by Angel Payne
“Emma! Uh…hey!”
Wade’s so awkwardly cheerful, I find it hard to stay casual. Nevertheless, as I head for the fancy coffee bar—another new feature of the break room, installed just yesterday—I manage to return with breezy sincerity, “Hey yourself.”
While I wait for his response, I let my gaze bulge at the luxurious setup. Wow. There are separate machines for tea infusions, specialty lattes, and flavored hot cocoas, with themed biscotti, chocolates, and cookies in another rack. It’s a Tiffany store in caffeine form—and easily ushers in another could-this-finally-be-the-tears moment. Though it’s just another false alarm from my tear ducts, my heart hangs on to its bittersweet ping.
The guy in the tower really does still care.
“You big dork,” I whisper, hiding the chastisement as the latte maker shrieks with steam. “All I want is the ugly sweater, damn it.”
I’m saved from any more thoughts about tangerine-colored togs by the workmates suddenly flanking me—though they’re not smooth enough to hide their furtive trade of glances before I turn in place and lean against the counter. My heart twinges again, but this time in the form of some feels for these two, who have likely been on the fanboy versions of pins and needles—gamepads and styluses?—since the last time the three of us were in here.
And then, the circumstances in which I dashed out of here.
And the bomb of information I dropped on them before I did.
The same bomb with which they’ve just played a glaring round of hot potato, each daring the other to grab the spud and face me with it.
Their discomfort almost makes me wince again. Instead, at least knowing I can save the two of them from any more burned fingers, I lower my cup, rush in a deep breath, and state, “All right, boys. Let’s go ahead and kill the elephant in the room right now.”
Wade has the grace to let out a good-natured chuckle. “Oh now, come on. There’s no elephant…”
“Not a single one.” Fershan nods like a bobblehead with a rocket booster. “No pachyderms in sight!”
“Not even one named Bolt?”
They both stutter into silence.
Until, a few seconds later, Wade mutters, “Errrmm…what about him?”
I send back a serene smile. “Neither of you are idiots, Wade—nor would I ever insult you by treating you as such. You heard what you heard…”
“Which neither of us have told a soul about.” Fershan looks ready to fall to his knees and pledge it on a sword dipped in his mother’s blood—or something damn similar. “We swear!”
“Which isn’t necessary.” I clap his shoulder to emphasize my point. “If anybody clearly gets the rules about all this, it’s you two. I know you’d never betray Reece like that.”
Wade’s wild ginger brows shoot up. “Reece?”
I pick up my latte again, sipping it with serenity I couldn’t be farther from feeling. “Did I say ‘Reece?’ I must have meant…cease. Or…something along those lines.”
I’m counting on the two of them to take the hint and back off a little. They’re not dumb guys or even the craziest fanboys—except, it seems, when it comes to this particular subject. Lucky me. Their reaction rapidly ramps up into a combination of fervor and terror, complete with bulging eyes, thundering carotids, and breathing patterns that make me look around for brown paper bags.
Once more, Wade is able to compose himself first, though he locks his hands behind his head like he’s become the crazed systems tech in charge of Fershan’s rocket booster. “Okay, so…” He pauses his tiger-in-a-cage pacing to latch his gaze directly back on me. “Reece Richards really is Bolt? Is that what you’re saying?”
Another full inhalation. Another self-reprimand, to keep my composure in check—since their excitement feels like they’ve dipped a pair of swords into liquid fire and are now juggling them over my head. “Now, Mr. Tavish,” I admonish. “You know I can neither confirm nor deny that—but would certainly not give you a lot of shit if that’s the theory you choose to stick by.”
Fershan plummets back into his chair. “By the gods.”
“By the holy fucking firmament of gods.” Though Wade stays on his feet, he’s now got his hands balled up in his hair, yanking and stretching it out like the crazy rocket tech with a foot stuck in a light socket. “Our boss is a superhero.” His gawk zeroes back on me. “And our friend is bonking him.”
I swing my gaze away—and don’t protest when the rest of me wants to follow suit, finding my way into an empty chair of my own. “Yeah, well…about that…”
“Aw, crap.”
It’s impossible to prevent his dismal blurt from reaching all the way inside and then twisting every chamber of my heart. My spirit. My nerves. My lungs. I should be used to this by now, but I’m not. I can’t breathe—and now I can’t even focus on their fun frenzy as a distraction. If only Wade could’ve been shallow and selfish about the exclamation—but no. His voice is weighted with the opposite. Deep concern infused with discerning insight—now followed by him walking over, lowering into the seat next to me, and then lifting one of my hands.
“You want to talk about it?”
I sigh again. Damn it, why is he being so sweet? “Sorry,” I whisper, slowly shaking my head. Sorry because I know you really want to know. And that if you can, you even want to help—but that if you do, you’re in a lot of immediate danger from some scary-as-hell bad guys.
And I’m sorry because processing all of that was not what I wanted to do.
Because now I understand every damn reason Reece did it.
Because now I understand the agony he endured in doing it.
Because now I have no choice but to let that desolation take over. That desperation to become reality. And the tears, at last, to fall.
