I have never felt so stupid in my life. Even my worst lit classes in college weren’t this bad.
I also have never felt more exposed in my life. With each terrible line I compose, I feel like I’m removing another rib, revealing more of my heart.
“This isn’t working,” I mutter to myself. I’m not sure if I mean this poem in particular or this entire enterprise. Either works.
I’m composing poem number twenty-six at this point—twenty-six poems in three days, when I’d never even written one before—but I haven’t heard a peep from Zara yet. She must have seen them since I tagged her in them and apparently our hashtag is the most searched term on Instagram, but… nothing.
For a moment, I falter. What am I doing, writing these awful things when Zara clearly wants nothing to do with me? Such a stupid waste of effort.
I set my jaw. I’m winning back the woman I love is what I’m doing. And I’ll keep doing it until I come up with something better. I’ll have to figure out how to send something through her agent next, beyond what I’ve already done.
Flower, flower, flower. I need something that rhymes with flower. Power might work, but it feels too pat. You’re a flower and you have the power… to break my heart.
I want to gag as I type it out, but it’s true. Well, maybe except for the flower part. Zara is nothing but herself. A flower could never be as bold and kinetic as she is.
The door to my office flies open. I immediately click out of the window I was in, hiding my awful attempt at verse. Which is ridiculous, because I’m going to broadcast it to the world in a little bit here.
“Is it important…” My voice dies somewhere in the middle of important, because it’s the most important thing in my entire life.
Zara is here.
She looks beautiful. So beautiful it almost hurts to look at her. All that gorgeous hair flowing over her shoulders and her expression alight with life and vitality.
She shuts the door firmly behind her.
“You saw my poems.”
“Oh yes.” She eats up the distance between us with two strides. “They were… terrible. Some of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Some part of me sags. Of course she hated them. She’s an accomplished poet and I’m not. “Maybe you could give me some comments. Editorial suggestions.”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m not going to touch them. Because I loved them.”
All of me tightens like a current is running through me. “Oh. Well, I wrote them for you. To say… to say everything that needed saying.” I gesture to my laptop. “I’m working on an apology cycle now. It’s going to be a long one.”
There’s a long beat of silence. Shit, maybe I should have just said I’m sorry instead of making a joke about it. Although it wasn’t really a joke—I am working on an apology in poem form.
“I’m not going to apologize,” she says baldly.
“I would never expect you to,” I say evenly. “Or want you to. It’s enough that you’re here.”
She could be here to tell me she’ll never forgive me, that she’ll always hate me, but it will be enough. Because she’s here.
Her gaze goes liquid. “Oh, Archer.” And then she’s coming to me, wrapping her arms around me.
I hold her so tight I think my arms will never unlock. When our lips meet, it’s like… like everything I’ve ever wanted.
“We’ve still got a lot of stuff to work out,” she says once we come up for air.
I nod because it’s true and I don’t care. Like I said, it’s enough that she’s here.
“I mean, we’ll still fight all the time,” she goes on. “And I have to say, the Ira stuff is bananas. And scary. I mean, someone pretended to be my friend because of it. That’s never happened to me before, and I never want it to happen again.”
“I’ll make sure of it. We’ve got her now, and she’s going to tell us where Tynan is. You decoded the notebooks, and Oscar is neutralized for the moment.” I take a moment to savor holding her. “You know I’m never letting you go again? Which completely solves the problem.”
“Wait.” She looks up at me. “What was in the notebooks? And no, you can’t hold me forever, although it does sound nice.”
She should know better than to dare me. “Ira came up with an entirely new way for electronics to communicate with neurons. And vice versa. It’s going to change the way people interact with machines forever.”
She blinks as she ponders that. “So he made cyborgs possible?”
I hadn’t quite made that leap myself. “I suppose so. See, he knew he had cancer and didn’t have long. But he didn’t want Oscar to claim ownership of this idea. He wanted Morgan and Raven to have complete control of it. So he kept it all secret and encoded it in the notebooks.”
“That seems excessive.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Oscar did end up murdering Ira, so it actually wasn’t.”
She grabs hold of my shirt lapel. “Wait, if Oscar didn’t know about Ira’s secret idea, why did he kill him?”
“He knew there was a secret idea, but he thought it had to do with the self-driving system. He wanted control of that. Except when we all abandoned it after Ira’s death, Oscar figured it was worthless. He still believes that, which is why he’s neutralized. At least until what’s in the notebooks becomes public. Which we will have to do to make sure Raven and Morgan have complete control of them.”
Zara takes a deep inhale. “Wow. That’s a lot. Where’s Lila now?”
“With Gage on her way to Alaska. He has a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He figures some isolation will get her to talk.”
“He won’t hurt her?”
The woman lied to Zara and used her for information and still Zara’s worried about her. “I swear. Gage is…”
“A softie?”
I laugh. “Uh, no. But he’s got his own sense of honor, and he won’t hurt her. But he will get what he wants from her. And then she’s free to go. She knows that.”
Zara chews on it. “Okay. That sounds fair. But you know I have a ton more questions.”
I guide her toward the door. “I’m sure you do. I’m sure you always will. Can you ask them on the way to my place?”
“Wait.” She grabs my arm. “We can’t leave yet.”
“Why not?”
She wets her lips. “Because I haven’t told you I love you yet.”
Holy shit, my heart. I knew it belonged to her before, but when it tries to jump out of my chest and into her hands, that’s when I really know.
When I start to kiss her, I can’t stop. When I run my hands over her sweet curves, I’m lost.
“We’re not going to make it home,” I mutter against her mouth.
“That’s okay,” she says as she puts her arms around my neck. “I love it when you lose control. In fact, that’s when I love you most of all.”