“I was never with them until I had no one else to be with!” I strangle out.
He’s silent, watching, so expressionless it’s strained.
“How could you?” I snap, shaking my head with disbelief and rage. “And I walked out on the company a long time ago. I couldn’t take it. After what they did to you, to us. Why—why the unholy fuck—couldn’t you send me a message?”
I stare up at him, anguish clouding every thought.
That whiskey-dark eye cuts through me, his whole gaze energized like a beautiful thunderhead getting ready to unload.
This better be good.
“Do you remember that time in Anchorage when they tried to import those lethal bird flu samples?”
I blink, cocking my head. “Like yesterday. SP-73 was never enough for Durham. That was…what? Six or seven years ago? I personally blew the ship to kingdom come before it ever came into port.”
“Correction. You got yourself thrown in the brig after they confiscated your explosive charges. A lucky glitch in the computer system set you free,” he says, reaching for my hair to run his fingers through it.
For a second, I’m lost in the sweetness of his fingers.
Then it hits me, and I jerk back.
“You—what? That was you?”
Oliver says nothing. But that single bright brown eye of his smiles with a wicked gleam.
“Your guardian angel. Watching over you, whenever I could. At least, the few times I could actually find you with any confidence.” He scratches at his short, dark beard, princely flecks of silver multiplied in it. “Or that other time, when they were harvesting human organs from that other clusterfuck of a company, Mederva Therapeutics?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Those savages were harvesting babies. I was all set to bring the place down myself if that guy hiding out in Minnesota hadn’t done it first. The military man who married the daughter of that author…Miller something-or-other?”
“Miller Rush. And I knew you’d get yourself in the thick of it if I didn’t help you beat him to it. Kids are a sore spot for both of us. So I helped his man, J.T., secure that encrypted data he’d pulled out of Mederva in exchange for backing up everything related to Galentron. Didn’t you wonder how that shit made it onto their list of charges in court?”
“So you saved me some dirty work. Bravo. But Oliver, fifteen years.” My lips tighten.
I won’t break.
I just don’t understand.
“Deanna Bell and her data cache back in Heart’s Edge. The stuff you helped Clarissa Bell and Nine dig up and broadcast to half the country…all your bravery I only found out about after the fact—”
“Like I could forget? What? You were there?”
“Not in the flesh. But Deanna originally got that neat little package of incriminating evidence from Marianne Jonas, Mayor Bell’s former secretary. Deanna tried to get her to spill what she knew for years. The girl was persistent, but it was the call with me that made Marianne open up, comb through her records, and decide to take action.”
I drop my face. “A shame I couldn’t save the old woman.”
“You saved her data with the Bell sisters and the former Nighthawk. You saved her legacy, and it helped save an awful lot of lives,” he whispers, reaching for my shoulder. I can’t fight off his reassuring squeeze. “And I gave Marianne a working blueprint for that code they used, the one Deanna Bell ran with, helping hide everything. I also told Marianne Jonas to tell Deanna to get in touch with you.”
My eyes whip to his face. And here I thought I was the grand chess master in that whole situation, when really, none of it would’ve happened without Oliver’s hidden hand.
Dear God.
“Hey…” he whispers, but I’m already turning my back. “Fuchsia?”
“You didn’t answer the other question. You never came back. You never sent me a message—not anything I could hope to decipher.”
He’s stone silent.
A stillness between us sprouts so thick I could cut it.
“Guilty,” he finally says. “I could give you the full litany…all the reasons why it made sense to help you from a distance, to throw myself into the gears when I could, to stop them from doing shit this isn’t the time or place to talk about. But the last couple years especially, I could’ve found you. And I didn’t.”
A chill ripples up my spine at the strange, bitter honesty in his voice. Slowly, I pivot on one heel, turning to face him.
Lifting an eyebrow. Waiting.
“Fuck, you want the truth?” he growls. “Truth is, I’m sorry. I was too damn scared to face you again, even when I had something besides Galentron crap to face you with. I didn’t know how, Fuchsia. Didn’t know if you’d ever want me, when I’m not the same man I was before. Didn’t know if you’d ever find it in yourself to love, to forgive, after everything that—”