The Cyber Twins novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: One Question

I didn't move.

Neither did he.

Under the mattress the laptop chimed a third time, two clear notes, and Nico's jaw tightened.

"Don't answer it," he said, very low.

"I wasn't going to."

He pulled out of me slowly, and I felt every inch of it.

Then he sat back on his heels, naked and breathing hard, with his eyes on my face.

I dragged the sheet up over my chest.

He reached under the pillow, then under the mattress, and drew out the old laptop with the cracked corner.

He opened it on his knee.

His own message sat in the black window, word for word, in the same green as on his screen.

"The brackets," he said hoarsely. "You put brackets around your numbers. I've stared at those brackets for a year."

"I know."

"Say something."

"You first," I said.

He closed the laptop and set it on the nightstand with both hands.

"A year of nights," he said. "I called you a fox. I told my father I wanted to shake your hand."

"I remember."

"I told you to go to bed because you wouldn't follow it." His voice cracked. "You were following every word. You were in the next room, typing back."

"Yes."

I waited for the shouting.

I had rehearsed it in my head for a year, in a dozen versions, and in every one he was furious.

He rubbed his face with both hands and then looked at me with raw eyes.

"Why did you do it?"

It was not the question I had braced for.

"Nobody asks me that," I said.

"I'm asking."

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