Chapter Fourteen

Waverly

Over the next six days, I have more fun than I’ve ever had in my life.

I guess I’ve been coding alone for so many years that I’d actually managed to convince myself I enjoyed the isolation – just me, bathed in the ghostly glow of my computer’s monitor, wrapped in a comforting womb of silence with no one to distract me or ask stupid questions about my work.

I’d even come to regard the sound of the keyboard as the friendly voice of a constant companion. I’d have a string of thoughts, and they would be answered reasonably by the steady clacking of my fingertips on the keys, unspooling my ideas, hashing them out, turning them into reality.

Even after my night with Hawk, I still wasn’t wholly certain I’d be able to break out of this routine without my work suffering as a result.

But oh, it feels so good to be wrong.

Hawk and I spend almost every moment of every day just a few feet away from each other, until it’s hard to tell where he ends, and I begin. Between frantic, hours-long bursts of coding, we pace around Hawk’s workspace in tight circles – firing ideas at each other like machine gun bullets, finishing each other’s thoughts, sometimes even talking in unison. We interrupt each other constantly, but instead of annoying each other, we just become even more excited about the project at hand.

We eat the same junk food and drink the same soda, until the wrappers and bottles and cans overflow from the wastebasket and start to overtake the floor. There’s no nagging, no disapproving looks, no eye-rolling, no recrimination about picking up trash. We’re both unrepentant slobs who are addicted to the work, and even without saying it out loud, it’s clear that each of us is overjoyed to find this out about the other. Cleanliness might be next to godliness outside this room, but inside of it, we are gods – creating and destroying entire galaxies of dense code, rearranging reality to be whatever we want it to be.

We rarely stop to bathe, and when we do, we use the same soap, shampoo, and toothpaste, until even our scents begin to blur together. We almost never sleep, and even though it’s clear that we’re eager to pounce on each other again like we did that first night, the most we can usually muster is a passionate kiss or two before we pass out for a few hours in a tangle of arms and legs, bleary and bloodshot, our minds racing even as our bodies shut down.

Because in its own way, this all-consuming work is almost better than sex. It’s something intense and intimate, something we both know we can’t share with anyone else alive. We’re two flames who have combined into a raging inferno of inspiration and creativity. All we do is burn and burn together, until our white-hot fire forges the iron wrought from our minds.

The only times we’re apart are when we need more food. We take turns driving to the nearest store for supplies, and whoever makes the trip generally comes back with a few quick bits of news from the outside world – gleaned from the headlines of newspapers and magazines in the check-out aisle – before we tear open the snack wrappers and get back to work. Every time I run this errand, I find myself blinking and recoiling from the sunlight, like something pale and blind that’s crawled out from under a rock.

We don’t dare make these trips together, after what happened to Hawk’s original work. We set alarms on our cell phones reminding us to save our progress at regular intervals, and whoever leaves the house even keeps the valuable external drive with them. We can’t take the risk of leaving what we’ve done unprotected in case someone tries to sabotage it again. Someone with greasy hair, Armani suits, and goons that look like the gorilla exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. Setting a fire in an empty workroom is one thing, but the odds are against someone trying anything when there’s someone there to guard the project.

That’s our theory.

But based on my tense meeting with Dante, that thought doesn’t comfort me entirely. If he was really willing to pay so much money for a program like this, what else might he be willing to do? Violence? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that he’d set his next fire with Hawk still in the house, or have a couple of his men beat Hawk up...or worse?

Every time I leave, I find myself driving a little too fast, trying to get back to him in time to prevent something bad from happening. I try to keep my mind on the work I’ll do when I get back, but instead, I find myself fighting off intrusive thoughts – graphic scenes of Hawk being brutalized while our software is stolen.

Then I open the door and see his handsome face twisted into a grimace under the weight of his thoughts, and I realize that up until that moment, my heart has been racing and my breath has been tight in my chest.

And every time he leaves and comes back, I notice the same relief in his eyes when he sees that I’m fine.

I freely admit it. Even with my laser-like focus on the project at hand, another thought nudges its way into my brain here and there. Hawk’s birth mother. It’s sad that he hasn’t been able to find her, but more than that, it’s surprising. Adults from foster homes find their real parents every day, don’t they? Sometimes these reunions work out and sometimes they don’t, but either way, there must be a million ways to dig up this kind of information so there can be closure.

Hawk just hit one too many brick walls while trying, and yeah, the fact that the records were burned up in a fire was extremely bad luck, not to mention discouraging. Based on that, it seems like he feels that giving up is his only option. But how much of that might be coming from fear and self-sabotage? Doesn’t he at least deserve a chance to make this decision for himself, to either find and confront her or let it go and move on with his life?

The more I keep picking at the knot of this problem in the back of my mind, the more I realize how important it is for me to do something about this for him, and the impulse surprises me. I’m not exactly the kind of person who goes out of her way to do favors for people – and this thought catches me off guard, reminding me of how solitary and self-sufficient my life has been up until now. After my first meeting with Hawk at that convention years ago, I had decided on some level that I should never ask anyone for anything, and that no one had any right to expect anything from me either.

He started as my curse but ended as my blessing.

Now I want to fix this for him, more than I can remember wanting anything in a very long time.

And what’s more, I think I can.

I don’t know how yet, but I’m positive there’s a way. If life has taught me anything, it’s that there’s no problem I can’t solve with a computer and the right combination of ones and zeroes. As soon as we finish this project, I can devote all of my attention to coming up with a solution.

“What is it?”

Hawk’s voice breaks through this cloud of half-formed thoughts, and when I glance up at him, I see that he’s been looking at me.

“What’s what?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

“You had kind of a weird look on your face for a second there.”

For a moment, I consider telling him about this train of thought. Then I dismiss it. He doesn’t need this stuff distracting him from the work we’re doing – in fact, he’d probably resent it. Worse, he might think my mind isn’t on the job and regret telling me about his search for his mother in the first place. And anyway, there’s always the slim chance that I won’t be able to accomplish this for him, in which case, getting his hopes up could be extremely cruel.

No. Better to just do this quietly on my own, then bring any successful results to him so he can make up his own mind about what to do with them.

“Yeah, um...no, it’s nothing,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “Think I just zoned out for a sec. I’m fine.”

“We’ve been working nonstop for the last thirty hours,” he observes. “That’s enough to put the zap on anyone’s head. Nap or caffeine?”

“Caffeine,” I answer immediately. We’ve both gotten used to this multiple-choice game over the past week. “We’re too close to nailing this thing for me to sleep now.”

He nods, goes to the mini-fridge, and tosses me a plastic bottle filled with cola. Now that my eyes are away from the screen, my blurry vision almost causes me to miss the bottle and have it hurtle to the floor in a liquid explosion. I fumble it, then carefully twist the cap, letting the hissing foam at the top lose its pressure before I remove it. As Hawk returns to his monitor, I understand that he knows I’m hiding my true thoughts from him, but he trusts me enough not to press the point further.

I’ve never felt so...known before. So deeply and firmly understood. How many times over the years had I dreamed of being truly seen? Too many to count.

It’s a good feeling.