by Garren, Jax
“Ready to try it?” he asked.
She fluttered her lashes in confusion before she got her head screwed on straight. “You mean the shoulder wheel throw. Right.”
He cocked his head in confusion. “Uh, yeah. The shoulder wheel throw. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Grumbling at herself, she squatted down and stuck her hand between his knees.
“You’re going to want as high a grip as you can get,” he said. “It’ll help with stability.” He huffed a rueful sound that was almost a laugh. “Especially on that side, as you’re about to grab metal.”
In addition to the horrific scarring, Hauk’s left leg had been amputated halfway between his knee and hip. The crazy-genius scientists at The Underlight had attached a high-functioning replacement that allowed him to do pretty much everything he’d done before, but it was metal instead of the usual skin-toned prosthetic. She hadn’t seen the whole leg, just the tin-colored foot at the bottom with its articulated toesiziculates, but she imagined some Terminator-looking thing sprouting from his thigh. The thigh she was about to grab. Usually she was good about reaching for his right side.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I don’t care,” he said softly. “But the metal’s not too comfortable to hold.”
She wasn’t about to embarrass him by switching legs, so she shifted her grip up. Way up. Nowhere she hadn’t been before, at least on his other leg. She dug her shoulder into his abdomen, just like he’d showed her, and hooked her arm around his thigh, trying to strike a nice balance between metal and man-parts.
“Go slow now,” he warned. “I know you’re strong, but I’m heavy compared to you. Keep your weight back, core tight and use your legs, not your arms.”
“Yes, I know.” He reminded her of his weight and her positioning every time, as if she hadn’t spent most of her life doing either ballet, which required leg strength, or aerial dancing, which required arm strength. And both of them required a solid core. She knew how to keep her back aligned and engage her abs. Besides, her brain was going to melt if she spent much more time hanging out between his thighs. She grabbed his arm, tightened her core and shifted her weight as she stood.
It was his turn to yelp—in a manly sort of way, she’d grant—when he flopped onto his back on her other side. She smiled down at him, arms crossed.
He blinked up at her from the mat. “Nice job.”
“Thanks. I think I got that one down.”
“Yeah. I would say so. And after you throw your opponent you…”
This was how every move ended. “I run like hell.”
“Good.” He hopped up.
“Can I kick him in the head first?”
“No. You probably won’t hurt him, and unless you do it right you might break a toe. Skulls are tough. Just run.”
“Yes, sir.” She faked a salute.
He snorted, like he always did when she mimicked Army procedure. Then he paused, brow furrowed.
She stared at the floor, wanting to commit the move to memory, but instead replayed how firm his thigh muscles felt when she’d dug her fingers into them.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You’ve been kinda out of it today. Did yesterday, I mean, are you upset about anything? It’s okay to talk about it.”
They were having share time? They didn’t do share time. They did throw-each-other-around time, and then she went to class and he went to spark up his welding torch. Even without deep conversations, though, Hauk was dependable, funny and the best friend she’d made since moving to Austin last summer. Scratching a temporary itch would screw that up. Discussing yesterday’s weirdness was trying a new trick with no mat as far as she was concerned—an unnecessary risk.
She looked up at him warily. “What about yesterday?”
He put his hands up, non-threatening. “It was intense. Way more than it should have been. We walked into an ambush. It’s normal to—”
“To what?” Nearly make out among the remains of a bomb blast? So he’d done that before? How many times?
And why did that thought make her irritable?
“—to have lingering thoughts about what almost happenednt>ost hap.”
Oh shit, he did want to talk about nearly kissing. She waved her own hands in front of her, backing up. “No. It’s no big deal. We don’t need to go into it.”
He frowned. “It is a big deal. We almost died.”
“Yeah. And so that—that’s what happened. No big. I’m not confused.”
He studied her for a moment, still frowning, but gave a reluctant nod. “Okay. You don’t have to talk about it with me. But I am a war veteran. I’ve been there. I know we were in a fight before at Ananke’s Temple, but exploding chains didn’t land two feet from your head then. It’s normal to feel unsettled.”
