Chapter Eleven

Hawk

We sit in the back of the town car that Caldwell provided, and all the way to the restaurant, Waverly doesn’t say a word. A wall of impenetrable anger stalls conversation, trapping it inside the emotional structure. She just sits there, staring out the window at the neon lights of the Strip. Due to the fact that she hates me, and I didn’t want to pander to her in any way, shape or form, I still haven’t gotten a good look at her. All I know is she’s all platinum blonde hair like Daenerys on Game of Thrones, and she possesses some killer curves that she’s trying to hide. She’s failing. I just hope I don’t end up like John Snow before he gets his magical second wind.

I blink, and a vision flashes, taking me by surprise. Waverly is splayed out on my bed, all waterfalls of silky hair, full tits, and wet pussy. Desire shoots through me like pain, and I force myself to remember my place. I’m a man without a past, and after today, maybe not even a future. She’s not for the likes of me.

Her silence doesn’t annoy me, because even if she does decide to speak, I’m not wholly certain that I’d hear her. My blood crashes in my ears, and my temples feel like they’re being used as bongo drums. I’ve got my hands clasped tightly in my lap to prevent them from shaking with anger. I rely on every ounce of self-control not to go absolutely nuclear.

How could Caldwell do this to me? Sure, he’s a money guy, and most money guys can’t be trusted to respect guys like me who wear clothes with holes, live on junk food, and conjure up codes and apps and programs from thin air – fine, I’m used to that. It’s why I don’t deal with them anymore. Shit, it’s why I barely even leave my workroom anymore.

But I thought my friend was different. I thought the years of comradery between us make him more than just an empty suit. I thought he understood me and appreciated our relationship along with the unique skill set I bring to the table.

“It’s not your fault,” he’d said. Right. Sure. Until you need something from me and can hold it over my head.

The hell of it is, on top of it all, guilt rages through my body right alongside the anger as if they’re both facing off in an emotional drag race. Because I can rant and rave all I want about him stabbing me in the back with this maneuver, but deep down, I know it really is my fault that he hasn’t gotten what he paid for. I haven’t come through. I should have backed up my work better. Hell, I should have been doing that daily – probably even hourly during the particularly sensitive parts. It’s a lesson most hardcore coders bitterly learn before they’re twenty years old.

Never, ever take your hands off the wheel.

But no. I thought I was in the zone. Nothing could touch me. I was The Invincible Hawk Stryker, and I couldn’t be bothered to pause my vital work long enough to protect it, could I? Fires? Losing all your work? No, those were things that happened to mere mortals, weren’t they? Certainly not to the mighty Hawk Stryker, Modern Prometheus, Sacred Lightbringer of HTML and C++.

I hear Waverly’s voice and turn to look at her. “Sorry, what?”

“I said we’re here,” she repeats, looking at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

We both get out of the car and walk toward the door. Waverly’s lush mouth is set in a tight line, and she keeps sneaking glances at me. I’ll admit, I haven’t been putting my best foot forward, but neither has she. She opens the door and walks in, then grudgingly holds it open behind her, waiting for me. I follow her in, and the hostess seats us instantly. We’re the only ones in the place who aren’t dressed up in expensive evening wear. I’ve been here so many times that I barely even notice anymore, but the restaurant’s wealthy clientele are openly staring at her torn jeans and frayed t-shirt, and she glares back at them like someone who’s just stepped out onto the surface of a strange alien world.

Once we’re seated and the host leaves us with the menus, Waverly opens her mouth, closes it again for a moment, then slowly says, “Um, thank you for not holding the door open for me. I should have known you’re no gentleman.”

Gentleman?

I roll my eyes. “Jesus, we’ve been here two seconds, and you’re already being sarcastic. ‘Hold the door open for you?’ What, you’re used to dinners with fucking Sir Galahad? Besides, I would have gotten the door if you hadn’t run ahead of me like a scalded cat.”

