by Angel Payne
A secret so well hidden, even Angelique La Salle can’t tell us a thing about how to get there, despite being an inside agent for the bastards for months.
The living hell Mom might be enduring this second.
Reece swallows down what looks like a wad of lead, betraying that his thoughts have followed the exact same path as mine. “I’m sorry.” His grate is just as ominous, striking the center of my heart and fissuring it a thousand different directions. “I’m so sorry, Velvet.”
“I know,” I whisper. “Me too.”
“You too?” He grabs the back of my head and gathers me tight against his chest. “What the hell for?”
“I treated Faline like she’d walked into our reception right out of the gutter—”
“Because if this place was in the center of downtown and not the middle of Malibu Canyon, and we could’ve tossed her right back into the gutter, that would’ve been okay?” he growls.
“All right, so screw okay.” I push closer to him, but it’s still not near enough. If it was possible, I’d open up his chest and crawl right inside, if only to be right next to the strength of his thrumming heart. His hold tightens as if he’s read that thought. Who the hell am I kidding? Of course he’s read that thought.
Another long, low rumble unfurls from his center. “Yeah, okay can suck it.” He twists his strong, bold fingers into what’s left of my bridal braids and then spreads his legs to lock my hips between his. “I only need this, damn it.”
In every one of his actions, I feel the ferocity and urgency of his gut-level protectiveness. I’m certain, without any doubt, that he needs this intense closeness to battle the terror joined with his remorse: the realization that if Faline snatched Mom that fast, she’d be able to do the same to me. My combat instincts and reaction times have gotten better but are definitely not at the level she showed off at the reception.
Now I’m gulping down lead.
And gritting back the need to repeat everything I just told him in the canyon—though this time, not just for his comfort.
It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.
But despite chanting the mantra out loud, I can’t control the harsher shivers that take over my very marrow, spreading over my tendons and muscles until they dominate every inch of my frame. They worsen as I think again about all the attitude and vitriol I flung at Faline. I was so pumped on action, adrenaline, even the thrill of true love. In short, I’d become a victim of what Sawyer labels a “hero high.” He claims it happens to field ops guys too: the sensation that there’s nothing their power can’t do or the trained agility in their body can’t handle. Having to remember that they’re mortal and can be broken becomes too much work—no matter how necessary that work has to be.
How vital it has to become for me right now.
As if the universe knows I need a little nudge in that direction, a pronounced sniffle erupts from a few feet away. A sound I’d know anywhere—and allow to whittle all the way into my heart—because it’s been around my whole life.
Human weakness, please prepare the air bags. I’m coming in for a crash landing.
The second I lift my head from Reece’s chest and gaze over at Lydia, she’s already looking away—with a lot of determined purpose.
What the hell?
Is she pissed at me? About all of this? Is she blaming me for what happened to Mom?
And sure enough, the thought pisses me off too. It makes no damn sense, considering I had all my fingers pointed back this direction two minutes ago, but she’s always the one on hand to talk me out of this shame game. Whether it was too many slices of pizza after the big game, too few points on the social science midterm, or too many hours keeping vigil by Reece during his induced coma, she’s been there to talk me down off the ledge.
But now…
What’s going on?
Does she think either Reece or I could’ve known this was going to happen? And if she thinks we did, does she really think we went ahead with the wedding anyway? And if she thinks that…
I can’t stomach a single minute more of that mental spin class.
My tap-out starts with a gentle push at Reece’s chest. I meet his narrowed gaze with an apologetic twist of my lips and a brief brush of my fingers through the thick stubble defining his jawline. “Just tired,” I murmur, hoping it’s sufficient for his concern but knowing it’ll really buy me just a few minutes at best. “I’m going to go change, okay?” I’m sure my wedding gown is as exhausted as I am, having been through more adventures than what it was created for, despite being a—gasp—off-the-rack purchase from a chi-chi eveningwear store in the Beverly Center, where Mom and I stopped for some lunch during a day of consultations with designers. I’d been so excited and relieved to find it. Mom, of course, had been horrified.
