by Cassie James
“It’s good, right?” he finally manages to ask after gulping down at least half of his soda in one go. I might not need to eat, but even I can appreciate a damn good meal. The flavors are insane here, unlike anything else I’ve had.
Dad seems to want to reminisce. I sit back and keep enjoying my dessert as I let him talk. This is something simple that I can give him, and I want to do it for him. To be here and just listen. I can’t imagine how long it’s been since he’s had that. I can’t imagine that Jackie has been much of a listener, as bat shit crazy as she’s been.
“I’ve been coming here since college,” he tells me, getting a faraway look in his eyes. I’m sure he’s remembering that earlier, simpler time in his life. “I was hammered the first time I stumbled in here. There’s nothing quite like going home with a full stomach after a hard night of drinking. I ended up here a lot the day after, too. Greasy food works wonders on hangovers, keep that in mind for college.”
College? I tilt my head to the side as he chuckles at his own little comment.
He suddenly seems to come back to the present. His whole demeanor seems to shut down, as if he’s remembering again that I’m not really his Piper. That it’s easier for him to be indifferent about me than to really face the reality of my existence. It stings differently than the way Jackie treats me. It’s one thing to deal with someone who’s unhinged—quiet disappointment is a different kind of monster entirely.
We fall into an awkward silence. I drop my head to stare down at my half-eaten plate, ice cream melting into a puddle around the remnants of my pie. I wish I could kick myself for agreeing to dinner in the first place. What the fuck was I even thinking?
Roman and I are nothing to each other. We exist on the outskirts of one another’s lives, walking on eggshells and only ever really interacting when there’s no other choice.
He’s not my father. I’m not his daughter.
I’m surprised when he asks, “How’s school, Piper?”
Nice subject change. I stab at my pie, not actually interested in going through the motions of eating anymore. “It’s fine.”
“Are you struggling with anything?”
“No.”
He releases a long breath as I keep spearing my pie. It’s unrecognizable now, and where before it actually looked appetizing, now it’s just an inedible blob on my plate.
“So your grades are good?”
I’m not sure why he’s still bothering. This would be way easier if he’d just finish his meal so we can both get the fuck out of here and put the usual distance back between us. Whatever easy truce we’d come to over the start of our meal was obliterated the second he realized he was giving me advice like I was a real, living girl. As if it would ever make sense for me to actually do something like go to college.
“Yeah,” I bite out. “Even my grade in Humanities is fine, ever since that stupid extra credit project he made me do before Winter Break.”
Silence.
More silence.
The realization of what I’ve just said hits me. Oh shit.
“Piper.” I wait for the storm that I’m sure is about to come. The hurricane that’s going to send everything crashing around me again. For a few very long seconds, he doesn’t say anything else. He clears his throat before he does speak again. “I’m going to use the facilities before we go. I’ll be right back.”
He stands up and leaves me sitting at the table alone. I watch his retreating back the whole walk to the bathrooms on the far side of the place. Why didn’t he say anything? Is he really going to pretend I didn’t just have a major slip-up? I never know quite what to expect from Roman, but in this case, silence isn’t it.
That’s all I get, though.
Roman doesn’t say anything when he comes back to the table. Or on the drive home. Or anytime that night, even after Jackie gets home. For once, the universe—and Roman—are on my side.
7
Brennan
I never skip school. Considering my mom works at Rosewood, skipping would be unbelievably fucking stupid of me. Hell, I didn’t even do senior skip day, and that’s basically a freebie. But when I see that Stanley Hyde is doing a late afternoon presentation at UCLA that’s open to the public, all bets are off.
She would never in a million years have let me out of school for this. Not without some kind of explanation—and I’m not going to risk telling her about what almost happened to Piper.
I shudder, picturing my mom storming her way over to the Hawthornes’ place to give them a piece of her mind. She loves Piper. She hates injustice. It would be like the perfect storm, and I’m not exactly keen on trying to find someone to help me bail my mom out of jail.
Jude. Jude would help get her bailed out. I shake my head at myself. Damn me for even considering it.
Worst case scenario, I’m hoping Mom will go easy on me when she realizes I only skipped school to go to a lecture. After all, Hyde is at the forefront of the biotech and biomedical engineering fields. If I wasn’t so fucking furious about the guy not doing more to protect Piper, I might actually let myself be impressed.
That’s about the only reason I manage to stay silent during his actual presentation. I can’t help but feel a begrudging respect for a man that’s made major moves in the technological community over the years.
My hands grip the armrests of my seat so hard my fingers are losing their coloring. What the hell kind of man is Hyde really if he was so willing to bend to someone like Jackie Hawthorne? He crossed so many lines of professional ethics by letting it happen. Hyde has to know what everyone else in this community knows—that we have to tread carefully in all areas where life is involved. Even if those life forms are made of something other than blood and bone.
It hasn’t made Piper any less human.
What he did? He murdered her. And then he almost did it again.
I’m pulled out of my silent stewing when a student near the front raises a hand to ask about Hyde’s company. The guy goes on for far too long trying to explain he’s interested in the business aspect rather than the technological one.
