Page 37

And again, two weeks later, at the local grocery store, just a glimpse, and a deep voice like warm maple syrup, but never anything concrete, always easily explained away.

Work was going well, at least, which made up for all the lack of sleep. His skills didn’t go unnoticed—after all, that’s why he’d been hired—and he found himself co-heading a project to secure the systems of an international company after only a few months on the job. Which was how, at two in the morning, he found himself in a mostly-empty office staring at his screen, cursing.

“Did you use your duck?” Sam asked, voice muffled, from where he was faceplanted on a nearby couch, supposedly napping.

“Fuck these goddamn ducks. They’re not doing their jobs. Fuck Dracula,” he said, throwing his duck at Sam. “And fuck Batman, and this stupid asshole,.” He sent Matt’s Batman duck that he’d borrowed sailing across the room, followed by his large welcome aboard duck. “And fuck Captain America, too!” All the ducks found their marks, landing somewhere on Sam’s prone body.

“You’re not supposed to fuck them, man. You talk to them.”

“I know that! You know what, fuck this shit. I can’t stare at this anymore. I can’t talk it through with the loser squad anymore. I’m—”

“Aw, hey man, Cap isn’t a loser!” Sam interrupted.

“Well he sucks a fat one tonight! I’m going to the gym. I need to punch some things.”

Sam lifted a hand and waved a farewell as Carson stormed past him. He grabbed his gym bag from the closet and took the stairs because he didn’t think he could stand still long enough to get down seven floors.

The night clerk at the gym knew him on sight by now, and Carson breezed into the locker room to change. He stretched a bit, and then started in on the heavy bag. His last foster dad had liked boxing, and they’d spent many weekends together in the gym throughout high school. After half an hour, he moved to the weights. It was in the middle of his third set of leg presses, while he was zoned out, that he heard him.

“Of all the twenty-four hour gyms in all the world, you had to waltz into mine.”

Carson felt heat suffuse his limbs, above and beyond what he felt from the physical exertion. Awareness tingled through him, raising goosebumps on his arm despite the sweat dripping off him. He let the weights down slow and carefully dropped his legs before he turned his head in the direction the voice had come from.

Zach.

He was real, not a figment of his imagination, not a ghost of a memory.

Carson’s mouth was suddenly drier than Death Valley.

“What, you couldn’t find a pool hall to hustle?” he asked, one eyebrow raised, pleased that his voice sounded at least mostly normal.

Zach snorted, the smile on his face and in his eyes warm, as if he was pleased to see Carson. Which was ridiculous, really. Because Carson was absolutely not acknowledging the flutter in his stomach right now.

“And besides, I’ve been coming here about two months now and haven’t seen you yet. So how exactly is it yours? Or wait—do you really work in gym equipment? Do you own this place? Because I was just joking about that.”

“Or something,” he replied, and wasn’t that what he’d said the last time, too? Fuck, was he involved with a drug dealer? Why was he so cagey about his work? Not that Carson had disclosed any of his own personal information, but he wasn’t evasive with his answers like that whenever Zach asked.

“Whatever. Keep your secrets, then.” He dropped to the floor—a strategic move, he wasn’t too ashamed to admit—and began doing crunches.

“How’s the new job going?” Zach asked instead. He dropped to the floor at Carson’s feet and straddled his legs, large, soft hands holding Carson’s ankles.

“Going great,” Carson huffed as his chest hit his knees. “Love my coworkers. Stuck on a problem right now though with a program not running right, so I’m here punching bags instead of my computer screen. Even the damn ducks aren’t helping.”

“Ducks? You have office pets? And they’re ducks?”

Carson laughed.

“No. More like a mascot. Rubber ducks. When you can’t get a particular piece or section of coding to work right, you try talking it out. Aloud. Somehow, somewhere, someone started talking to rubber ducks, and it became a thing. Because when you are trying to explain what the code is doing, or what it’s supposed to do, you usually see your mistake.”

“Gotcha. I remember reading something about that somewhere online one time, I think.”

“It’s silly, but it works. Usually. I’ll figure it out, I always do. I’m just tired. Been working weird hours trying to get this done.”

“So you work with computers then?”

Carson paused in his crunches, wrapping his arms around his legs and holding himself up.

“Or something,” he smirked. He’d signed his damn life away with confidentiality paperwork and an intensive background check. He couldn’t tell anyone what he actually did.