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aking things up.”
“So am I,” Aidan said.
Noah shrugged. “I go to a lot of parties, where I smile and nod. That’s pretty much my entire strategy. I don’t have any others.”
“I’m the only guy in the Texas oil business who doesn’t wear Wranglers,” Alex said, “and I have tattoos. Most of the time they don’t know what to make of me, so I get my way.”
“But you actually do all of those things,” I said. “I don’t. I’ve spent the past two years writing a program that uses AI to teach without a human teacher. I haven’t been doing deals like I’m supposed to.”
“I didn’t know you were making an AI program,” Aidan said. “I knew you were working on something, but you were secretive about it.”
He was right, and that was part of the problem. “Okada has promised to assign staff to help me finish it,” I said. “As much staff as I want.”
“Well,” Noah said, running a hand through his scruff of dark blond hair. “It sounds like a great deal for you, Dane. And it sounds like a great deal for Kaito Okada. Sorry if I’m being calculating here, but there’s nothing in this for the rest of us.”
“I agree,” Alex said. “We lose one of our partners, who is working on something that could be worth a lot of money, and we don’t get anything in return.”
“What do you want, then?” I asked, exasperated. “Do you want Okada to pay Tower? Buy me off you? Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aidan said. “We don’t put a price on one of our partners. That said, we also don’t give our partners away for free, which is what Okada is asking for.” He swiveled back and forth in his chair, his only sign that this had gotten under his skin. Then he stilled himself. “Dane, you’d have to leave Chicago and move to Japan, at least for a few years. Leave everything. Is that something you want to do?”
“I want to do more than what I’m doing,” I said. “It’s time I stopped pretending I’m a venture capital guy like the rest of you. I’m just a programmer who wants to come up with cool shit on the computer. As for moving to Japan…” I scrubbed a hand over my short hair. “I can’t answer that, because it isn’t up to me. It’s up to Ava.”
There was thunderous silence in the office as all three of them stared at me. “Up to Ava?” Noah said.
Aidan’s tone was decidedly chill. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d come into this meeting with every intention of keeping what happened between Ava and me a secret, but these were my brothers in everything but blood, and I couldn’t lie to them. I couldn’t sit here and tell them to their faces that nothing had happened in the past week, that I was considering a job offer like any other job offer. My life was in fucking disarray, or it was about to be, and my Tower partners were the only guys I wanted to talk to about it.
Besides, it was time to man up. If I wanted Ava—and I did—then I had to own it.
I looked at Aidan. “Ava and I got involved while she was in Chicago,” I said.
His face showed not a flicker of expression, which I knew from experience was very, very bad. “What did you say?” he said.
“You’re involved with Ava?” Noah said.
“I am.” I glanced at the others. “I want to be. We were involved eleven years ago, and when we were together last week, we started again.”
There was a loud clatter as Aidan pushed his chair back and stood up. “What do you mean, eleven years ago? Say it, Dane. You slept with my sister?”
Lots of times. Oh, and I took her virginity, and she took mine. I didn’t say it out loud, thank God. Instead I said, “We were serious. At least, I was.”
“When the hell did this happen?” Alex said, incredulous. “And where was I?”
“I didn’t notice it, either,” Noah said. “I know we were all distracted, but come on. I definitely would have heard the noise if you two were—”
“Shut up,” Aidan said to him. He turned back to me. “Ava has never told me this. So both of you have been lying to me for all this time.”
Now he was being a dick. “It’s been none of your business all this time,” I shot back. “Ava makes her own decisions. She moved to New York and I stayed in Chicago. We’ve been broken up for years.”
“Until last week.”
“Yes.”
“Did you break her heart?”
This was why he was so mad, I thought. He’d told me that Ava was fragile, that he was worried about her. He was worried I’d hurt her, that I would hurt her again.
