Fuse

by Angel Payne

  She keeps her arms around me while slowly pacing around until we’re again facing each other. She lifts her head high, her face imprinted with graceful strength and purposeful clarity. Those qualities were such huge parts of why I fell in love with her to begin with and why she can still peel my composure back by several meaningful layers. Just by standing here. Just by being her.

  And why I’m not sure whether to damn her or adore her for it.

  Especially when she frees her next words. The statement for which she’s obviously taken up this position.

  “Okay, it’s the cause now.” She jogs up her chin by another fraction, making sure I see her unequivocal support. “Both Tyce and Mitch died for that cause. But at this rate, Mr. Richards, you’ll be soon joining them in martyrdom.”

  Chapter Two

  Emma

  I’m right.

  He knows it.

  Though he peers up, still all hunched and brooding gargoyle about it, and bites out enough profanity to prove that he knows.

  And isn’t happy about it.

  Which could have to do with that sausage grinder of a few other emotions too. Yeah, the ones I feel as clearly and painfully as my own. Frustration, rage…grief.

  But that’s the thing about meat grinders. In the end, the pile is still just a carcass.

  “Reece—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Damn it—”

  “I said don’t, Emmalina.”

  He slashes his arm out, which propels his fresh escape from me. The distance is more than physical. I pull in a deep breath, telling myself it’s temporary. Everything’s simply going to be hard today, and I’ve only made it harder by serving him a huge platter of tough love. But damn it, if the man wants to find the golden ticket to being mortal again, he has to start acting mortal again. He has to realize he’s not really from another planet and that the electricity in his veins doesn’t preclude him from being a homo sapiens who needs shit like food and sleep and mental health breaks to survive. Commodities he’s been skipping more often than accepting.

  A conclusion that’s going to make my next words sound like I’m the one who needs several hours of sleep and an hour of punching bag time. Or, damn it, the Plan B option—aptly named, considering the power of a certain B-word around here…

  “Maybe…you need to do a patrol in town tonight.” Oh, yes. That did taste as bad as I thought it would. Though, like a vegan pizza, I know it’s good for us both. “I mean, you’re already dressed for it—and maybe blowing off some steam will help you clear out the cobwebs.” In more ways than one. Or five or six. Or twelve. But damn it, my quip clearly goes over like two-day-old soda alongside the pizza. “You could take Sawyer.”

  He snorts. “What? So he can keep me in line?”

  “So someone can say when you’ve had enough.”

  He barks out a laugh, bracing hands on his hips. I try not to fixate on how that stretches the black leather across his taut backside in all the right ways. It has to be the most inappropriate thought at the absolute worst time—especially because my priority here is keeping that ass, and everything attached to it, alive.

  “When I’ve had enough?”

  I fold my arms. If I don’t, I seriously might summon my inner Ant Girl, swing the stubborn ox over my head, and haul him for a lengthy lockdown in the walk-in freezer. “Of driving yourself, as well as everyone around here, to the brink of exhaustion.” I first go for the voice of—gasp—reason. “It’s the truth and you know it, baby,” I level as gently as I can. “Wade, Fersh, Alex…they’re all barely thinking straight. You hit that point at least a week ago.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sure,” I retort. “And that’s why you’re looking ready to fight enemy orcs from the hills at any second?”

  “I’m fine, damn it.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  “Goddamnit, Emma.”

  “Sure. I’m fine with God joining us too.” I push my feet into a ready stance, undeterred by his battering-ram glare. “He’ll tell you I’m right too. That you’re still seeing all the damage your dad caused as some kind of punishment from him to you—and that by fixing the issues, you’ll somehow redeem yourself.” I symbolize that with a sweep of one hand and then the other. “You’re on a mission to make things right, which is why you refuse to stop. Why all the tests, experiments, analyses, and theories still don’t feel like enough.”

  He huffs in a bullish rhythm. “Look, baby. We have to keep clawing our way to results on this shit. We’re not playing subterfuge softball with those bastards anymore.”