The memory stops me in my tracks. It makes me laugh, until suddenly I’m not laughing. I’m sobbing, pouring out the fear and anxiety and dread that’s thrummed near the surface of my sanity for the last seven hours. It all punches through now, bursting my control and dominating my heart, turning into racking bursts of grief in my cupped hands.
This was supposed to be the happiest day of my life.
But happiness is like the hero high.
It can be appreciated. Honored. Valued for the lessons it teaches but never trusted as the certainty that’ll be there within the next minute. The next second.
“Baby girl.”
I hiccup to a stop. Jerk my head up. Not that either is going to fool Lydia, who’s managed to sneak up on me even in the terra cotta breezeway between the main house and the wedding party dressing rooms.
“Wh-What do you want?” I can’t hold back the bitter overtones, my spirit still stung by her weird behavior inside.
“Thought you could use some help with the dress.” She’s not making anything better with her own tone, threaded with nothing but sister-style tenderness.
What the hell is her deal?
I communicate as much by whirling toward her, the earthy tie-dye along my skirt swishing around my legs. “The dress?” I retort. “You mean this thing with one hook and one zipper, like the ones I was getting in and out of for myself fifteen years ago?”
It’s a whip when I only meant to use a fly swatter, but I refuse to take it back—and am grateful I don’t have to. What I said to Reece was partially true. I am really tired, and even though ’Dia’s the bee under my saddle right now, it feels good to take off the kid gloves and throw a decent verbal punch, knowing we’ll still love each other after this. Just doesn’t mean I have to like her right now—especially as she scoots past me with a blithe stroll, swooping out her hand with a condescending air before drawling, “Right. Sure. The good ol’ days. Jo Bros posters, lunch at Ruby’s on the pier, and you dressing yourself. And oh yeah, those times when we didn’t have to watch our mother getting ‘disappeared’ in front of our eyes? Remember those?”
“I always will.”
I truly mean every syllable of the soft and sad declaration, but it only ramps our tension as we arrive at the entrance to the bridal dressing suite. There’s no way either of us can ignore the messes on either side of the double French doors: heaps of potting soil and bedraggled flowers surrounded by the red dust that used to be their homes. The crimson powder I created when we first arrived back here from the disaster known as my wedding reception and I had no better place to direct my frustration than at those clay pots. I’d let the rage loose for a solid five minutes, turning into a human kiln—and though that episode also must be on my sister’s mind again now, I turn and attempt another verbal peace offering.
“I remember it all like the times I could rely on my sister to understand that my life isn’t like any other. Also, that I didn’t necessarily choose any of it to happen like this, okay?”
Damn it. As trite as it sounds, tears are not my freaking intention right now. Still, I allow the whopping droplets to slide down my cheeks and congregate along my top lip, as I work to for
m more words from between my locked teeth. “I didn’t just sit down and command the cosmos to give me this life, ’Dia. I didn’t wake up one morning and finish off my daily devotional by gazing up at the ceiling and saying, ‘Hey, God-type buddy. You know what would totally make my day? Falling in love at first sight with the world’s strangest, broodiest bad boy, only to find out that he’s the city’s coolest, most badass superhero. Holy crap, that would just be epic. If you make that happen, I’ll swear off Nutella for a year.’”
If we were having any other kind of a conversation, the two of us would be lost to giggles by now. Instead, ’Dia yanks open one of the doors and keeps her gaze fixed on one of the waist-high pots across the patio, probably grateful I’ve managed to clamp down the powers to a reasonable temperature.
Or so she thinks.
At the moment, I’m simply doing a better job of not showing the turmoil. But she needs to see it. She needs to know it as well as I do. “So…what?” I challenge, circling toward her with my arms outstretched. “What do you want me to say here, Lydia?” I scuff to an angry stop. “That all of this is ‘normal’ for me? That somehow, just because my mitochondria are doing the electric cha-cha, I know and understand why Faline pulled a woo-woo Matrix on us at the reception? You don’t think I’m just as scared and uncertain and freaked the hell out about this as you? That I don’t want to go grab my husband, bug the crap out of here, and dive under the covers at the private rental in Monterey where we’re supposed to be screwing the white out of each other’s eyeballs on our honeymoon right now?”
