Page 74 of The Circle

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

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DANNY

“Mr. Fortnight, sir. Will you come now, please?”

“Shut the fuck up and gimme a minute!”

If I’ve got to do a bunch of shit that someone else is demanding and I have no way of avoiding, I’m not gonna be rushed while I’m doing it. This asshole in his fancy suit and his stupid glasses can wait all goddamn day.

“If something feels off by even a fuckin’ millimeter, you do what you have to do,” I tell Christine, leaning in close.

“I will.”

“I’m not fucking kidding.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Mr. Fortnight…” comes his voice again from over by the car where he is waiting. I ignore him this time. The driver of the Mercedes that is intended to carry Christine and Eliza stands by the rear door, holding it open, waiting for Christine to enter. Eliza is already in the backseat, staring out the window, also waiting. Not waiting patiently. But waiting. But I need to say what I need to say, so everybody else can just fucking give me a second.

“Christine—” I start before she cuts me off.

“Danny, stop. You need to stop. I’ll be right behind you, we’re going to the same place, I have my phone, and if anything gets weird I’ll handle it. I can still handle things. I’m still me. Right?”

I sigh out through my nose and nod my head discreetly. I want to kiss her. Hold her. Wrap her up in a hug. Take her hand even. But I can’t. I can’t show anyone that there is any amount of vulnerability they can exploit. Even though I don’t think you’d have to look at me that hard right now to see that it’s there.

I feel like an asshole. I don’t mean to be all fragile and delicate at the moment, but I find myself not being able to help it. I know what I know. And I can’t un-know it now. I fuckin’ wish she weren’t here. That Alec and I could just handle whatever this is alone. But that’s not how it works. We are a unit, the three of us. We have put in too much effort not to be. And, besides, there seems to be some unique knowledge of these people and this place that Christine possesses and which may be useful in short order.

“Right,” I say, answering her. She is still her. She can still handle things. Of course she can. And I need to let her.

I nod once more and give her a wink. She smiles and kind of half rolls her eyes. I know that she likes it when I wink at her. And, despite herself, she can’t help but be moved by it. At least that’s how I’m taking the smile and eyeroll. As opposed to her thinking I’m being an overly worried ninny or some bullshit.

She steps to the car that’s waiting for her and the driver closes the door behind her once she takes a seat. I move up to the curb where Alec and… Hans? Sure. Why not? Where Alec, Hans, and our driver wait.

I walk slowly. Just to be a dick.

When I finally find myself standing next to Alec, who is waiting by the open rear door, I see him wanting very much to ask me things. And then I see him very much decide not to.

Instead he just holds the door open for me, waits for me to get inside, and then winks at me kind of like I just winked at Christine. And when I roll my eyes at him, I know for certain it has nothing to do with me feeling butterflies in my stomach and everything to do with the fact that I just want this all to be over. So, so fucking bad.

CHRISTINE

Riding in dead silence, sitting beside someone you don’t have a lot to talk about with, isn’t fun. It’s not awful or anything—there are fifteen worse experiences I could rattle off the top of my head—but it’s not a good time. Both Eliza and I are deep in our own thoughts. And what I realize abruptly is that we’re in our own thoughts kind of about the same thing.

Eliza is, no doubt, thinking about her child and her brother—in that order—and I’m thinking about my pregnancy and Alec and Danny—probably in reverse order. Neither one of us is thinking about ourselves, I don’t imagine. That’s love. That’s, I’m pretty sure, true love. When your thoughts and concerns gravitate automatically to someone else, or several others else, instead of yourself.

If I’m thinking about me at all in this instant, it’s only to wonder what might happen to Danny and Alec if something were to go wrong and I were to lose this pregnancy as well. Or, perhaps even more gloomily, what would happen to them if something happened to me. By which I mean me winding up dead. Let’s just call it what it is.

We’ve come too far and been through too much to have it all ripped away now. I really hope we survive. Danny, Alec, Andra, Eliza, her brother, everybody. I notice that I don’t include myself in that line of thought. I don’t know if that makes me selfless or reckless. Maybe both. I’ve been reckless before. It wouldn’t be unlike me.

Usually it comes with that all-powerful feeling of having a plan and knowing how to execute it to perfection. But I suppose then it isn’t really recklessness. It’s maybe hubris or bravado. This, now, having no certainty or plan whatsoever but still charging headlong into the unknown… that’s reckless. Probably. Honestly, I don’t really care. I just know that my priority today is keeping everyone else safe.

And if that’s being reckless, well then, reckless I shall fucking be.

DANNY

“Where the fuck are we going?”That’s me asking Hans, directly behind whom I’m sitting and whose throat I could reach out and strangle any time I feel like it. There’s no glass or barrier of any other kind separating the front and back seats. Why would there be? They (whoever “they” are) know they have all the power and that us killing any one of them would get us no closer to getting Andra back.