Waverly flinches, and for a moment, it looks like she’s about to spit an insult back at me. Instead, she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “No, I wasn’t, uh...I wasn’t being sarcastic. I actually do hate it when guys do that. Hold the door open for me, I mean. It’s, um, patronizing and misogynistic, I think. So. Yeah. Thanks. For, um...not...doing that.” She trails off.

I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to say. A huge gap lies between being considerate and misogynistic. Before I can sweep it away, an image of me holding doors open for her, fighting ogres for her, and picking up her dropped handkerchief, settles inside my brain.

A rush of protective emotion grabs me by the throat. “You’re welcome, I guess.”

A long and uncomfortable silence follows, during which we both pretend to study our menus. The words in front of me blur into a jumbled mess. All I can think about is how my friend treated me, how he backed me into a corner and dictated terms to me like I’m on his payroll. Being treated like a minion is one of the biggest reasons I chose coding and independent software development in the first place – so I’d never be pushed around and expected to just follow some boss’s orders without a second thought. Even if I don’t bring money and power to the table, I bring my really big brain. I want to use it. I’ll never be anyone’s employee. And I thought I’d done that. I really thought I was free.

Then Nixon Fucking Caldwell gives the leash a little jerk and...

“You’ve been here before, right?” Waverly asks, her eyes nervously darting to mine and then back to the menu. “What’s good? What do you usually get when you’re here?”

She’s right. I’ve been here plenty of times. But in that moment, I cannot think of a single thing I’ve ever ordered here, or whether anything I got was any good. It’s like my skull is full of a deep red fog, and no matter what I do, I can’t clear it away.

“I don’t know. It’s all good. Order whatever you want, I don’t care.”

She winces, then pinches the bridge of her nose and takes another deep breath. “Look, for what it’s worth, what Nixon said to you back there was kind of harsh. Not backing up your work, losing your stuff...it happens, you know? It’s just a thing that happens to all of us. If you’re able to stop what you’re doing long enough to back it up, odds are you aren’t passionate enough about it to be working on it anyway, right? I get that. I do. I’ve lost plenty of projects that way.”

For the first time, I realize that she’s not just trying to cut the tension with small talk – these comments are meant to be peace offerings. Part of me feels a grudging respect for her since she’s the first to try to put the obvious hostility between us aside. I want it to be that simple for me too. I want to follow her to the high road, so we can work together.

But why? Because ultimately, I know I have no choice but to work with her thanks to Caldwell senior, and that’s when all the anger comes rushing back into my chest like molten lead.

And he’s not here to take it out on, and she is. Despite my attraction to her, I feel petulant and willful. And she’s going to pay the price.

“Oh, have you?” I hear myself sneer. “What ‘projects’ were those, exactly? Cute little eight-bit avatars of you and your friends? Snarky mods for Warcraft and The Sims? Which vital, top-secret, world-changing programs were you working on when tragedy struck?”

She snaps this time, her eyes flashing with fury. In that moment – tense, wild, ready to pounce and maul like a tiger that’s suddenly been freed from a cage – it strikes me just how much I want her. My cock twitches and throbs inside my cargo pants. The madder I get at her, the more it aches with need. I’m completely unprepared for it, but it’s undeniable. I hadn’t seen it before behind the big glasses and the insults, but she’s so fucking gorgeous with her white hair, azure eyes, and porcelain skin I can’t even try to deny it.

So I don’t. But I do deny that I like her.

“Just what the fuck is your problem with me, anyway?” she hisses. “The thing at my place? So, you got your fragile little ego bruised. What of it? It’s not like I killed your mother or something.”

I let the stony silence stretch between us for long moments while I seethe. She hit a raw and aching nerve. A place deep inside me that I’ve never shown to anyone.

“I figure I must have killed yours, though, right?” I fire back, knowing she has no idea how deeply that one cut. My mother could be dead for all I know. “I mean, I must have done something like that, since you seem to hate me so much. And yeah, starting with that whole scene at your place. What the hell was that? I come to you with a legit offer and an olive branch, and you play James Earl Jones with some voice changer and pour battery acid all over it. What’s wrong with you?”

