Chapter Fourteen

Geekronym: VPN

Translation: Virtual Private Network

Definition: Using a public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the internet, to provide remote offices or individual users with secure access to their organization’s network, while maintaining privacy using security and encryption protocols.

The mass of people who clogged Waterfront Park for the Blues Festival was exactly what Daniel had hoped for. He and Charlie could be safely anonymous in the crowd, and it had the added benefit of forcing them to walk closely, allowing him to capture her hand to keep them together in the throng.

“Wow,” she said, standing at the edge of the slope that led down to the main stage, a steady stream of concertgoers jostling each other along the path behind them. “This would be a terrible place to be attacked by zombies.”

He grinned down at her. “Is there a good place to be attacked by zombies?”

“Of course.” She slanted a glance at him from under the screen of her curls. “Someplace with two clear exits, no possibility for an attack from the flank, and a weapons cache located conveniently nearby. Make that two weapons caches.”

“Damn. And here I am without my spare crossbow.” He tugged her hand and drew her with him, braving the crowds headed in the other direction like salmon fighting their way upstream. They made it to the relative peace of the riverfront sidewalk under the Hawthorne Bridge, in back of the stalls selling batik clothing, handmade jewelry, and for some reason, plastic and ceramic skulls on sticks.

The breeze off the river, welcome in the heat of the afternoon sun, cooled the back of his neck and lifted the hair off Charlie’s face. The slope of her neck mesmerized him. He raised one hand, tempted to trace the smooth line from her jaw to her shoulder, but before he could touch her, she shifted out of reach.

“Look.” She pointed to a nearby food stand. “Root beer floats.”

He took a deep breath and followed her through the crowd. Don’t move too fast, Shawn. You’re in public, remember. Keep PDA to a minimum.

He joined her in the short line in front of the stand. “Last time I had one of these was at old man Jakachi’s diner with you back in grade school.”

“You remember that?”

“How could I forget? He set the thing down in front of me, you stuck a spoon in the glass, and the whole thing overflowed into my lap.”

“You had a science test coming and you didn’t get heterogeneous nucleation.” A smile quivered on her mouth. “So I demonstrated. You always responded better to the practical than the theoretical.”

“So bicycling home in root beer-infused pants was for my own good?”

“Absolutely.” She broke out into a full-fledged, heart-kicking smile. Christ, he was a goner. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe today. Plastic spoons aren’t as reactive, and by the time we sit down, a lot of the CO2 will already be released.”

“Thank God.”

They took their floats to one of the blue-clothed tables next to an al fresco dance floor. No bands were onstage, so they had relative quiet to talk and catch up on the missing years.

She told him about her awkward undergraduate years at Stanford, about meeting Gideon and Lindsay when she’d arrived at UO for her psychology master’s, about her inexplicable acquisition of Toshiko at Columbia. He told her about the years he’d spent building up the academic capital to get into journalism school, earning his tuition money as a freelance car mechanic.

“You can fix cars.” She stared at him over her nearly empty float as a band began to set up. “That’s so cool.”

Christ, the woman had four degrees, and she was impressed because he could rebuild a carburetor. “Yeah. Turns out all those auto shop classes in high school weren’t just a way to keep my GPA out of double zeroes. They actually gave me a marketable skill.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” She scooped up a spoonful of vanilla ice cream. Daniel watched her lips close around the spoon and shifted in the hard plastic chair, his pants suddenly too tight. “How sometimes the things we learn as a lark turn out to be important in ways we don’t expect. I’ve gotten more projects for COBOL refactoring than anything else, and I only learned it on a dare.”

“Who dared you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You did.” She put the spoon down. “Seriously, Daniel. What else have you forgotten?”

“If I could tell you, then I wouldn’t have forgotten it, would I?”

“Daniel—”

“Learning things, committing them to memory doesn’t come easy for me. I have to work at it.” He wadded up his napkin. “After Dad…well, I just didn’t make an effort. It was easier to forget. Besides…” He smiled tightly. “I could never have matched your mental firepower, even if I’d wanted to.”

She ducked her head, pink sneaking across her cheekbones, shrugged, and took the last sip of her root beer. “It wasn’t important. Just a stupid argument we had. Actually, we had it at the state fair while you were trying not to upchuck after your third ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

“No wonder I don’t remember.” He gathered up their trash and tossed it into a nearby bin. “What did I lose on that bet other than my lunch? My autographed picture of Mr. Spock?”

She smiled, but he could tell it was forced. “Nothing. By the time I’d mastered the language, we weren’t…well, let’s say it’s just as well you avoided me in middle school, because you would have been buying my lunches for at least a month.” She turned her head to watch the musicians set up onstage, and her shoulders lifted with a deep breath. “Our last bet,” she murmured.

