by S. Massery
“Don’t fucking tell me to relax,” I grumble.
Grace’s hand snakes up and cups the back of my neck. “Shh. We can figure it out later.”
I raise my hand and keep Grace’s palm against my skin, kissing the inside of her wrist.
Zach sighs. “You’re screwed. Girls mess with our brains, man. That’s why—” He snaps his mouth shut.
Both Jackson and I perk up.
“That’s why what, Laurent?” Jackson asks.
“That’s why they’re better as friends.” His ears turn red.
I can’t help but grin. “Yeah? You have one of those? A girl friend? I said that with a space in there, by the way. Girl-space-friend.”
“I don’t know, man. Shut up.”
Jackson laughs. When I laugh, too, my rib cage explodes in fire. My chuckle ends in a groan.
“Just hang on, D,” Jackson says. “We’ll be there in an hour, and Griffin can stitch you up.”
“Can he fix a broken heart?” Grace whispers.
I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t know how to fix broken hearts, that’s for sure.
Mine’s been in disuse for so long, I wouldn’t even be able to tell if it’s working again. I tip my head back and close my eyes, trying not to concentrate on anything important. Not the way Grace feels on my lap—like a luxurious dream—or the pain radiating through my body.
Sal did more than just stab me. He carved me up like a pumpkin. I can feel his knife against my skin, the look in his eyes as he asked me about his daughter. Like I had all the cards and he had none, and he wanted what I had. He was driven mad because of it.
I’d love nothing more than to shoot the bastard.
I stare at the stars.
I was told about an African myth once. This was back when the name Morning Star was still freshly burned onto my skin. It was uncomfortable, thick armor that I wasn’t used to yet. My bones ached from the weight of it.
One of the soldiers at the base where we were staying came over to play cards with us. Jackson and Zach were off fighting with some of the soldiers who needed to get their aggression out. While I usually never refused a good fistfight, I had been hurt earlier that day. A hostile had found my location and shot it up, and while he didn’t hit me, he broke a piece of overhead rock that fell onto my back.
It landed just to the left of my spine.
I was able to hobble back to the pick-up point and meet my team, but God, everything hurt. I had a black bruise the size of Texas. When I showed Griffin in the helicopter, his eyes bugged out. He said I was in danger of internal bleeding. Because of that, we diverted our mission and went back to base. He used whatever tech they had to determine if it was serious or not.
Turned out, nothing too serious. Bruised organs, broken capillaries. He warned me about blood in my piss, which was a great thing to hear. It was a really fucking big rock.
Anyway, Griffin and Wyatt had stayed with me if only to make sure I didn’t sneak off to throw my hat in the ring. Mason was holed up in the computer room, getting some private time—heh—with his boyfriend. We had elected to play cards, and that’s when the soldier joined us.
“Morning Star,” he had said. “There’s a legend about the name. My granddad used to tell me as a child, and he was straight from the heart of Africa.”
We raised our eyebrows.
He leaned back in his chair and gestured for us to deal him in.
Wyatt got up and grabbed him a beer, sliding it across the table to him. “Talk,” he says. “We’re curious.”
“The Morning Star wasn’t just a star. He was a hunter.” The soldier cleared his throat. “When the Morning Star fell to earth, he took the form of a human. He fell in love with the Lynx, who happened to be in human form at that time, too.”
I shake my head. “This myth is a love story?”
“You’re a great hunter,” the soldier said. “We’ve seen it, riding into the towns. Sometimes you protect not just your crew.”
I gave a sharp nod. How could I not? It was ingrained in me, and goes far beyond any contract. The guys understand. Sometimes I pull double duty, scouting out ahead of the troops. Sure, they have their own snipers. But they aren’t me.
“The Lynx is known as the jewel of the grasslands, shining like a gem. Their union was a great one. They fell in love and married.” He went quiet for a minute. “But eventually, the Morning Star was pulled back to the sky. And such was the lonely life the two of them led, separated by time and space.”
