Jawbreaker (Four Point Universe Book 14)

by Max Ellendale

  She froze, slowly lowering the weapon to tuck it behind her back in the waist of her pants. The suspenders that often accompanied her outfit hung to her knees, and her white blouse lay untucked. She appeared as if she emerged from the rubble of something, save for the shoes.

  "It's me." I lowered my hands, then changed course to remove the hood of my jacket. When I made to reach for my mask, she shook her head.

  "Don't. There are cameras in here." She glanced to her right where I noted one of the humming units perched during my many visits.

  "I know."

  "Figured. You're only ever a shadow on them and I look like I'm talking to an inanimate object," she spat, her narrowed eyes unabating.

  "Did you do this?" I motioned around us, then pointed to the picture beside me. "Turn all of these around?"

  "I did."

  "Why?"

  "Because you like them and I wanted you to feel the loss of something you like, too," she said. Her terse, unapologetic delivery stung.

  "Then I've felt the loss of two things I liked very much."

  A laugh escaped her, and she shook her head. "You didn't like me enough to tell me the truth sooner. Or even before you had me over to your house to meet your family. I thought, maybe it was a little soon, but who cares, right? Who the fuck cares?" Tears streamed her cheeks, and she swallowed hard enough to cut off her own speech.

  "I'm sorry. I know I made a mistake, and I'm sorry." My apology, distorted by the respirator, felt diminished and filtered in a way I didn't like. I reached for it and Harlow started.

  "Don't." She held her hand up to me, her fingers trembling.

  "Then let's go somewhere else. I'm not standing in the shadows to talk to you."

  Her lips pursed as her eyes searched my face, before turning on her heel and leading me down the hall. No warning came this time about not following her, and so, I did.

  As we passed each camera, she pressed something on her phone when the internal alarm sounded. One after the other, through all six zones, until we ended up in her office.

  Unlike last time, nothing appeared ready to work or tidy. The area where she worked on fossils now lay in disarray with samples, dirt, and papers all over the floor. She closed the door behind us and turned the lock on the knob. As before, she said nothing, then leaned against her desk, her arms folded over her middle while she stared down at her feet.

  I pulled my hood off, followed by my hat, letting the latter hit the floor between us. She looked up then, meeting my gaze with tear-stained cheeks. The respirator hissed when I removed it, and I watched as her heart broke in front of me this time. It wasn't fear or shock like before, but full brokenness that sent waves of chaos around us.

  "You wanted me to be lying about this, didn't you?"

  She nodded, sniffling a little as she swiped at her nose with her sleeve. "Yeah. I did."

  "I'm sorry."

  "You keep saying that."

  "Because I'm so sorry for hurting you. And before this, I'm sorry for scaring you that night. For being angry and making you afraid of me—"

  "I really really liked you," she said, covering her face when she stopped holding back her tears.

  I moved toward her then, my boots falling on either side of her daintier heels. She didn't shove me away yet and so I stayed there with tears dripping down my cheeks. I carried regrets in life, sure, but none amounted to this. I wasn't sure if I ever truly hurt someone's feelings or caused them emotional pain before Harlow. The devastation of knowing hurt more than I expected it to.

  "I really really like you, too," I said, my voice a shaky mess.

  "It was stupid of me to trust you." She sucked in a sharp breath, her angry gaze returning to mine. "Both parts of you. Trusting a Hybridian Protector in my museum night after night. I knew almost every time that you were here, whenever you walked through the empty halls in the middle of the night. I could feel you and I let you because you seemed to appreciate the art. I trusted your intentions then. I saw the news stories about you. The good you tried to do while blind to the consequences of vigilante justice, but I still trusted that you would do the right thing. And when I trusted you as Veyda, I trusted your intentions then, too. You seemed so genuine, so heartfelt. The way you talked about your friends and the baby. Your worry for them." She shook her head while stifling a sob. "Your job and your passions. I thought you were a good person. That you really cared about people and about me. I know it was just a short while, but I thought it meant something. I thought I finally met someone who would care about me as I am."

  "I do care about you as you are. That hasn't changed." With caution, I held my hand out to her.