  “I’m aware of that, Reece.”

  “Then you also remember that this is the Big Show, with cowhide balls and ace batters in the box ready to crack line drives into our gonads. We don’t have time to binge a bunch of CGI cinema with guys in tights and call it corporate training videos.”

  “I’m not talking Netflix and beer for three days.” I return my hands to my sides. “This is simply about actually sleeping a full eight hours, or—oh, my God—sitting down at the table, with silverware and place settings, for a whole meal. And perhaps—gasp—actually talking to your friends about something other than platelet count, DNA variables, and—”

  “I stopped for a full meal with you last night.”

  I return his adamant finger by jabbing up one of my own. “That was a last-minute picnic on the backyard lawn, with cold chicken on plastic plates,” I parry. “Besides, you barely ate anything.”

  “I snacked on…other things.” The smoke in his voice filters into the heat in his stare as he pivots all the way back to me. I’m sorely tempted to sock him in the shoulder, except the only bearable hour in his week—and mine—was our escape by the pool last night.

  But I’m not up here to be his meal-replacement option again. The darker cast in his gaze confirms he knows that too. With heavy steps, he returns to my side, latches his hand into mine, and keeps trudging until we’ve stopped on the sundrenched curve of hill between the two memorial markers.

  Golden sun. Gray granite. Summer heat across the land.

  A winter of grief sucking at my man.

  And despite all of the brutal honesty I’ve just force-fed into his psyche, including every accusation about ducking his feelings short of the ostrich-in-the-sand cliché, all I long to do this moment is yank him hard, hold him close, and croon that everything will be all right. That he doesn’t have to face any of this right now.

  But that would be a lie.

  We all have to face this.

  I’m reminded of that as soon as a stiff breeze picks up, bearing the familiar sounds of our families’ voices, the air itself changing as their energies impact the atmosphere. Their arrival is still a few minutes away; the path is steep, and the day is already heating up.

  So I get to Reece’s side and pull him close.

  Letting him know that while I don’t get his nonstop work obsession of the last few weeks, I do get the sadness and weight on his spirit right now. But the process has to go on. Life has to go on. Life can’t move back into brightness unless there’s a tunnel to compare it to. The brightest dawns can’t come from anything but the darkest nights—even if they take place on a blazing Southern California summer morning.

  I attempt to say as much to Reece with the pressure of my grip and the compassion of my eyes. The gaze with which he answers is a silver slice of acknowledgment, gleaming brighter as I crush him closer, my voice fervent in his ear for a few precious seconds.

  Not to tell him it’ll be okay—because today it might not be.

  Not to tell him I’m here for him—because he already knows that.

  Only to tell him what he needs to hear for this moment alone.

  “We’ll get through this, baby,” I whisper. “In some ways, we always have. We’ll do it by crawling inch by inch if we have to.”

  I’ve rarely meant words more. And I can feel, through all of the heightened electricity in his system, that he’s rarely bee
n more open to them. He affirms it deeper by finding my lips with his and melding our breaths with tender, almost reverent care. It’s only a moment. I know it as surely as the voices from the wind become the conversation that’s about to change the air—but it’s a moment I make count, letting him know the openness of my senses and the offering of my heart.

  “Dear God, Emmalina. How I love you.”

  And smiling as every note of his impassioned grate fills me.

  The approaching voices become more prominent. We look up in tandem to see the heads and shoulders of our families and friends on approach.

  At the front of the small group are Wade, Fershan, and Alex, making their way with confidence—not surprising, since the three of them come up here for a lot of brainstorming sessions. Behind the Team Bolt guys are Trixie and an attractive petite brunette. The women are dressed in nearly identical black pantsuits, which is no surprise. Joany Richards, Chase’s wife, is a lot like Trixie in overall grace and underlying humor, unless the subject is protecting her loved ones. I barely knew the woman until four weeks ago, when the family pulled together after the catastrophe in Paris. “Demure” Joany handled everything from beating off the press to booking flights back home to whipping up batches of Totino’s rolls once we got here. As much as I love Anya’s cauliflower popcorn and kale chips, sometimes a girl just needs a premade pizza roll.

