Page 64 of The Triangle

“I’m sorry.”

He pulls back and looks at me, fanning some hair away from my eyes as he does. “For what?”

“For everything that happened. Everything that ripped us apart. I feel like it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s his fault.”

“But I chose to stay with him.”

He nods and chews at the inside of his mouth. “Yeah, well, that’s true.”

“But you know why, don’t you?”

“I mean, I’ll go out on a limb and guess ‘money.’”

I sigh. Shake my head. “No. Because I didn’t think that I’d ever get what I want from you. And so I just decided… I did what I had to do to stay… strong.”

“Yeah? Did it work?”

I think about giving him the answer I know I should, but I opt for the truth.

“Yeah. It did. It was the right decision.”

I hate seeing him frown.

“But, look, you’re here now. And I’m here now. And, I mean, we did fuck a little while ago, so I assume that means you’re in a different place about it all than you were before.” I bend my head to look at him with a kind of half-joking, searching face that always used to make him laugh. It works. A bit. I go on, “So, whatever. Maybe it all went the way it was supposed to, so that we can be here.”

He looks around, “Here? You mean here in this fucking glass box in the middle of who knows where with Alec, who—and don’t even get me started on the fuckin’ irony that that dude has us living in a glass house—who, I’ll bet everything I own, is the whole fucking cause of whatever this is that’s happening, but that you can’t remember because you cracked your goddamned head open, but the one thing we know for certain is that lots of people with guns and who knows what the hell else are trying to kill all three of us right now?”

That’s more of a speech than I’m used to from Danny. Or maybe it isn’t. Again, I’m not sure I can trust my memories right now. “Why do you think it’s Alec?”

“Who else? I’m not saying he set us up. I don’t imagine he’d try to coordinate a hit on himself. But whatever the fuck he’s into—and I think I know what it is—he’s dragged you into it too, and the result of it all is that we’re balls deep in van den Berg again.”

I almost laugh at that. “You think you know what he’s into? What is it?”

Danny’s brow knits and he takes a breath. His lips tighten. Either he’s not sure he’s right or he just doesn’t wanna say it out loud. I’m about to prod him to answer, but I don’t get the chance because Alec beats me to it.

“Yeah, Danny. I’m curious, man. What’s he into?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - DANNY

I don’t see Alec when I look over. I see the silhouette of him. Framed by the doorway, the now-setting sun casting him in shadow. An Alec-shaped phantom.

He’s still got his shirt off. Shoes too. Probably doesn’t wanna dirty up his fancy glass house. Fuckin’ van den Berg.

Wearing only trousers, leaning against the door frame, he looks like he could be on vacation in the Caribbean some goddamn place. Lazing around like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Because he doesn’t.

I know he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. Or that’s not true. He does. We all do. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t put so much effort into still being here. It’s more that as long as he is alive, Alec doesn’t have to care at all about what he does or how he does it. Every resource imaginable is available to him. Everything he could ever want is at his fingertips.

It took me a couple of years to figure out why he is the way he is. Why he does the things he does.

I finally figured out that Alec’s whole reason for being is to test the world. See how far he can push it before it breaks.

Hell, it would not surprise me if he figured out how to live forever. The only thing that seems like it might be able to end his run…

Is sitting next to me in this room right now.