Finn turned out to be a cuddler.
He kept me close all night, even when we weren’t fucking like crazy. He wasn’t kidding about his stamina or my inspiring him to feats of strength. And when we came down from each and every high, he pulled me close and kept me there.
So when I wake up nestled next to him, I’m not surprised. There hasn’t been more than six inches between us since he showed me the library.
I nibble my lip as I watch him sleep. I have to get up, get to work, but he looks so… I frown as I try to pin down how he looks. Not sweet or boyish or tender. He just looks like someone I want to keep looking at.
Aw, hell. I have no idea where we’re going after we do this insane break-in, if we’re even going anywhere. I should ask him, straight out, but I don’t want to. I want to keep assuming this will last, that I will get to keep looking at this person.
I swallow hard. If I squint, I can convince myself that with everything going wrong in my life, I deserve the fantasy. Just for a little bit longer. It’s such a beautiful one.
He starts to smile even before he opens his eyes. “Are you watching me?” he asks with his eyes still closed.
“I’m not going to answer that.”
His smile gets wider. “You can admit it. I promise not to get a big head. At least not with that head.”
I know now how big his other head can get. I’m going to be deliciously sore all day from last night. Which brings me back to the sad fact that I have to be at work soon.
“I should get going,” I say, sitting up and pulling the sheet around me. I can scrub most of his scent off in the shower—God, I’ll miss it—do what I can with the makeup in my purse, and head in to the office in yesterday’s clothes. I’ve got a change of clothes in my desk, so if I get really lucky, no one will know I’ve been up all night with Finn.
January’s not the kind to squee, but if she hears about this, she’ll start imagining triple dates with her, Mark, Logan, and Callie, and dreaming of us as best couple friends. I’m not ready to deal with that, not with everything else going on.
Finn shifts so he can wrap himself around me again, his arm coming over my crossed legs. “They’re bringing breakfast in a minute. Steak and eggs.”
My stomach rumbles. I’m not the kind to skip breakfast—I get cranky if I don’t get some food and coffee in me before I start the day. And steak and eggs is a pretty good way to start the day.
“Well…” I don’t really have to be in by nine on the dot. And if it’s already on the way…
He pats my ass. “And we have to talk about what happens next.”
My heart dives for my feet. He wants to talk about a relationship? Already? My heart starts climbing, soaring, because this is actually a good thing—and then I catch sight of his expression as he unfolds from the bed.
He means the break-in. Not anything else.
I firmly set my heart back where it belongs. “Right. I’ve got an interview to prep for.”
By the time I’m out of the shower and in yesterday’s clothes, breakfast has been set up in the kitchen nook. This room has a kitchen, which probably no one ever uses, that’s bigger than my entire apartment.
Finn’s waiting for me at the table, in fresh clothes, his hair and beard damp. He must have had them sent over. He’s got a laptop open—no morning papers for him—and is scrolling and typing with intense focus.
“Just dealing with Slack,” he says without looking up. His plate sits in front of him, untouched.
The moment my bottom hits my chair, he snaps the laptop shut, giving me his full attention.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says with a half smile.
“Morning.” I dig into my steak, determined to be my usual, snappy self. “Did you sleep well?”
He laughs softly. “Perfectly.”
Oh, my heart. It slips out of place before I can catch it. “What do I do next?” I ask, staring at my eggs.
“I’ll arrange everything else.” His voice is brisk. “You just treat it like any other coding interview.”
Okay, I have to give him a look at that. “People spend months prepping for coding interviews. There are entire books—dead-tree books—devoted to the coding interview.”
“You’ll do fine.” He’s not even dented by my skepticism.
“I guess I can get January to help me run through some stuff.”
“No.” His gaze snaps to mine. “Don’t tell anyone. Not even January.”
A chill runs over me, more nerves than cold fear. “I understand we have to be careful, but my telling January is like your telling the rest of the Bastards.”
“Which I haven’t done.”
I blink at him. “You haven’t?”
“No. Once it’s finished, I’ll give them the highlights, but that’s it. They know how I work.”
But that’s not how I work, with everything secret, closed off. My friends know about my AI, know about my brother, know me.
It hits me then—Finn might seem open, friendly, nothing to hide when you first meet him, but underneath… I might not know what’s really underneath.
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all,” I say slowly.
His expression is slightly wounded. “Of course you do.”
Something about the way he’s acting reminds me of when he was talking about winning the Westinghouse contest in high school—not exactly ashamed but definitely closed off. Like it meant too much to him to talk about openly.
Like I mean too much to him to talk about openly.
I don’t know how to process that or if I’m even right about all this assuming I’m doing about him. So instead, I start to grill him about AI, which is a much safer topic. Soon enough, we’re going back and forth, bouncing ideas off each other, picking apart the faults and having a grand time. My mind is humming with things I want to try with the code, things I can’t wait to discuss with him once I’ve tested them.
Too soon, breakfast is over. Finn pushes away from the table and watches me for a long moment. He looks like he’s considering something, something I might say no to.
But all he says is “There’s a car and driver waiting for you out front.” There’s a faint thread of regret in his voice.
There’s more than a faint thread of regret in me, but work calls.
“Thanks for breakfast,” I say, gathering my things. “It was great.” I open the front door and walk into the hallway before this gets even more awkward. “And… everything else.”