  And the best part about all that? Chase seems to have woken up and smelled the Totino’s where his wife is concerned too. Correction: Chase has opened his eyes about a lot of things since the events in Paris. Even as he comes into view now, there’s no Bluetooth in his ear or cell phone in his hand. The anomaly would’ve dropped everyone’s jaw six weeks ago, and it likely should now as well, considering how much Chase is juggling as the head of the Richards Family empire in a post-Lawson Richards world.

  Lawson Richards.

  The name nobody will speak today but the ghost sitting solidly on all our shoulders. Who doesn’t even deserve the designation of “ghost,” considering he tried to sell his three sons to the mad scientists of the Consortium. That was after he pissed on nearly thirty-five years of adoration from his wife by sleeping with one of the head bitches of the Scorpio crime cartel—on top of betraying his company’s shareholders by letting his ambition override his better sense.

  He is dead because of it.

  A death he deserved—though he took down two lives with him.

  Which circles everything right back to here and now—and the necessary suck-all of moving on, since we’re all still having trouble grasping the awful truth. But it’s been a month, and now it’s time.

  It’s time.

  The pain is eased, at least a little, by the appearance of a face that warms so many corners of my heart. At the end of the procession, my sister Lydia is walking arm-in-arm with Reece’s key wingman, Sawyer Foley. Honestly, they look like the cutest couple on campus who’ve decided to “go public,” bringing half a smile to my lips despite the solemnity of the occasion. It’s about damn time.

  That theme is destined for repetition today. We’ve waited a month to do this. Even by abnormal standards, the occasion is long overdue. But abnormal has been my new normal for a year now, since that night when the man at my side became a force in every breath I took and every move I made. Since that night in the penthouse at the Brocade, I have not regretted the choice to heed our connection and listen to our destiny—especially now. Imagining Reece facing this day by himself, let alone all the bullshit that led up to this day, makes me shiver in awful, visceral ways. My heart cracks at the vistas of solitude in his eyes and the giant weight of responsibility he’s scooped up and taken on his shoulders. Even now, he clearly still thinks he can change the course of time, of fate, and of his father’s selfishness with the singular force of his will.

  Even now—with reality literally etched in stone in front of us.

  His mother and brother detach from everyone else and approach him. He releases my hand in order to become the third part of their grieving huddle, but he’s jarringly stiff and noticeably quiet. Even his energy field is like a muted version of itself. Part of that is due, no doubt, to the thicker leathers he’s wearing along with his half-fingered gloves. But based on the intensity of everyone’s emotions pulsing the air, at least his fingertips should look phosphorescent blue by now.

  He’s holding back. I’m not sure whether to be curious or alarmed as I confirm the signs. His refusal to bend, even when Trixie clutches him harder. The tension that turns his arms into I-beams and his hands into staunch fists. The way he breaks from the embrace as soon as the other two relent their holds even an inch—

  And with his Frankenstein steps, showing me the full spectrum of the monster he’s fighting from the inside out.

  Not a creature who doesn’t want their love.

  A man who blatantly thinks he doesn’t deserve it.

  Oddly, I’m not surprised when Trixie lets him go, despite how Chase tries to pull him back. After a few seconds, even Chase sees the grief that crashes over Reece as he hikes back up to the slope between Mitch’s and Tyce’s markers.

  Chase grabs Trixie’s hand while sending his mother a look of gratitude and then helps her climb the rise too. I link elbows with Joany, and we follow them. In a flash, I remember the last time I did this to bond with a girlfriend: Angelique and I had Rachel-and-Monica’ed along the Quai de Conti in Paris on our way back to the apartment she’d lent to Reece and me. It had been the hideaway rendezvous she’d shared with her lover, Dario, before the Consortium killed him—only that morning, we’d learned that they hadn’t, and that a very alive Dario was none other than a very alive Tyce Richards.