  "You can't care about me and lie at the same time. It doesn't work like that." She pushed my hand away and even that seemed to cause her another wave of agony.

  "Yes, it can. I lied because I cared about you. Because I knew telling you would hurt. We didn't have the best interactions here. I wanted to tell you the whole time, but then you kissed me and I couldn't. I choked." I crouched down in front of her, one knee hitting the floor with a thud as my energy drained from me, but the papers around us began to rustle. "I am so sorry for that."

  "Stop apologizing. It's not helping," she spat, a shaky breath followed as she looked behind me. "Are you doing that?"

  "Yes." I clenched my teeth, bearing down in an attempt to regain control. The dirt from the broken fossil swirled itself into a pile between the papers that gathered in a circle around it. "Did you break your fossils?"

  She nodded, swiping at her eyes as my loss of control appeared to distract her for a moment. Her eyes followed the papers as they zipped across the floor, and I focused my attention forward, guiding them into a neat stack by the leg of the table. A smirk tugged the corner of her mouth and she glanced at me.

  "Do you clean your house like that?"

  "No. I usually mess it up when I get overwhelmed."

  "Are you overwhelmed right now?"

  I nodded and rolled back to sit cross-legged on the floor.

  "Then why are you making it neater?"

  "Because it made you smile." I swiped at my eyes as the two of us seemed to calm down enough to not vacillate in and out of emotional meltdown.

  "I've never smiled as much with anyone as I have with you…" She crossed her legs at the ankles then gripped the edge of her desk.

  "I'm sorry I took that away from you."

  "Me too."

  A long, pregnant silence followed until she said, "What else can you do besides stack dirt and papers, hide in the shadows, and run fast?"

  "Um…" I tugged at the cuffs of my gloves while fiddling with them. "My abilities are tied to the elements. Wind is my strongest. It helps me run and fly short distances. Second is spirit, which gives me the ability to move through the shadows and become intangible or ethereal. I can pass through walls or solid objects, but it's also brief."

  "All of those things you use to get in and out of here…"

  I nodded and dabbed my eyes on the back of my sleeve.

  "What else?" she pressed, pushing herself up to sit on the desk then.

  I pointed to the glass of water perched beside her. She looked over and I flicked my fingers at it, sending a small splash into the air.

  She flinched and cocked a brow at me. "Very funny."

  "Water listens to me sometimes, not always. Fire rarely obeys. And Earth on occasion. I tend to favor air and spirit. My mom mastered all of them, but she wasn't a hybrid. She was from the Andromeda Galaxy."

  "A refugee?" Interest lifted her brows and I nodded. "Wow. What planet?"

  "I don't know. She never told me or my father. I don't have a lot of memories of her…"

  "Did she look like you?"

  I nodded, then pulled out my phone to show her a picture of me and my mother from when I was little. She wore her Army uniform, but I adorned her hat. Her eyes a radiant mix of teal and purple, bore similarities to mine. Otherwise, she presented just as human as me with matchi
ng red hair.

  "She was an Elite Soldier?" Harlow's eyes widened as she pointed to the insignia on my mother's jacket.

  "She was, but she was secretive about a lot of things, so I never knew much."

  "You were a cute kid," she said, handing me back my phone. "Still just as ginger and freckled."

  "Yeah." I smirked and tucked my phone in the pocket of my hoodie.

  "Some Hybridians and Offlanders have heightened senses, too. Is that why you're a picky eater?" she asked, I listened to her as she seemed to connect all the dots in our conversations and experiences. "And why you saved me and that boy from the falling engine?"

  I nodded and leaned back with my palms on the floor. "Yes and yes. But the heightened senses haven't served me much. I hear every electronic device in here humming, all the traffic outside, and when I'm around populated areas, I hear a constant murmur of distant conversation. Everyone's heart beating simultaneously, heavy breathers, people chewing." The more I talked about it, the wider my range spread. "It's horrible sometimes. Hearing bothers me the most."

  "What about smelling?"

  "I can block out bad smells pretty easy and linger on the good ones. Like your magnolia perfume…" My lips threatened a smile when I said it. "I really like that."