She leaned back on her heels. “Wait. You think I’m in shock because I nearly died?”
His hands shot back up. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want you to know it’s perfectly normal to feel shaken up. I’m not trying to pry, either, but if you want somebody to talk to about it…”
Jolie reviewed the conversation in her head and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh.”
“What did you think I meant?”
Good question to ignore. “Thank you for your concern, but I’m okay with what happened yesterday.” The bombs and guns part, anyway. What did that say about her? “To be honest, that didn’t scare me nearly as badly as what happened two months ago.”
“In the temple?” He tensed. “Did something happen after I blacked out? Something you didn’t tell me about?”
Uh, maybe. Two months ago he’d helped her rescue her niece from a cult. The whole thing had been a cluster-fuck from start to finish—magic and secret societies and Pagan temples. Not that Pagan was bad; Hauk was Pagan (or Heathen, as he liked to remind everybody as he tugged on the silver Thor’s hammer he wore on a leather strap around his neck). But The Order of Ananke, the group behind her niece’s kidnapping as well as the brain-dead Atropos guys from the slaughterhouse, was full-on creepy-movie Pagan, not normal, happy-person Pagan. They’d used magic to try to turn Hauk into one of their brainless Hands of Atropos.
Jolie had woken him up with a kiss.
She might have neglected to mention the kissing part.
But that event wasn’t what she was referring to. “No, not in the Temple. I mean, that was whacked out for sure, but I was referring to getting attacked backstage at the show.”
“Ah,” he said, a sound so full of meaning, and she knew he, too, was thinking about exactly how well you could get to know a girl from the other side of thin fabric.
She shot him a saucy smile, the kind he never gave to her in the training room.
His façade cracked a little, just enough for a hint of proud male to show through. But it quickly broke. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay longer. See them. Stop them.”
“Not your fault, so don’t beat yourself up.” She rubbed his shoulder and headed for the bench and her water bottle. “Besides, you got to me before they did any permanent damage.”
The cold water felt good and tasted better. They’d already been at it for nearly an hour; it was their usual time for packing up. As if reading her mind, Hauk stowed the pads they’d used for sparring before coming to the bench to gulp down his own water. She watched his patterned skin slide up anat slide d down his throat with the motion of swallowing. Even the most mundane movements were interesting when Hauk did them.
“I got hurt then, you know. They gave me a concussion. That’s the only time I’ve been hurt. But I don’t think that’s what scared me.”
She didn’t know why she was telling him this. But he put his water down, wiped his mouth with the scarred back of his hand and focused on her with his steady gaze. They didn’t talk much, but when they did, Hauk was a good listener, good at making a person feel like her words were important to him.
Maybe that’s why she told him, “Yesterday at the ambush and two months a
go at the Temple, that was dangerous, sure. But I felt like I had choices, like there were things I could do. The other time, when those three guys came at me, I was backed into a corner.” She shuddered. “I can’t stand feeling helpless.” Hauk’s eyes were now full of understanding and maybe sympathy. She turned away, embarrassed. “Not that you’d know what helpless felt like.”
“Hey,” he said, demanding her attention.
Lips pursed tight, she faced him again.
“You think I don’t know what helpless feels like?” He tapped the ruined skin of his cheek. “Think again.” He pointed toward a corner. “Show me what happened.”
Her eyes widened. He wanted to re-create the attack? She wasn’t sure about that. But she also didn’t want to look like a chicken in front of him, so with a thudding pulse she marched to the corner. Hauk followed. She really didn’t want to do this. What else could she think about instead of that night? She needed a different story to concentrate on to get her through whatever Psych 101 Hauk was experimenting with.
Stupid boy. That’s what she got for sharing.
“What actually happened the night you were burned?” She blurted it out, not thinking how inappropriate the question was.
He paused.
