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He might have been bad news, but everything I had learned about Breaker suggested he was a good man.
And I couldn't drag a good man down into my gutters to wade around in the muck with me. It wasn't right.
I had to find a way out for myself. And for him. And Shoot. Whatever it took. No one else was going to die because of me and my mess.
I sniffled back a new onslaught of tears, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. It wasn't the time. To break down. To fall apart. I needed to push back all that dark and lock it away for a time when everyone was safe and away from my mess. Then I could let it out. Let it consume me if it needed to.
“You alright?” Breaker's voice asked and I felt myself nodding even though that answer was a booming, deafening no. “Can we get back on the road?”
“Yep,” I said, pulling out of his arms and turning back to the car, throwing myself in before he could even move a foot.
Breaker got in silently, throwing on the heat, pulling off the shoulder, and letting me have my silence though I kept feeling his eyes on my profile as he drove.
We pulled up to his house a while later and I followed Breaker inside, both of us going to change into dry clothes. By the time he came out of the bedroom, I was in a pair of black yoga pants and a oversize pink sweatshirt, legs curled on the couch, laptop propped on top of them.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting the word about Glenn out there,” I said, forcing my eyes to blink back the tears. “He had friends in the hacker community. They have a right to know. Everyone worries about each other when we disappear. Mostly thinking one of us got locked up, but there's always a chance for... worse. His friends deserve to know the truth.”
“You think that's a good idea seeing as we're the only ones who know what happened to Glenn?” he asked, watching me, his words hesitant like he was worried he was crossing a line.
“First- Lex doesn't exactly seem like the type who knows how to use the dark web. Second- I am going to say to keep it on the DL because it could lead to my getting into the same kind of trouble as Glenn. And third, I don't give a fuck.”
To this, Breaker had nothing to say.
I had the vague knowledge of him walking around the kitchen as I typed but I didn't look up until I saw him sit down beside me, dropping two glasses on the coffee table and filling them with something clear.
My eyes went to his, brows drawn together.
“Your friend died today,” he said, putting the bottle down and reaching for the glasses, handing one to me. “You owe it to him to honor his memory.”
“By drinking?” I asked, glancing at the bottle of vodka.
“Yeah, doll. It's what people do. People in the line of work we're in. We drink. We share stories. We numb the pain a little. We fight or fuck and we move the fuck on. It's the only way.”
The line of work we're in.
I never thought of it that way. That we were, in a way, doing the same kind of job. Underground. Illegal.
But he was right.
I may not have had blood on my hands in a literal way, but that morning proved I did in a very metaphorical way.
So if the way people like us honored a death was by drinking, then I owed it to Glenn to do that.
I lifted my glass toward Breaker then threw back the liquid that burned down my throat. I came up coughing and Breaker laughed.
“Not a big drinker, huh?”
I rubbed the tongue against the roof of my mouth, trying to scrub the taste of vodka away with no success. “No.”
To this, he shrugged, leaning forward to snag the bottle and pour us both another round. “You won't even taste it soon enough,” he told me sagely then just kept plying me with liquor until it became true. “So did you two date for long?” he asked a while later when my head was starting to feel fuzzy and the room was whirling a bit, making me put my foot on the ground to assure myself that I was still, in fact, stationary.
“No. And we didn't really... date,” I said, my mouth deciding it was a good time to spill all the dirty little secrets I kept buried deep. “He taught me things. He liked me. I just... I had nothing else to offer him...”
If I had been looking, I would have seen Breaker's light eyes darken, his face harden. “Alex, you have more to offer than sex,” he said, his words a little firmer than usual, making me look at him.
But I didn't see the hardness there.
And I was laughing. “Says the man who has been screwing me silly for the past couple of days.”
“Doll...”
“Not that I'm complaining,” I went on, oblivious to even the idea of boundaries anymore. “The sex has been like... great. Like super super great. And I didn't even think I had a sex drive anymore. But then there you were all badass and dirty mouthed and my lady bits were like... well hello. And then you knew how to use your gentleman bits really well and I just... what's so funny?” I asked, my brows knitting together, feeling indignation rise up. Didn't he see that I was trying to give him a compliment? It was rude to laugh at compliments.
“My... gentleman bits?” he asked, trying to reign in the smile and failing miserably.
“Fine. Your cock,” I shot back, lowering my eyes at him. “Happy?”
“Surprisingly... given this shit day. Having to deal with Lex. Seeing him rake you over the coals. Again. Having to see you cry. Even with all that shit? Yeah, babe... I'm pretty fuckin' happy right now.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You're drunk,” I dismissed him.