“That took a depressing turn,” I mumbled.
“It’s said that the Lynx became a constellation of stars to be with her love,” the solider said.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “Why tell us this?”
The soldier grinned. We never got his name, even after that night. We never got an answer about why he deigned to tell us the legend… and the image of the Lynx never quite vanished from my mind.
“We’re here,” Jackson says.
I snapped my eyes open. I fell asleep with my cheek pressed against the window. Grace stirs, too, stretching. She slides off me and looks out the window. “Where are we?”
“Pompano Beach,” he answers.
She smiles. “We used to visit when I was younger.” A wistful expression comes over her face like a mask. “My mom and me. She had family here.”
“Who?”
“A sister. Dad said my aunt had moved away… but what if he was lying?”
I frown. “We can find out if you want.”
Jackson pulls into a driveway next to the other SUV, and we all pile out. My legs are stiff. I pause once I’m upright, focusing on my breathing. Now isn’t the time to wimp out, I tell myself. Get moving.
I hobble, my muscles stiff and screaming, when suddenly Grace is next to me, slipping my arm around her shoulders.
She takes some of my weight, glancing up at me. “You’re hurt.”
“We knew that already,” I say. “I heard Marco call you ‘love’, by the way. Explains your violent reaction.”
She scowls. “Yeah. I don’t really want to be reminded of him when I look at you.”
“Good.”
Griffin meets me at the door. They got a little ahead of us, and it seems like they’ve made this house a home already. The lights are on, and the kitchen table has a cloth laid out on it in the center of the room. I’ve seen too many of Griffin’s surgeries to not know what that’s for.
“Glad you made it,” Griffin says, patting my shoulder. “How bad is it?”
“Like on a scale of one to ten?” I ask.
“Sure.”
“Eleven?”
Grace gasps. “What?”
“It’s fine,” I mumble. “Maybe more like an eight.”
Griffin chuckles, lifting my other arm and putting it around his shoulders. He and Grace get me to the table, and I’m ashamed of how weak I am.
“Sit,” Griffin orders.
Someone closes the door and locks it. The shades are already drawn.
“Want me to cut your shirt off?” Griffin asks.
“Fuck no,” I growl. I start to pull it off and stop when the pain doubles. “Maybe.”
“Lean forward,” he tells me. I do. He grabs the back of my shirt and slides it off me.
I don’t think Grace has seen me shirtless, judging from her strangled gasp. I can’t even look at her. There are scars on my back from my father. Cigarette burns along my spine and ribs, scars from the Marines. Bruises and bleeding wounds from her father.
Right now, everything hurts.
I straighten, and even Griffin freezes.
“Yeah, the front is the worst,” I mutter. There’s the stab wound, a long cut along my stomach, bruises everywhere. Pretty sure he cracked a rib, too, but that just feels like a moot point at this rate. Blood is smeared across my skin.
Zach comes over and hands me a bottle of vodka. “Drink.”
I uncap it and take a swallow. It burns like fire on the way down, and a second
later heat spreads from my stomach to the rest of my body. I drink again and again, until Griffin takes the bottle from my hands.
“I know you’re in pain,” he says, “but drinking will make you bleed worse.”
I give a sharp nod. The room spins.
“Do you want a painkiller?”
I squint at him. “Probably should, right?”
He nods.
“Maybe later.”
“I’m putting you on fluids,” Griffin warns. He disinfects my arm and puts in a needle, taping it to my skin. He hangs a bag of fluid from the chandelier above my head, and the liquid is cold as it seeps into my veins.
I fight off a shiver.
Grace comes over and takes my hand. “All of that…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say.
She leans forward and kisses my cheek. It distracts me from the sudden pinch of a needle going into my skin at my back.
“I’m going to kill him,” she whispers. “I can’t believe he did this to you.”
I put my forehead against hers, inhaling her clean scent. We’ve been to hell and back in a matter of a few hours, and all I want is to curl into her. I pretend we don’t have an audience and say, “When did I start falling for you?”
