Page 89 of A Barista's Guide to Love & Larceny
It was like it all came rushing over her at once, the reality of facing him right here, right now, after two weeks of silence and pain and wondering. Katya was talking in her shell, reporting that the power at OneiroLabs was down, that Wyatt and Oliver were porting in, but Dani couldn’t process any of it. She swayed on her feet, and she and Kass reached for each other at the same time, hands gripping the other’s forearms, locking their connection into place. “Kass, I’m so sorry, oh my gods, I’m so sorry. I never meant, I hope you know I didn’t want—”
“I know, Dani. I know.” He pulled her in closer, one hand going to her cheek, where his thumb gently brushed away a tear. “I mean, Ididn’t at first. I can’t lie to you, I was really hurt. Fuck, I felt awful. It took me days to even open your message.”
“Why did you?” she said. The tears were coming in earnest now, spilling down her face faster than he could get to them. “You should’ve ignored it. You should’ve hated me.”
“Should I have?” He smiled sadly. “Maybe. But gods damn it, Dani, even when I thought you were just trying to get close to me for my dad, I couldn’t bring myself to feel that way about you. I wanted a reason to forgive you, even when I thought I couldn’t.”
She let out a sob, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, their bodies pressed together now. “Then I read your letter, and—well, let’s just say it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already suspect. I told you myself, my dad’s willing to trample over almost anyone if it means success for his business. I just didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.”
I’ve jammed the door, Katya was saying in Dani’s ear.But security is on their way up. We’ve got literal minutes to get this done.
We’re looking, Wyatt said.
There are hundreds of plants here, Oliver said, sounding excited in spite of the circumstances.And dozens of hybrids—
I’m trying to get into Dr. Rodriguez’s computer, Wyatt interrupted,but it’s password protected. Katya?
We’ll need you at any moment, Miss Amari, Silva said.
I’m ready to deploy, McKenna said.Just tell me when.
Dani couldn’t deal with all this right now. She reached up and ripped the shell from her ear, slipping it into the hidden pocket of her dress. Kass was so involved in their conversation, he didn’t even seem to register it.
“I spent the last week investigating the clinical trials for myself,” he said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of his sister’s, which was filling the hall with some bland talking points about innovation and progress and pioneering the dreamscape. “AndI found out you were right. A huge percentage of the people they test the product on have some kind of adverse reaction, so they kick them out of the study and don’t even follow up to see if their side effects go away.”
Dani nodded. She was so grateful to hear him saying all this, for him to have trusted her enough to look into it himself.
“I couldn’t believe that when I read it,” Kass said. “I realized I couldn’t just stand by and let my dad get away with something so—so fucking careless.”
“So you confronted him?”
“I went to my sister first, but she’ll do whatever our dad tells her, even when she doesn’t want to. After that, yeah, I tried talking to him. As you could probably gather, he didn’t want to hear it. He told me not to come tonight if I was going to act ungrateful.”
“I can’t believe you showed up anyway,” Dani said. “I can’t believe you ultimatumed him like that. What if he pulls you out of the Leap?”
Kass scoffed. “Oh, all that stuff was bullshit; he’s too proud to really do it. Having a son who’s a legacy at the Leap is too important to him. And even if he had the nerve to follow through, then fine. If they go ahead with the product as planned, and it ends up hurting thousands of people—we’ll lose everything anyway. So what does it matter?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she said softly. Her ungloved hand had found its way from his arm to his chest, where her palm rested against his sternum. None of this felt real to her, but the sting of the cut underneath its Band-Aid was real enough, grounding her in the too-good-to-be-trueness of the moment.
“I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk to me about this,” Kass said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself. I just—in the moment, I couldn’t handle it.”
She shook her head fervently. “Don’t apologize. I shouldn’t havekept it from you, even for as long as I did. I just knew it would change things, and I’m…”
“Falling in love with me?”
There was no hiding from him, not when they were close enough for him to feel her heart, and when it skipped a beat. Her lips parted, her face heated, and her mind went blank as it searched for the right response.
“That’s what you said,” Kass murmured. “In your letter.”
“I did?” She knew she did. But hearing her words recited back to her was a vulnerable thing. Butterflies stirred in her rib cage, not knowing whether to take flight just yet.
“Wasn’t it true?”
“No,” she said, then, at his crestfallen look, “no, I mean it is, of course it’s true—I am falling in love with you, Kass. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m falling in love with you, too, Dani.”
She was crying happy tears now, everything fading into the background—the gala, the heist, the revelation about Silva—as Kass leaned in to kiss her. Golden warmth swept throughout her entire body, knitting together the parts of her that had frayed over the past two weeks. Her arms wound around Kass’s neck so she could draw him even closer, deepening their kiss, an aurora borealis of vibrant colors soaring across her mind, pink and violet and fluorite green.
