Close Enough to Hurt, page 2
Daniel sighs, a small puff of understanding leaving him. It’s a reprieve I can’t share. I wish the pain were mine to carry, rather than Gabrielle’s. Anything would’ve been better than watching the joy seep out of her in slow motion. Staring at a face too much like my own—the beaming smile she used to never be without marred by a wicked scar running up her neck and cheek.
I haven’t cried in years. I promised myself—and my sister, though she doesn’t know—that I’d be the one making other people cry. It’s even on my favorite coffee mug: Tears of My Enemies. The urge to weep is strange and unfamiliar, like a vestigial reflex I can’t shake no matter how much I try to harden myself. An annoying, humiliating prickle in my sinuses, making my eyes sting.
Then water leaks, racing down my cheeks, splotching my dress. I wish the floor would open and plunge me to the center of the earth. Better that than letting the person I most admire witness my meltdown in a busy restaurant.
Daniel says something to our server, and before I really know what’s happening, he’s whisked me outside, dinner tucked under his arm. Rather than hurrying, however, he seems content to wait and let me gather my wits.
The night is cold, a true taste of fall, the scent of dry trees and ocean and woodsmoke carried on the wind.
“I’m sorry.” I hate saying those words, the ones every girl learns so she can smooth over any situation. I shiver when the wind picks up, annoyed with myself for dressing impractically. Like I wanted to turn Daniel’s head my way.
“Why?” He sets our food on the hood, unlocks the car, and grabs his suit jacket from the back seat. “Want it?”
I nod and slide my arms into the smooth silk lining. The outer shell is fine wool and blocks the wind well. The fabric smells like him too—which is to say, delicious. Bright and citrusy, underpinned by deeper cedar notes.
“Thanks. And I don’t know why I’m apologizing. I’m sorry if I made things weird. I know I haven’t really talked about my family much. So.” I cut myself off and kick at a few fallen leaves on the sidewalk with my bootie. The more I try to dig myself out of this awkward hole, the worse I make it.
“So, what?” Daniel asks. “It’s not like I don’t want to hear about it.”
I arch a brow.
He folds his arms. “I want to hear anything you have to say. I’m sorry I brought up something painful. I wish I’d known, so I wouldn’t have ruined your night.”
“You didn’t. I simply … wasn’t expecting it.” Though I should’ve been. For God’s sake, it’s not as if Brent fell off the face of the earth. In a just world, he’d be behind bars for the rest of his life, but our society practically guaranteed it wouldn’t happen.
The wind dies, and Daniel glances over his shoulder, then at me, a tentative expression on his face. “Would you like to eat our dinner at my place? Talk some more? It’s not far from here.”
Funny that he knows where I live, but I haven’t seen his home. I guess I’m not the only one who values their privacy. “I’d love that.” I try to dilute my sincerity by lifting the food. “It’d be a shame not to share this.”
A smile curls the corner of his mouth and pops a dimple. God help me. “Let’s go, then.”
He so rarely smiles, each one is a present, wrapped in black Burberry gabardine. Dangerous, but I get in his car anyway.
* * *
I still don’t know what specifically Daniel does during his day job. He’s told me a few times, and the words “senior engineering manager at Apple” have stuck in my brain, but I’m still pretty sure he contributes to the growth of AI that will take over the world, despite his assurances to the contrary.
Regardless, the wealth funding his home is a little astounding. His apartment is minimalist—immaculate white walls, white marble, contrasting light fixtures and furniture in matte black. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’m too buzzed on soju and excitement at being in the inner sanctum to tease it out.
He lights a fire in the gas fireplace, casting gold light across the walls and windows, and the high-ceilinged space slowly warms.
By contrast, my boho houseboat with incense and macrame and too many houseplants seems quaint. Can’t leave my crunchy beginnings behind, I guess, though I haven’t set foot in Eureka for years.
“Have a seat anywhere.” Daniel grabs a rubber band and pulls his hair into a half-up knot. He’s grown it out over the summer, his one nod to free-spiritedness, and true to form, it looks great even pulled away from his face. “Chopsticks? Fork?”