Well, holy shit.
I’ve done it this time.
Lydia Harlow Crist—my take-charge, smartass, one-liner-for-every-occasion sister—is actually wringing her hands. The twisty, anxious, just-thrown-into-a jail-with-a-bruiser-named-Bubba kind. “Shit. I’m sorry.” She de-kinks the twist in her lips long enough to add, “I really am, baby girl.”
She grabs one of my hands, pulls me across the dressing room, and then drags us both down onto the long leather sofa in front of the stone hearth. Like we’ve done so many times before, we turn to each other and hike up a knee along the cushion—only the movement from me is a timing catastrophe, since the bottom twelve inches of my fine lace skirts are now an interesting ombré sprinkled in clay-pot dust. At mid-calf length, the dress’s pure white lace turns apple beige, then oak-bark brown, and then nearly black, a reminder of everything I’ve done to truly earn the Dirtiest Bride in the World award. I’m shocked that my gem-encrusted Keds show a bit of dust but nothing more. The difference between the two is like Bellatrix standing next to Umbridge. Okay, crappy metaphor—but maybe that’s perfect for the moment as well.
“Ohhhh, gawd.” As ’Dia moans it, she pushes the pads of her thumbs at the corners of her eyes, holding back her own tearful attack for a few seconds longer. “You know why all the superheroes’ families don’t get the cool storylines? Because their lives are major suckage, that’s why.”
Though I have sworn to myself I won’t get all goopy again, I clutch her hand tighter. “I’m so sorry, my Dee Dee Doo.”
“It’s all right, butthead.” She invokes her special nickname, reserved for the occasions when I use the unique version of hers. “I—I just don’t know what to do about all this, you know?” she goes on in a watery rasp. “While I know damn well we’re not firing up rocket ships or swooping down the 405 on the ends of spider web slings here, a huge part of me has perceived this all as some massive, fun adventure.”
I purse my lips while giving that a quiet contemplation. “I understand,” I finally tell her. “I really do. Even after Reece showed me his mask, and through so much that happened after that—the showdown with Angie in El Segundo, his public reveal at the tennis gala, you and me being kidnapped—”
“And almost killed.”
“There was that.”
“But even after that, and despite all the times Sawyer has tried telling me this isn’t all just a wild 4-D ride, it just hasn’t…” She uses her free hand to rub the center of her forehead. “It’s just never sunk in, you know? I thought we’d all just get to unsnap our seat belts, get out of the ride pod, and go have some beers at Naja’s.” She stops the rubbing. Drills her hand back through her mussed curls. “But that’s not going to happen, is it?”
I pull in a long breath. “Not anytime soon, honey.”
“You all really are fighting some nasty-ass crazies.”
“Nasty-ass,” I repeat before chuffing. “Capital N and capital A.”
Lydia slowly shakes her head. “This sucks.”
“I know.”
“That bitch took our mother. Just like that. Just because…why?”
Her last few words are struggling chokes. And once again today, I’m wrapping my arms around a person I love and then whispering into their ear with as much purpose as I can push out, “It’s going to be all right. It really is.”
Lydia, her face fitted into my nape, emits a loud and shameless snuffle. “Baby girl,” she mutters during my answering laugh. “You’re a shitty liar.”
“So harsh, wench!” I protest. “I simply don’t have a crystal ball.” As we pull apart and clasp hands again, I give into something else inside. The boosting reassurance of hope. “But you know what? I don’t need one, Dee Dee. I know, whatever’s going on, that she’s survived this. Faline hasn’t made her pay the ultimate price.”
“Not yet.” ’Dia cocks her brows.
“Not ever,” I rebut—and this time, she doesn’t call me on the lie because I know this one to be completely true. “That’s not the bitch’s end game. If anything, she’ll take Mom and—”
I’m not sure what stops me first: the inability to speak every horrific thing that’s just drenched my mind or the screeching brakes I apply about relaying them to Lydia. Because, for all my sister’s boggling physical strength and mental fortitude, she’s just as drained right now as I am. She doesn’t need to hear shit like she’s going to take Mom into a concrete-lined room and strap her down before blowtorching every cell of her bloodstream open. So you see, sister? Impossible to do that to a dead person, right?
