Kyle strode out, and he was alone. If he didn’t figure out a way to break through Maddie’s walls, he might always be.
* * * *
Maddie closed up the lab and glanced down at her watch. Deke would be here in less than half an hour and then they would likely follow the same schedule they had for the last week.
Drive back to her place. Order food. Laugh and talk with the others. He would take her to bed, blow her mind, and then go to sleep. She would lie there wondering what the hell she was doing and then the day would start over again.
Except tonight they would go to The Reef so she would get her mind blown at the club before they went back home and she lay in bed wondering. At least that would be different.
So why was she so worried that after Saturday she would have to make a decision? She wasn’t ready to make a decision.
Maybe she wouldn’t. Deke could go back to Dallas. She could stay here and deal with the fallout of whatever they found out on Saturday. They could talk on the phone and text. They could spend some weekends together.
They could let it die quietly this time.
She was going to get her heart broken again, and this time it wouldn’t heal. Maybe it hadn’t ever fully healed from the first time.
He wasn’t willing to share those years apart with her. He didn’t mind talking about the good stuff. She knew way too many Boomer and Big Tag stories. She knew about Deke’s friends and the places he’d seen, but it was all superficial, and now she had to wonder if it hadn’t always been that way. Had she been the one offering up her whole soul while Deke gave her sex and friendship and called it love?
What if that was all he had to offer?
She rejected that notion entirely. He wasn’t shallow. Not even close.
She just wasn’t the person he wanted to share his pain and heartache with. Maybe he didn’t want to share it with anyone at all. She wasn’t sure she could handle that situation.
Wasn’t it better than being alone?
“Maddie, I was looking for you.”
Nolan stood outside her office, leaning on her assistant’s desk. Jenna had left at lunch for a doctor’s appointment, so they were alone in the little space that served as her assistant’s office.
She forced a smile on her face. There was a fine tension she felt every time she thought about Nolan now. Deke had convinced her to worry, and now she wasn’t sure she had the acting chops to pull off being comfortable around the man. “Hey. I was in the lab. I’m working on the audio problem from my end. I think that’s the real trouble they’re having. I’ve got some code I need to fix on my end and then I think the integration should be much more clean.”
He seemed to study her for a moment, and then his lips quirked up, though now she found his smile creepy rather than comforting. “Excellent. I’ve been worried. I know it’s small in the big scheme of things, but the voice component will be a big deal to the public.” He went quiet again, his gaze seeming to pin her. “You know you’re about to be very famous.”
“Not really. No one knows the scientists behind a project. I’ll just be a member of the team.”
“I seriously doubt that. I’ve been talking to our publicity department, and they think you would be an excellent face for the development team. They love the idea of having a woman in front of the cameras. They even think it might be smart if you handled some of the interviews I would normally do.”
He didn’t like that idea. It was there in the narrowing of his eyes, the slight distaste in his tone as he said the words. She shook her head. “I’m not good on camera. I’m sure you can handle everything we need. I’m content to stay in the background.”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to.” He seemed to shake something off and refocused. “Hey, I was talking to someone in HR and she said you were having trouble with employee absences? Is something going on that I should know about?”
She’d thought she’d gotten away with this. Her gut twisted and she was probably getting another spanking because she would bet that someone on the team was currently watching her and would tell Deke, who would want to know what this conversation had been about.
“Naman mentioned he’d had some problems in the last couple of weeks.” She hoped she sounded breezy and unworried. “I wanted to check it out. It looks like some kind of bug was going around, but it seems to be better now.”
Now that they’d paused working on audio tests while she figured out the integration. Was she about to unleash something terrible on the people she worked with?
She’d talked to a couple of the people who’d been out, and they’d described their symptoms. Some were still dealing with vertigo and random bouts of migraine headaches. They’d been exposed to what she suspected was some form of high-frequency sound wave for mere moments and in a random fashion. What if the sound waves had been directed into their bodies? Clarke could do that. Clarke’s systems were built so the AI could pinpoint locations down to a centimeter. It was precisely how Clarke would be able to send the drones to retrieve materials they needed to fix the satellite. It wouldn’t take much to use the same system to direct sound waves, pinpointing them to a place on the planet’s surface.
Or more likely, to something in the atmosphere. Like a plane. All they would need would be the flight plan and then Clarke could direct the sound waves directly at the aircraft, which could be carrying a bunch of families to Disney World. Or the president. Or any number of world leaders.
“Are you all right?” Nolan’s question brought her out of her doomsday scenarios.
“Of course.” She wanted out of this office. She wanted Deke to be here, and they would get in the car and drive until she didn’t remember LA anymore. They could go home and pretend the last twenty years hadn’t happened. She could teach math to a bunch of kids who didn’t want to learn math. He could get a job running security for the local grocery store where the worst he would have to worry about was someone trying to steal a couple of beers. They could raise kids and go to family barbecues and allow all of his nieces and nephews to entertain them. They could have a life.
“You seem stressed, dear.” Nolan’s expression wrinkled into something akin to concern.
Now that it had been pointed out to her, she could see the trappings he hid behind, like a mask that was beginning to fray at the edges, revealing the truth beneath. “Well, it’s a big deal. It’s all coming so fast, you know.”
It felt like it. It felt like life was coming at her in a blinding wave, and she wasn’t sure where she’d be on the other side. Conversely, it was going too slow, and she felt like she was caught in a weird limbo. Even if they got what they needed on Saturday night, it wasn’t like the world would stop. They would take the data, analyze it, decide what to do about it. No one would be arresting Nolan Byrne on Saturday night.
Deke said he would stay as long as she needed him, but how long could she keep him? How long before she had to make the decision to let him go?
Nolan reached out and put a hand on her arm, an affectionate gesture she wouldn’t have given two thoughts about before. Now it felt like a cage. “Don’t worry about anything but getting Clarke ready for his big debut. You let me handle everything else. And maybe you’re right about staying behind the scenes. It’s better that way. I can handle that part, too.”