“Fork, please.” I curl up on the high-pile rug in front of the fireplace, admiring the view—thousands of twinkling lights glowing along the hills in the indigo dark. “I’m lucky I haven’t spilled anything on this dress already.”
Daniel nods, looking amused, and offers a heavy fork, saving stainless chopsticks for himself. For a few minutes we’re silent, enjoying the meal together. Devouring the savory beef bulgogi and vegetables and sipping more soju.
“Well, look at us live wires.” I wipe my mouth and laugh, trying to ease the tension. It’s too quiet for me. Too intimate. “Sorry I ruined our night out.”
“You didn’t,” he says with enough force to make me pause. “This is more my speed anyway.”
“Spoken like a true introvert.” I wink.
“Guilty.” He plinks his soju down on the glass coffee table with a rare, broad smile. “You know me well.”
It’s a good thing my mouth is full of food; otherwise I’d do something dumb and tell him how stunning he is. Saved by kimchi fried rice! There’s a first for everything.
“Your home is beautiful.” That much I can say. I wrap my arms around my knees. “Thanks for having me over.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I should’ve invited you sooner.”
The fire pops and hisses, light flickering across his fine gold skin, emphasizing the curve of his cheekbone, the hollow beneath his full lower lip. When did I start noticing him like this? As if his face is something I need to memorize in case I don’t get to see it again?
His gaze is steady. “Will you tell me what happened with your sister?”
I shake my head and curl inward. An immediate, knee-jerk refusal, like I’ve touched a fire coral. “It’s not a pretty story.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Exasperation truncates his words. “Of course it’s ugly. It’s always ugly.” He downs his soju, head tossed back, long neck exposed.
I eye him. “It’s not personal, Haas. I just … it’s what set me on this path.”
Not content to wait for the grief to pass of its own accord—like everyone else in my family, it seemed—I fled right after her court case was done, as soon as I graduated from high school. For seven years, I traveled wherever the current took me, learning the lay of the land in each new country, learning how to wield a knife and size people up and blend in and approach absolutely everything from new angles, working just long enough to save for a plane ticket to the next corner of the world. Making fair-weather friends who never knew the contents of my scarred and misshapen heart. Whenever someone asked where home was, I lied, determined to shun my family’s corner of California and its wooded, oppressive gloom.
At least until I saw Brent’s Ken doll face on the cover of a glossy magazine in the Singapore airport.
He’d been rewarded for being a Brilliant Jerk™, a necessary quality in the consecrated pursuit of wealth. Despite all the hurt and trauma he left in his wake, he’d ascended to the top of the food chain.
The urge to rip all the magazines off the wall and set them on fire in the nearest garbage can was overpowering. And shared by me alone.
Somehow, I made it onto my flight without getting myself arrested. Only I didn’t sleep on the fifteen-hour red-eye back to California. I drank coffee and plotted from my peon’s seat in steerage on the last of my one-way flights.
After seven years on the roam, I wouldn’t run any longer. I’d stay and find my own way to right the scales. Put my odd skills to use and fight small battles—and sometimes large battles—in service to anyone who needed it.
“But I still don’t like to think about it.” I clear my throat. “In fact, I try to forget. All the time.”
After several long beats, Daniel sighs, looking resigned. “All right.”
“You said you had something to tell me?” I redirect the conversation, relieved to have the intense searchlight of his focus away from me. His eyes are those of a thinking man; seeing much, revealing little. If he doesn’t play poker, he ought to.
He clears his throat, looking uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Yeah, I do. I know this is bad timing, but with Nadine’s case done, I wanted to let you know that, ah … I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help you with cases going forward.”
I stop chewing. “What?” The word is garbled, my mouth still full.
“My parents want me to get married. And I can’t keep doing this job with a wife and family—it’s too risky.”
“Oh.” I feel punctured, like a paper lantern with a giant tear.