“Oh, damn, Hauk, I’m sorry. That’s not—”
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“What do you mean, you don’t remember?” She positioned herself in the corner, just like she’d been the night she’d done nothing but scream for somebody to save her like some helpless princess.
Hauk stood tall in front of her instead of crouching into ready position. Apparently he was willing to tell her more. Think about Hauk’s story, not what happened. “I remember the fight I had with my guys that afternoon. I remember being alone in the CHU before the fire. One of them came back, and then it’s a jumble of hospitals, helicopter rides and morphine dreams until I woke up in BAMC.”
Jolie already knew there had been eight men in the fire that had consumed the CHU—containerized housing unit—they slept in. Hauk was the only survivor. He’d been blamed, court-martialed while he was still in the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center and sentenced to life in prison for arson and first-degree murder. He’d escaped the hospital and joined The Underlight. Most of The Underlight’s members led regular lives outside the organization, like Jolie did. But some, like Brayden, lived in The Austin Underlight’s secret headquarters, off grid and out of the system. Hauk had moved in mostly because he believed in the mission, but also because being a fugitive left him few options.
Jolie had never doubted he’d been wrongly accused.
She also hadn’t known he’d had a fight with the men of his squad just hours before the incident. “A fight over what?”
His eyes wandered away from hers. “Over…things they’d gotten involved in.”
The dark shift in his tone caught her attention. “Illegal things? Like, bad illegal, not like smoking a little weed or whatever? What were they doing?”
His eyes dulled in sadness as he said, “It’s not that I don’t trust your discretion, but they were friends. Or they had been at one time. I keep my mouth shut and they died heroes. I’d rather their memory stay that way.”
She bobbed her head in acceptance. Keeping silent in honor of their memory was an action she could respect. But this was a new twist to his story. Hauk had caught his squad, the guys under his command, engaged in something malicious. They’d fought about it. Then the place they slept in burned to the ground. “You had a motive,” she said then added quickly, “Not that that’s your reason for staying silent. I didn’t mean that.”
He hesitated. Nodded.
“And you don’t remember anything? You told me your blackouts didn’t start until two years after that, until after you were out of the hospital.” When Hauk got really upset during a fight, he would sometimes mentally check out and turn into a crazed whirlwind of destruction. She’d seen him twice now, both times when someone had threatened her. Hauk had ripped his way through adversaries like a tank, and one of those times he’d dismantled a van with his bare hands to get to her. In that state he was out of control. Totally capable of killing seven men who’d done dishonorable things and then had the stupidity to pick a fight with him over it.
Hauk shook his head, but she could see the doubt in his eyes. “It’s medically common for a blackout to happen during traumatic events, like burning eighty-two percent of your skin off. It’s not necessarily one of those blackouts.” The inexplicable ones. “I didn’t have one of those until two years later.”
“Did you have a reason to have one of those in the two years you were in the hospital?”
He clenched his jaw. “No.”
Jolie took a deep breath as she digested that. Magic and secret societies and Pagan temples and dark secrets and hidden pasts. Hauk was being uncomfortably honest in front of her. She could nut up and do the same thing.
She pointed to the floor in front of her. “Asshat was standing there, and Dickhead was there. The leader was behind them. Asshat reached for me. I started screaming.”
Hauk took his own deep breath and stood where Asshat had been. “Do you believe me when I say that if you can get past me, you could get past them?”
Jolie couldn’t help the little smile that wormed its way back onto her face. “Considering that you killed them singlehandedly? Along with five other guys? Yeah. I believe it.”
Hauk relaxed at her smile. “Okay, then. Let’s see you get out.”
She poked him in the chest. “Don’t make it easy on me.”
“I won’t.”
They negotiated a place across the floor. If she got there under her own power, she “escaped.” If she got there under his power, she didn’t.
Hauk kept his word; getting past him was a nigh impossible pain in the ass. The first three times he came at her, she was handily tossed over his shoulder and carried away. Each time he brought her back to her starting location, set her down, made her state what went wrong and then came at her from a different direction.