Her lips quirk. “Probably when you stopped being such an ass.”
“I need to get to this puncture wound,” Griffin says. He touches her arm, and she flinches. He immediately steps back, his eyebrows rising. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “It’s…”
Well, it’s not quite fine, is it? I hope she doesn’t say that.
“Have you met Hadley?” I ask her.
I’m unsurprised to find her in an armchair with a book. Zach and Jackson are near her, and Mason is in the other chair with his laptop open.
“Griffin’s…”
“Fiancée,” Hadley answers. She snaps the book shut and comes over. “You got yourself into a mess.”
I wink at Hadley, and Grace scowls at me.
“Hadley, Grace. Grace, Hadley.”
Hadley looks Grace up and down, then turns back to me. “It’s a shame Delia isn’t here,” she comments.
“Why, because she’d love to see me like this?”
Grace snorts. “Sounds like a wonderful woman.”
Hadley cracks a smile. “Yeah, that. And also because she and Grace seem like they’re cut from the same cloth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Grace asks. “He said he couldn’t stand—”
Hadley frowns. “Well, yeah. But he obviously likes you.”
I groan. “Can’t you play nice?”
Grace straightens. “Wait. Aren’t you the no-commitment friend?”
“Just kill me, Griff,” I mutter.
Hadley stares at her for a second. “Yeah, that part of the friendship didn’t pan out.”
Grace’s body relaxes. “Glad to hear it.”
Hadley holds out her hand, and I’m more than surprised when Grace takes it. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of the guys,” Hadley says. “Griffin is their medical expert, so we’ll leave him to do his magic. Zach, you met Grace? Come here.”
The vodka is getting to me. The room spins. Griffin puts his hand on my shoulder, slowly laying me back. His face looms over me. “This is going to hurt. You want something to bite on?”
I shake my head. “Just fucking do whatever you’re going to do.”
We’ve all been poked and prodded by Griffin more times than we can count. It isn’t a friendship if he hasn’t had his fingers under our skin at least once.
My back arches off the table as he cleans the puncture wound, and I channel all of my fury at the Argentos. Sal for being the one who actually stabbed me, amongst other things, and Marco for being the one who ordered it.
“Fucking hell,” I say through my gritted teeth. He’s digging around in there with something.
“I warned you,” Griff says, bending over me. “Almost done. What’d he stab you with anyway?”
“A thin little knife. Like a letter opener, except sharper.”
Griff hums.
“Why?”
“It’s a clean wound,” he says. “I’m going to stitch you up using dissolving thread, and your muscles will need time to knit back together.” He pauses and presses on my rib cage. “Did he kick you?”
“Few times.” I grip the edges of the table.
“Might have a cracked rib, but it doesn’t look like flail chest.”
“Lucky me.”
I close my eyes and concentrate on not passing out until he’s done. It takes eons, but eventually Griffin pats my shoulder and says, “Done. Just have to clean the rest of these cuts, but they’re shallow enough for some butterfly bandages.”
“Sounds good.”
He checks the IV bag, then offers his hand.
I take it, letting him pull me upright.
“Sit here till it’s gone, then you’re good to go.”
“Thanks, man,” I say. “I think it’s painkiller time.”
Griffin squints at me. “Sure. Just out of curiosity, when’s the last time you slept?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. A few days ago, maybe?”
“Seems like a good idea,” he says.
Smartass.
“You need to sleep.”
“I would if I would stop having fucking nightmares.” Everyone else is preoccupied, so I say, “You knew Wyatt was alive?”
He jerks back, but I reach out and grab his shirt. I fist the fabric, right at his collarbone, and pull him close.
“Don’t be a dick,” I growl. “Just… answer me.”
“He showed up in Bitterwood. I guess he went to see Jackson and Delia first, when they were in the city visiting his grave.”
I snort. “Typical.” Typical that Wyatt would go to Jackson first, then Griffin. Hell, I wonder if he’s already showed himself to Mason and Zach and failed to mention it.
