested there toward the end.”
“Was that why you went legit?”
I shrugged, the memory of that time suddenly stronger than I would have liked. I’d pushed all that away, determined to always look forward, but I had to admit, there had been times when I couldn’t avoid it. Usually late at night when there was nothing to occupy my mind but my regrets…and David was a huge part of those regrets.
“I had lots of reasons.”