Blackbird's Fall - Jenika Snow Page 0,15

definitely tried not to check out her body, but she was curvy in all the right places, and the very male part of him had been without a woman for so long. But it wasn’t just sex on his mind. Maya was smart and strong, and that turned him on too.

“Graduate school? That’s impressive.” She smiled genuinely.

“At the time, it was good, but things change.”

She nodded. “They do.”

They were silent for a few more seconds as he ate, but then he cleared his throat, needing to be honest with her. But before he could tell her about his background, she started speaking again.

“Did you have anyone close?”

Although she didn’t come outright and ask if he had been with someone, he knew she was asking if the infection had claimed someone he held dear. For a second, he stared at the half-eaten food on his plate, the memories of his past resurfacing.

“I did years ago, well before the infection broke out.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “But I worked a lot, was too invested in myself and my career to give her the attention she needed and deserved.” More silence filled the air between them.

“I’m sorry about that.” Maya looked sympathetic. “It’s times like these, when everything we took for granted is gone, that we regret things we did.”

He nodded. She was right, so damn right. Although he hadn’t planned on marrying his ex, he did regret that he’d been a workaholic, that he hadn’t given them a better shot. That’s what he regretted.

“What kind of work did you do?”

Well, he’d been meaning to tell her anyway, so he might as well get it out. Setting his sandwich on the plate, he wiped his mouth before speaking. Maybe he was stalling slightly, because he knew she’d look at him differently once he admitted his involvement concerning the infection. But he had to be honest with her. He had to.

“I was one of the scientists involved in creating the immunization that turned into the infection.”

11

The silence was deafening, and Maya’s face was void of emotion. Maybe she was processing this, or maybe she saw Marius for the man he was—one of the evil ones who unleashed hell on Earth.

She finally licked her lips and looked down at Sherman. “You don’t even look old enough to be a scientist. I see them as old men with white hair and black glasses.” She chuckled, but there was no amusement in it. She started petting Sherman, and he could feel her emotions coming from her as if they were his own.

“You don’t look very old either.” He smiled.

“I’m twenty-four.”

Damn, she was young. “I’m thirty-nine.”

She lifted her head and stared at him. “You don’t look that old.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks… I think.”

She smiled lightly, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “So you made the infection.” Maya didn’t phrase it like a question.

He breathed out and lifted his hand to run his fingers through his hair. He needed a haircut for sure. He’d been able to hack off longer pieces with his knife while on the road, but he seriously needed to get it cut.

Why are you thinking about cutting your hair when you should be explaining more important shit to her?

That’s exactly why he was thinking of stupid things, because he didn’t want to face this now that it was out in the open.

“Can you explain it to me? Explain to me what happened?” The way she asked wasn’t judgmental. She was curious, and he could understand that.

“I don’t know what I can really say that would explain what is happening, because truthfully, we don’t know what in the hell went wrong, not really.”

“Tell me anything.” She sounded more adamant now.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back on the couch, the food forgotten, and his appetite vanished. “The immunization, at its earliest stages, was a medical breakthrough. We saw properties of cell rejuvenation, documented cases in which the immunization, which originally was just for a new strain of the flu, was healing destroyed and mutated cells. That last part had been a fluke.

The subject in which this all came about had cancer, and we hadn’t known about it at the time. They were one of the subjects that volunteered to do a clinical study with us, and that’s when we noticed what was happening.”

She stayed silent, but her focus was solely on him.

“We studied what was happening, watching the miracle, the medical breakthrough, whatever you want to call it, and