Before I can start for the elevator, he pulls me into his arms and kisses me like I’ve got all the oxygen in the room. Our tongues tangle, dance, and I can feel his cock pressing against my pubic bone, right next to where my clit is pulsing.
The elevator door dings, and he pulls away. “Don’t worry” is all he says before guiding me to the elevator.
Easy for him to say.
When I walk into work an hour later, everyone is already at their workstations, typing away. I say a quick hello as I set up at my desk, pretending to be all upbeat and casual. Inside, my organs are tying themselves into knots.
I’ve got a fake coding interview with the most secretive company in the world coming up, I’ve started an affair… or something… with one of the most powerful men in tech, and my brother is still in prison. Oh, and I’ve got code I need to test and push by the end of this week.
“Hey.”
I look up to see January hovering over my desk.
“Yeah?” I make myself bright-eyed.
“You okay?”
I guess I wasn’t bright-eyed enough. “Sure.”
January’s brow wrinkles. “I mean, about the fire last night. At the Gordian construction site.”
My face sags. “What? What fire?”
“It’s all over the news. You didn’t hear anything at your place last night? It’s not even a block away.”
Oh crap. “Uh… I didn’t spend last night at home. What exactly happened?”
January raises an eyebrow but says, “There was a fire at the construction site; the police are saying it’s arson. They arrested a homeless man for it.”
I turn to my laptop and pull up the local news site. Front and center is the construction site on fire, smoke rising up the steel beams, and next to it, the face of a man I know.
“Oh shit,” I mutter. “It’s Kevin.”
“Kevin? You know him?”
I close my eyes, rub at my forehead. “He’s taking care of Ray’s cats. And they think he set fire to the building? On purpose?”
“The police said they had security camera footage of him doing it.”
I snap up, my spine going to ice. This is all way too familiar. A homeless man, supposedly caught on a security camera, committing a crime you’d never imagine him doing. “Did they show the camera footage?”
January shakes her head. “I was worried about you when I heard about it this morning. Um… where did you stay last night?”
I’ve got to get Finn into Corvus, got to get to the bottom of this. Kevin’s case is related to Ray’s. I can just feel it. I take a deep breath, trying to think of a plausible answer that isn’t a lie. In the end, I blurt out, “At a hotel. With Finn. But please, can we not talk about it?”
“Sure.” January’s trying to hide her hurt and confusion, but it’s not working. “Did he… Look, I know he’s friends with Mark, but I’m always on your side. Did something happen? Something bad?”
I don’t think I can love January more than I do right now. She’s head over heels for Mark, completely and totally devoted to him… but she looks like she’s willing to pop Finn in the nose if he’s hurt me.
My smile is shaky but true. “I promise the Finn stuff is…” Oh God, I’m blushing and stammering. “…you know. This news about the fire is upsetting me.”
January rubs my arm. “No one got hurt.”
Except for Kevin. And I have to make sure the cats will be okay. “Yeah,” I say. “At least there’s that.” I point to my laptop. “I’m going to start testing the new build. We’re way behind on that.”
“Great.” January smiles, then heads back to her own desk.
Instead of running code, I pull up the secure messaging app January wrote, the one Finn sent me the surveillance photos of Ray on. I paste the link to the news story about the arson into a message, then add, This has to be related. We have to get into Corvus.
It takes him several hours to message me back, hours that I spend climbing up the walls. And when he does, all he says is Sit tight. I’m working on it. And memorize the background information I’m sending you.
So I’m just supposed to wait here for him to do… whatever. Great. Awesome.
But I do. I spend the next three days bouncing out of my skin, memorizing my fake past, trying to work, failing to sleep, and waiting for a signal from Finn. January watches me with worry but doesn’t say anything. I want to tell her… but I remember Finn’s command to not tell anyone and to keep my mouth shut.
Finn doesn’t contact me either. No messages, no emails, no calls—he’s not even in our Go forum. No one else in the forum is anywhere near his level, so I log out without playing a single game. I work some on my AI, testing some of the ideas we discussed over dinner, but my heart isn’t in it. The suit and the wigs are delivered on the second day, along with the glasses he was talking about. I can’t tell what’s different about them—other than they’re kind of boring—but somehow they’re my exact prescription. There’s no note with any of it. I don’t bother to put on the mermaid wig—I’m too tense to enjoy it.
I’m home on the evening of the third day, in my pajamas and setting out food for Ray’s cats. I managed to lure them to my place, but they wouldn’t stay inside, not that my roommates would have allowed that. But they will come to the food I leave out.
I also convinced Ray’s lawyers to look over Kevin’s case, see if they can help him out at all. I’ll probably have to sell a kidney—or two—to afford it, but Kevin was Ray’s friend. He took care of my brother’s cats. I have to do something.
I watch the cats munch on the wet food, eating with one eye on everything going on around them, as if they expect a predator to pounce at any moment. It’s a feeling I understand, what with waiting for Finn to contact me.
My phone pings, and I jump right out of my chair. I grab it, fumbling with the buttons as I try to unlock it as fast as I can.
Please be Finn, please be Finn, please be Finn.
I start to sigh with relief when I see a message from him in the secure app but then catch it back when I read the message.
Interview tomorrow. Three p.m. Don’t forget the suit.