I don’t—fuck, I can’t exactly refute that.
“He’s a human being just like the rest of us, and yeah, he fucked up. You two have a chance to learn from this, to focus on how you communicate. I’ve been with Colin for close to four years now, and let me tell you we always have to have a lot of patiencewith how we each choose to communicate. You might both speak English, but that doesn’t always mean you’re speaking the same language, okay? He chose to do this for both of you. Do I think he was being a little bit selfish? Yes, but not in a bad way. I truly believe he thought you’d be happier in New York, and by the way, I agree.
“If you’d come here...” She pauses to sigh heavily. “As much as I would’ve loved to have you, we wouldn’t have been able to beat off the so-called journalists with a stick. You and I working for the same team would have meant that the second we lost a game, it was officially the end of the world, and that’s no way to live.”
I soak in her words, and wonder briefly if she knows something about the Demons that I don’t.
“I was already feeling very overwhelmed by the idea of being in the spotlight permanently. Even more than in LA, but when he just casually told me about Tucker, like it wasn’t even something big or something he hadn’t told me... That probably made it worse,” I concede, because yeah, the way I went off on him might’ve been out of line.
“You should be saying this to Eli and then letting him grovel. You two will be fine,” she says, her voice full of a breeziness I wish I felt. “Just talk it through when he gets back.”
I grumble nonsense and she chuckles.
“You left him in the middle of an argument, didn’t give him a chance to say anything in his defense, Lex. You can’t be mad at him for doing the same. Besides, knowing him, he probably spent the whole night researching the NHL so hard that he probably already knows more than you and me combined.”
“Sure,” I start out, my voice already full of dark sarcasm. “Why couldn’t he have done that before talking to fucking Tucker?”
“Because he’s not perfect, and finding that out at the start of your relationship isn’t a bad thing, Lex.”
I resist the urge to hang up on her—barely.
18
Eli
The slam of the door echoes for minutes after Lex storms out.
It doesn’t seem real.
It can’t be real.
There’s no way I fucked upthisbadly, is there?
You don’t fucking understand.
I never thought such simple words could have the impact of a bomb on my body, on my brain, but after Lex’s rant, I know they’re the truth.
I feel stupid.
Never in my life have I felt stupid, not even at fourteen years old when I told Lex I loved him and he didn’t say it back.
Not three years later when the FBI came knocking and told me they’d figured out I was Angelwings66 and I’d been the one tohack into Quantico and the Pentagon—I was so naïvely smug even while feeling a little bit mortified.
That mortification spurred me into caution, it pushed me to learn more, to become better than I already was.
Now there’s no one in the world who could find me—find Angelwings66—unless I want them to.
I’ve made sure that the agents who came that night and every single person who knew about their findings don’t have any proof. I’ve done enough work for them over the years to be sure they won’t ever tell.
And if they did?
Well, their lives would be irrevocably changed and still it would be really hard for people to believe them.
My back snaps straight and I stand from the mattress on shaky legs, and I walk as if in a trance to my office. I close the door but don’t lock in the security system.
It’s already ten and I doubt anyone would come in right now... especially not Lex.
I sit at my desk, boot up my system, and do what I do best.