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. How many other cherry bombs were hidden in the rusty locker of his memory? He scooted his chair toward her and took her hands. Made her look at him. “Charlie, please believe me when I say I wish I hadn’t been such a dick back then. I wish I’d made different choices.” About a lot of things.

She stared at their joined hands. “I admit, I held a grudge for a long time. But I’m starting to think it was all for the best. Even if you’d been around more, I’d still have been the freaky, introverted geek, the one nobody talked to unless they wanted to borrow my notes.”

He groaned and released her to drop his head into his hands.

“Daniel.” She touched his knee. “It really is okay. If you’d been different, if I’d been different, our lives would have followed different paths. So what if I hated high school? I got out early.”

He lifted his head and met her worried gaze. “How early?”

“I was sixteen. Bypassed senior year altogether.”

“What? No graduation ceremony?” He lifted one eyebrow in an attempt to lighten up the conversation. “No prom?”

“Daniel.” Her voice held a hint of amused exasperation. “The only person who ever asked me to prom was you.”

“Me? I don’t…” Holy shit. Once she’d given him the clue, he didn’t have to try as hard to pull the memory out of his ass.

It had been the day he’d received his final college rejection, when he’d finally gotten an inkling of what his actions had meant to himself and the most important people in his life. He’d attempted to make amends.

He’d caught her between classes.

“Prom? You want to go to the prom with me?” Charlie’s voice was barely audible in the milling crowd.

“Why did you think—” he began, intending to finish with I wouldn’t.

“Hey, everybody. Did you catch that?” The voice of Pete Dawson, Daniel’s chief toady, echoed in the hallway. Charlie flinched, pulled her shoulders forward, and tried to curl herself around her calculus book. “Nit just asked the Destroyer to the prom. As-fucking-if.”

Daniel frowned, glancing at the sudden wall of faces that surrounded them. “Shut it, Pete.”

“Are you kidding? This is too good. I’ll see you in weight training. Hey. Marco. Wait up.”

Pete ran down the hallway, grabbed Marco’s shoulder, and delivered the news, both of them casting avid glances at Daniel and Charlie. Daniel tried to stare them down, warn them off, but he could do nothing from this distance. He turned back to make sure Charlie was okay and to get her answer, but she was gone, shouldering her way through the crowd of grinning onlookers. More than one person said something to her and laughed, and her head bowed further with each jeer.

“You dodged me for days. I took that as a no.”

She blinked, her mouth dropping open for an instant. “You mean…you were serious?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You hadn’t spoken to me in years. I never thought…I assumed it was just…” Laughing softly, she shook her head. “It’s probably just as well. I hated crowds then even more than I do now.”

“You’re doing okay with this one.”

She glanced around, as if she was surprised to find other people surrounding them. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

The band struck up a Zydeco-flavored tune. “Turns out, I never went to prom, either. I think I was suspended at the time for decking Pete and Marco after that scene in the hallway.” Daniel stood up, holding out his hand. “Since we both missed out on the penultimate high school experience, may I have this dance?”

She took his hand. “As long as you don’t care that I haven’t the faintest idea how to follow.”

“That’s okay. I haven’t the faintest idea how to lead. We can faint together.”

She laughed, that wonderful peal that lit up her face and resonated in his chest, and he drew her onto the dance floor and into his arms where she belonged.

…

A week ago, Charlie would have refused, because really? Standing up in a crowd of strangers and displaying her nonexistent dancing ability? People would look at her, and looking was one step away from judging, and judging one step away from mocking. In no time, she’d be teetering on the edge of another pit of humiliation.

But today she lived in a different world. One where VR-Charlie could pretend nobody else mattered, because this alternate dimension had only one other life-form. Real-life Daniel, with his laughing eyes and square, long-fingered hands, and a heart bigger than she’d given him credit for.

She swayed in his arms, not knowing if anyone stared and not caring if they did. This little bubble of virtual reality was all she needed right now, this point in the space-time continuum with Daniel all that mattered. His light grip on her waist, her hands on the back of his neck, his cheek pressed against her temple.

Toshiko was right. The past was fixed, but she could alter the way she perceived it, change her reactions to it, splice this moment over that last hideous moment in the high school corridor.

This is what it should have been all along. The two of them, weathering any derision the crowd threw at them. Together.

…

After that dance, something built in Daniel’s chest, expanding until he began to worry that his rib cage couldn’t contain it. A warmth that had nothing to do with the sun. A buzz that had nothing to do with the beer. A thrill that had nothing to do with the music.

It was 100 percent Charlie.

At the end of the evening, they stood together, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder, as an America-themed rock medley played over the PA system and the fireworks exploded over the river. Their glitter reflected in Charlie’s eyes, and the thing in his chest finally detonated, but it wasn’t painful or destructive. It was a rightness. A sense of finding something he’d lost.