  She tucked her hair behind her ear, but stayed on task. "What about vision? Any x-ray vision?"

  I shook my head. "I can hyper focus my vision like the zoom on a camera, but that's all. Everything has limits. Hearing is probably a quarter of a mile. Scent is less. Vision is minimally useful, except to torment me when things are too bright."

  "And touch?" She smirked as if she'd been waiting for this one.

  "Touch has always…bothered me. If I'm upset or have too much energy built up, even the slightest pat on the shoulder feels like a burn. A hug is like being seared with acid. It comes and goes mostly, but even my family know to be cautious," I said while tugging at my shoelace. "It doesn't happen with Elara though. At all."

  "I touch you all the time…" Concern wrinkled her brow then. "Did I hurt you?"

  "No." I met her gaze then. "It's as if my body and energy know yours and anticipates it. You feel…really good."

  "Yeah." She laughed though seemingly not out of amusement. "So do you. Kissing you was probably the best I've ever felt in my whole life…What did you do to me?"

  "I didn't do anything. I was honest about that. I thought you did something…"

  She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. "I didn't."

  Quiet found me for a moment while I considered what she said. I didn't understand it any better than she did, it seemed.

  "It was humiliating," she said, her voice soft as she stared at the floor between us again.

  "Kissing me?" My stomach sank at her disclosure, though I noticed her cheeks turned shades of pink.

  She shook her head as tears welled in her eyes again. "Kissing you and…feeling that. Then realizing who you were."

  I stood up then, pushing myself from the floor to stand between her knees when she shifted her weight. "What did you feel?"

  "It's still humiliating." She covered her mouth the way she did when we spoke on the phone.

  "Harlow…" With caution, I ran my knuckle over her arm. "Tell me…"

  "Kissing you feels like we have sex, okay? Like the best sex I've ever had and all we're doing is kissing." Her gaze shot to mine as fragments of anger returned to her. "Don't tell me you didn't know."

  "I-I didn't know. I mean, I felt similarly. Almost to the point of…but not because every time I kissed you, I felt bad about not letting you see who I was. Every time." When she didn't recoil from my touch, I gently caressed the ends of her hair that fell around her elbows. "I didn't know and I'm sorry for complicating the hurt further."

  She nodded, and her energy seemed to implode on itself. Her body leaned forward, and she dropped her head against my chest while gazing down between us.

  "How can I trust you now?" she asked through sniffles.

  "Trust is earned…" I ran my fingers through her hair before carefully offering her a hug. "I'll have to earn your trust again if you'll let me."

  "I don't know how to do that." The faintest tickle of her nail scratching the zipper of my jacket sounded like a tire skidding on pavement.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of her thrumming heartbeat. Her breathing slowed in time, while I rubbed her back. Being close to her soothed me, despite the terrible circumstances.

  "You turned in that Hybridian terrorist after we talked," she said suddenly, then looked up at me.

  I nodded then held my hands to her. Shaky fingers tickled my palms, though they didn't close around them yet. "You were right. I let him go because of my own biases in thinking I could help him. I didn't think about the victims."

  "No one ever does. Everyone's always worried about catching or not catching the bad guys, but who thinks about what happens to the victims? How many times do we hear about women, or Offlanders, or refugees being assaulted on the news? They'll say something like, 'All victims survived the attack,' but surviving isn't the only thing. It's not."

  "I understand what you're saying."

  "Do you ever go back and check on the victims or the people you save?" she asked, while gazing up at me.

  I shook my head. "But I know victim services does. Nalea always tells me how the social workers help the victims. She updates me on them."

  "But those are the victims you help when connected with the police. What about the ones on your own? Like the boy you saved with me? Or the random things you do that don't get reported. Who checks on them?" She tilted her head, sincerity lacing her tone.

  "I don't know," I admitted, gulping down the tightness in my throat.

  "That's the price of vigilante justice, Veyda. You're a historian and you know the roots of our justice system. We spent decades revamping our system of fairness, of checks and balances for a reason," her lecture continued, and I heeded her every word.