In response to my silence, Daniel rambles. “They’re older, you know? And they want grandchildren, and my mom is … pretty sick. And I turned thirty-seven last month, and they’re apoplectic I haven’t already found a wife and started a family. It’s …” He shakes his head. “I’m their only child, and they’re not getting any younger, or healthier, is what I’m trying to say. So I promised them I would settle down.” His voice lowers. “Really, it’s the least I can do for her.”
For a few stunned seconds, I can’t respond. Maybe because I’ve never heard him say so much in one stretch about his family, much less that his mother is ill, perhaps terminally. A lie of omission so large it craters my chest with self-absorbed hurt.
Never mind the fact that it stings, thinking of him with anyone else.
That’s silly, though. It’s never been like that with Daniel in all the years I’ve known him. I have no reason to be crushed, aside from losing a top-notch investigator.
“Your mom is sick?” I ask. “Is it very serious?”
He nods, slowly, like it’s an effort to even move. “Multiple sclerosis. Hers was the aggressive variety anyway, but it’s progressing fast. And I just …” He swallows. “I want her to know I’ll be okay, you know? That she doesn’t have to worry about me. And I want to celebrate while she’s still able to.”
“Oh,” I say again. Rendered dumb, it seems.
The fire crackles, and I focus on the sparks, blinking back tears. Fuck, I hate this feeling of powerlessness. I never was good at sitting with it. How do I fight something invisible? How do I wipe this terrible expression off his face, erase the grief swimming in his eyes?
“Some bestie I am.” My smile is chagrined. “I had no fucking clue. Didn’t know you just celebrated your birthday either.”
“How could you have known, Dylan?” His voice is soft. A low, tickling purr. “I never told you, on either count.”
“Why not?” I sound petulant. Hurt.
“You know me.” His tongue presses into his cheek. “Why open up when I could not?” His smile is bitter, the first sip of Shiraz when you’re not ready for it. “Same goes for birthdays. A Don’t perceive me sort of thing. Besides, I was afraid you’d alert the waitstaff and make everyone serenade me.” He shudders.
“You were right to worry.” I cackle into my drink. “I for sure would’ve done that just to watch you squirm.”
“She-devil.” His smile is all sharp corners, but there’s no heat in his voice.
I hide my smile by taking another sip. “When is your birthday, though?”
“September fifth.”
“Virgo, huh? I might have known.” I bump him with my elbow. “I’ll add it to my dossier. And now I have to get you a gift.”
“Please don’t.” He looks horrified.
“Why not? You get me presents.”
“But you like presents.”
“And you don’t?” I laugh. “Don’t be a birthday martyr! Let me have some small joy, Daniel.”
He sighs. “Fine.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask after a minute, crossing the Rubicon, his self-protective armor be damned. “I mean, with your mom?” My shoulders aren’t as broad as his, but he could cry on them if he wants. I would take his hurt onto my frame and let it settle like a second skin, if he’d let me.
“There isn’t, not really, but thank you for asking. Oma has a good team behind her. We’re far luckier than most.”
“Okay,” I relent. “But if you need a shoulder to cry on, or anything at all, you know I’m your woman.”
He cuts me a curious look, so I hurry on. “Unless I’m not? Is there a future Mrs. Haas in the picture already?” I don’t really want an answer to that question, but morbid curiosity won’t allow me to leave well enough alone.
“Not at the moment. But there will be soon, I think.”
I hide my interest with another blithe pour of soju. “I gotcha. As for the cases”—I throw back my drink—“that’s totally fine. I’m always glad when I get to work with you, but times change. And your family comes first.” Even if it means I won’t see him again.
“You’re not disappointed?”
“Why would I be? If you’re going to stop moonlighting and move on, isn’t that a good thing?”
He sprawls his long legs out on the thick rug. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s sulking. “It’s not really my idea.”
