“Is that a euphemism?” I asked.
Ethan blinked at me then snapped, “Dude, do I look like I’d know what euphemism means?”
I blinked back at him because I didn’t understand how I could possibly tell a person’s vocabulary based on their appearance.
Cade thought my confusion was funny.
Ethan glared at Cade and pointed a finger in his direction. “First of all, don’t pretend like you know what it means either. And secondly, you’d probably know what it means if you weren’t so worried about blowing hard.”
“I will kick your ass,” Cade warned.
Ethan glanced at me and asked, “You gonna intervene if I beat the shit out of your best friend?”
“Probably,” I told him.
“That’s cheating,” Ethan told Cade.
“Do you two ever shut up?” Saige sighed.
“No,” Ethan and Cade replied at the same time.
“Drake, maybe we should just walk,” Saige suggested.
“Yeah, except I’m not sure where we should be walking.”
“Get in the truck,” Ethan ordered. “But Cade… don’t sit next to me. Don’t want you getting any ideas.”
I pushed Cade toward the truck just in case he really did take a swing at his friend. I didn’t really get this guy-bonding-over-threats-of-ass-kicking thing, but there seemed to be a lot I didn’t get about the way people interacted with one another.
Ethan dropped us off at a small motel and promised he’d return later with Chris and weapons. I still didn’t like the idea of involving Chris in any of our plans because it seemed so deceptive and if we secretly plotted to kill his father behind his back, were we really any better than Parker himself? I had to be better than Parker. None of this mattered if I couldn’t be everything he’d never intended for me to be.
Cade handed me one of the keys Ethan had given him after renting our rooms, and he tried to walk away before handing Saige hers. At first, I thought he was just messing with her again since they seemed to do that a lot, too. At least I usually understood they were only joking.
“Um… you only gave us one key,” I pointed out.
“You only need one key,” he said.
“Then where is Saige going to stay?”
Cade rubbed his eyes with his empty hand and exhaled heavily. Saige smiled at me and took the key out of my hand.
“You,” she said coyly, “will be rooming with me.”
I stared stupidly at her back for a few moments as she fit the key in the lock. Cade pushed me toward the door and insisted, “I am way too tired to have this talk with you again.”
“What talk?” I asked.
He glanced at Saige and ignored me. “Are you sure trying to rescue him was such a good idea?”
“Go,” Saige ordered. She held the door open for me, and part of me wanted to follow Cade to his room instead. Why did she make me so nervous? Why did the thought of being alone with her make me so nervous?
But I didn’t follow Cade because ultimately, I wanted to be with Saige. I entered the room with her and hid my shaking hands in my pockets as she locked the door behind us. She pulled her shirt off and tossed it on the floor, and I thought she spoke to me, but I couldn’t hear her over the blood rushing through my ears. I didn’t even lift my eyes from the perfect curvature of her breasts until she stepped closer to me, taking my hand and pulling me toward the bathroom.
“I asked if you’d like to join me,” she said. “Based on your reaction, I’m assuming the answer is yes.”
I had to repeat both sentences in my mind several times before I understood what she was telling me.
“But…” I fumbled. “What if someone shows up?”
“They won’t show up this quickly,” she assured me. “And besides: You’d be the first to know because you’d hear him in your head.”
That seemed like compelling logic to me. Of course, she probably could have told me a team of green rhinos would guard our door, and I would have been just as easily persuaded.
Saige turned the water on in the shower then pulled off her jeans. And I just stood there, knowing I should be doing something but unable to move. She reached around me to lock the door, whispering, “Just in case,” before she slid her fingers beneath my shirt, letting them graze my skin lightly as she lifted it above my head.
I bit my lip as I realized soon, we’d both be naked and most likely in that shower, and this probably wouldn’t be the first time, but I couldn’t remember being naked in front of her or touching her or making love to her. And I really had no clue what I was doing.
Parker had told me I’d recently turned thirty, but since I hadn’t been born like a human, I was probably closer to twenty-nine. And at my age, it seemed embarrassing how little I knew about intimacy and physical contact. And my embarrassment temporarily got the better of me, although my body seemed far less concerned about my awkwardness than my brain.
I took a small step back from her, but she held onto my arm, tracing her thumb over the scar running through the black rectangle with broken blue lines. “Drake, we’ve been through this before. If you don’t want to…”
“Of course I want to be here,” I interrupted. “I’m just…” I exhaled heavily in frustration and ran my fingers through my dark brown hair. I didn’t know what I was besides horny and confused and sad that this incredible woman had chosen me, yet I couldn’t remember why. And more than anything, that’s what I wanted: My memories back.
“Nothing has to happen, Drake,” Saige offered. “We can just shower and lie down together for a while watching TV. I never rushed you before, and I’m not trying to do that now.”
“Before,” I repeated. “You mean, I was always this big of a loser?”
Saige squinted at me, but she also smiled. “You’ve never been a loser, Drake. You’ve been given a life none of us can possibly understand. Despite Cade’s teasing, he gets it, too. He just doesn’t know how to interact with people without being a smartass.”