“Did you see him?” Griffin asks.
“Yep. He and Elizabeth gave me a ride back from Jacksonville.”
“Interesting.”
I lift a shoulder. “I thought he was alive. I mean, I knew he was alive. I saw him after his funeral.”
“Ah, the funeral you weren’t supposed to go to.” Griff shakes his head at me. “Seriously?”
“Mason went,” I argue. “You’re not mad at him?”
“You’re ridiculous. When did you spot him? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“In Central Park. It looked like some sort of deal, which he said was a meeting with his informants, and then he was suddenly just… gone. I didn’t say anything because…” I shrug. “Figured he either faked it for a reason or I was wrong.”
“Interesting.”
I sigh. “He admitted it was him. That he faked his death. I’m pissed that he hid—”
“It has to do with—”
“Scorpion,” I finish. “I know.”
“He told you?”
“Well, I asked.” The IV bag is nearing the end, which means our conversation must be, as well. “What do you think?”
“I think…” He grimaces. “Hadley said that Smith told her he was going to kill her to get my head back in the game.”
I freeze. That was something we always said to each other when we needed to be serious. Get your head back in the game, soldier. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
“So is he SI or rogue?” I feel the need to glance around the room again.
We all know how it went down with Griffin’s former pilot. He abducted Hadley after her cancer treatment, and we managed to find her… just in time for Smith to inject her with poison. Griff got her to the hospital in time to reverse the damage, but Smith got away.
“No idea,” Griffin mutters. “We’re kind of too freaked out to even talk about it.”
I shake my head. “It needs to be discussed. If SI is, what, trying to round us up again? What does that mean?”
Griffin rem
oves the IV and presses a cotton ball against my skin. “I don’t know if they want to round us up to get us back on a contract… or eliminate us,” he says, his mouth barely moving. “We haven’t had a chance to investigate their motives.”
“I’d bet real money that that’s what Wyatt was doing before he got himself fake-killed,” I answer. I touch the bandage over my stab wound. “And he’s still researching it, albeit a little more cautiously.”
“He was afraid of us getting hurt,” he says. “We were better off scattered around, appearing uncaring about each other. Jackson with his fire thing, Zach in Chicago, Mason in Vegas, and you in Florida…”
“Yeah, look how well that turned out.”
“It’s only been the last few months that we’ve all come together with more frequency,” he admits. “And that might be drawing some attention.”
I look over at Grace, who’s examining Hadley’s book. It’s not just myself now. Grace is stuck with me. “I’m worried.”
“Join the damn bandwagon,” Griffin says. He’s watching Hadley and Grace, too.
I suddenly realize he’s probably been carrying around this fear for a while.
I pat his shoulder. “We’ll go when we’re called and fight the good fight. And then we’re done, and we’ll have a slice of happiness waiting for us.”
Griffin just shakes his head. “I don’t think they’ll let us just go off to war without them. But, we’ll see.”
I stand, biting back a groan. “I’m ready to sleep for a week.”
Griff starts packing up his supplies. “There’s enough bedrooms for all of us,” he says. “That is, if you don’t mind sharing with Grace.”
“I doubt I’ll ever mind that. It’s her minding that’s the question.” I walk over to Grace and Hadley, lowering myself on the couch next to Grace.
Her hand automatically goes to my thigh, and I meet her eyes. “
“Tired?”
She frowns. “Are you okay?”
“I’m great.” I look over at Hadley. “Your boy’s always been a good seamstress.”
Hadley rolls her eyes.
“There’s a bedroom upstairs with your names on it,” she says to us. “Well, not literally, but we put your bags on the bed. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
Grace stands, holding out her hands.
I grab them and allow her to lift me off the couch, aware that I’m still shirtless. She stares at my chest for a second, then at the scorpion tattoo on my rib cage. After a beat, she goes to the stairs. I follow her, watching as she peers in each room until she finds the one with our stuff in it.
