One Good Reason (Boston Love #3)(36)

And then, a small voice whispers. When he sails his giant yacht off into the sunset in a few days or weeks or months… you’ll still be here. Alone. Empty. And, quite possibly, brokenhearted.

No. I can’t tell him. Can’t let him in any more than I’ve already done. Look what’s happened in the span of a single afternoon — he’s gotten me to strip out of more than just my clothes. He’s stripped away my defenses. Obliterated every barrier I’ve built around my heart.

So… a week with him? A month? A year?

He’ll take everything.

And I’ve spent far too long building myself up from nothing to let a guy walk into my life and reduce me back to rubble.

“Zoe?” Parker prompts, a pleading note in his voice.

I stay silent.

It’s for the best, I assure myself. This pain, right now, is nothing compared to what you’ll feel if you let yourself fall in love with this man.

Parker scoffs. “Know what, Zoe? Keep your secrets. Keep your walls up.” He shoots me a look that’s so disappointed, it breaks my heart. “I just hope you know, this life you’re living — it’s not worth shit if you live it alone. You call me a playboy, a man-child… maybe that’s true. But at least I live. At least I grab life by the throat and take it for all it’s worth. Can you say the same?”

He doesn’t wait for me to answer; he just turns and walks toward his bedroom.

“You got what you wanted,” he calls over one shoulder. “You can see yourself out.”

The sound of his door clicking closed cuts through me like a knife wound to the stomach. Ignoring the tears filling my eyes, I reach out and grab the flash drive off the table. Collecting my bag from the couch, I’m up the ladder and off the boat before I have a chance to do something stupid.

Like follow him into his bedroom and beg him to change his mind about me.



* * *



I spend a week moping around my apartment, tying up loose ends on a few freelance programming (read: hacking) jobs I’ve been working on the side for cash. Luca calls several times; I never answer.

Parker doesn’t call.

He doesn’t have my number, so it’s not like he could even if he wanted to.

That’s what I tell myself, anyway.

Still, there’s an ache of disappointment as I walk around my loft, staring out the windows at the snowflakes drifting down and feeling even emptier than usual.

When we were teenagers, still living at the group home some nights, sleeping in Luca’s car others, we often spent holidays at a local church. They’d always give out candy on Easter and Halloween and Christmas but I never ate any. At first, Luca just shoved my portion in his mouth without question, happy to have double. Eventually, though, he asked me why never ate my share.

I don’t want to know what I’m missing, I always told him. I don’t want to taste something once, see how good it is, and then spend the rest of my life wishing I could have it again. I’d rather stay in the dark.

That’s how it feels with Parker.

He’s chocolate, the most delectable candy, the most forbidden of desserts. And once I sampled him — not just kissed him, not just felt his hands on my skin… but experienced the way he made me feel, the freedom he inspired, the reckless hope he instilled inside my heart in the space of a single afternoon…

I crave more.

And it damn near kills me to know I’ll never get it.

I bury myself in work, praying the Lancaster Consolidated case will distract me from memories of his hot mouth, his big, callused hands, his thick, messy hair. It doesn’t — not remotely. But at least I have something to do instead of mope and eat all the chocolate peanut butter cups in my pantry.

After all the damn work I went through to get it back, it chafes to find there’s almost nothing of value on the flash drive. The only files of potential use are so heavily encrypted, even I can’t decode them. And that’s saying something.

Luca will be pissed — that means we have to get outside help. Probably from Knox Investigations or one of the other private firms in the city with a server big enough to run an algorithm program that can filter through the millions of possible password combinations until it finds the correct one to unlock the documents. My laptop’s small brain isn’t quite up to that challenge.

The only silver lining from my night spent as Cindy the cater-waiter is the fact that I managed to install my virus into the LC network before I got caught. The Clover. With each day that passes, the virus creeps a little further into their network, embeds itself a little deeper in the innermost workings of their computers. Reaching out in four directions, it then cloaks itself to blend in with the rest of their files — one tiny green blade, indiscernible from the zillion others in the field. My little emerald Trojan Horse.

It’s slow — painstakingly so — but I designed it that way on purpose. Any faster, a breach would be detected and I’d be up shit’s creek without a paddle. So, I sit on my hands and wait. And wait, and wait, until I’m practically pulling my hair out by the roots.

Day by day, my access increases. File by file, folder by folder, terminal by terminal, from the lower-level office where I planted my bug all the way up to Lancaster’s corner office. And the best part? It’s not just the documents saved to their hard drives.