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I was broken, but she was breaking, and that hurt more.
“So that’s why you’re after me? Your dad threatens you with sending Theo away?”
Edie nodded again and retrieved her hand. The tears made a comeback. Again, she didn’t let them fall. I admired that.
“He said if I don’t get my hands on your flash drive, Theo will be sent to New York.”
“I can give you my flash drive sans the information he is looking for,” I offered without thinking it through. Why the fuck would I care if Jordan had his hands on a bunch of contracts and contact lists he already had access to? It made zero difference to me. And most of my flash drive had just that. A bunch of shit you could find in the company’s records if you did a general search in our database. There was just the one file, leading to a few other files, with information he actually wanted…
“He knows, Trent. Whatever you’re planning, he is not stupid. He’s already figured out whatever you have on him is on your flash drive, and he expects it to be there.”
Good point. Especially as I knew how and why he’d found out about it. I stood up and paced in front of her.
“The thing is…they only let me see Theo on Saturdays. Which is why Saturdays are sacred to me. If I try to go tomorrow, they won’t let me in. I think my father is bribing someone there or something.”
“That’s why you hate rich people so much.” I rubbed the back of my head, staring at the floor as I paced. It was simple, when you thought about it. Her father chose his career and money over his family, and so she hated money and her father—the two things that ruined her life.
“Yeah.” Her hands dropped to her thighs, her head hanging down. “Money makes people do stupid things. It eats at your morals and makes you lose sight of what’s really important.”
“Not always,” I argued. I didn’t feel that way. Maybe because I didn’t come from money, I knew you could, and should, survive without it. But I loved my life as a rich man. I just didn’t love it enough to give up the things that kept me alive. My daughter, parents, and friends. I’d spend every dollar I had, give it up in a heartbeat if I could get Luna’s voice back.
She looked up, shooting me a tired smile. “You’re a good man, Trent.”
I didn’t know about that, but the notion I should be good, even if just for her, gripped me hard.
We hung out there for another half hour, then I went out to grab us some sandwiches from a nearby joint. We sat on the damp, dewed benches outside the hospital before returning to the reception area of the fourth floor. Edie was chewing on the collar of her top like a kid, looking out the window. She’d tried to call her father twice since I’d arrived. He never picked up the phone.
“You should probably leave. It’s getting really late and Luna will be worried. Plus, it doesn’t look like I’ll get out of here anytime soon, so…”
“I’m staying.” I brushed off her nervousness. Not because it was the humane thing to do—because fuck humane—but because she was there alone, and I selfishly wanted her with me. No matter how. Even like this.
“You really shouldn’t.” She let go of the damp collar of her shirt, biting her lip now.
Our eyes met. “I know.”
Edie rested her head against my shoulder and wept, and I let her.
Even when she fell asleep on me, and I couldn’t move, I waited until her soft snores drifted into my ears.
Then I carried her quietly to her mother’s room, tucking her on a sofa next to the hospital bed. The light was still on. They were both too exhausted to care. My gaze traveled between them, and they looked so similar, and yet so different.
That night, I watched Edie for far too long.
That night, I’d changed.
That night, I didn’t take anything from Edie Van Der Zee. For the first time in years—I gave something of myself. Worst part? I’d never be able to retrieve it.
It was hers.
Forever.
A GREAT BIG WORLD HAS this song, “Say Something”. It’s supposed to be a love song, but for me, it would always be the song I cried to when I got on a bus from San Diego to Todos Santos, with my headphones plugged securely into my ears to silence the rest of the world after Theo threw the punch at me.
He hadn’t meant it. I knew that. It must be horrific, being caged in that head of his. Things that came so easy to me were foreign and strange to him. But giving up on him just because he couldn’t say it, the things he was feeling, was out of the question.
