Only Through Love: A Cane River Romance Novella (9 page)

            He
stopped at a light. “That’s awful.”

            “I
know,” she said, shame choking the words.

            “But
haven’t we all?”

            Maybe
that was true, but it didn’t make it any better. “What if I said I was a thief
and an imposter?” She could hear the bitterness in her voice.

            “Thief?
You’re a bit of an underachiever at your chosen profession, then.” His lips
were turning up in a smile. “Why not just steal some money? Why go through all
the effort and embarrassment of filling out those assistance papers? Surely
Alice has some money lying around.” The light turned green and he started the
car forward. “A girl with your tech skills could clean out a few accounts
without anybody noticing.”

            “Without
Paul seeing it?” She let out a noise of disbelief. “Wait a minute…” Charlie
felt shock travel through her body. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh
no…. no.”

            “What?
What happened?” Austin shot her a look then pulled the car over to the curb.
“Charlie, talk to me.”

            She
couldn’t speak. How blind she’d been. All this time she’d been hiding from Paul
and he’d known from the beginning.

            Austin
reached out and gently touched her shoulder. “What is it?”

            Dropping
her hands, Charlie turned to him. “I did something bad. And I thought nobody
knew about it, but I think they all know about it and were just waiting for me
to confess.”

            His
eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

            “No…
yes… I think so. I don’t know!” She wanted to jump from the car and run away,
but there was no place to go. She’d already run from her troubles once. She’d
thought she was safe in the little sleepy little tourist town.

            He
took her hands in both of his and turned toward her. “Charlie, listen to me.
Whatever happened, it’s not the end of the world. Everybody makes mistakes. You
should see the kids that come through the center. They’re picking themselves
back up after a stint in prison and they have to get the courage to go
straight.”

            “Prison,”
she groaned. Why hadn’t Paul had her arrested? Out of respect for her parents,
probably.

            “I
didn’t mean you should be in prison, or did anything to deserve prison.” He
sounded a little panicked. “I’m not saying this right at all. Maybe you should
talk to Tom.  He’s good at this kind of thing. Or Gideon. He’s had to come back
from some really bad choices.”

            “No,
no.” She couldn’t imagine involving any more people. “And aren’t you good at
this kind of thing? Isn’t this what you do for a living, tell people how to
give up their life of crime?”

            He
blinked. “Life of crime? What have you been doing?”

            And
then without even thinking it through, she started at the beginning and told
Austin everything.

She with one breath attunes the
spheres, and also my poor human heart.—Thoreau

            Charlie
started her story way back when she’d created an avatar that was male because
it didn’t really matter and who cared anyway, it was just a game. Then it was
more than a game and she made friends and built a group. The group evolved
several times until it included some pretty clever programmers that traded sly
little codes that could sneak into anywhere and do anything. They formed a
guild in Ultimate Voyager and they were her family, closer than anyone she knew
in real life. Especially one boy who was smart, funny, and dedicated to living
dangerously. Everything Tyler did was thrilling. She fell hard for him and even
though they’d never met face to face, he had her heart as surely as Paul had
Alice’s. Whenever she needed him, he was there, no matter the day or the hour.
Not physically there, and not even by video chat, but in other ways. They
talked on the phone, texted constantly, and they were together online more
hours than most married couples saw each other in a day.

            Then
everything had gone wrong. They had a fight. It was over something silly and when
he wouldn’t let it go, she’d laughed at him. Tyler hated to be laughed at. He
could stand almost any other kind of slight, but laughing at him was unforgivable.
He told her it was over. Within hours his number didn’t work, her messages were
blocked, his facebook account disappeared. She thought he’d cool off, get over
it, come back and say he was sorry he’d been such a hothead. A day later―
an eternity in their relationship― he was nowhere to be found. Charlie
mourned as if he’d died and went to take comfort in her online friends.

            Charlie
paused for breath, looking down at Austin’s fingers interlaced with hers. “I
logged into Ultimate Voyager and saw that my guild had attacked all my resource
gathering plants, destroyed all my defenses, blew up our stores.”

            “And
disbanded?”

            “Right.
I was alone. And I know the character is portable. I know I could just pick up
and move somewhere else if I had the courage. I would lose some of the special
battle suits and things we’d won on our raids, but I still could have just
joined another guild…” Sadness clogged her voice.

            “Except
you were grieving.”