REECE
I’m still breathing hard as I collapse at my desk in the Brocade’s penthouse. The snarls bursting from my parted lips are ferocious but fulfilled. They match my smile, a continuation of the celebration from helping put away the fifteen-person credit-card-skimming-ring who decided tonight’s Dodger game would be a great place to cheat thousands out of their hard-earned money. Less than a half hour ago, I’d helped the cops escort the gang into booking at Central, where even now, they’re all being processed for arraignment.
Fifteen jerks arrested. Every collar clean, clear, and by the book. The kind that remind a guy that maybe the system does work. That maybe his freak show fingers are good for something worthwhile after all.
Until the freak boy leans back in his chair. And takes a look at the different security cam feeds from around the hotel tonight.
And locks his gaze on the feed from the employee cafeteria.
Where a beauty with a long blond braid is hunched over, her slender shoulders clenched as she sobs, being comforted by the two gamer guys from the reservations bay.
Who take turns looking up at the camera—as if knowing said freak boy can see every second of this. And hoping he feels like trash about it.
I ditch my smile in favor of growling the F-word.
Because I don’t feel like trash.
I feel ten times worse.
I shove back to my feet, trying to ignore how the analogy follows my steps across the room. I feel like the monster from a dystopian movie, covered in rotted things and smelling like ass, as I trudge back and forth in front of the security monitors.
“Shit.” I hiss it out while reaching a finger up to the image of my woman bawling her eyes out on the shoulders of her friends. Wade and Fershan still take turns glaring up at the camera, their expressions doing the talking for them. Loud and fucking clear.
You’re an ass.
If this girl was mine, I’d be treating her much better than this.
They don’t get it.
They don’t get even half of it.
If they did, they’d know how brutally this crap is killing me too. That getting out of the limo three nights ago, I might as well have crawled back into this place on the blood
y stumps of the knees I’d just sliced from under myself. That every damn second of every damn day after that, there’s been no relief from the pain, except during the hours when I get to go out and make the city—her city—a better place to be by putting criminals away.
And yeah, they don’t get that the most heroic act of my whole fucking existence was the decision to separate her life from mine. That I knew, and still know, that as soon as the Consortium has a chance to yank their tails out from between their legs, they’ll be sneaking back through the junkyard like the dogs they are, ready to sniff at my trash pile again.
And this time, maybe they’ll be armed with matches and kerosene.
So as much as I admire those two kids for “standing up” to their boss, especially since they now know what he does on his midnight break times, I still refuse to cede the joust to their lances. They don’t know the entire story here. They still don’t know that two people have been existing in this hell. They still don’t know that I completely get where she’s coming from. That all too clearly, I can imagine myself in the back seat of that limo, watching as Emma handed me some lame-ass line about “saving me” from her “dangerous” existence. That I would’ve been just as pissed and devastated.
No. That I would have been worse. I would have demanded to climb to the summit of her trash heap. To be her helper instead of her handicap. To—
I slam to a complete stop.
Thump a hand, flat and frozen, to the center of my chest.
I stand there for a solid minute, focused on nothing but the crashes of my heartbeat against my ribs—which reconfirm everything my traitor of a brain has just smacked into me like the clueless bitch I am.
But then, I’m not even able to stand.
I back up by two steps, letting my ass fall to the front edge of my desk. Curling my hand, still in the center of my chest, to grip at my leather jerkin like the shit’s about to turn to sackcloth and I’m about to declare myself dead to the world.
But that’s just my brain talking again—the same gray matter that screams at me for being the world’s hugest jackass about this, and follows up that little rant by ordering me to dig out the business card I’ve stashed in my on-desk caddy “just for giggles.”
That’s not my brain talking again.
That’s my fucked-up pride. Probably joined by his cute little friend, my stubborn ego—both of whom have become so used to playing in their exclusive sandbox that they kicked out the cute, smart, funny, perfect girl who’d been making the place a hell of a lot better.
A place they could actually tolerate living in.
It’s time for those assholes to get out of my way.
I prove it to them by fishing out the card and quickly punching the number on it into my phone. The “rings” are unlike any sound I’ve ever heard—unless a Tauntaun and a busy signal decided to have phone sex—until, fortunately, the noise stops in the middle of the third ring.
“Speak.”
I feel my forehead hunch from bewilderment. The voice is a one-eighty from what I expect. It’s beach-bum casual wrapped up with bold command. At once, I get an image in my head of the lead baddy from Point Break—Patrick Swayze’s version, not the poor sap from the reboot.
“Mr. Foley?” I murmur.
“You’ve got him,” the guy replies. “Who’s this?”
“My name is Reece Richards.” I pause there, waiting through the three to four seconds it’s going to take him to place my name, then another two or three for him to process his version of a coolest-guy-on-the-planet response. It’s a chore, especially because I’m in a tangible hurry now, making me wish I had gone ahead and made up a name just to get this conversation going.
“Okay,” he finally answers. “What can I do for you, man?”
I pull in a long breath—but only a hoarse catch of air emerges. “Do you have time to meet in person? This is probably going to take a while.”
“How so?”
“This isn’t like any of the stories you’ve read about me before.”