  I nodded, allowing the notion to sink in. She wasn't wrong, not in the slightest, and I found myself thinking rather heavily on her words. "What about you? Pulling a gun on a Shadow Protector? Isn't that vigilante justice in the same way?"

  "No. Protecting myself from an intruder is different," she defended, though a hint of amusement made it to her eyes. "And if you weren't a recognized Protector, I would've turned you in."

  "Fair." I scrunched my nose at her, and she smirked.

  "Do you know their names? The victims. Do you remember them?"

  "I remember them all…"

  "Maybe you should check on them sometime." She blinked away her tears and squeezed my hands.

  "I'll consider it. I will," I promised, brushing my glove-covered thumbs over her knuckles. "Do you still hate me?"

  "A little."

  "What can I do to make this better?"

  "I'm not sure." She sniffled and turned to gaze out the open window beside her desk. "You can fly."

  "I can under the right circumstances," I admitted.

  "Can you fly with someone?"

  "I can, but not too far or too high."

  "Take me to fly with you," she said, urging me to step back so she could stand. "Right now."

  "Now?"

  "Right now." She swiped at her damp cheeks and motioned toward the window.

  I hesitated for a moment, before picking up my hat and mask. "Are you sure?"

  She nodded, despite the fact that her heart beat near-panic rhythms in her chest. The veins in her neck throbbed under the intensity of her upheaval. I pulled on my hat, affixed the mask to my face, and held my arms to her.

  "Don't let go of me no matter what." My warped voice warned her when she made it into my arms.

  "I don't like your voice like that," she said, her hands shaking against my chest.

  I flicked the dial inside the mask with my tongue to turn off the distortion. "Better?"

  "Yes." She wrapped her arms around my middle, an
d I guided her fingers around my belt.

  "Don't let go. I'm not a bird or Superwoman able to bend and twist at will. I'm limited. Okay?" I pressed my advisory until I could be sure she understood.

  She nodded, though choked on a sob as she hid her face against my shoulder. Her body burned in my arms, though our clothes blocked our flesh from connecting, dimming the side effects of touch.

  "Ready to move through the wall with me?" I whispered against her ear, and every inch of her tensed.

  "How can you do that?"

  "I can't." I chuckled and rubbed her back. "Seeing if you're paying attention."

  She huffed at me as I tugged my hood up to cover my hair. "Don't trick me."

  "I won't ever trick you. Leave your shoes here." I moved with her toward the open window, one arm holding her firmly around the middle. I twirled my hand clockwise, directed at the floor as I focused my concentration on conjuring a strong enough gust to lift us. "Ready?"

  She nodded after slipping out of her heels, though her grip on me tightened. "Are you stronger than a human?"

  "Only a little bit. Stamina is higher though for sure. Here we go." I bent my knees just enough to press off in an angled jump out the wide window.

  She shrieked the moment our velocity and upward trajectory picked up. The colder air whipped Harlow's hair wildly around us, and her grip on me tightened. We dodged a few drones until I cleared the air space, cupping the back of her head when one of them cut a little close. I couldn't tell if she looked over my shoulder or continued to hide, but holding her as we climbed the heights of the skyscrapers brought a new sense of exhilaration to the feat. I didn't fly with anyone often, and if I did, it was during a brief rescue, or Nalea if it's a quick transport for a collar.

  With all the pent-up energy I channeled, air obeyed me easily tonight, as long as I held my focus. I managed to hover for a few seconds with the turbulence under my feet keeping me afloat.

  "Look up, Harlow," I said, a smile meeting my lips when she lifted her head.

  She bent one knee against mine, as if she knew how to keep her balance in the air already. She turned slightly to gaze ahead of us, and her eyes widened when she saw the city from above. Lights filled the buildings and blocks, marquees scrolled the news and upcoming live shows, and vehicles passed below us, both in the sky and on land. Her jaw fell slack, and the wind blew her tears from her cheeks in tiny beads. A smile replaced the sadness she carried all day, and wonderment filled her sparkling eyes that reflected the lights around us. Her grip on me loosened as her confidence grew, but my resolve tightened to support her bravery.