The fourth time she threw her hands up, stopping his approach. “I can’t get past you. You’re bigger than me.”
He shrugged. “So what?”
“So what?” She yanked out her rubber band, which was barely containing her curls, and smashed her hair back up into a messy bun. “You’ll always catch me. You take up half the corner. If you get ahold of me, I can’t get out.”
He frowned. “What have I been teaching you these past eight weeks? It’s not about strength. It’s about leverage. You’re just as fast as me. You’re smarter than me. You may not have the training or the bulk, but that’s not as big a detriment as most people let it be. You’re not trying to beat me in a fair fight—you’re trying to get away. You can do that.”
“But—”
“No buts. I win a lot of fights because my opponent looks at my size and decides that’s the only possible outcome. And you know what? As soon as they decide that, they’re right. Don’t lose because you’ve convinced yourself you can’t win. There’s too much at stake.”
She took a deep breath and relaxed back into ready stance like he’d taught her. “I’m not smarter than you.”
He snorted. “All right, Miss Working-on-her-PhD. Big, lumbering, barely-graduated-from-high-school is coming for ya.” Sixty seconds later, he set her back down again in the corner. “Don’t give up.”
Jolie tried to stay loose and ready to move. It wasn’t like Hauk would hurt her. But the situation itself made her tense up with fear.
This time he surprised her with a smirk as he stepped closer. “Aw…look at the helpless little birdie with the pretty red feathers. You scared, little bird?”
Her back stiffened. Hauk never taunted her.
He was trying to make her mad.
“Pretty little bird in a safe little cage. Doesn’t know how to take care of herself.”
Okay, he was making her mad. He swiped for her and she dodged. He
reached for her again, but instead of her arm he grabbed for her hip and yanked her up against him.
“I’ll take good care of you.”
She reached for his face with her nails.
He caught her hand. “Ooh, not a bird, eh? Got ourselves a kitten. Kitten with cute little claws.” He pulled her forward. Instead of carrying, he was going to drag her to the end place.
She was really fucking tired of losing, and he was being a dick. She relaxed completely, like she was faint. He’d been ready for her to pull away, but not for her to drop, and she easily slid down his body. He already held one wrist. She pivoted until her foot was between his and grabbed him around the thigh with no thought but winning.
His character broke. “Wait. Jolie. You just learned—” She lifted him. “Oh, fuck.”
He landed on his back with a gasp of air.
She twisted her wrist from his grip and ran to the win spot. “Made it!” >.
Hauk laughed, still lying on the ground with his knees in the air. He had a nice laugh, light and easy, and she found herself smiling again.
She strolled cautiously toward him. “You didn’t let me win, did you?”
“No. I wasn’t expecting that.” He grinned up at her from the ground.
She stepped over his torso and stared down at him. “You were kind of a dick.”
He curled up until he was leaning on his elbows, a move that tightened his abs. “Anger works better than fear to get you out of a bad situation.”
His T-shirt wasn’t quite tight enough to see the way his muscles pleasantly rippled up the front of him, but she’d seen him once with his shirt off, and she remembered. Tribal-stylized vines climbed asymmetrically up his torso, thicker on the left side, where the skin was the most damaged. His chest was a patchwork of different skin tones and landscaped with scars like shallow canyons. The texture would be interesting to touch.
She’d touched his face before while he was asleep. The rest of his body was odd, but at least the scars had faded to skin tones. His face, though, that was the really different part of him. She’d researched burning on the internet. Melted cartilage was irreparable. His nose was nearly gone. One ear was missing; the other was half gone. He’d pierced an industrial across the top where the shell should be and three spikes into the remaining edge. He had no hair at all and marked where his eyebrows should be with four curved barbells on each side. He had no tattoos on his face, but his skull had her favorite one, a phoenix rising from a fire at the top of his spine, her colorful wings encircling his head and her beak touching his forehead, right where a priest would place a blessing. It was an incredible piece of art, and must have hurt like a mother to have been done entirely on bone like that.