            “Grieving.
I suppose that’s right.” She was focused on their hands, his hands. She’d never
touched Tyler. He lived in Florida. Or so he said. Nothing he’d said about himself
checked out later and she felt like a fool for how trusting she’d been. “But it
was more than that. The head of my department called me into his office.
Someone had sent him dozens of pages proving that I’d cheated on all my
projects and papers, pulling them from the internet.”

            His
fingers tightened on hers. “You were kicked out.”

            “No,
I fought back. I tried to show them that all those internet sources were
recently created, that someone was trying to set me up.”

            Austin
leaned back against the seat, his lips a tight line. “They didn’t believe you.”

            “They
did, actually. These were professors of computer science and they knew the
forensic evidence was pointing to my innocence. It would just take time. But
then I got a notice my bank account was overdrawn.”

            “They
hacked your bank account?”

            “Everything
was gone. All my savings.” The memory washed over her. She had folded to the
ground in despair, too shocked to cry, too angry to form words. “I decided to
come back home.”

            “But
you never asked Paul for help.”

            She
paused. After everything she told him, she didn’t know why she hesitated now. “Do
you remember last spring when ScreenStop was hacked?”

            “Of
course. It was huge. All over the news. Paul said they cut the net worth of the
company in half. They lost…” Austin’s eyes went wide. “Did they blame that on
you?”

            “It
was my program. My virus.”

            She
didn’t know what she was expecting but she was unprepared when Austin put his
other hand to his eyes. It was such a position of despair that her throat went
tight. She didn’t need to say anything more. He understood what a complete mess
it was.

            He
dropped his hand. “Did they really think Paul would believe it was you?”

             “I’ve
been trying to keep him from finding out.”

            “First,
I think you’re right. I think he already knows. Second, my mama says that a
jaybird don’t rob his own nest.”

            Charlie
barely heard him over the pounding over her heart. Her worst fears were being
confirmed. “I’m sorry. Jaybird what?”

            “It
means that you don’t work against yourself. There’s no reason for you to
sabotage Paul and Alice’s company. None at all.”

            “Unless
I just wanted the fame.”

            “Okay,
that could have been, but then why run back here? Why hide in this little town
with the same people you just tried to ruin?”

            She
saw the moment the realization struck him and she almost cringed at the dawning
horror in his eyes. “You’re… you’re UltimateStarCrossed, the player that got
doxxed and shamed for trying to cheat her way to the top. The trolls were
feasting on you for months. Your guild said they had proof you’d been cheating
for years, even at that developer’s conference in Miami. ”

             “None
of that was true. I had an alternate, but I wasn’t collecting points or running
raids with bots. And the hacks they said I’d downloaded would have ruined the
fun. Some people said it had to be true because I’d been accused of cheating
before. What really good player hasn’t? I never let it bother me. My guild
always defended me. They vouched for my skill…until they turned against me.”

            “Have
you played since?”

            “I
haven’t been online. I wiped all my accounts. UltimateStarCrossed is dead. I
killed that orphan character.” She let out a long breath. “I’m here, though.
Not thriving, obviously. But I survived.”

             “So,
what now?”

            Alarm
shot through her. “What do you mean?”

            “You’re
going to let them know what breed of bear they decided to poke, right? You’ve
got to show them you don’t corner something bigger and meaner than you.”

            If
she hadn’t been so scared, she would have laughed. She didn’t feel big and
mean. She felt pretty wimpy and fragile. “There’s nothing to do but try to
disappear. The people who bought my parents’ house are going to have to move.
They’re dealing with all the revenge that was supposed to come my way.”

            “And
your― the guy?”

            “Tyler?
Nowhere. Fiction.” She shrugged. “And I can’t point fingers, really. He never
knew my real name, either. I loved him but deep down I knew, I must have known,
that there was something I couldn’t completely trust.”

            “He
knew enough to destroy your life,” Austin protested.

            “But
I never told him my name is really Mary Charlotte. The cyber bullies are
pranking the people in that house because they traced an IP address to that
place. I never played Ultimate Voyager at work, so the bookstore is safe.”

            “Why
did they go after Paul?”

             “Everybody
knows his avatar, or at least the one he uses for the public. Anyway, Paul
popped into a raid and said my name without me telling him, so the guild knew I
was somehow connected. If they thought I was cheating, there wouldn’t have been
a better time to make the accusation. A developer playing his own game? But
they were impressed and nobody said a thing about it until this year. Anyway, that’s
why they used one of my programs to hurt ScreenStop.”

