Deadline

nodded and left the room even faster than Becks had. She didn’t even bother putting down her last bag of groceries.

I stayed where I was, watching Maggie cautiously. She put down the bag she was holding and walked over to me, stopping a few feet away as she studied my face. Finally, shaking her head, she sighed.

“How crazy are you, Shaun?”

It was an echo of the question George asked me in the van, after Kelly dropped her little bombshell about the reservoir conditions. There was no possible way for Maggie to have heard Georgia’s side of the conversation, even if she’d been listening in. I flinched all the same, answering without thinking about it: “Pretty damn crazy.” I winced. “Okay, that was maybe not the best answer. Can I try again?”

“It was an honest answer, which is what I needed.” Maggie looked me slowly up and down. “Did you know what you were going to do to Rebecca when you let her take you to bed?”

“God, no. Maggie, I didn’t even know she was… y’know, interested in me. That way.”

“I thought that might be the case.” Maggie sighed. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

That was another question without a good answer. I settled for being as honest as I could. “Not as such, no.”

Again that slow look up and down before Maggie said, “I thought that might be the case, too. Will you let me give you some advice?”

“At this point?” I barked a short, bitter laugh. “I’d take advice from the bulldogs if I thought it would help. I didn’t mean to fuck things up with Becks. I mean…” It was my fault because she’d been there, and she’d been willing, and she’d been offering me something I thought I wanted. She came with full disclosure, all her baggage right there on the table. Me, I’d been hiding how far gone I was for so long that I… didn’t. She had no idea what she was getting into. I knew that. And I should have known better.

“Are you blaming her?”

“I’m blaming myself.”

“Good.” Maggie nodded, looking satisfied. “You’re both adults, and it’s none of my business what you do, as long as nobody’s getting hurt. Becks got hurt. Maybe she should have been more careful about weighing the risks, but that doesn’t matter right now. You need to apologize to her. You need to make this right, because if you wait for her to get better on her own, I don’t think you’re going to be able to work together anymore.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” I would even mean it. Becks deserved a hell of a lot better than the way I’d treated her, whether I meant to treat her badly or not.

She deserved a hell of a lot better than me.

“I’m glad.” Maggie stepped forward and hugged me. Her hair smelled lie I was fonilla and strawberries. She held on just long enough that I was starting to get uncomfortable before letting go and turning to start taking groceries out of bags, leaving me blinking dumbly after her. Catching my look, she arched her eyebrows, and said, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get out there and talk to her. Go.”

I went.

The grass was damp, probably from some overnight rainfall, and my boots were wet by the time I’d crossed it to Maggie’s van, which sat in the driveway with doors open and groceries on the front seat. There was nobody there. I turned to look around, unsurprised to see footprints in the wet grass leading away, toward Maggie’s vegetable garden.

I followed the trail all the way around the house and to the edge of the carefully tilled plot of ground that Maggie used for growing vegetables and fresh herbs. A few pre-Rising park benches had been set up inside the garden border, providing a decorative touch of retro chic to the place. Becks was sitting on the bench farthest from where I stood, her back to me. I wasn’t quiet as I approached her, and she didn’t move. I guess she’d been expecting me.

“Hey,” I said, when I was close enough. “You mind if I sit down?”

“Yes, I do mind.” She turned in my direction, tilting her chin up as she looked at me. Her eyes were only a little bloodshot. She’d clearly mastered the Irwin art of crying without making yourself look bad for the cameras. That just made me feel worse. “But I guess we have to do this, so you might as well.” She scooted to the side, waving a hand in invitation.

“Thanks.” I sat, letting my hands rest on my knees. Silence fell between us. She was waiting for me to start, and I had no clue how.

Say you’re sorry, prompted George.

She’d never led me wrong before. “I’m sorry, Becks. I mean, Jesus, I’m so fucking sorry, I don’t think I can even say it. I was stupid, and I was selfish, and I’m sorry.”

Becks took a shaky breath. There was an edge of laughter to her voice when she spoke, like she couldn’t quite believe that we were doing this. “So that’s it? You’re sorry? I knew you had issues, Shaun, and I’m a big girl—I thought I could handle them. I guess I was wrong. I shouldn’t blame you for that.” But I do. The subtext in her words was impossible to miss, even for me.

“Maybe you shouldn’t blame me, but I should still have been smart enough to tell you that it wasn’t a good idea for us to be… intimate like that.”

“You mean we shouldn’t have fucked like bunnies?”

I coughed, partly from surprise, partly to cover the phantom sound of George’s laughter. “Uh, that, too. I just… I guess I wasn’t expecting it and does that sound unbelievably lame, or is it just me?”

Becks frowned, slowly. “You really mean that, don’t you? You really had no idea.”

“No idea of what?”

She stared for a moment before letting her chin drop and saying, “Oh, my God. You really had no idea.”

I was starting to get concerned. Apologizing for something I knew I’d done was one thing—I may not have much experience with girls, but I’m smart enough to know that calling them by somebody else’s name is never a good thing, especially when that somebody else is dead and also technically my sister. Apologizing for something I didn’t know I’d done was a bit more of a problem, if only because I couldn’t be sure I was doing it right. “Uh, Becks, I’m sorry, but you’re kinda losing me here. I’m happy to keep apologizing, but I do need to know what I’m apologizing for.”

This time her laughter was bright and brittle, like broken glass glinting in the sunlight. “I’ve been throwing myself at you for months, Shaun. The flirting, the frilly tops, the requests for hands-on review of my reports—I mean, what the hell did you think I was doing?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I figured you just wanted to make sure your facts were solid before you posted, and all that frilly stuff looked like a girl thing. Sort of like the way you wear your hair.”

“I wasn’t getting any ratings based on what I wore to work,” she said.

I shrugged.

Becks sighed. “Fine. So you wrote all that off. What about the flirting? Did you write that off as ‘a girl thing,’ too?”

If I was telling the truth, I might as well go for the whole truth. I was pretty sure it couldn’t get me into any more trouble than I was already in. “Until you showed up and took my towel away, I really didn’t notice.”

“If Dave weren’t dead, I’d owe him ten bucks.” Becks looked away from me, staring out at the forest past the fence. It looked completely untamed; Maggie’s security precautions were very well concealed. “He said you didn’t get it. I thought you were playing hard to get.”

“That’s what Alaric said, too. I’m really sorry. I never did the whole flirting thing.”

“No, I guess you didn’t, did you?” She slanted a sidelong glance my way, considering me. “You didn’t need to.”

I thought about lying to her. After everything else, there didn’t seem to be any point. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

She nodded, once, mouth twisting in that too-damn-familiar way before she went back to looking at the forest. I hated that look. I’d hated it on every face that I’d ever seen wearing it. The one that said, clearly, “But she’s your sister,” and ignored the part where she was also the only person who’d ever really given a damn what I thought. About anything.

Finally, in a soft, almost contemplative tone, Becks said, “I guess I sort of knew, deep down. Maybe that’s