I see Dixie in the corner of my eye. She starts to walk toward our table with the trundling salad cart in front of her, giving me her usual VIP wave. But then reads the mood between me and Waverly. Her wide smile flickers, snuffs out, and she seamlessly heads to a different table.

“Okay, you really want to know?” Waverly demands.

“Yes, I really want to know. Why do you hate me?”

She hesitates, and then her shoulders slump. I can tell that whatever I did to her, it must have been horseshit. And personal. Most coders like us wear our grudges and feuds like badges of honor. In some twisted way, we even end up defining ourselves by our adversaries. Our community is no different from any other – there are cliques and factions, drama and envy and betrayal. Most of us aren’t shy about confronting our enemies directly with our lists of grievances.

But the thing most of us also have in common is that we keep our most private selves...well, private. What Waverly or Ostrich said during our first meeting brimmed with honesty. We all hide our true identities behind keyboards and screen names. Each of us is a castle full of secrets, with many moats surrounding us. We might lower the drawbridge on one or two of the moats for our closest friends. We might even bridge one or two more moats for lovers or family members.

That last moat? No one ever gets past. That’s the one where the drawbridge never falls. It’s what keeps us in our basements and lairs and holes, typing away, keeping the rest of the world at a distance. Because people equal pain.

Waverly is about to lower a drawbridge for me now. For the first time since the meeting with my so-called friend, Caldwell, I can feel my anger retreating, replaced by unexpected curiosity.

She tells me the story. For most of it, she’s unable to make eye contact. She just fidgets with her napkin, staring down at the table as though it’s a teleprompter feeding her lines. I can see her struggle, pulling the words out of herself. I can’t help but feel the emotion in her words, unsettling me as much as the situation that landed me in front of her.

As she speaks, I steal occasional glances at Dixie, and she gives me an empathetic wink. She understands that whatever we’re talking about, we need some space until we’re finished. Her service instincts are finely honed, and besides, it’s not like we’ll be kicked out of the place for not eating our VIP Caesar salads quickly enough – not when Caldwell made the reservations himself.

When Waverly’s done, her cheeks are flushed, and her hands shake as they worry the white linen. I stare at them. All I want to do is twine my fingers with hers and stop her from hating me.

“‘Go hack an Xbox?’” I ask. “Seriously? That’s what I told you?”

She nods, still not looking at me.

I think back, trying to recall saying that to her. Do I remember her face or that specific instance? No, but now that I really go back and reconsider how I’ve interacted with most people at events like Defcon, other memories crash into my brain like angry waves. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of offhand comments to young and hopeful coders that I now realize were snarky, dismissive, or just downright cruel.

For the first time, I understand how many people I’ve probably hurt since making a name for myself in the software industry, and my heart sinks down into my shoes. All this time, I saw myself as the maverick, the renegade, the bad boy of the tech scene.

Now, as I look into Waverly’s eyes, I see that I’m just a smug asshole that needs to grow the fuck up. I feel her stare as she waits like a blazing heat, made hotter when I recognize the emotion lingering there. It’s pain, and I caused it.

I always thought that if I ended up with a legacy, it would be as a master coder, a creator, a demigod of bits and bytes. But there have probably been about a million other guys like me who thought that about themselves, too, and they still managed not to be hated by rising stars like Waverly. What if I’m just known as a shitty, self-absorbed dickhead with a scrap of talent and a terminal inability to work with anyone? Is that really what I’ve been working so hard for all these years? To be remembered as a total prick – if I’m even remembered at all?

And when, exactly, did my career legacy or status in the industry start mattering more to me than the work itself?

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember,” she says, snapping me back to the present. “You’ve probably had a lot of interactions like that, and I’m sure one yapping little code monkey looks much the same as another to you.”

“Well, look, I mean...uh...” I hear myself stammering like a runaway locomotive chugging down the wrong track. Jesus, when’s the last time I’ve felt so embarrassed? I swallow hard and try again. “You have to understand, I didn’t know that you’d...” I trail off.

