Hack X Love

Lotus Oden's POV A sliver of light inched through my blackout curtains, pulling me back from the precipice of a desperately needed breakdown. Cutting off Daeke's mind-rending "Antiflux" song, I scowled at the last remnants of code on my computer and leaned back in my chair, digging my fingertips into sore eyes. I'd spent seven hours working my way through every security the Libra bastards had put in front of me, and my head was a f*****g ball of cookie dough. These people were rather excellent, I'll admit it. Rather excellent, but not excellent. I'd been outsmarting them for years at this point. But I might be losing it if I was already devastated. I got up and stretched, my muscles straining and protesting the movement, joints cracking and popping. Losing my edge, yeah. And if I continued to neglect the gym, I was gonna be out of shape, and that would be bad. My body needed to be as finely tuned an instrument as my mind. I went bare-breasted to the window and lifted the hem of the curtain, wincing at the sunrise that erupted in my face. Denver was coming awake, dark buildings outlined against a sky ablaze with red and orange. And I was slowing down. But maybe I still had the stamina for a run and a shower before I collapsed. I had to clear my muzzy brain. I threw on sweats and sneakers and took the elevator down the twenty-four floors of my penthouse. Hannah, a SmarTech employee, got on at ten, and I greeted Jen, an Encorp employee, as I got off on one. Both had been trying to set me up since they'd moved in. But the other men in the Nest who owned the building hadn't rented to them to get into their pants. We rented to them—and several others in the building who were in the tech industry—because we needed to piggyback on their IPs. But they didn't need to know that. So I made a quick exit into the cool Colorado morning. The cold air and the rushing blood soon had me back into an even, comfortable stride. So many times in life, running had been my only outlet—well, running and computers, although sometimes only one had been available to me. One had enabled me to run away; the other had enabled me to connect. Neither had been easy. Not in the foster homes. Maybe even less so in the Air Force. But too beautiful a morning to spend on it. The birds were having a playdate, traffic was cheerfully deadly, and I had a solid long sleep lying in wait that would most definitely charge all my batteries. I focused on the rap music coming through my earbuds, on my breath, on the pound of my Nikes on the sidewalk. Despite the cold outside, I was sweating within a few moments. I had only just prepared to make the turn and come around the block again when a face in the sea of faces in front of a coffee shop brought me up short, and I breathed quietly as I narrowed my eyes. The moment I'd caught sight of her, however, she was no more, engulfed by the constant flow of people. Certainly that must have been some trick of the light…or if it wasn't, if it actually had been her, what the f**k difference did it make? I damn sure did not need my day wrecked by having her memories flashing before me. Too late. I hadn't seen her in years, but I could rebuild that face out of the mists of memory as if I'd spoken with her yesterday. I could say that woman ruined my life; it damn well felt like it then. But today, after thinking back, that wasn't quite the truth. She'd only set me on another path. An entirely different path, at times a bad one—during the darker, more frightening moments when I definitely curse her name for having robbed me of the easy life I'd always envisioned for myself. But I wouldn't be where I am now if it weren't for her and what she'd done. I suppose in some f****d up way, I should thank her. Nah. She'd ripped me off, period, no exceptions. The memory of the betrayal burrowed into an exposed wound in my heart, and my run back to the high-rise was at a faster clip, blood rushing in my ears more urgently than ever before. Somewhere, Christmas music was playing. Good luck sleeping now, with visions of Lila Grant dancing in my f*****g head. … The knock on the door was tentative, but it still woke me up. Due to events reaching back at least as far as I could remember, I was not a heavy sleeper. A misplaced pin on the outside of the door might have me mobilized before my eyes were open. This time around, I swore under my breath as I pulled my corpse out of bed and staggered to the door, bumping my toe on the leg of the table in the process. So I almost flung the door open without glancing at my video feed, poised to unleash a tirade on the poor guy, but it was nobody there. The fine lines were unmistakable and cut into the lowest regions of hell in my mind, and the rest of my laughing demons. It was her. "f**k me sideways," I growled at no one in particular, clawing frantically at my bedhead hair. "Are you f*****g kidding me?" What had I done with this, anyway? And then suddenly I recalled. I slammed the door open, scowling my face into the most impassive whiteboard of ice I could manage. Lila's eyes snapped wide open, and her jaw fluttered shut for a second or two, as if she had been expecting a friend to open the door and was confronted instead by a hockey-masked lunatic with a machete. She even took a step back, a hand going up to her throat. And she looked.softened. Her loose, shining hair honey-blond, and her green eyes sparkling with an innocence I didn't remember at all. Then again, it had been what, seven years? Eight? Maybe bitterness had warped her into something monstrous in my head. Didn't matter. She was probably still a lying b***h. You— You're— Lotus?" Her gaze tracked down the length of me, stuttering a little on my bare chest. "At least have the decency to remember my f*****g name," I snarled at her, and her eyes snapped back up so hard she might have hurt her eyeballs. "I re-remember. I said it, didn't I? I laughed. And waited. Whatever her motive for showing up after all this time, it must be good. I almost looked forward to it. Almost. "Um, I don't really know where to start," she began nervously, "but could you possibly.wear a shirt?" "Why? This is my house. You're lucky I'm wearing pants." "Whatever, I just need you to hear me out. I think you're confusing me with —" "I don't want to hear s**t. What I don't want to hear is that you've discovered Jesus or some s**t along those lines and you're here asking my forgiveness for sins of the past. Because you can take sorry up your ass." She stepped back again, her face contorted. "But I didn't—" "Hold on." I closed the door in her face and remained there for a moment, a thin veil of red clouding my vision. Balls on this woman. There was a wad of T-shirt on the bedroom floor near my bed; I hurried into my bedroom and shoved my arms into it, drawing it over my head and scarcely believing that this was happening. Cambridge University. Gone. Because of her. Years of dreaming. Years of hard work. Years of suffering. Erased, and to be frank, I didn't even know why. Maybe today I would learn. Maybe she would tell me why she'd done it. No matter how furious I was, I had the right to the explanation, didn't I? But I did not need to make it easy for her. I had some share in the responsibility in it, though. One nice refusal on my part all those years ago, and maybe I'd be living in a mansion somewhere today, ruling over a software empire. Yeah. Maybe. But apart from whatever crime I may have done for her, there was something lower than a rat. And Lila Grant was the lowest rat of all. …