“No, but you’re going to do it anyway. Because you love your parents. Love your mom.” That much is clear. It was in the way his voice softened when he brought them up, especially her. I wish I had the same closeness with my own parents, but my years away have taken their toll. Gabrielle still lives close by to them in Eureka, but I can’t even remember the last time I went home. We text sporadically at best, small tidbits of our lives. Checking in over holidays and birthdays. A pale fraction of what we had, and why? Because I left and the guilt is corrosive, eating away at me. I don’t know how to mend the bond I tore with every mile I put between us.
Still, a part of me is curious to know whether he’s ever spoken about me with his family. “Do your folks know anything about me? How we’ve worked together?”
He actually laughs. Then he catches himself and clears his throat. “Uh, no. I wouldn’t know where to begin, to explain what you do. I don’t think they’d understand, even if I tried.”
“I get it.” I laugh too, but the sting burns through another layer of my dragon-scale skin. How dumb. I gave up on finding a partner a long time ago, and I’ve never wanted the marriage-and-kids kind of life anyway—it would be impossible with my odd career.
It’s just … sometimes I think it would be nice to have someone to share my days with. My nights too. I’ve leaned on Daniel more than I knew. Scary, how easy it happens.
“I can’t imagine many people would want a professional revenge artist among their family,” I say, as much to myself as to him.
Daniel shrugs. “Their loss.”
There he goes again, with another sweet, laconic turn of phrase. I glance at him, bemused. The soju must be talking, because I can’t look away. My gaze roves over the firelight dancing in his eyes, his thick brows and messy, pushed-back hair, raven black and just as iridescent. This man can’t possibly be thirty-seven. He’s too pretty.
Our shoulders are touching. I hadn’t noticed; then I can’t unnotice. Warmth from his oxford shirt seeps into my chilled arm. He has a runner’s build, lean and spare, but there’s strength too. And something else, a low, vibrating frequency. Something contained, checked.
“Dylan?”
“Yeah?” I snap to it, breaking the spell I didn’t know he was casting.
“Will you hunt him, if I convince Dr. Chang to step forward?” he asks. “This Brent Wilder? Even if it’s the same man that … that hurt your sister?”
I take a deep breath, but I already know my answer. “Have I ever said no?”
Daniel shakes his head.
Never have I turned away a client after vetting them. Fire streams through my veins, priming me for battle. Little fucks like eighteen-year-old Brent grow into men who learn no one will hold them accountable. God knows Gabrielle tried, and all she had to show for her belief in justice was a settlement, an NDA, and a well-funded smear campaign—against her.
In short: I owe it to Gabrielle to fight. Fight every one of these bastards who walk through the world maiming others without consequence, throwing rocks on their way to the top.
I empty my glass of soju. The alcohol burns all the way down. “Besides, I don’t have much choice when you put it like that, do I?”
Daniel gives me a wary glance, like he senses my shift in mood, sees my chain mail sliding into place. “Why do I feel like I’ve poked a tiger?”
“Yeah?” I turn to him with a tipsy smile, hoping I look endearing and not just sweaty and frightening per my usual. “The tiger would like to make a request, then.”
For the briefest moment, his smile fills my whole field of vision. “Anything for you, Dylan.” Ah, but there it is.
“Would you help me, just once more? Then find a lovely wife and gift your beautiful children with your dimples? I’ll kidproof my houseboat and be their eccentric aunt if you need a babysitter.”
Lord, I have had too much to drink. The thought of him moving on from this, my strange calling, is making me unbearably sappy. If I’m not careful, I may cry on him again.
Daniel leans close, a downright predatory gleam in his eyes. “One more for old times’ sake, hmm?”
He can play it cool all he wants. That look tells me all I need to know: he loves the hunt as much as I do.
“You’ve got a deal,” he says.
CHAPTER
3
SUNDAY DAWNS AND I still haven’t heard from Daniel.
I try not to fret about him or his mom as I pour more coffee and sit on my back deck, covered in the wool wrap I bought when I was backpacking in Tibet, listening to the gentle lapping on the hull. I should eat something, but my nerves have kept hunger at bay.
