Page 61 of Never Broken

“Nine times out of ten,” my boy continued, “that’s going to be where they broke up. Reinforce those areas next time, and they might survive long enough to meet your revenue goals next quarter.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Corey said. He was a ticking bomb and clearly, the only thing preventing him from detonating was that his would-be-billionaire boss was sitting next to him, rapt. “We get the idea.”

My boy didn’t even have to wait for Langer this time to signal to him to carry on. “But here’s the thing,” my boy continued. “Even if by a one-in-a-million chance you get lucky enough to reinforce every single critical portion of your remaining rockets, you still have to face the fact that space is a vast, scary, unpredictable place and you’re trying to blast your way through it on the calculations of scientists just out of school, who areprobably regurgitating everything they know out of textbooks written decades ago to feed some C-list professor’s drug habit.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at this, horrified as I was.

“See, at some point, whether it’s a solar flare, radiation, or killer green space blobs from Mars, you’ll find out eventually that the numbers and formulas can only take you so far. They say, follow the science, but eventually, it’s not about science anymore. It’s a gambit. And it’s your move,” he finished. “Max.”

The table was silent as everyone took a second to pick their jaws up off the floor. His poker face was excellent, though, except for the hand through the hair: his tell. Nobody besides me could have possibly known it, of course. But I couldn’t imagine how nervous he must have been; how fast his heart was pounding; the knowledge of what could happen if this plan—whatever it was—went wrong had to be unbearable. But what could I do to help?

“He’s right,” I said.No, you idiot, not that,the smart part of my brain scolded me. The stupid part just went right on talking. “I mean, I study pre-med, not physics or engineering, but speaking from that point of view, if you go into a medical tent during wartime and look at the soldiers recovering, you’re going to see a lot of gunshot wounds to the limbs and hardly any to the chest or head. But that doesn’t mean you should wear Kevlar on your legs. It’s the same principle.”

At last, he turned, meeting my eyes dead-on. And there on his face was that beautiful, life-affirming smile I’d been trying to coax out all night. Turned out, making a fool out of his asshole rival and impressing a billionaire hadn’t done it for him.

I had.

I smiled back before looking down at my plate again, face aflame.

“Well said, Loulou.” Daddy nodded at last.

“All right, then,” Langer said slowly. “So then what do we do to fix the holes?”

“I don’t know,” my boy replied, quickly tearing his eyes away from me. “Slap some duct tape on them? I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist.”

That got Langer laughing, and seconds later, my father and most of his friends and colleagues joined in. He used the opportunity to slip back inside the house with the plates. It was all I could do not to run after him and either hug him, kick him in the nuts, or both. It was a miracle that he’d made it away from the table with any skin left on him, talking to free men like that.

Isure couldn’t laugh. But at least I could finally breathe.

Corey, however, was barely doing that. He was seething, his knuckles so white on his glass it was astonishing it wasn’t already in smithereens.

Langer, for his part, turned to Daddy again. “And all you’ve got this kid doing is serving drinks? Come on, man. You’re breaking my heart. I’ve told you this over and over. How do you expect buy-in from investors, buy-in from your team, if you can’t buy in yourself?”

Meanwhile, my father’s eyes were as wide as if a dinosaur had walked through the backyard or a flying saucer had just landed on the roof. He cleared his throat.

“Well, Loulou,” he said, “for starters, maybe the boy should be tutoring you in more than just chemistry.” He lowered his voice, and for a second, my heart twisted in my chest. Had he noticed how I’d looked at the boy? Or had the gardener gotten to him and?—

But no. He was only repeating his request from earlier. “Your mother, please.” He looked genuinely worried.

Now Ididhave the urge to start laughing hysterically as I pushed back from the table, but not because anything was funny.

Okay. It was fine. Mom would be upstairs. The gardener wouldn’t be up there. He wasn’tallowedup there. I’d find her, tuck her into bed, and get the hell back to the party as soon as I could. By that time, Rocket Boy would have seen my message, and then we’d come up with a plan to deal with this. He was the smart one. Fuck, he’d just solved a major engineering problem for a Fortune 500 company in five goddamn minutes. He’d know what to do about this.

Ducking behind a mesquite, I pulled out my phone and, heart pounding, tapped out another message to Albert Einstein. Pressed send.

No.What was I doing? For fuck’s sake, he didn’t have enough on his plate already? He’d barely escaped being chained to a post and flayed alive, and I wasn’t even sure hehadescaped it. Daddy’s wine might be calling the shots right now, but it wouldn’t be tomorrow. And what about Maeve?

I deleted the message.

I couldn’t do it.

He had enough battles to fight. He’d spent his entirelifefighting.

It was my turn.

I swallowed. My heart was pounding in my ears, but my mind was made up, and I started down the Mom Trail, trying to breathe normally and mostly failing. I had just until I found her to come up with a plan to save us.

Or just savehim.

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