23

We’ve developed an understanding, James and me. Maybe it was always there, just shoved beneath the layers of guilt and shared history, but it’s come to the surface in these past months, as we’ve worked together.

We’re becoming a team. It’s happening whether I want it or not, and I’m starting to doubt I can go back to the way it was, seeing him once or twice a year for an hour or two at a time.

I walk quietly down the hall toward the bathroom and slide my phone from my pocket. By agreement, he’s been checking my email for me hourly, anticipating Lex’s response as much as I have. With Mia here, I haven’t been able to.

Lex: Your lure worked. [75k] was just moved to an offshore account in the Caymans. Broxman, Telker and Shone. Guess who?

Papa Whitten.

Yeah, boo. You read that right.

So far haven’t been able to find out anything about B, T & S except it’s registered in the Caymans as a P corporation, meaning it’s privately owned. Pulling some contacts there. Should have more soon. In the meantime, keep an eye out. The money will move to your account soon.

I rest my shoulder against the wall outside the bathroom, reading it over again. It makes no more sense on a second read.

Mia laughs at something James says, and I shut my eyes as the sound washes over me. She’s so happy right now. I picture her face when I sit her down. I have to tell you something. Mia, your dad hired me to kill you. I’m not going to do it though. Want me to kill him for you?

I tuck my phone back into my jeans. It doesn’t make sense. Lex already looked into his accounts. The guy’s got plenty of money, liquid and holdings. Why the hell would he want to kill his daughter?

When I get back from the bathroom, James is facing Mia across the island counter. She’s perched on a barstool.

For a second, I’m not sure if I can touch her in front of James. I don’t do relationships, never have, so I don’t know what’s expected. But then she smiles at me, and he pushes a beer across the counter, and I don’t even have to think.

For the rest of the night, I put Ender out of my mind. I pretend I’m the guy who gets to keep this, the guy who gets to have a woman, a brother, a dog, a house, a job, a life.

We’re in the kitchen. I’m slicing a mango for her. There’s a right way to do it, you slide the knife along the meat, just outside of the stone core. Then score the flesh in an even grid, keeping the tip just shy of breaking the skin. Flip the skin inside out then, and it practically slides off on its own.

“Why?” Tidy cubes of mango slide to the plate in a pile under my hand. “Do you have somewhere to be?”

She casts me a furtive look, shuffling her bare feet, toying with the end of my t-shirt. “No.”

Gogo’s feet tick as she crosses the wood floor and presses her nose against Mia’s bare thigh. I need to trim her toenails.

I cock my hip against the counter, set down the knife and wipe my hands on a dishcloth. “There’s no welcome to overstay. You belong here. For as long as you want to stay.”

She blinks up at me through her lashes, almost coy. That’s unlike her. “I didn’t pack enough stuff.”

I study her. She doesn’t look like she wants to go, particularly. Whatever’s bothering her, I’m missing it. But it feels like she’s asking me for something.

“Then wear my clothes.” I push the plate to her. “They look better on you anyway.”

“Won’t James mind me being here?” She picks up a piece, licking her fingers, still avoiding my eyes.

I tilt my head to the side. Maybe she’s trying to tell me something. Is this her way of ending it? I don’t know enough about actually being with a woman. “Your mail can wait.”

I turn away from her, look out the window so I won’t have to see her face when she says whatever she’s about to say. The empty land next to ours sits there. Nothing but a crumbling wooden fence and a broken barn on eight odd acres.

She comes up behind me, her slender hands wrap around my waist, her warm breasts press against my back. A hug. I can’t remember the last time anyone hugged me. “I... just... Stranger, what are we doing?”

I cover her hands with mine. I could tell her right now. I wouldn’t even have to mention the dad part. Just the Ender part, ease it in slowly. I’m a killer, Mia. Or I was. I think I don’t have to be anymore. You make me want to be something more.

Instead, I turn her in my arms, look down at her warm honey eyes. “Getting to know each other. Starting something real. Seeing where it takes us.”

Her lips part, she leans up and kisses me, light as a butterfly’s wing on the jaw.

“Want to go for I hike?” I ask, almost surprised by the words as they come from my mouth.

She’s everywhere, all the time. And so is her crap. Pots of various lotions cover the vanity in my bathroom. Along with a purple and orange striped bag full of makeup, they take over my bathroom. A book appears on the side table in my bedroom. Tubes of handcream appear in the living room and the kitchen.

It doesn’t bother me. I take perverse pleasure in reading the labels. Healing chamomile and ginseng hand butter. Nighttime aloe and cucumber quenching eye serum. Orange blossom neck paste. It all sounds like shit I want to eat, or drink, or rub on her myself.

For five days, I get to see what my life could be. Showers with Mia. Hikes with Mia. Sleeping with Mia. Fucking with her, cuddling with her, eating with her, too. I like it all. I want it all.

Maybe I can be that guy, the one James described the day Mia came into my life. A normal writer guy.

Well, two things. Me. If I’m going to be with her, I need to tell her the truth.

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