He didn’t go back to scanning, instead turning to face me head on. “I know now that she had to force herself into a role, that she wasn’t happy with me, that the life I had planned wasn’t right for her. I never knew how strong she really was until I saw her again.”
It took me back to the first day I met her, outside of that intro classroom. She’d been so afraid of the world, of us, of herself. It was strange to think that was the same woman I knew now, the one who faced down anything without so much as a flinch.
But it was, and I finally understood what Aaron was telling me.
Hera had always been this woman, but she’d hidden it because she’d tried to fit into a world that wanted her to shrink herself, to lessen herself for the comfort of others.
It made me look over at Aaron, at the sadness in his eyes.
“I didn’t lose Hera. I know that now, realize she and I would have never been happy together long term. I see her with you, though, with the others, and it’s so damn obvious that she and I weren’t ever right for each other. I’m not here because I’m trying to get her back, but because I want to be as strong as she is for once. I want to do something good, to not just be some rich asshole who does what Daddy tells me to. I want to earn the trust she has in me. I want to be the man she thinks I can be.”
The look in Aaron’s eyes said he spoke the truth, that he hid nothing as he said those words.He bared himself to make me understand.
And it made me nod, accepting his truth. Hera and Aaron had a past. Nothing would ever change that. They’d both learned from each other, grown together and they’d helped each other become the people they were now—for better or worse.
The petty jealousy inside me dissipated at that realization.
Accepting someone meant accepting their past, and fuck knew I had enough ugliness in my own that I didn’t want held against me.
“Thank you,” I said softly, Aaron’s responding look as surprised as I felt. “For coming here. I don’t think I told you that, but thank you.”
Aaron shrugged and went back to taking pictures. “I don’t know if I’m much help compared to you all.”
“You are,” I said even though a part of me hated admitting it. “Having you and Moa here makes a difference to Hera. It tells her she’s still the same person, that her life outside of this place isn’t completely gone. In the end, that might be what gives her the strength to actually do this.”
Aaron paused to meet my gaze, but instead of responding, he nodded and went back to work.
Which left us with the silence—less awkward than before—as we copied all the files we could.
Who would have figured Larkwood would bring people together?
* * * *
Wade
“Did you miss me?” I walked into the large central security office with a grin to find Deacon appearingfarless amused.
“No,” Deacon said without even a moment of hesitation.
“Words hurt, you know.” I peered to the side to find a guard on the ground, his eyes closed and a dark mark on his throat. Still, the guard’s chest rose and fell, showing Deacon hadn’t killed the other man.
No matter how much Deacon liked to pretend to be some sort of heartless monster, he really was a softie, wasn’t he?
I held my hand out as I took a seat in front of the computer. Deacon placed the external hard drive in my palm, which I quickly pushed the USB connecter into the slot at the front of the computer.
“Hera okay?” Deacon said in that quiet voice he used when he wanted to ask something but worried he shouldn’t.
“Fine last I saw. We should hear something pretty soon.”
Deacon nodded and crossed his arms, the action reminding me how much larger he really was. Yet, somehow, it didn’t bother me the way it had before. There had been a time not that long ago when it would have annoyed me, when it would have made me uncomfortable.
Yet, that had changed. I saw Deacon as an ally, as someone I could rely on rather than competition I couldn’t live up to. Large and broody was certainlyonetype of male, but I’d accepted that I wasn’t that type and that was okay.
It felt like the first time I’d truly accepted myself—both the good and the bad—and it was all because I’d stopped running from it, stopped hiding it beneath jokes and keeping things casual. Instead, I’d bared myself—even the parts I didn’t like much—and found acceptance for them.
Instead of getting lost in that, I went to work on the computer. There wasn’t anywhere near enough space for everything, but I could get a lot of it transferred to the hard drive to smuggle out of Larkwood.
With any luck, we’d succeed on all fronts. So long as they didn’t wipe the data, we could always come back for the rest of it later.