EVERYTHING IN HIS house was hideous. Ugly and gaudy, a testament to money. Money that meant absolutely nothing when the house was empty of everything but horrible artwork. He’d been trying to forget for five days. It was two in the morning and he was well on his way to being drunk, but he still hadn’t forgotten.
She haunted him. His bed was cold. His heart was cold. It was a cold that ran deep. No night on the street had ever felt so bad. No stripping of his pride in the bed of a woman he despised had ever left him feeling quite so sick.
Losing Julia showed everything he’d built up in his life for the false facade it was.
He had not changed. He was still a scared boy with nothing and no one at the end of the day. Money hadn’t changed that. And it wouldn’t.
The only thing that could change was him. Even thinking about it scared him. Because if he opened himself up, he might remember. Might have to deal with the full force of his feelings, feelings from the past twelve years that he’d blunted. He’d blocked it all out to avoid the pain.
But without it, he would never have her. Without emotion, he could never have joy.
He looked around. At all the ugly, bloody artwork on his walls. On pedestals. Such opulent, pristine surroundings that meant less than nothing. He hated it all. What it represented. The type of man it proved him to be. He’d sold his soul for marble and plaster, for canvas and paint. For money. And now he was empty inside, while his house and bank account were full.
A damned sorry trade.
He walked over to a pedestal with a bust of an emperor on it and looked the thing in its white, hollow eyes. Eyes that probably had more substance than his own. Then he pushed it over, watched it shatter like dust on the floor. And he did the same to the vase beside it.
Meaningless. All of it. Without her, what did it mean?
He went down to one knee, the pain in his chest crippling. Ferro lowered his head and pressed his palms against his eyes. He felt it all crash in. The darkness, the shame. The hatred. For himself. For the women who’d used him. He felt like he was sinking in the mud, shrouded in darkness.
But in his mind there was one spot of brightness. One bit of sunshine.
It was Julia. She was reaching her hand down to him, offering to pull him out. Offering to free him. And he had turned her away.
Damn him to hell, he had turned away his salvation.
* * *
Julia exited the bathroom adjacent to her office and put her head down on her desk. The cramps she’d been dealing with all day had now been explained by the timely arrival of her period. Which was great, because it meant she wasn’t pregnant. But she honestly didn’t feel like throwing a party about it.
It just confirmed that her relationship with Ferro was going to be over, well and truly over, soon. There would be no link between them. No evidence of their time spent together.
Except maybe their GPS for Barrows. If that deal went through, then they would have that. But she really wasn’t holding her breath on that score. Not right now.
No. That wasn’t true. She wasn’t going to let there be nothing. She lifted her head and punched the intercom that connected her with Thad’s desk.
“Thad? Order one of those big, obnoxious life-size soldiers from Cold Planet.”
“A real one or one from a novelty store?”
“The novelty store will do just fine,” she said, cutting him off. She was going to put it in her living room. Because she liked that stuff, and she didn’t let herself have it. Because it was weird and geeky and she’d been trying so hard not to be. Because it revealed too much of her unsophisticated self. Of her real self. The self that had been battered, taken advantage of. Ridiculed.
But Ferro had shown her that she didn’t need to hide. That she didn’t need to be scared.
That it didn’t matter what anyone else thought of her, because who she was mattered. She was successful because of her focused nature. Because of her enthusiasm. She’d surged ahead of the pack and made success for herself, not in spite of those things about her that had made it hard to make friends, that had made her parents think she was weird, but because of them.
Ferro had helped her see that. He’d helped her reconcile the pain from her past. Helped her put it all where it belonged. She’d thought she’d been over it, because she’d felt strong, but it had been a lie. And she’d gone into hiding, afraid that if she was ever pulled from her cocoon again, she would be hurt again.
And she had been. But she wouldn’t hide. Not again.
She would always be thankful to him for that. Not so much for the salmon that was still in her office, or for the broken heart that still, a week later, hurt like hell.
Her intercom buzzed and Thad’s voice filled the office again. “Julia, he’s on his way in…”
Julia looked up just as Ferro walked into her office.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He had a beard. She’d never seen him with a beard. But it looked like he hadn’t bothered to shave at all in the past six days.
“I’ve had news from Barrows.”
“And?”
“They gave the account to Hamlin.”
“Oh.” She honestly couldn’t believe it. Even with Ferro’s display of macho anger, she’d felt like Hamlin had behaved even worse, and his GPS had been inferior. “I can’t even believe they picked him after that cheap family values shot. He’s so transparent and…”
“I threatened the man’s life in front of them, our odds weren’t good.”
“Our GPS was better,” she said, feeling stubborn now. “And I’m not pregnant. I thought I’d throw that in there real quick since we’re getting to end our association now. Really and completely.”
“You aren’t pregnant?” he asked, his expression strange, veiled.
“Nope. Not gestating the heir to your techie empire. Sorry.”
“Julia…”
“And I still can’t believe they picked Hamlin! We won that. We won it. Ours was so much better.”
“It doesn’t matter, they picked him.” He started pacing the length of the office. “This is your fault, you know?”
“My fault? How is this my fault? You’re the one who lost your cookies in the meeting, in front of everyone!”
“Because he insulted you,” Ferro said. “And I could not stop myself. I lost all of my control, and that has never happened to me, not since I learned the importance of it. It’s you. You’re the only thing that’s different. You have changed me. And I cannot, for the life of me figure out how to change back. Six days, Julia, six days and I can’t eat. I can think of nothing but you. I feel like my heart has left my chest and is walking around outside of it. Do you know how terrifying that feeling is?”
“Yes,” she said, “I do because that’s how I feel. Like my heart is walking around outside my body and you, you’re my heart. When you walked away you took that away from me and I…and everything just sucks! I don’t care about the GPS. I don’t care about the deal at all, and it’s the whole reason we got together in the first place. But I don’t even want it anymore, Ferro, I just want you.”
