“Well?” I asked. “What are the chances hewaslistening?”
“From the sky? Unless he’s tailing us with a surveillance drone, almost zero, I’d say. I expect we’ll hear from him when he makesanotherfortune down in Rio Dulce. Or loses one. Or dies for real in a shootout with guerillas. It’s wide open.”
We continued our languid stroll, arms wrapped around each other, glows of headlights cutting through the falling snow as we crossed into the park, our footprints the only disturbance in the path stretching away into a tessellation of naked maples. “So now what?”
“Well,” he said, taking a deep, rattling breath. “Now that I’m in Boston, I have a few things on my list. Look for a place to rent. Enroll in university and start working on an actual degree. I just applied, and I’ll start in the spring. I think I could probably finish bynextspring, but you know,” he added wryly. “They have their own timelines.”
“And the tuition?”
“Also the VC funding, at least for the first year. The university said I would qualify for a scholarship, but I told them to give the money to a former slave whodoesn’town a company.”
“Which school?” I wondered.
“One of the ones across the river. You’ve probably heard of it,” he said modestly.
“Any particular reason?”
“Well,” he said, “that brings me to the rest of my list.” He tugged me to a stop under a lamp, its soft yellow glow illuminating the funneling snow. “See, there’s this girl I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year. Like, every goddamn day as it turns out.” He seemed to alternate between gazing into my eyes and running his thumb against the fabric of my white wool coat as if to anchor himself to me. “Whose dad, the day he picked me up from the airport in Phoenix, happened to casually mention that she goes to another school right down the road from here.”
I anxiously worked my hands inside his coat, finding warmth against the solid planes of his chest, that inverted V-shape of which I could see all the luscious contours in my mind’s eye. My heart pounded, anticipation rising in my throat. “And what are your plans for this girl?”
“Well, for one, I want to take her out on a date. The ridiculously clichéd kind where I pick her up at her door and bring her flowers. Where we go to dinner and I pull out her chair. Someplace in public where I can stare into her beautiful eyes for as long as I want and not give a fuck about who sees. Where I kiss her good night at her door and text her the next day. The kind I’ve always heard about.”
I blushed, ducking my head. He tipped my chin back up with a gentle finger. Tears pricked my eyes. “That sounds perfect,” I whispered, practically vibrating.
“And then,” he continued, pulling me closer, “I want to spend every moment I can with her. Making up for all the ones we weren’t allowed. Helping her study and bringing her coffee, not because I was ordered to but because I want to,” he added. “Taking her on adventures where we don’t have to lie and scheme and dodge death. Unless, of course, shewantsthat kind of adventure, because we can have those, too,” he added with a troublesome gleam. “And then,” he continued, his voice dropping low in my ear, “I want to make love to her. Slowly, tenderly, worshiping every inch of her gorgeous body the way it deserves to be worshiped. No more counting clocks or banging on intercoms. I want to take hours,dayseven, to teach her things she’s never eventhoughtof and learn everything that makes her gasp and moan and come undone in my arms.”
“Shai—”
“I know, but wait. Let me get this out, yeah?” He forged ahead. “I know she’s changed a lot, too, in the past year. So before any of that, I want to meetthatgirl and get to know her, too, and maybe—maybe, while I do that, she can see if she likes this version of me.”
I cocked my head. “What do you mean,thisversion of you?”
He blinked, and now it was his turn to be tongue-tied. “Well, I just thought that—well?—”
“Fucking hell, Shai, thisisyou,” I exclaimed. “This is the first time I’ve ever reallymetyou. Theyouthat I met over a year ago, well, it wasn’t reallyyou. I mean, it was, but—well, you know what I mean.”
“Manny said I didn’t know how to be a person,” he blurted out, all of his silver-tongued romantic composure melting away in an instant. “And he was right. I didn’t. Or at least, I didn’t know the kind of person I wanted to be. And maybe that’s still true.”
“Why?”
“Because—” he stopped, shaking some hair out of his face in frustration. “I know it’s ironic, but because there was freedom in that, Lou. The only freedom I ever had. They told me I wasn’t a person, so I said, fine. If I didn’t have a name, I’d never have to answer to anything, or anyone—except for my family, and once my sister was safe, I figured I never would again.”
“But why did youwantthat?”
He sighed dolorously. “Maybe because—because—I’ve done a lot wrong. I’ve lied. I’ve stolen. I’ve fucked up and fucked over. I’ve hurt people. All for what I thought were the right reasons, but, well… we know that’s what everyone thinks, yeah? And so maybe I was afraid that if I chose to be a person, nobody wouldlikethat person. Maybe even thatIwouldn’t like him.” He looked down helplessly and kicked a thin, snow-dusted branch out of the way in torment. He’d made biochemical breakthroughs, mounted reckless gambits and bold rescues, endured sadistic abuse, torture, and rape—andthiswas what the poor guy was struggling with: talking about himself. “Or that?—”
His voice was raw, breaking open like an old wound.
“Or that what?”
“Thatyouwouldn’t like him.”
This actually stopped me dead. “What?”
“That if you—if you said my name, if you made me a person—that you wouldn’t like the person you made.”
“But—”
