She had to trust him, the same way he’d trusted her.
Maya dragged in a shuddering breath and scrubbed tears from her cheeks. “You did pretty good with the truth.”
“I don’t usually,” Ava admitted. Then, surprisingly, she smiled wryly. “If you’d like to hear something soothing … So far Gray has handled this better than I did. He hasn’t kidnapped anyone that I know of. Perhaps that’s a good sign.”
She wasn’t sure if the sound she made was another sob or hysterical laughter. “I don’t know how soothing that is considering he just underwent brain surgery. Maybe you should stick to hard truths.”
“Probably.” Ava picked up Maya’s tablet and idly scrolled through the recently scanned book. “I think it will be all right, Maya. I may not have Zoey’s emotional intelligence, but I have an extremely developed awareness of the tactical implications of interpersonal relationships.”
Maya sorted through the tangle of words. “Is that he cares about you in Ava?”
“Cares is an insufficient descriptor.” Ava eyed her over the edge of the tablet. “Matthew Gray loves you. You are his weakness, and he’s yours.”
And that was why the tactical assessment of interpersonal relationships would never be the same as emotional intelligence. Ava saw the ways their relationship made them vulnerable. Maya imagined she knew how Zoey would have responded.
Gray was her strength. And she could be his.
If only he would let her.
December 12th, 2080
I’m starting to doubt my own instincts. I was so sure about Matthew Gray. But is he truly a danger or simply an echo? I’ve been so deep in this for so long, I see shadows everywhere.
I see my failure in him. What have I missed while chasing a ghost?
Probably too much. Possibly everything.
The Recovered Journal of Birgitte Skovgaard
THIRTY-ONE
Mace found him in the training room.
“I’m not doing anything not doctor-approved,” Gray assured him, never halting his steady strides on the treadmill. “Just a nice, leisurely jog. See?”
“I could not give less of a shit about that.” Mace shut off the treadmill and pointed at him. “Get down from there. We’re going to have a chat.”
Gray snagged a towel and his water bottle. “What’s going on?”
“You’re fucking up.”
“My exercise?” Gray asked.
Mace slapped the water bottle out of his hand, startling Gray. “It’s not funny, smart-ass. You’re going to lose her.”
An aching bolt of pain gripped Gray’s chest, and he turned away. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you haven’t spent the last week pushing Maya away? My mistake.”
Sudden, fierce anger gripped Gray. He didn’t have to stand there and get lectured like this. It wasn’t like Mace had all his shit together, either. He was still running around, stabbing people by accident. “We’re not doing this right now.”
“Yes,” Mace said firmly, “we are. Knox and Rafe and Conall can’t do it, because they’re still scared they’re going to lose you. So it’s my job—as your friend—to say this and make damn sure you hear it.”
The rage bubbled over. “Oh, like when you told me I was going to die? That I had to accept it, really stare it in the face, and give up on everything? Like that? Because news flash, Mason—you were fucking wrong.”
Mace frowned at him, his affronted expression almost comical. “No, I wasn’t.”
Gray choked on a laugh. “Then what the fuck am I doing still standing here?”
“From what I can tell? Shoving your head as far up your own ass as it’ll go.”
Gray took a swing at him, but he still wasn’t quite steady on his feet. The punch went wide as Mace sidestepped it, and the momentum carried Gray to the mat beneath their feet.
Mace held his hands up by his sides and sighed. “Fuck. Here—” He reached down to help Gray up.
Instead, Gray jerked him off his feet. “Asshole.”
Mace hit the mat with a thud and a disgusted groan. “Adolescent.”
By unspoken agreement, they both lay there, staring up at the ceiling.
Finally, Gray whispered, “I was ready to die.”
“I know,” Mace murmured. “But you didn’t. Your girlfriend pulled a miracle out of her back pocket, and now you get to live. But you have to live, goddammit. You can’t keep punishing the world for thwarting your expectations.”
“I don’t know if I know how.”
Mace rolled to a sitting position. “To start, you can stop making Maya feel like you hate her for saving you.”
“I don’t,” Gray protested. And it was true—he couldn’t blame her. If their positions had been switched, he would have pledged anything, given anything. No price would have been too high to pay for a chance to save her.
Oh, but it hurt. It hurt so much, the back and forth. Wanting and needing and having and losing, until he could stand anything, even sheer desolation, over another dashed hope.
“Prove it,” Mace challenged. “You’re running out of time. Again.”
And wasn’t that what had scared him before? What had held him back? The fear that Maya would fall in love with him, and he would have to leave her. Now, he was doing it anyway, and she didn’t even have the luxury of telling herself he had no choice.
He was fucking up.
He sat up and nudged Mace. “Where’s Rafe?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I need to find some forks.”
* * *
It had taken a lot of practice, but Maya was starting to find the balance.
The darkness behind her mask didn’t bother her. The basement room was as vivid behind her eyelids as the moment she’d tied the cloth over her eyes. There was a trick to focus, it turned out—an entire spectrum of nuance in between on and off. The brutal discipline she’d learned to exert over her mind could be … softened. Heightened.
Controlled.
It was like learning to flex individual muscles independently of one another. Messy at first, and frustrating. But as the targets Rafe had set up for her in their basement chimed one after another, Maya flowed through the room with perfect confidence, the laser pistol an extension of her body, each shot precise and effortless.
Ten bull’s-eyes. She didn’t need to look to be sure. She’d learned the room in minutes, internalizing the way the walls and furniture impacted echoes, parsing the pitch and timbre, the duration and intensity. It had always been instinctive, but now she savored the active experience of it, the almost synesthetic euphoria. She could feel the sharpness of sounds as they swept past. She could taste the sizzle of them on her tongue. They had colors and weight, they told stories.
Like the footsteps on the stairs. Steady and measured, but heavy with a lingering bone-deep exhaustion, like the effort to lift each foot was only surpassed by the struggle to put it down so precisely it looked effortless.
It took extra energy to project an aura of strength when you were barely recovered from brain surgery.