Touch And Go - Aiden Bates Page 0,84

the side, as though daring me to guess. I shot out a few guesses at him, and he stayed blank-faced until I hit the right one. A security firm. And the rest was on a need-to-know basis.

I leaned way back and almost toppled my chair. “So, you want me to work for you. You’re not kidding.”

“Have you ever heard me tell a joke?”

Come to think of it… No. “This is insane, Matt.” Insane not as much as surprising. “I mean, who else knows?” Had Derek put him up to this? It was the question I was too afraid to ask.

Matt brought a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Hardly anyone, and I want to keep it that way. Which is why I need you on my team. I want to keep my data secure…”

I pointed at him. “And you need someone to get into other people’s not-so-secure data.” Finally, something I was good at. Something that made me feel useful.

“You got it.”’

“I mean, I’d love to, that’s a legit dream job.” I rubbed the back of my neck where a twinge of doubt still nagged.

“But…?”

I grimaced and shrugged apologetically. “I really don’t think I’m qualified. I just graduated, and it’s only a bachelor’s degree. I don’t have any experience working to that level. And I’m young. I’m not sure…I don’t think I can…”

“I wouldn’t hire you if you weren’t qualified.” He closed his folder and stared at me. “This is my business. The work I do is too important to trust just anyone. I’m choosing to trust you. So knock it off.”

I coughed out a shocked laugh. “What?”

“I’m sick of you playing stupid. You graduated at the top of your class, and you’re a white-hat hacker in your spare time. Yes, you’re young, but that means you can pull all-nighters without falling to pieces. You’re not immature, irresponsible, or incapable, and telling yourself that is a waste of everybody’s time. Yours included.” I opened my mouth, but he held up a hand. “If you want something, you have to step up and take it. Especially if someone else is being a stubborn ass about it…”

I flushed, and I’d folded the corners of a napkin to a pulpy mess. “Are we still talking about the job?” We weren’t.

“What do you think?” He wasn’t the kind of guy who answered a lot of questions. He was a question with a question man.

I grinned and leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. “I have to step up and take it, huh?”

“Yeah. Because it’s supposed to be yours.”

“Right.” I nodded thoughtfully and then held my hands up in surrender. “Then I guess I better take it.”

“The job?” He grinned. “Or the stubborn ass?”

“What do you think?”

25

Derek

I had become the physical manifestation of misery. Dressed in sweats and my college hoodie that still smelled like Seb if I sniffed past my two weeks of sweat. I had a super-sized bag of potato chips in my lap and an infomercial for the robot vacuum on the TV. I’d hated the stupid commercials before I met Seb, but now I watched them every spare minute of the day. I’d called in sick three times to watch them some more, and I was living on a diet of junk food and coffee.

Eli was this afternoon’s visitor in what seemed like an organized roster of brothers who were assigned to nag me about Seb and lecture me on how I’d fucked up, under the guise of ‘keeping me company’—or the even bigger lie, to ‘cheer me up.’ Uno sat at his feet, looking up at me from beneath her knitted brow, her yearning for potato chips stronger than her compassion for my plight.

“Man, that guy loved these stupid commercials.” Eli sighed and slumped onto the couch beside me. I didn’t have to be reminded. I knew who was missing from this scene.

“He’s not dead, Eli. You can talk about him in the present tense.” I stared at the screen and wondered when I’d started sounding so monotone. Probably around the time the first guy I’d ever really cared about walked out and took my heart with him.

Eli’s tone was annoyingly carefree. “Yeah, well, maybe he hates them now. How would we know? Maybe you should call him and find out.”

I grunted. I was getting good at grunting. I’d been bombarded every day since Seb left, and the onslaught was relentless. Eli’s tactics were some of the more friendly–—a casual conversation that just so happened to veer