He strode to her desk and rounded it, reaching for her hands and tugging her up into his arms, kissing her, bold, deep, fierce. And when she pulled back and looked into his eyes, she saw him unveiled. Truly. Finally.
Emotion blazed from him, passion. And there was no control. He kissed with everything he’d held back from her for the past few weeks. She had a feeling it was everything he’d held back for the past thirty-four years of his life.
When they parted, neither of them could catch their breath. He brushed his thumb over her cheek, wiped her tears away. Tears she hadn’t realized were falling.
“You were right about me,” he said. “I was a coward. I learned early on in life that the more you need, the more you can have taken. The more you care, the more power you give to other people. I had to force myself to stop feeling when I made the choices I did. I had to stop so I could get through it, and when it was over I was afraid if I started feeling again I would have to face the full horror of who I had become in order to get ahead in life.”
“You make it sound like you did it on a whim. Ferro, you were saving your life. You were doing it for food. For shelter. For things I had given to me, things I’ve taken for granted all my life.”
“I know,” he said. “But it didn’t change the fact that it…broke something in me. The way I saw sex. The way I saw relationships. Not just that I had a hard time connecting sex and emotion, but that it seemed an impossibility. I had worked so hard to separate my body from my own desires, from my emotions, that I didn’t think I could ever unite them again. And I didn’t want to. Because it would hurt too much. Cost too much. But I faced it, Julia. I did. I looked down into the darkest parts of myself and I saw the pain. The destruction.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “And then there was you. I thought I could give in to my body’s desire for you and keep my emotions separate. After all, I had done it with women I didn’t want. How hard could it be to take what I wanted for a while and walk away? But I didn’t count on you. You and your joy. Your innocence. Your enthusiasm. You are everything that I had beaten out of me. You bring it back to me. Show me a part of life that I have never gotten to have and I want to hold on to it, to you, forever.”
“You… Ferro you make me proud of who I am. You make me feel like I’m special. Except…except when you left. That hurt me. It broke my heart.”
“It broke mine, Julia, and I didn’t even know I had a heart left in me to break. A shocking discovery. Even more shocking is the fact that you make me want to feel. I thought…I thought I would get to a certain position in life and nothing would touch me. Nothing would hurt. There would be no more shame or fear, but it was always there. Money, things, didn’t fix it. I was to the point where I was a man with billions of dollars, afraid to sleep outside because it might make me cold. Because it might take me back to the places I’d been. But, Julia, you make me not so afraid, you and the feelings I have for you. The answer has never been in money, it’s never been in status. Those things didn’t change me.”
“Any more than my clothes changed me,” she said.
“No. What changed me was you. Loving you. You put the pieces of me back together. You made me whole. And if you can take me…a man who has been where I’ve been, done what I’ve done, if you can take me and love me, then I really can let it go. If you can forgive it, I can, too.”
She kissed him, hard, with everything she had. “There is nothing to forgive. Nothing in your life makes me feel ashamed of you. I am proud. Proud to know you. Proud to love you. Because of you I’m even proud of me.”
“I love you, Julia. I have never felt this emotion before. I’ve never said those words before.”
“I am honored to be your first lover. Your first love,” she said. “Oh, and I have something for you.” She reached down into her desk drawer and pulled out a folder, the folder he’d given her, and handed it to him. “For you. To do whatever you see fit with.”
He turned around and put the file through her industrial shredder. Then turned back to her. “How’s that?”
“I hope you aren’t still planning on not taking me down simply because you’re attempting to pay me back.”
“No. But I’m not ever going to try to take Anfalas down because you fill a space Datasphere doesn’t. The world needs you. Needs your creativity. Your passion. Just like I do.”
“Now that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“You deserved to hear it much sooner.”
“I’m fine with the fact that I heard it first now. That I heard it from you. You’re the first person who’s made me feel like being me was enough. The first person who’s ever made me feel like nothing was wrong with me.”
“Your parents…that boy at your school…they wanted you to be a garden variety flower, Julia. To put you in your place. Something they could understand and manipulate with ease. But you are something much more beautiful, much more rare. That they couldn’t see, and that is a commentary on their vision, not on you. They were threatened by you because you’re a force, a beauty that can’t be contained. It is…a crime that those people stole your color. That they made you feel you had to hide it. I believe you were made to shine.”
“See, you say things like that and…and I believe them.”
“I’m so glad you do. Perhaps we can’t make each other see exactly what we see in each other. But we can keep saying it.”
“I have no problem with that.” Julia looked down at the shredder, where the file with all the ill-gotten information about Anfalas had gone. “Hey, Ferro…how would you like to do a little partnering?”
“On what?”
“Have you ever thought of expanding in to the auto industry?”
“The auto industry?”
“Our kick-butt GPS needs some cars to go into. Seems like it might be a pretty cool adventure. And the JulErro page has like…fifty thousand likes at this point, so it seems to me like we could really get some easy buzz going.”
Julia was off and running with her idea and Ferro could only watch in awe as she explained, with grand hand gestures and glittering eyes, how they would make the dream into a reality.
Emotion expanded in Ferro’s chest and he embraced it, allowed himself to feel, wholly and completely, the love he had for the woman in front of him.
Then he pulled her into his arms. “I love it when you get excited about a project.”
“I’m not boring you?”
“Never. You make me feel like life is one big adventure.”
“Who me? I don’t just look like a geek?”
He kissed her. “Julia Anderson, you look perfect to me.”
“I may wear an elven robe to our product launch. Since I’m newly liberated and all.”
“I’ll still think you look perfect.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes,” he said. “Because you’re you. And you can never be anything less than perfect to me.”