Page 78 of Sucker For You

It seemed impossible, but: “You were happy?”

“I think so, yes.” Isabel swirled her fingers in the water. Her thumb brushed his. She didn’t seem to notice, studying theirtwo-spot: mottled and pale in her halimeda-swaddled coral, with two uneaten shrimp. “Until a migraine caught me in the library. I was asleep. I didn’t have any warning. If I knew the pain was coming, I’d leave the building so no one would hear me crying. But that day I didn’t get out. Paramedics were called. They took me to the hospital. I didn’t have a university ID. Security came, too. Obviously.”

Obviously?

It wasn’t. None of this torrent of information was obvious! Taciturn Isabel had never spoken so much about herself before.But now?Hard on the heels of her brittle, unexplained silence had come a passionate argument in his defense, and then—

This.

You need to know, she’d said.

These weren’t merely interview facts, however. This was something else.

What the hell?

He just managed to keep his mouth shut; her next words were a reward for his restraint, spoken in little more than a whisper. Her fingers stroked Thalassa’s tentacles and passed over the mantle that concealed the octopus’s organs of respiration, digestion, and reproduction. The skin there was dotted white like the couch’s throw pillows.

“Legally, I’d been trespassing. I was banned from the campus. I hope someone told the lab personnel. Otherwise, no one would’ve been on a late shift with the octopuses that night. But there was nothing I could do. . . The doctors said I was under observation for twelve hours before my symptoms subsided. Before I could breathe normally and my vision returned. They tried acetaminophen, triptans, and antiemetics. Nothing worked to control the pain. Only time. Once I was functional, though,a resident told me that the San Francisco Medical Center was recruiting state residents for a Phase Three experimental drug trial. The medication was a preventative treatment for severe migraines. So when they discharged me, I left the facility—”

Wes’s treacherous brain conjured up an image of a younger, paler, exhausted Isabel, turned out on a city street with her life cradled in her arms or stuffed into a ratty backpack (shirts and socks, maybe a natural history book), and his heart clenched.

“—and I boarded a ferry from Vancouver to Port Angeles, Washington. I made my way to the Seattle Aquarium. The institute had recently received a large administrative grant, so it didn’t balk at sponsoring a nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional visa for me. I was one of many Canadians in the city on three-year work permits. I didn’t have a degree, but I had experience. I requested night shifts and I didn’t ask for much more than a volunteer stipend. Just enough to pay for a future interstate bus ticket to San Francisco. It was all right for a while, but. . .” her shrug rippled the surface of the reef tank; the octopus drifted gently, “that was before the economic downturn.”

“Damn.”

“The aquarium couldn’t justify the cost of renewing my visa. Not when I didn’t have credentials. I don’t blame anyone. They notified me of their decision well in advance, and I’d saved some money by then from taking the late shifts, swing shifts, or any other times when they needed hands. Since I was working with octopuses, that was always. Besides, I’d found a converted garage for rent that didn’t cost very much—”

Exactly how “converted” had that garage been?

“—so I knew I could afford to live for a few months in San Francisco.”

He couldn’t smile at her tiny financial success. “Right.”

“My migraines were getting worse and more frequent. I tried not to let them disrupt my hours at the aquarium. But there were days when I couldn’t even stand up.” One finger curled through Thalassa’s slack arms. “Eventually, I left Washington. It wasn’t hard to uproot my life. I. . . I don’t get attached. To places, to people.Can’t, it says in my federal file. I left the aquarium, and I enrolled in a study at UCSF Medical Center. The clinical trial for Ceretobicin. That’s where I met Chase.”

Chase fucking Meyer.

Wes’s jaw ached.

“The drug company had hired a model to shoot promotional images on location at the hospital. San Francisco was having a climate-action protest, though, and she couldn’t get through the gridlock. But I’d just completed an MRI scan to assess how my brain chemistry responded to the Ceretobicin. Extremely well, according to the researchers. So I. . .Iwas there. And lunch was provided.”

The pharmaceutical publicity people and that handsy photographer had seen Isabel: beautiful and hungry.

They’d taken advantage.

“I agreed to stand in—” her anxieties weighed against her empty stomach, against dry cheese slices and flat sparkling water, “and they paid me. I met Chase, too. Later that day I even received notice about a distribution of my new support fund. The Canadian bill had passed, and my first installment of the money was mailed a few weeks later. Everything was going well, until. . .”

“It’s going to be fine.” His words burst out, irrepressible, that simple statement somehow more potent than Wes’s million questions. He couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t help tracing his thumb over the healing skin on Isabel’s fourth finger. The contactsnapped up her focus from the octopus. She blinked at him, her gaze bright and wet. He assured them both, “It’s going to be all right. I promise.”

The weekend swept by with all the helter-skelter speed of a spring tide. Isabel dangled her hands in the reef tank and spent thirty minutes enticing the octopus (sluggish on Saturday morning, but blowing tempestuous raspberries by Sunday afternoon) to nibble at sea snails. Her stomach torqued nervously at every muted call from Chase; she couldn’t avoid a conversation with him forever. She knew that. She also knew that she’d likely hear herself apologize to him when she was finally brave enough to answer, because the alternative was anger, which she couldn’t afford, even now—and she couldn’t bear those lies in her mouth. So she escaped the anxiety that bubbled up like texting ellipses inside her by lingering near Monterey’s rocky, kelp-swaddled pools, standing frozen with her elbows pinned to her ribs and her tongue locked behind her teeth while surf frothed over her feet.

And Wes?

She held herself stiffly with him, as well.

Monday: she didn’t reach for him, didn’t bury her nose in the warm hollow of his throat, didn’t sigh into the solidity of his arms.

Tuesday: another volunteer shift at the institute, learning to drive MORI’s ATV and assessing her options for sneaking into the computer wing—while aware that Adrian Monaghan had just flown into San Francisco. Her time in the wet lab was slipping by like sand. The Monaghans’ meeting in Santa Cruz was fast approaching.