“I haven’t read that manual. Never did and never will.”
The incredulity drains her face of all color as she stares at me. “Raiden! You’re not the only one who has a whole life and career dangling from this one freaking project. This mess reflects as much on me as it reflects on you.”
For someone of her experience and so sure of her future career and that job she’s got lined up in September—thank you Britt for that tidbit—this is new, but it’s true. Whichever way this goes, we’re both going in the same direction. If I mess this up, I mess it up for her too. We fall, we fall together. We win, we win together.
My insistence that she know things about me on a need-to-know basis might have to stop right now. I clear my throat, trying to order the words in my head, catching them by the scruff and putting them in line.
“How could you not bother to read the manual?” she groans as she sinks back into her chair. “It’s like the baseline starting point for this whole project!”
Her voice croaks on the last words, as if she’s about to burst into ugly tears. I clear my throat and roll on my heels and sigh. I inhale, exhale and take in another long breath. Right. “Dyslexic, I am. D-dysgraphia, I have. No-nobody c-can re-read my ha-ha-handwriting. I can’t even read my ha-handwriting.” The words are out, and she stares at me, grey eyes brimming with frustrated tears. “Read, I can, but t-to be honest, a hundred and f-fifty pages like that? Never going to happen. Would take forever. I-it makes m-me too t-tired.”
The barn goes quiet as she looks up at me, horrified shock in her gaze as she widens her eyes even more. “What?”
I’m going to have to say it again. “Dyslexic, I am. Dysgraphia, I have.”
She drops her face into her hands and rests her elbows on the desk as quiet sobs tear through her body. “And you think I’m only allowed to know this now?” Georgiana looks up at me as she rakes in a shaky breath. “Were you hoping we’d get through this project like this? And get disqualified on a two-inch technicality?” She closes her laptop screen with such a slow, controlled movement, as if she wants to break it in half. “I’ve had it. I’m done.”
The threat that she’ll leave is now a certainty. I don’t want her to go. I want her here, by my side until the end. “If y-you want to go, it’s fine. I u-understand that you won’t be able to work with me. Or would w-want to work with me.”
“What?” she whispers. “You want me to go?”
“Someone else, I will find, can’t be that difficult.” Already I have Bob in mind. He’s the only person that comes to mind.
“You’d dismiss me, just like that?” She’s out of her chair and has her palms pressed against my chest. “You’re dyslexic and have dysgraphia, whatever that is, and so you go through life disliking and distrusting and being that disappointment and thinking you’re freaking disposable, don’t you? And so everybody else is disposable too, aren’t they?”
With every word she pushes against my chest, and the first time she does it, my balance wavers. But I catch her by the wrists and hold on to her while she spits out her anger.
“You’re an idiot, Raiden Logan. A freaking id—”
“Don’t call me that.” I say the words so quietly, I doubt she even heard them. Those words have ruled my life and I’ve had my fill of them. The bullying was mostly in the face, sometimes from the side, but sometimes it was so subtle, I didn’t even notice until it ate at me hours later. At one point, those words made me blind with rage, but now, they only make me tired. They spill over and wash away from me as my hands loosen their grip on her wrists.
I need to let go. I need to push her away, but she clutches my shirt, keeping me close. We stare at each other. Every exchange of the past few minutes seems to race through her mind, and in her eyes, I can see how they sink in, elbowing for space.
“God,” she whispers, “I’m so sorry.” She circles her arms around my neck and her body is against mine, trembling, pressing me so close, and the longing in me ignites as if on cue. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean that. It isn’t true, you know it isn’t true.”
She draws in a ragged breath and for a moment I still resist and then I recall that she’s running a million hugs short, and I cave in, returning her embrace. “Miami,” I groan, my promise to keep this professional swaying on a knife’s edge.
Georgiana looks up at me. “You’ve been blinded by those words, unable to see your own brilliance beyond them, haven’t you? All your life, that’s all you’ve been hearing, isn’t it?”
Pretty much. Never from Uncle Bill or Aunt May, and at some point, no longer from my cousins or siblings. But my family isn’t the whole world. It’s something I’ve come to terms with. As for her idea of my brilliance, it’s hard to fathom.
“It’s two inches, Miami. We’re going to backtrack and will have to redo some work, but you’ve caught it early and it’s only two inches.” I rest my chin on her head, willing my body to control itself. “It’s nothing we can’t handle. Two days max, it will set us back.”
She nods and peels away from me and I let go reluctantly. I rather like having her right there where she was.
“Okay. Two inches. It’s only two inches. I don’t know how you can stay so calm.”
“M-mistakes happen. We fix them. We move on.” She nods and I dare to hope. “You’ll stay? Please? I-I won’t find anybody else and as it is—”
“Of course I’ll stay. That’s not what I meant. I’m exhausted and meant I was done for the day.” She drops back into her chair like a puppet whose strings got cut. “As it is, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
That’s the second time I’ve heard her say those words and it hits me that she means them literally. I drop to my haunches in front of her, since she’s dipped her head so low I can’t see her face anymore behind a curtain of hair.
“Hey.” I gather the thick blonde strands and gently hook them behind her ear. “What do you mean, you’ve got nowhere to go?”
Georgiana shakes her head and rubs at her forehead with a knuckle. “It’s nothing.”
She looks like she wants to dig a ditch in her forehead with the pressure she applies. I take her hand and pull it away and wrap her fingers between mine before resting them on her knee. “Tell me. You’ve been upset all this time and I want to help.”