“That sounds right,” I agreed.
Saige tilted her head at me and gestured toward the shower. “I’m getting in. If you’d like to wait and shower alone, it’s all right. Really, Drake.”
I watched her step into the shower and close the curtain and spent about three seconds staring at the white vinyl before unbuckling my jeans and yanking them off. I pulled the curtain back carefully and stepped into the tub with her. Saige pointed to the shampoo bottle on the ledge of the tub, and I handed it to her then watched her run the suds through her chestnut hair as bubbles dripped onto her shoulders.
After she rinsed her hair, she grabbed a washcloth and lifted my arm, the same arm with the port that served as a reminder I’d been created as someone’s machine, and rubbed it gently, working her way to my shoulder then my chest.
“God, Saige,” I groaned. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to keep doing this.”
Saige smiled and retorted, “And do you really think this will be the first time I’ve seen you orgasm?”
“First time I remember,” I said.
Saige just shrugged and put the cloth in my hand. “Do you want to wash me?”
That seemed like a trick question. If I said yes, would she infer I wanted her to stop—which I didn’t? If I said no, would she think I didn’t want to—which I most certainly did?
Apparently, standing there biting my lip, painfully aroused and confused, answered her question for me. She pulled me closer into the stream of hot water and stepped behind me to wash my back. I closed my eyes and let the water run through my hair and drip onto my face.
I imagined a shower with pale yellow tiles and a deep maroon and gold shower curtain. The water hit my back, forming rivers down my spine as I lowered my lips to her neck and she sighed happily. A familiar citrusy vanilla scent greeted me from her wet hair.
And then I opened my eyes.
I gasped and spun around, throwing her off balance so I had to grab onto her to prevent her fr
om falling.
“Drake?” she asked, her voice scared and worried.
“Do you have yellow tiles in your bathroom and a maroon and gold shower curtain?”
Saige gasped, too. “You remember?”
I shook my head slowly. “Not really. That’s all there is. Just being in your shower with you.”
Saige wiped water from her eyes before throwing her arms around my neck. “But something is there, Drake. Maybe you haven’t lost everything.”
I pressed my face against her neck and sighed happily—much like she had in the only memory I had of a life I wanted back. But I had it, this brief glimpse into a trove of memories Parker had tried to steal. And maybe one day, more would return.
We stayed in the shower until the water began to cool then wrapped thick white towels around our bodies. The air of the motel room seemed absolutely frigid on our damp skin so Saige pulled me onto one of the beds and covered us with blankets.
“We don’t have to make love, Drake,” she said. “You had to overcome so many inhibitions…”
“Wait,” I interrupted, but I was only teasing her. “You mean to tell me that long shower wasn’t foreplay? What was that then? Torture?”
Saige laughed and put an arm around me. “Parker clearly only took your memories because when we first met, you were scared to even hold my hand. And the shower… I just wanted to be close to you again. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”
“I’m still scared,” I admitted. “But I think it’s mostly because I’m afraid I won’t be the man you fell in love with. Not anymore.”
Saige sat up and her wet hair hung over her shoulder, dropping cold droplets of water onto my chest. “Always you, Drake,” she promised.
I didn’t know what those words meant, but they seemed important, meaningful, as if some shift in our relationship had occurred when those words were uttered. I traced the soft contours of her lips with the tip of my finger, and she watched me, not moving or speaking. My fingers glided along her jaw, behind her neck, and pulled her toward me. At first, that kiss brought me back to our first afternoon on the houseboat: soft and affectionate. But I cradled her in my arms and rolled over, and the torment of having waited this long caught up to us both.
It could have been the thousandth time or the first time I’d made love to her, but it didn’t matter. I could regret what I’d lost later. In those moments, everything wrong in my life disappeared and with just us, just the contact of our skin, and the movement of our bodies, and the heat of her breath against me, she set everything right.
I’d spent the past few days feeling sorry for myself for the life Parker had taken and had overlooked the life I could still have.
Afterward, as we lay breathlessly beside one another, I realized a part of me had been hoping this experience would awaken old memories as the shower had given me a glimpse of a past I only had other people’s stories of. But there was nothing else there: Not the first time I’d made love to her or the last before Parker reprogrammed me. There was only this new memory there, and I reluctantly had to admit to myself that it might have to be enough. My world now would have to be one filled in with new memories and a reconstructed past based on the experiences Cade and Saige shared with me.
And maybe I’d just have to accept that I would be living a reconstructed life.
A rapid knock on our door startled us both. We must have fallen asleep. I rubbed my eyes and glanced at the red numbers on the clock by the bed. Several hours had passed. That rapid knock startled us again but this time, it was combined with Cade’s voice.
“Stop screwing around and open the door!”
I sighed and pushed the blankets off then remembered I was still naked. “Unless you want me opening the door with no clothes on, you’ll have to wait,” I called back.
He got quiet for a second then yelled, “Send Saige. I’m cool with seeing her naked.”