  Only now, Tyce really is dead. And with him, so is the man Angelique’s had to mourn a second time—a double hit of karmic payback for her role in helping the Consortium abduct Reece to begin with. But my conclusion about that is colored by my ferocious love for the man she sent to hell that night, which often prevents me from remembering that she too was tortured by those monsters, even before they took the life of the man she loved. She’s more than paid her price to fate. She’s racking up points in her divine good column by refusing to wallow in her grief. After the fiasco of Paris, she returned at once to the Consortium, where her deep cover with the bastards continues to be one of our strongholds in the fight to take them down forever.

  The weirdness of it all isn’t lost on me, even now.

  We’ve taken the war public but are still fighting the battles in secret.

  We’ve called the Consortium out by name but know less about their real identities than before, especially with Tyce and Lawson dead.

  Worst of all, we know we’re likely sitting on a ticking time bomb—but because there’s been no contact from Angie in ten days, we’re blind to the length of the fuse.

  It’s all been pricking at Reece extra hard, though he’s not spoken a word to that effect. I see it in the tension stiffening his movements and the sharp slashes defining his jawline. He’s concerned but hiding that torment well from everyone—and probably thinks I don’t notice either.

  But right now, I think “stress” is everyone’s middle name.

  In a pre-Paris world, a ten-day lag from Angelique wouldn’t have made any of us blink twice. But since that incident, as well as Reece’s ballsy action of publicly calling out the Consortium afterward, Angie’s been pinging every few days—sometimes, if there’s a lot going on, even a number of times every day. According to her, the Consortium has been frantic about running deeper underground to hide from a world that now knows who they are and how deep into the scientific cookie jar they’ve been reaching.

  That doesn’t match what the bastards have been doing on a public level—actions that have been, in a word, brazen. Since they’ve accelerated their abductions in the aftermath of Paris, we can only assume they are boldly flaunting how easily they can get to all of us. And while that possibility might be true, a frightening enough consideration on its own,
it’s also led us to question how thoroughly their right hands are talking to their left hands these days.

  So they’re fragmented; maybe worse. This is possibly some of the best news for us but the worst for Angie. With her going totally dark, we have no way of really knowing—and that might continue to be the case until it’s too damn late.

  Right now, all we can do is force one foot in front of the other. Get through every day. Trudge up each hill as it comes.

  Even this one.

  Especially this one.

  Wade, Fershan, and Alex join us on the top of the ridge and we form a haphazard semicircle behind Reece. He steps forward, sagging his head between shoulders that look as if the weight on them has tripled. The shitty thing is, it probably has. The even shittier thing is, I have to simply watch and let him be in that space. It damn near kills me, but I do. He has to endure this journey. There’s no shortcut for the canyon of grief.

  He descends to one knee. Then the other. His shoulders rise and fall like massive tectonic plates trying to lift miles of the earth at once. I’m helpless to do little but drop down next to him, pressing against one side of him. Trixie mirrors the hold against his other side.

  There are words inside him. I don’t know what they are, but I feel them as potently as my own heartbeats as he struggles to translate the sludge of his emotions into sounds on his lips. I try to help him by stroking a hand along his back and forming my forehead to the side of his neck. I don’t utter a word myself. I just need him to know I’m here. And again, like a surety in my soul, I recognize that he needs that too.

  At last, after a massive inhalation, he says on a sparse rasp, “They were…my thunder.” Another searching pause, followed by another unsure breath. “Both of them. My brother…Tyce. My friend…Mitch. They helped me harness impossibility…”

  “So you could do impossible things.” The conclusion, uttered with the care of a poet, belongs to Chase. He paces forward until he’s right in front of Reece, but at the moment I predict he’ll kneel and join his little brother, he instead grips Reece’s shoulders and yanks him. “So you could be every bolt of lightning you were destined to be, brother,” he grates as they stare eye-to-eye. “And take those fucking moonbats down for good.”