Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(35)

We shared a look then, and my heart kicked back to life in my chest, thundering hard in my ears as my hands dug into the box. One by one, I pulled out each item in that box — what was left of each item, anyway — until I got to the very bottom and retrieved a thick, heavy, dated and familiar rectangle that I never thought I’d see again.

Mallory gasped. “Is that…”

“His laptop,” I finished for her, swallowing as I carefully sat it on the table. “Yes.”

For a while, we both just stared at it, but then Mallory rounded the table to stand on the same side as me. She reached forward, carefully flipping the monitor of the laptop up to reveal the damage inside.

The screen was shattered and covered with a thick, black gunk, and what was left of the keyboard was melted and warped, revealing the plates and wires that made everything work underneath.

Mallory peered inside the box again. “Is there a power cord? Do you think it would turn on?”

“Look at it,” I told her, waving a hand over the damage.

She sighed, nodding.

We both stared for a while again — me because I couldn’t believe the ghosts we had found, Mallory likely because she didn’t know what to do or say. But after a moment, her hand dipped into her pocket, and she pulled out her phone, typing something into a search browser.

“We may be able to recover the hard drive,” she said, showing me an article she’d found. “And if we can get that, then maybe…”

“We can get answers.”

The words sounded like they’d come from someone else’s mouth, in someone else’s voice. They shook and croaked out of my throat, and I swallowed, trying not to let the hope I felt building in my chest get enough air to surface. The longer I stared at that burnt hunk of computer, the heavier I breathed, and the more my pulse raced.

Little black dots invaded my vision, encroaching from every angle until I could only see through a lens the size of a pin hole.

I felt hands on my chest, on my neck, on my face, pulling me. Mallory’s voice was somewhere in the distance, pleading with me to look at her, to breathe.

“Logan,” she repeated, this time her voice clearing the fog in my head. “Look. At. Me.”

I blinked, over and over, trying to find her through the darkness. It was her cerulean blue eyes I saw first, just an inch from mine. I felt her forehead against mine, her cool fingers framing my jaw, and the next thing I knew, my hands were reaching for her, wrapping around her waist, pulling her closer.

“Breathe,” she said, and I sucked in the first breath in minutes, my lungs burning with the inhale before I let the air out again, slow and long through my mouth. “That’s it.”

I repeated the process, keeping my eyes open and locked on hers, but the more my body approached awareness, the more it buzzed to life at our proximity.

My cheeks heated under her fingers, breaths shallowing out again as I swallowed past the sticky knot in my throat. My gaze fell to her lips — dusty rose, plump and full, and now, parted just a centimeter, letting sweet breath through that met mine between us.

My eyes snapped to hers, but her gaze was on my lips now.

She let out a shaky breath.

Her tongue glided over her bottom lip, wetting it.

She leaned into me — just a fraction of an inch, the movement so subtle I couldn’t be sure it happened at all.

All it took was the tilt of my chin, and our lips brushed, the slick heat of hers meeting the shaky coolness of mine. Mallory sucked in a breath at the contact, her fingers curling where they held my face.

“Logan…”

It was a warning, a whisper of desperation for me to stop — or maybe to never stop. I couldn’t be sure, but I pulled away, wrapping my hands around her wrist as I pinched my eyes shut and took a real breath now that we had some distance between us.

“I’m sorry,” I rasped out, shaking my head. “I… I think I was having a panic attack.”

“It’s okay,” she assured me. “It’s fine.”

I released my grip on her wrists, breathing deep again before I let my eyes flutter open. My hands found balance on the flat of the table, and I stared at the computer, shaking my head.

“What do we do?” I asked — and I wasn’t sure if I was asking Mallory, or my deceased father.

But it was her who answered, and her voice was steady and sure.

“We find a way to get that laptop home with you.”

My eyes met hers, and the determination I found there lit a fire in my chest.

“Tonight.”





Mallory


Later that Friday night, Chris sipped from his wine, commenting on the bogus drama happening on the reality TV show he was watching while I read the same sentence in All the Light We Cannot See ten times in a row.

I was actually enjoying the book — which was a new feeling, since I hadn’t read for pleasure in as long as I could remember. College textbooks had turned me off to reading, especially since I preferred to make art in my spare time rather than read it. But this book was intoxicating, drawing me into another country, another time, another perspective. I loved reading it at night before I went to sleep, and since Chris knew how much I hated reality TV, he wasn’t offended that I had the hardback splayed open in my lap while we hung out.

The problem was I couldn’t read tonight any more than I could stomach watching two housewives fight over who had the best birthday party for their kids. As much as I wanted to escape into another world, I couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening in my own.