“You can hire someone for that side of things, right?”
Stan listens to him talk, but from his unimpressed gaze, this guy isn’t making any friends. Eventually, he seems to realize that and shuts his mouth.
In a dry tone, Stan tells him, “The foundation of any good business is the passion you have for the service or product you’re offering.” What an asshole. What right does he have to speak about passion when he so callously treats one of his own creations like an unruly television? Stan turns it around on the guy, asking, “Do you really think you can be fully invested in your business if you don’t, on some level, really care about what you’re doing?”
“Is that why you stepped down as CEO? You don’t have a passion for what your company’s doing?” the business-bro challenges. Some of my anger fizzles out as I watch on in disbelief, much like the rest of the full lecture hall. Is this guy fucking for real? Does he even realize who he’s talking to?
“On the contrary,” Stan deadpans. “Sometimes, when you’re running a business, you have to make tough choices. The choices that are right for the company. I shifted my passion back into research and development and handed the reins over to an equally passionate colleague. HBI has been on the forefront of our field for years, and that won’t be changing anytime soon.”
There’s a glint in Stan’s eye as he raises an eyebrow at the business-bro, challenging him to say anything else. I don’t give him his chance. “What sort of projects are you working on now? What’s HBI doing to stay relevant and at the forefront of the biotech field?”
Stan jerks his head in my direction, the overhead lighting catching on his glasses as he searches me out near the back of the darkened lecture hall. The low lighting offers me a degree of anonymity, but I still feel like Stan Hyde’s staring into my fucking soul as his eyes land on me. The kid stupid enough to ask him to share proprietary information with an
entire crowd of strangers. But I have a reason.
“We have several projects underway at any given moment, most of which are classified, as I’m sure you understand.” Laughter passes through the crowd as he smiles at us.
“What about AI?” I challenge, cutting to the heart of the matter.
Stan’s smile falters for a brief moment, but his mask slips easily back into place. He fixes me with a hard stare as heads start to swivel in my direction. “What about it?” he asks, and I smirk at the edge in his tone. Anyone else might not notice it, but I was waiting for it, so I hear it clear as day.
“It’s just surprising that HBI doesn’t seem to have a stance on it, for a company on the forefront of technological advances and all that.”
“We’re a biotech firm,” he answers with a shrug. It’s the verbal equivalent of dusting his hands off. It’s clear he’s finished with this pesky line of questioning, ready to put the entire conversation to bed. “It’s not relevant to our work at this time.”
I scoff. “That’s arrogant.” And a fucking lie, but I keep that part to myself as the entire room turns to look in my direction. The guy next to me shifts further away from me in his seat, like he can’t get far enough away.
Hyde gives a patronizing smile. “I take it you’re studying AI at school?”
Nope, only studying it in the bedroom, as it turns out. I obviously can’t make that little snide comment out loud. “Nah, I’m still in high school. I’m a student at Rosewood,” I answer instead. I can’t help but smirk as I see the first flash of panic in his eyes. The guy isn’t flustered by much, but he clearly realizes something is up.
“I see.” He’s all smiles again as he looks out at the rest of the crowd for a moment. His eyes find mine again. “Well, AI is unfortunately not the focus of my talk today, but feel free to stick around to chat after we’re finished here. I’m sure you and I could have a very interesting conversation on the topic.”
I’m sure I should feel more nervous than I do as I hang around the front of the room waiting for the crowd to disperse. Everyone wants a chance to shake Stan’s hand. As if touching him will be the magic juju that gets their own projects off the ground.
By the time the last of the ass-kissers is gone, I’ve managed to rekindle all of my earlier anger. The two of us stare each other down in the now otherwise abandoned room.
He caves and speaks first. “Rosewood, huh?” I nod, not quite trusting myself to speak yet. Now that I’m this close, I note the signs of stress. The weary tilt of his shoulders. The dark bags under his eyes. He throws the strap of a leather bag over his shoulder. “Walk with me?”
I nod again and then climb the stairs behind him as we exit the lecture hall together. When he pushes open the door, he doesn’t bother to hold it, letting it nearly slam back against my face. Asshole. I shove the door open for myself and then tuck my hands deep in my pockets. It’s the only thing I can think to do to avoid wrapping both my hands around this man’s goddamn neck. Every silent step we take only makes me more furious.
“How is Piper?” he eventually asks. “Has something…” He falters, then catches himself. “Has something happened?”
“She’s fine. No thanks to you,” I growl.
I can’t actually do this. I push past the man, ready to storm right out of the building. Coming here was a mistake.
He calls after me, “I only want what’s best for her.”
I freeze, turning slowly back to face him. He looks sincere, but his words only stoke more of my fire.
“Really?” I ask with a humorless laugh. “You want what’s best for her? Maybe start by not wiping her fucking consciousness every time Jackie Hawthorne comes calling.”