His snort is short but gruff. “I’ve never read any stories about you, dude.”
“You don’t stand in line at the grocery store? Glance at the billion gossip rags there?”
“I don’t go to the grocery store. Most of my food is picked from my own garden, and I use custom organics for my body, hair, and housecleaning.”
And that was more than too much information. “Fine. Cool. But I’m still going to require a signed NDA.”
“Is your money green?”
“Excuse the hell out of me?”
“You heard me. Is your money green?”
“Is your surfboard dope?”
“Ha!” The laugh is short but genuine, giving me hope he’s connected to the real world in at least a few ways that count. “Okay, man. Don’t stress. Whatever this is, I’ll help you handle it.” And weirdly, though I haven’t shared a syllable of what “this” is, I believe him. “When do you want me to start?”
“How about now?”
Because the sooner he starts, the sooner I can make things right with Emma again. And have her by my side again.
And when that’s a sealed deal?
I swear to God, I’ll never let her go again.
Chapter Seven
Emma
Three more days slug by.
Seventy-two more hours in which I’m given a handful of moments, tiny and perfect, in which I start to think everything will be normal again—just before it all returns in a crash of pain and regret and breath-robbing grief. The memories. The aching. The loss, in places so far and awful inside me, no food will stay down, thought will stay planted, or feeling will take root. The limbo of this damn darkness. The pain still so deep, I even start to hope for tears again, even if Wade and Fershan are likely still drying off from my last sob-fest.
Because despite what I’d thought, crying over Reece Richards didn’t wash a drop of him away from my heart. If anything, it all just deepened the tank of my sorrow.
On that “cheerful” thought, I pack up the last of my snacks and water bottle for work, tuck them into my shoulder satchel, and set off from the apartment to catch the three p.m. train downtown.
While walking down the two flights of stairs to the courtyard, I think about the new day-shift slots that have just opened at the Brocade. Maybe taking one of them, just for a little while, might be a great idea. I’ll miss the gang on the night shift, but maybe this is the step I need to escape the Reece-themed slap I endure every night at work. Neeta was actually the one who mentioned the new shifts, sensing my struggles and perhaps even guessing Reece is at the root of the problem.
But it’s not like the man has been hovering lately. The exact opposite, in fact. Recluse Tower Reece has definitely become a thing again. And yes, I’ve been noticing. And yes, I’ve heard about all the Bolt sightings in the last week, triple their normal numbers. The whole city couldn’t be more ecstatic.
Goody for the city.
Yaaaay, La-La Land.
On that morose thought, I plunk to the bottom of the stairs. Once there, I stop and give those ruminations an open huff. “And here she is, folks. The most depressed girl in the world’s safest city. Give it up for…Emmalina Crissssttt.”
As I finish my fake crowd noises, I scowl. Damn. I just used my own full name on myself.
The way Reece does.
The way Reece used to.
“Well, at least you look runway ready, baby.” I reward myself for the pep talk with a soft laugh directed toward the bow-front kitten heels upon which I splurged as my heartbreak shoes. They’ve been sitting in the box for two days, but their Kelly-green color meant I had to wait for the ideal blouse to come back from the dry cleaners. Tonight, the whole ensemble has come together. I may not feel totally rockin’-red-carpet again, but at least I look it.
“Did I miss the punch line?”
So much for considering steps on a red carpet—or any steps at all—as I swing a glower toward th
e source of the quip. The line is as friendly as a greeting from one of my neighbors—if any of them had a Catherine Deneuve accent and smelled like Baccarat perfume mixed with clove cigarettes. But the scent isn’t what lodges my heart in my throat. I’m not even struck senseless by the fear Reece warned me to be so nutballs about—which is disconcerting but not entirely disturbing.
Because I like what I feel in fear’s place.
I let the rage settle in, raw and invigorating, while glaring at the bitch from head to toe. When I’m done with the once-over, I let out another laugh. Louder this time. And so much longer.
“Angelique La Salle.” I rock back on one foot. “The woman with the name of a princess and the wardrobe of a skank. Should I congratulate you on being well-rounded or just a puppet ho?”
The woman adopts a similar pose, her lips hitching like a droll doll. For a flash of a second, I catch something else on her face too. It’s the dread Reece kept warning me about—and it almost makes me feel sorry for the woman. For half a second.
Then I’m right back to hating the woman.
I only have to remember her sending Reece to his knees at the power station, adding humiliation to her initial betrayal. Deepening the sorrow that convinced him to never believe in the word trust again.
In so many ways, this bitch has already killed the man I love.
“Puppet ho.” She issues the echo with a mirthful half smile. “That is…très créatif, I will grant you that.” Her head tilts. “Hmmm. I see it now, a little bit, I think.”
“See what?”
“The quality you have…that captivates Reece.”
“Captivated Reece. Past tense. I haven’t seen the man in five days.” I’m thankful I’m able to fling it and mean it. Thankful to the tune of considering calling in sick tonight and replacing the work hours with copious wine consumption and a trash-TV binge.
Shit. Surreal second number two. Have I just understood a little of what made Reece cut things off with me last week?
