Chapter Nineteen #2
“Dad never understood princess cakes. Or for that matter, any cake. Grandma seemed to understand that about him, and the two of us sure tried to, but some people just aren’t supposed to be parents, you know?
By the time my seventh birthday rolled around, I think we all finally realized that.
Then Dad did something about it. He was no longer around.
Instead, there was a bigger deposit to Grandma’s bank account and a check for me inside a birthday card mailed from somewhere near Edwards Air Force Base.
My dad the rocket nerd finally followed his joy, which simply wasn’t Genny and me. ”
From a few feet behind her right shoulder, Lois spewed another harsh gasp. “Wait. No, that’s . . . just . . . ”
“What?” she quietly cut in. “Unbelievable? Unfair?” Then shook her head and dropped her stare to the rough cobblestones beneath her dingy boots.
“Trite is sometimes right, my friend”—and part of her did hope that she and Lois Lance could keep being friends—“and life is unfair. You know that one as well as I do, don’t you? ”
“Fine.” Lois huffed. “Yes. But—”
“Stop.”
She almost spun back around just to enforce the word.
But a stronger force emerged to lock her feet and pull her head back up.
A pair of crystalline green eyes, seeming to float on their own from between a couple of buildings.
But she already knew better, because she already knew the face in which that riveting gaze belonged.
All its chiseled edges. Every line of its aquiline nose.
Every inch of its high, noble forehead. Even the ears with which the lucky strands of his long gold hair got to tease.
Her almost-assassin.
Her fucking Glow Worm.
Her gorgeous god.
But never really to be hers . . .
How long had he been hiding there? Long enough that he heard every word she’d exchanged with Lois?
But maybe that was a good thing. The best thing.
“Stop.”
Because now, she didn’t issue the echo just for Lois. She squared her shoulders, girded her soul, and spoke her truth to him too.
She had no choice.
“Sometimes, stop is the most powerful choice of all,” she asserted, as calmly yet strongly as she could.
“Just stopping it all. The wondering, the waiting, the conjecturing, the hoping. When you can do that, just accept that you’re not a priority for someone and that there’s no logical way you ever could be, you’re free.
And soon, you learn to be happy in that freedom. ”
“Happy.” Though Lois’s reiteration matched hers for volume, another element tinged the tone. Something like curiosity, except . . . not. A question that already had its answer. “Because you’re free. So, you mean off the hook from having to care in return, right?”
For a moment, she actually thought that would unseat Apollo from his murky hideout. His gaze certainly flashed as if preparing to launch a standing ovation. In return, she made damn sure she flared her nostrils with angry emphasis.
“In my line of work, caring about people isn’t good business practice.”
“Ah. Right.” Lois didn’t relent from that annoying I’ve-got-a-question-and-an-answer bit. “And you’re pretty good at your job, is that right?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Okay. So, tell me what you were doing with the guys on your team when you and I first met.”
She winched her head around with a sharp glare. “Excuse me?”
“Back at DeLux.” Lois practically singsong’ed the breezy challenge.
“You remember that, right? In the atrium where you and your boys dropped in, ready to take me by gunpoint because I was in disguise as Natasha? Only you didn’t, thanks to the fact that I was on a ‘speed date appointment’ with a demigod who had your SWAT-guy wannabes kissing the floor. ”
“Wannabes? For your information, every gentleman on my elite team is worth five fighters on any special tactical team across the world.” She spat it all out now, pivoting fully around.
“Those men have seen shit that would make this place, demons and goblins and all, look like the Keystone Cops nursery. They are warriors with more honor in their fucking pinky fingers than—”
“And yet you don’t care about them.” And damn it, the woman had to be that elegant about the clapback, arching her dark whisky brows with impeccable timing. “Because that’d be bad business, yeah?”
Wen reached up and tugged at her back collar.
She retreated physically, as well. Continuing this debate would be a pointless cause.
Lois Lance was as savvy as her street-smart doppelg?nger.
Though unlike Natasha Korra, who had undoubtedly struck up a fresh partnership with Ito already, the petite scribe was chill about allowing her to back up by another couple of steps.
The farther she got, the calmer her pulse settled. But not back to normal. That wouldn’t happen until she finally found Genny again, and that wouldn’t happen until she dealt with the proverbial elephant in this room. Orin this case, the sneaky sun god in the shadows.
Apollo had the grace to look chagrined, though hardly shocked, about her stomp toward his impromptu hidey hole. And she was hardly stunned when a pair of steaming pizza boxes suddenly appeared in his grip. The food smelled amazing yet now turned her stomach.
When an animal wanted out of its cage, not even a prime slab of meat could tempt it to stay behind the bars.