“It’s not that simple.” His face falls, his expression turning to something like grief. It’s so familiar. It’s not so different from the look we all wore like a bad accessory to Piper’s funeral once upon a time. “My hands are tied. There are things you can’t possibly understand. The contract…”
“Fuck the contract! You created her—how can you not care about her? Do you know what it was like seeing her after that first reset? It was goddamn devastating. It took us months to get her back to where she was before—and that was with her log. What happens the next time Jackie shows up at your house in the middle of the night? What happens when we don’t have a log to get her back with? You keep killing her. How are we—all the people that love her—supposed to deal with that?”
“I left you a backup!” he whisper-shouts as he storms closer to me. He crosses the distance as I reel. Of course I’d suspected he’d done it on purpose, but now he’s confirming it. Holy shit. “Do you really think I’m so stupid that I wouldn’t address a security concern after having a server hacked like that? I’ve got security protocols tighter than the Pentagon—I could have closed that hole in the server anytime!”
“I’ve hacked her twice since then.” I’m smug, but only for the amount of time it takes Stan to scoff at me.
“Because I let you. Her firewalls are coded to shut out any and all hacking attempts that don’t mirror your signature perfectly, and they’ve been that way since the very first time you hacked her.” His anger is indignant, but it’s very, very real.
I shift in place as a wave of guilt washes over me. Truth be told, I really did think Stan was just being stupid and careless with Piper—that he didn’t care enough about her to protect her the way he should. I mean, if a high school kid with a shitty laptop can hack his technology, imagine what a professional could do. Knowing that he’d coded a backdoor for me makes all of my boiling anger cool instantly.
“There was always a door open for you to find a solution. I needed you to do what I couldn’t, Mister Diaz-Baker.” It doesn’t surprise me that he knows who I am, but I still jerk back a little at the sound of my name.
“Why did you give her to them?” My voice cracks. Dammit.
His eyes look so damned tired as he starts to walk, heading for the doors to the outside. I fall into step beside him, waiting for some kind of answer to make sense. To justify what it is he’s done. Not that anything ever really could, but I’m desperate for some kind of reasoning to hold on to.
It’s only once we’ve stepped outside, into the harsh afternoon sunlight, that he answers. “I recognized their grief, and I wanted to help. I would have given the world to have another opportunity with my daughter.”
I almost tell him he could have, but I bite my tongue. I definitely don’t understand where he’s coming from, but I at least have some tact. “They don’t deserve her,” I finally say after a long pause, and he sighs out an exhausted breath.
“I can’t do anything now. We have an airtight contract, and unless they go around sharing her information or purposefully damaging her, it’s not likely to be broken.” I bristle at the defeat in his tone, but he’s continuing before I can cut him off. “She backs up automatically now, by the way—to my servers as well as her own. And before you insult my intelligence by asking, yes, I have updated those firewalls as well. I will not accept any more proprietary information being leaked about her.”
Piper’s logs. My cheeks flush, and I run a hand down the back of my neck. “Yeah, sorry about that.” Barely. He fixes me with a hard stare as he stops beside a gleaming Tesla, and I shuffle in place as my stomach twists.
“Your halfhearted apology somehow doesn’t ease the sting of my knowing my private property has been illegally shared.”
“Sorry,” I mumble again, turning my eyes toward my feet so that I don’t have to meet his disapproving stare. Mom will kick my ass if she finds out I keep doing this, hacking into this man’s private property for my own gain. I broke so many laws it isn’t even funny. I could be facing serious consequences. In the moment, it was absolutely worth it to save Piper—twice—but now…
“Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of time to make it up to me this summer during your internship at HBI.” My head jerks up, and I’m surprised as shit to see him smiling
at me, not unkindly. I struggle to keep my jaw from hitting the pavement as he casually reaches for his key fob and unlocks his car door. “A little labor is the least you can do after what you did with Piper’s logs. And besides, a teenager capable of hacking my system? It’s better to have you on my team than the opposition’s.”
He lets out a quiet laugh as he climbs behind the wheel of his car. I’m not sure what alternate universe I’ve landed in—because there’s no way Stan Hyde actually just offered me a summer internship after acknowledging I hacked his shit. What the fuck just happened?
Just before he pulls away, the window rolls down. I’m not quite sure if he’s talking about Piper or the internship when he leaves me with his parting words, “I’ll be in touch.”
8
Piper
After the first reset, I was careful around school, just in case Jackie had someone watching me. After this failed attempt, I started the same way. But after a few weeks, I finally decide I just don’t give a fuck whether she’s got people watching me or not. Maybe it’s stupid of me, but knowing Anne is actively working on my case and that Stan is irrefutably on my side emboldens me. Jackie Hawthorne might have crazy on her side, but I’ve got my boys and a whole slew of other powerful people.
I’m not going to pretend like my best friend isn’t my best friend anymore. I stop avoiding her during the school day. I stop hanging out in the library during lunch. I stop shying away from the curious stares of my classmates. And I stop trying to be something I’m not. I start to become unapologetically myself—something I never thought I’d get the chance to be.
At home, Jackie might still be in charge, but in the rest of the world? No one gets to control me anymore.