He turned, stroking the smooth skin of her arm with his thumb. She looked up at him, and the fireworks cast flashes of varicolored light on her face. He cupped her cheek with one hand. Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated from the dark and the excitement and, Christ, he hoped from him, as well.

He lowered his head, took that mouth in a kiss. He was in no hurry. The whistle, pop, and boom of the rockets, the shrieks and cheers of the crowd, all of it faded away as he concentrated on the sensation. The softness of her lips. The sweet taste of her when she opened for him. The shape of her body when he pulled her to him, her breasts pillowed against his chest, her hips and legs against his in a long, smooth line.

The final explosion echoed over the river. The crowd erupted into applause, and Daniel swore it was all for him, because he’d finally gotten a freaking clue.

All the dissatisfaction with his life, all his lousy choices, the discontent that he’d tried to conquer since high school. All of it was because this woman had been missing from his life. Because he’d driven her out.

He had her back now, and he’d make damn sure she didn’t get away again.

A pack of teenagers passed by, mixed boys and girls, which meant hormones and hubris in lethal combination.

“Jeez, get a room,” one of them hollered, followed by the snickers and guffaws of the rest of the group. He turned, shielding her from their sight, their contempt.

Charlie laughed. “Daniel, they’re only words, and from a bunch of people I’ll never see again.” She stroked his face, her hand lingering on his jaw. “They can’t hurt me. Not anymore.”

He inhaled, his breath bottoming out in his lungs. “I have one.”

A pucker appeared between her brows. “One what?”

“A room.” Now all the air seemed to have fled his chest, and he had to force his voice out of a vacuum. “A hotel room. Downtown. The Heathman.”

She smiled, but her lips trembled. “Swanky.” She pushed her hair back from her face, revealing a glint of silver at her earlobes.

He swallowed, wishing now for that last sip of root beer. “Will you…would you go there with me? Stay with me? Tonight?”

“I—”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to.” He kissed that tiny forehead pucker, smoothed it with his thumb until it disappeared. Kissed along the gull-wing swoop of her eyebrows. Captured her mouth in a chaste kiss. Just a promise. An invitation. “But I would love it if you said yes this time.”

Her eyes were huge and dark in the glow of the streetlamps. Under his hands, he felt the shiver race across her skin, down her spine.

“Daniel. I…if you…” She glanced away briefly before dipping her chin in a tiny nod. “Yes.”

…

All the way down Jefferson to Broadway, Daniel held Charlie’s hand. She didn’t draw away when he laced his fingers with hers. Her shoulder rested against his biceps, a tease of bare skin just above his elbow where the sleeve of her T-shirt ended. He’d checked in before he picked her up so all they had to do was take the elevator to his floor. He didn’t jump her on the ride up like he had in Hana K’s hallway. This time, he could wait.

Instead, he played with her hand, stroking his fingers over her palm just to see the way her breath caught in her chest, her face flushed with pink. The rose along her cheekbones should have clashed with her hair, but it didn’t.

All the quirky, traditionally imperfect parts of her combined to make one perfect whole. Without the crazy curls, without the too-wide mouth, without the forceful nose and the eyes neither brown nor gold but somewhere in the middle, she wouldn’t be Charlie.

Then there was the new equipment. The soft slope of her waist into the curve of her hip, the length of her legs, breasts that short-circuited his brain. Bonus.

But the mind behind those sherry-colored eyes, sharp and incisive and as quick to catch the ridiculous as the beautiful. That was pure Charlie. That hadn’t changed.

He traced her jaw with his thumb. “Charlie. I need to know. Have you been with anyone before?”

Her flush deepened. “I told you about Preston. We knew what parts went where and managed to get them there.”

“How long has it been?”

Charlie gulped and ducked her head. “Four years.”

Christ, she might as well be a virgin, especially if Procedural Boyfriend bypassed the foreplay subroutine.

It was on him to make this good for her. For both of them.

“Are you sure about this, Daniel?” She rested both hands on his chest, her palms warm through his shirt, her gaze searching his face. “I mean, you don’t really know me.”

He covered her hands with one of his. “Sweetheart, nobody knows you better than I do. We laid the groundwork for this relationship in grade school. It just took us a while to find our way back.” He stroked her hair, wound a curl around his finger. “So I’m absolutely sure. But I’m not going anywhere. If you want to wait, we wait. You get to call the shots now.”

She shook her head as the elevator doors slid open. “Tonight, I don’t want to be the one making the decisions, choosing which path is most logical. I don’t want to think. For once, I just want to feel.”

A wave of heat washed up Daniel’s chest and left his heart racing. He laced his fingers with hers and led her out of the elevator. “I can handle that.”