BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

And now she lay counting the squares in the mesh and hoping against hope that when she multiplied the two sides she would get a lovely, beautiful number.

TWENTY

They danced.

Anthony Elder and Jessica …He had forgotten her last name.

How had he forgotten her last name?

They danced in a club where two hundred dollars and a plausible fake ID did the trick. There were advantages to being the AFGC

golden boy.

They danced on a parquet floor crowded with twentysomething

white guys in suits, their ties loosened and sweat matting their conservatively cut hair. They danced amid women in sexy-mannish

business suits who wore moderate, serious-lawyer heels and threw

their hair around a lot.

The music was pretty weak, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

They were dancing, a dude and his girl. His girl who blew away every

other female in the room.

That last part, the part about walking around with a stunning

beauty, he’d almost become used to that. The looks. From the guys,

from the women, the looks that said, Man, you are so not in that girl’s league. But now it was different. He was still not in her league, but

now she was free, and every moment she spent with him . . . “Having fun?” he yelled into her ear, straining to be heard over

the music.

“Uh-huh.”

“Really?”

He heard the insecurity in his own voice. He sounded needy.

Then she smiled, and it was a different smile. No one else would

notice, but he did. She was flushed with pleasure. Her eyes, her amazing eyes, were bright, and they watched him.

Gratitude. That’s what he felt. How strange. Gratitude. Like he

wanted to thank God up in heaven.

It was real. That was the thing: it was real.

The dream came back to her as she danced.

Buried up to her neck.

Napalm in her veins.