“Don’t be such a baby.” He shifted closer to me, though, putting an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him.
We both ate one-handed, in silence, listening to the ocean beat against the foundations of the island. Out to sea, in the very far distance, the lights of freight ships and tankers winked and flashed red and green, as if marking the holiday.
Once we were finished, Sully cleared away the mess left over from our meal and got out the mulled wine, pouring out a healthy measure into the top of the flask. “We’ll share,” he said, handing it to me. I held the lid containing the piping hot liquid in my hands until I could feel my fingers again, and then I drank and passed it to him.
“This month has been shit,” he said quietly under his breath. “I didn’t realize how shit it was going to be. And don’t you tell me you’ve been having a great time, because I know you haven’t.”
“I have.”
“I went to Connor’s play,” he blurted. “I sat at the back. I made sure he didn’t see me.”
“You did?” I couldn’t believe it. The presents this morning had thrown me, but this was something else altogether.
Sully nodded, and then drank some of the wine. He seemed lost in thought, eyes shining dimly even though the night was pitch black around us. “I just wanted to see him. See both of them. Everyone on the island is always arguing about who they look like—Ronan or Magda. I guess I wanted to make up my mind for myself.”
“Oh.” I took the wine from him. “What did you decide?”
“They look like Ronan the most. Which means they also look like me.” This thought didn’t seem to make him happy. His left hand tightened into a fist in his lap. “I wasn’t expecting that. I should have been expecting it, but I wasn’t. Goddamnit, Lang, will you open your damn present already? It’s making me flip out knowing that we’re sitting here with it in your pocket.”
I wanted to know more about what he’d seen the night of Connor’s play, what he’d been thinking as he watched his brother’s son recite his lines, perhaps catching glimpses of Amie and me in the shadowy crowd, but his confession had obviously made him uncomfortable, and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I took the gift out of my pocket and held it up, studying it with one eye closed.
“Can I shake it?” I asked.
“Sure.”
Nothing breakable inside, then. I shook it, and the slender package rattled, many small pieces bouncing around inside. “Hmm.” I unwrapped it carefully, and then lifted the lid of the plain blue box underneath, to reveal USB drives. Six, seven, eight of them, each one the same slim, silver design with a small lanyard attached.
“What the hell are these?” I asked, laughing.
Sully picked one up out of the box and held it up, grinning wickedly. “These are the downloaded files from my unit’s shared drive when I was deployed, Miss Ophelia Lang from California. Each one is twenty gigs of uncensored hardcore porn, courtesy of Specialist Crowe. Seriously, I hope you understand how honored you should be. These USB sticks are my most prized possessions.”
I gaped at the box, horrified. “Are you kidding me? How many…how many hours of porn is that?”
“God knows. At least a hundred.” He threw the USB back in the box. “Maybe two.”
“Should I be thanking you right now?”
“Only if you mean it,” he said, winking.
“Well, I don’t. God, what am I supposed to do with two hundred hours of porn, Sully?”
“Watch it. Give yourself carpal tunnel. Make yourself happy, girl.”
“I am not…urgh!” I thought about dumping the scalding hot wine I was holding down the back of his jacket. I thought about punching him in the balls, too, but I got the feeling he was expecting this reaction and was already preparing to block my attack. “Why do you have to be such a dick, Sully Fletcher?” I growled.
He sighed heavily and threw his arm back around my shoulder, pulling me to him again. “I told you. I promised I’d be a super asshole. To protect you.”
“Ha! To protect me.” I squirmed, trying to get up, but he held onto me tight.
“Yeah,” he said. “To protect you.” And then, much quieter, “And to protect me, too.”
I waited a long time, leaning against him, breathing him in, before it felt like the right time to speak. “You know, I have something for you, too, Sully.”
“A Christmas gift?”
“Not really. Just…something I thought you should have.” I couldn’t be sure giving him Magda’s journal was the right thing to do—he’d said at Rose’s party he never wanted to see it again. I just couldn’t shake the fact that I certainly didn’t have any business keeping it in my possession. I withdrew the hard, leather-bound journal from the inside of my jacket and held onto it with both hands, looking down at it. I gave it to Sully, cringing.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “I guess I deserve this after the porn.”
“That’s not all of it,” I told him.