“What?” she smirks, finally looking into my eyes as though challenging me. “You didn’t know that saying things like that is a shitty, hurtful thing to do to someone who admires you? Or you didn’t know that I’d grow up to actually be somebody so I could throw it back in your face at the perfect time?”

I chuckle, but the attempt to lighten the conversation falls flat and dies a slow death. Well, she’s right, isn’t she? About both of those things. I should have sensed it from the quivering silence laying in the ever-widening gap between us. I want to close it. To seal it with a glue of connection so powerful it can never be broken. Suddenly, I realize that I’m not just feeling twitchy because I’ve been an insensitive person for so long. It’s also because no one has ever called me out on it before. Now that someone finally has, I know my natural response would be to become angry and defensive, but instead, it actually feels good.

Like a weight’s been lifted.

Or maybe it’s just the fierce flash in Waverly’s eyes, the cocky jut of her chin, the knowing smile as she sizes me up, deeming me a worthy competitor. Now that I’m not busy loathing her and resenting having to work together, I seem to be losing myself in the features of her face. Underneath all of her toughness and bluster, she’s doing something to me. Something no woman has ever done.

“Okay,” I begin again slowly, trying to collect my jumbled thoughts and emotions. “If that’s what I said to you...”

“Oh, it was. Believe me, I remember it pretty damn clearly.” She’s having a lot of fun with my discomfort, and it shows. Again, it should be annoying, but it’s oddly charming.

“Fine, I believe you. In that case, I was a major league fuckhead, and you’re right to hate me. If, you know...you still do.” Why the hell would I say that? It’s such an obvious ploy to see whether or not she’s softening under the pressure of my contrition. Christ almighty, I feel like I’m in high school again, awkwardly trying to kiss a girl for the first time all while wondering if she’ll present her cheek, and I’ll end up devastated.

She smiles widely, displaying rows of perfect white teeth, and see-saws her hand. “Eh. I’d say it’s transitioned from hatred to mild irritation. You keep doing this whole ‘regret’ thing, and we might even reach indifference by the end of the night.”

This time I actually laugh. She’s funny. A real ball-breaker, sure, but witty and likable when she’s not taking herself so seriously and doing the whole “I Am Woman Coder, Hear Me Roar” thing.

“Listen, have you heard of Craig Kesselman?” I ask.

Waverly raises an eyebrow sardonically. “Have you heard of a religious dude named Jesus? Of course, I’ve heard of him. He’s a legend. He’s the one who originally came up with the dark web before the whole thing got taken over by Navy, with TOR and those boring dweebs Goldschlag and Syverson.”

I nod. Of course, she’d know that. I really need to stop underestimating her.

“Well, Kesselman was my personal hero. And I met him once, years back when I was about thirteen and starting to get into coding. He was speaking at the WebSpinners Tech Fest the year it was held in... I want to say Scottsdale? Anyway, I waited in line to see him with my notebooks under my arm. I was sure that once he’d taken a look at my work, he’d see how similar we were, and he’d want to mentor me.”

I don’t tell her how much this raw story hurts when put in the perspective of the abusive foster home I was languishing in at the time. Our fragile truce won’t withstand the dark, dirty truth of my past.

“I think I can see where this is going,” Waverly observes. She leans back and crosses her arms, which only presses her perfect tits outward. I look away before I have more than an uncomfortable story to deal with. “And I’m going to savor every word.”

“Yep. He barely even looked at my notes before he turned to the guy next to him, pointed at me, and said, ‘Hey, look what just fell out of my nose.’ Then he tore a handful of pages out of my notebook and – I swear to God – wiped his ass with them before crumpling them up and tossing them in the nearest trash can.”

Dixie hovers over the table, and I can see she caught the tail end of my story. But she’s too professional to react. Her smile stays in place as she says, “Nixon called ahead so Miss Waverly could try the Caesar. You sugar plums want your salads yet, or should I do another lap around the room?”

As if on cue, our server appears over Dixie’s shoulder.