But as soon as the thoughts hit my mind, they take over my face—confirmed by ’Dia’s high, harsh sob. As she lets me go and lurches unsteadily to her feet, I inwardly smack myself for the composure breach. But damn it, I’m only human. A very defeated human, sitting here in nothing but a few layers of dirty lace, a pair of sparkly Keds, and a thick wall of unshed tears. I don’t have golden bracelets, titanium war sticks, or panther wrist blasters to help with the badass factor right now, and while ’Dia was chill with me venting by frying the flower pots outside, I doubt she’d feel the same if I unleashed some Flare fire in this contained space. Not in her current state of mind.
“She’ll take Mom and what?” she demands into my uncomfortable silence. “And what, Emma? And where?” With fists she keeps balling and then flexing, she paces around the end of the couch, along its backside, and then around the end closest to the hearth. The depths of the fireplace, shrouded in gray and navy shadows, are just a shade darker than the glare she whips around and into me. “Do you really know, Emma? Does Reece? And if so, then why aren’t—”
I cut her short because I’m on my feet again too. “We’re pulling every thread we can.” I grab her hand again, hoping to arrest her mind with the force of my stare. At the same time, I silently beg her not to ask for more details. It’s horrible enough to fight the visions of everything Faline might be subjecting Mom to. Having to even think about relaying them to Lydia…
“Your sister’s right.”
Sometimes, the Bolt of LA really does have the best timing. Like this moment, appearing at the far door as he makes the declaration in the baritone that slays my senses, seizes my heart, and wins my love all over again. And a few other parts of me, helpless about confirming some other truths about my superhero spouse, as long as I’m at it.
One, he looks damn good in a filthy tuxedo.
Two, he makes the look even better while pledging a sincere vow to my sister.
Three, he looks absolutely the best when peering at me through the loose, dark waves that tumble around his eyes. Like he’s about to order the whole world to fall away for me. Like he’s going to back up the command with lightning strikes from those incredible irises of his.
With my heart answering like a thousand sparklers, practically pushing the damn organ out of my chest in its need to feel his, so vibrant and bright and bold, beating against mine once more. Honestly, if I was hooked up to any of the ridge’s training monitors right now, the guy would be flashing a teasing smile, urging me to back off my pace and get in some breaths.
But I don’t want to breathe right now.
I only need the assurance of him right now. All of him.
In all the best possible ways.
Chapter Two
Reece
Before yanking open the French door, I caught enough of my reflection in a couple of the panes to know I look more like a degenerate who hiked in from his hutch in the wilderness than the tuxed-up guy who slipped a ring onto the finger of his gorgeous bride a few hours ago. Thankfully—or maybe scarily—neither of the women inside even blinks at my dishevelment. As a matter of fact, Emma’s gaze gains a new glint, reconnecting me to her in a million and one perfect ways.
“Well, hey there, brother.” Under normal conditions, Lydia would likely shoot out a giggle to punctuate that. Tonight, I at least get half a goofy smile as she tries on the new nickname. I screw together my composure, trying to copy the expression before responding.
“Hey there, bratty sister.” I easily catch the pillow she hurls my way. “I always did wonder what it would be like to say that…”
“Well, I hope I fulfilled every one of your fantasies.”
“That would be your sister’s job.”
“Okay, ew.” She’s approached close enough to take back the pillow from my grip and then use it to cushion-clobber my head. “I think that’s my cue to go find Sawyer—but not before this.” And just like that, she’s pummeling me in a new way—with a hug that’s as harsh as it is heartfelt, nearly knocking every ounce of air from me. Not that I mind one damn bit—and, knowing she needs the return squeeze just as much, hold back nothing in giving it to her. After she greedily accepts my comfort, she declares into the meat of my shoulder, “You’re still the one I’d order her to marry, you big dork.”