“I will kick your ass,” I warned. I smiled as it dawned on me that I’d just entered the guy-bonding-over-threats-of-ass-kicking thing I didn’t even get. Parker had never built a robot. As Cade had been trying to tell me all along, he’d given life to a man who simply needed time and space to learn how to be a normal man.
I snatched my jeans off the bathroom floor and slipped them on while Saige snuck into the bathroom, presumably to hide from the guy who almost certainly hadn’t been entirely joking about wanting to see her naked.
As soon as I opened the door, Cade pushed past me and said, “Ethan just called me. Parker has moved his research again, only this time, he didn’t tell anyone where he’s going—not even Chris. Apparently, he just had the entire building cleared out then he and a handful of his top researchers took off.”
I sighed heavily and sank onto the edge of the bed. “Does he suspect Chris tampered with the program?”
“Don’t know. But considering he didn’t tell him anything, it seems that way.”
“Parker knew we’d come for him. We had this window we might never get back. How are we ever going to find him now?” I complained.
The bathroom door opened and Saige sat beside me, looking just as frustrated as I felt.
“Let’s start with these guys he likely took off with,” Cade suggested. “What do you know about his aides? The ones he’d trust most?”
“I have some faces and names from Mogadishu,” I offered. “I guess if he hauled them all the way to Somalia, he had to trust them, right?”
“How’s that going to help us?” Saige asked. “They’re all setting up somewhere else. It sounds like there’s no one left in Lake Charles to question who might know where they went.”
“It’ll be easier to find them if we have a manhunt for a group of people rather than just one,” Cade explained.
“Especially since we’re on our own,” I added.
Cade started to protest, but I held a hand up to stop him. “We’re not involving Chris anymore. He did us a bigger favor than we could have hoped for by shutting down Parker’s program. The rest has to be up to us.”
“And Ethan?” Cade asked.
I shook my head. “No. Nobody else. It’s not just their lives they’re risking but their families’ and friends’ lives as well. Nobody can ever know they helped us.”
“So this is it then?” Saige asked quietly. “It’s just us versus the Project?”
I smiled at her and took her hand in mine. “It’s always been just us versus the Project.”
“If they’re driving, they can’t have gotten too far yet. We’d better hurry,” Saige said.
“They’re hours ahead of us already. Hoping to follow a trail that doesn’t exist isn’t going to work,” Cade argued. “Let them get to their new facility. People don’t just disappear. I know enough people who can help us behind the scenes and we’ll eventually figure out where he’s gone.”
“So what? We just sit here and hope he doesn’t get inside my head again?” I asked.
“No,” Cade answered. “There’s one thing we have to take care of before finding Parker.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and waited.
He arched an eyebrow back at me and said, “We have an asshole traitor to deal with first.”
Chapter 13
“Virginia,” I sighed. “Again.”
“You want to find out why Ramirez betrayed you, right?” Cade retorted.
“I don’t exactly remember that, you know,” I snapped. “I just know I hate him for some reason.”
“That’s the reason,” Saige pointed out. “Should we tell you this story again?”
“No,” I seethed, glaring at the apartment building where a man who used to be our ally lived. I’d seen SEALs in the field before, the way they worked together and their unspoken dedication to their brothers. Even if Ramirez had never been able to accept that I deserved the same respect, he’d betrayed Cade, too. And something seemed so wrong about that.
“Think we can get out of the car now?” Cade asked. “I’m kinda tired of si
tting here staring at an apartment building.”
“You complain a lot,” I told him.
Cade shrugged and shot me a smartass smirk. “You made me quit drinking. If I’m an annoying asshole now, it’s all your fault.”
“Sounds fair,” I agreed.
“I’ve never killed anybody, but I think I’m willing to start with this bastard,” Saige interjected. “Because of him, you were ordered to kill me. What the hell for? I know Ethan told you Parker thought I was responsible for… breaking you, but how can a genius be so stupid?”
I shook my head because I had no idea either. He’d insisted I couldn’t see Stacy, and I suspected he worried she’d somehow change me, too. And based on Cade’s information, I’d always been different but had hidden that knowledge from everyone, even him, for a long time. Meeting Saige just provided the motivation to let others know I was more human than they’d thought.
We’d both also feared Parker would try to keep Saige and me apart, but to kill her just because we’d been dating? Because I’d hidden her from him?
Cade obviously got tired of sitting around while I silently deliberated the reasoning behind Parker’s deranged rationalizations for his actions because he got out of the car and walked toward the apartment building.
Saige grunted but got out of the car so she could follow him, and there was no way I was letting her confront Ramirez without me. We caught up to Cade, who suggested he knock on the door alone. Saige and I could wait out of sight because if Ramirez saw us, he either wouldn’t open the door or would open it armed. We had to hope he didn’t harbor the same hatred for Cade now since everyone knew he’d been at least partly responsible for the recent tragedies in this state.
We waited on the sidewalk behind the corner of the building. The door opened and I heard Ramirez’s voice for the first time, at least the first time I could remember. But it pissed me off, grated on my nerves as if this bastard deserved whatever I ended up doing to him, and at that moment, I could imagine doing some pretty awful shit to this guy.
“What the fuck do you want?” he asked Cade.
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