I’m feeling a lot calmer now. “Sure, Dixie. We’d also like the surf-and-turf kebabs, medium rare, plus an order of green beans with hollandaise sauce to share? After our salads, of course.”

“Seriously? You ordered for me?” Waverly frowns.

I shrug playfully. “What? You did ask what was good here. Seemed like an unspoken invitation.”

“Fair enough. Don’t ever do that again, though. That’s some controlling, macho bullshit. So anyway, what’s the point of your story?” Waverly demands. “That you got shit on by your hero, so now you get to shit on anyone who thinks of you as one?”

No, that hadn’t been my point at all. But her words do make me realize that I’ve internally clung to that excuse many times while mistreating people for no reason, and I feel myself blush a little.

“The point,” I choose my words with caution, “is that not everyone can do what we do. They can study coding for their entire lives, read every book on it, practice for hundreds of hours...but they still can’t...” I grope for the right word.

“They can’t innovate,” she finishes just like she opened my skull, pulled the words out of my brain and into her vocal chords. She’s presenting herself like the missing half to my whole. “Because that can’t be taught. You’re either born looking at the world a certain way, or you’re not.”

“Exactly,” I burst out, relieved. “Either the big ideas come to you, or they don’t. But most people don’t understand that, because most people just aren’t born that way. When you finally ‘make it’ in our field, you’re constantly swarmed with people – mostly younger, but not always – who are desperate to shove their work in your face and ask, ‘Is this good? Is this like what you’d come up with? Is it? Is it?’ And it gets exhausting, and the answer is always ‘no,’ and you just...well, eventually, you run out of polite ways to say it.”

“Because what they’re really asking is, ‘Where do you get your ideas? What’s your secret? How can I be like you?’” Waverly nods. “And there just...aren’t any answers to those questions.”

“Which leaves us a pair of Mozarts in a world full of Salieris. And clearly, I mistook which one you are the first time we met. So, I’m sorry. That won’t happen again, I promise.”

Waverly grins. “Well, your apology is accepted. And it’s been a real pleasure to witness your redeeming little three-ghosts-in-the-night revelation, Ebenezer.”

I laugh again, and warmth flows over me. She exudes light and strength as if she travels with her own sun.

After sous chef Dixie’s VIP salad treatment. Our server brings the rest of our food, and as we eat, we both order a couple rounds of drinks. We trade stories of late-night brainstorming sessions, coders who’ve offered personal inspiration, favorite software hacks, and other stuff that would be a foreign language to anyone who isn’t us. I haven’t been able to communicate on this level with anyone since...

Wait. Have I ever been able to connect with someone like this? The people who aren’t on my level go glassy-eyed with confusion when I try to discuss my work, and the ones who are on my level are usually too busy preening and posturing about their own accomplishments to care about mine.

And she is on my level, clearly. Like she said, anyone can study code, but the way she talks about kisses my ears and caresses my heart like exquisite poetry.

By the time we’re finished with our meal, the alcohol glows with heat in the pit of my stomach. “Sorry if I stopped making sense around that third drink. I’m a bit tipsy.”

“I’m not nearly tipsy enough,” she replies, mischief flashing in her eyes. The little bit of naughty turns them a deep blue, like the color of the sky at midnight. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got a mostly-full bottle of vodka rolling around under my couch. Feel like a nightcap?”

I try to hide my surprise. Is she inviting me over?

My brain reaches down to shake me by the shoulders violently. No. No, no, no. Do not do this, Hawk.

Caldwell wants the two of us to get along so we can work together, and now, like magic, we do. Now is the time when I should make a polite excuse, go home, and start the project fresh tomorrow with no weirdness between the two of us. Now is not the time to accept an invitation to...what? Get drunk together? Make out? Slide my cock so deep inside her tender pussy that I claim her as my own? Now that I’ve fixed things with her, do I really want to break them all over again by making it complicated?

And that’s the moment temptation wins the war and I fuck myself over.

“Sure,” I say. “I’d love one.”