            “Mary
Charlotte.” He looked out at the cars going by them, and seemed to be mulling
over that bit of information. “They couldn’t get your full name from your
school records? Didn’t they contact your advisor? I don’t know how you’ve
escaped so far.”

            “I
was looking over my shoulder for months, sure they knew exactly where to find
me but I heard later that they’d sent all those accusations of plagiarism to
every senior girl majoring in computer science. It was a huge mess, but that
told me that they actually didn’t have as much information as I’d feared.”

            “They
really didn’t know… then what about your bank account?”

            Charlie
slumped in her seat, her chin dropping to her chest. She was nobody’s fool. Her
daddy always got a good laugh out of a neighbor who always feel for some scheme
or another. He’d always say old Mike didn’t have the good sense God gave a
goose or that he didn’t have both oars in the water or if brains were dynamite,
he didn’t have enough to blow his nose. Then he’d look at Charlie and tell her
that she better keep her head on straight, that he didn’t raise no fools. “He
got it from me. I’m an idiot.”

            He
let out a soft sound, whether because he knew what was coming or because he
didn’t want to hear her call herself names.

            “Tyler
said he’d gotten into a bind, short on funds. He just needed a loan.” She shook
her head. “I probably sound like the most gullible person on the earth but I’d
known him for years. I’d loved him for almost as long. I didn’t think anything
of it. Just made the transfer and figured that was the end of it. I never
thought he could have backtracked the information and was keeping it, like
insurance.”

            They
sat in silence for a moment and Charlie looked out at the traffic passing them
by. Alice would be wondering where they were. “You probably need to get back to
work,” she said.

            “You
haven’t said what you’re going to do.” He didn’t let go of her hand.

            “Do?
Work at the bookstore. Get another job. Try to pay my rent.” She heard the
irritation in her voice but couldn’t soften the edge. “What would you suggest,
Mr. Counselor?”

            “You
need to fight back.”

            “Huh.
That easy.”

            “You’re
the innocent party. You have evidence on your side. And powerful friends.”

            “Being
the good guy doesn’t mean you win, and remember that I’m not completely
innocent.”

            Austin
shook his head, blue eyes darkening with determination. “You can’t just roll
over and let them get away with this.”

            She
swallowed, working to get up the nerve to say what was really keeping her from
fighting back. “Maybe I’m scared to tell Paul what I did.”

            “What
you didn’t do, which he already knows.”

            She
looked into his eyes, hope sparking in her chest. “I don’t know where to
start.”

            “We
can plan it all out. How you’ll tell him and where. It doesn’t have to be
tonight.”

            Her
stomach clenched in response to the idea. “No, not tonight.”

            Smiling,
he gave her hand one more squeeze and put the car back in gear. “I know it
feels bad right now, but the more you get used to the idea of standing up
against them, I think the more relief you’ll feel.”

            “I
hope so,” Charlie said. She missed the feel of his hand. The bravery she’d felt
when they were linked together seemed to leach away. “I’m so tired of hiding.”

            He
didn’t say anything and she wondered what he thought about her. She’d let Alice
give her a job and care for Aurora while she kept secrets from her, big
secrets. The list of people she didn’t want to disappoint was getting longer
and Austin was pretty close to the top.

            “I
can understand that,” he said as he turned a corner into the historical district.

            “You
have nothing to hide,” she said, laughing. “Everybody knows you. If you tried
to hide anything, Father Tom or Gideon wouldn’t let you get away with it.
That’s not even counting Henry, who seems to be able to see into a person’s
soul.”

            He
didn’t join her laughter. “I told you that I had as many secrets as the next
guy.”

            A
cold chill settled on her. Tyler had seemed completely transparent, but his
secrets were too many to count. “Surely not.”

            Austin
pulled into the little lot behind the bookstore and parked. He got out and said
nothing else as they walked toward the front door. A few feet from the corner,
she reached out a hand and pulled him to a stop. They stood facing each other
in the no man’s land between the bookstore and the sidewalk. Weekend tourists
wandered by, fanny packs strapped on tight, sunglasses perched on their heads. The
breeze from the river wafted toward them and Charlie could smell the change in
the weather. Summer was ending and she wasn’t at college. It was fall and for the
first time in years, she was in Natchitoches while the rest of the world moved
forward.