Wicked Torture (Stark World 3)

; "There was a woman," he began. "Before I married Darla, I mean." He drew in a breath. "She was . . . hell, she was everything. It sounds lame, but--"

"It doesn't," Wyatt assured him, moving to sit on the couch opposite Noah. "Go on."

"I need to start from the beginning. I was twenty-four," he said. "I'd dropped out of college after my first year, because school was starting to interfere with my success. And by then I knew I'd made the right decision. I was mostly writing video games, but I was doing some innovative shit, and I'd gotten noticed. I was getting all sorts of offers to buy my little company."

"So you were going gangbusters," Wyatt said. "That I understand. Just stay away from the tech talk, and we'll be fine."

"I hired a lawyer and looked at the up and downside of selling--and ultimately decided to hold on to my little corner of commerce. I had the lawyers help me get some venture capital so I could expand into virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and that's when I met Darla. She was in college and working as a file clerk with my attorney's firm. We met, hit it off, started dating."

"Fell in love," Wyatt filled in.

"Honestly, no." Noah took another sip of his drink. Not so much because he wanted it, but because he needed the time. Had he ever admitted that out loud?

"No," he repeated. "We got along great. The sex was fine. We had a lot of the same interests, and we could go out to dinner and always find something to talk about. We started spending all our free time together. I don't know if she truly loved me, and to be honest, I never thought about it. Not really. One day she told me she loved me, and I said the words back. It felt like it was time." He looked at Wyatt. "Does that make sense?"

"Sure." He considered his answer. "I think so."

"Not your experience, though. Not with Kelsey."

Just the mention of her name made Wyatt's eyes brighten. His mouth curved up, and he said very simply, "No. Not with Kelsey. We were just kids, but she grabbed hold of my heart, and I damn well knew it." He met Noah's eyes. "I'm sorry you didn't experience that."

"I did. Just not with Darla."

Wyatt leaned back. "All right. Go on."

"Darla and I'd been dating about five months when I met Kiki. She's a musician, and she and some friends were starting a band. She'd blasted through UT in three years--she's originally from Texas--so she could race to LA to make it big, and she was doing some freelance scoring work at my company. She showed up at my desk, I took one look at her, and it felt like I was tumbling out into space."

From the look on Wyatt's face, Noah could tell that his friend understood the feeling.

"You got together."

"We did. We worked together for about a week, and we both fought the attraction every step of the way. Because otherwise it would be unprofessional, right? But then we gave in. One Friday we went out for Happy Hour, and midway through our second drink decided to officially call it a date. That date ended Monday morning when we both went back to work."

"And then you told Darla."

Noah nodded. "And then I told Darla." He drew in a breath. "She was hurt, but break-ups aren't supposed to be pretty and I was as gentle as I could be. The thing is, we probably would have gone merrily along if I hadn't met Kiki. I probably would have ended up proposing. We were comfortable, and--"

He shrugged. "Well, that was about it."

"A lot of people live their lives without a grand passion. Sometimes, maybe that's enough."

"Maybe. I don't know. I think it was enough for my mom."

"Your mom?"

Noah nodded. "My real father abandoned her when she got pregnant. Said he couldn't deal with being a dad and had no intention of getting married. She had me, struggled, and ended up marrying my stepdad when I was almost ten. He was a nice guy, and a great father, but they weren't a couple. They were two people who didn't want to be single. I wanted more. Hell, I wanted Kiki."

Wyatt went to the kitchen and returned with the bourbon, then poured them each another shot. "I already know how this story ends. You ended up with Darla. And the two of you had a baby. I'm guessing she told you she was pregnant."

"Yeah." Noah slammed back the entire drink. "Fuck. To this day, I don't know if I did the right thing or not. But I know it hurt like hell to do it. She told me the day after I proposed to Kiki. Can you believe it? We'd been apart for almost four months, and I was at the office, a little hung-over because Kiki had said yes, and we'd done some serious celebrating."

He could still remember the way his head had pounded that day. He'd gone to the office even though it was Sunday to try to clean up some troublesome code, and Kiki was celebrating--and working--with her best friend, Celia. Their band, Pink Chameleon, had burst onto the scene after a single Kiki wrote blew the lid off both MySpace and YouTube.

That led to a manager and a record deal. They'd already been touring around the Southern California area, and they'd gained a pretty big following. But their new manager booked them for a national tour that was kicking off soon. The proposal had been in part because Noah wanted his ring on her finger before she hit the road with the band.

"So that Sunday, Darla came to my desk. She told me she was almost five months pregnant. That she'd never been regular, and she didn't think anything of it until her clothes started fitting too tightly. She said she was scared. That she loved me. That she didn't make enough money to take care of a baby. She said she wanted her baby to have a father, and that she and I had been so good together.

"She said," he continued, his voice tight with emotion, "that she knew I was a better man than my father, who'd walked away from his responsibilities."