31. Reese
31 REESE
Saint Hart and I are getting to know each other.
While drinking. It’s honestly the only way to do it.
I hold my cards close to my chest—literally and figuratively—and wait for him to make a move.
It came down to gin or chess, so here we are.
Not a freaking chessboard in sight.
We’re trading questions for shots.
And playing cards, because it’s better to not just stare at each other all night.
God, that would be weird.
I dealt, he poured, and now he’s examining his cards.
He’s got the first question, I’m sure, so I lean back in the chair and wait.
He finally discards and throws back his shot, smiling wickedly at me.
He doesn’t grimace, but I think he’s been numb for a while.
Liquor isn’t going to change that.
“Tell me how you met Tem.”
I’ve noticed that he calls her Tem when she’s not around, and Artemis to her face.
It must be some sort of tactic to keep her thinking she doesn’t mean anything to him, but I can see through it.
Transparent fucker.
“I met her through my parents,” I say.
“When we were teenagers.”
He narrows his eyes.
“Where?—”
“Take another shot if you want to pepper me with questions,” I interrupt.
He curses.
I take the card he discarded, debate for a second, and discard something else.
I lift my shot glass and swallow the liquid.
The whiskey burns on the way down, but I fight back the urge to cough.
“Why do you live with her?” I ask.
He frowns.
Picks up a card.
“I have to,” he says.
I growl.
His gaze rises to mine, and he grimaces.
“I was on an unofficial suicide watch, and Artemis got the short straw.”
“How long?”
He tsks and refills both our glasses.
I sigh.
Discard. Shot.
Question.
He pulls his punch, though.
“Did you have any pets growing up?”
I blink in surprise.
“Um… no. Well, actually, I had some crows.”
He chokes.
“Excuse me?”
I frown and pick a card, slotting it where it goes.
“If you offer crows gifts, they’ll do the same. They’re quite good with faces, actually. I didn’t have a ton of close friends as a kid, so I befriended a murder of crows.”
Saint doesn’t seem to know whether or not he can believe me.
“A murder of crows.”
“They’d follow me to school and back.” I shrug.
“’Til Dad shot some of them.”
Most of them .
The image of a yard full of dead black birds flits behind my eyes.
I reach for the bottle again.
“Who’s your favorite superhero?”
“The Joker,” Saint says.
I snort. “He’s a villain, not a superhero. Not even in the Justice League.”
“Fine. Captain America, because he transformed and stood for his beliefs through everything.”
“That makes sense.” I shake my head and toss my card.
He smirks and takes it from the discard pile.
For a second, I think he might win and end the game.
I hate losing. But he just takes his time, then the shot, and considers me.
“Burning building, and Kade and Tem are both trapped inside. Who are you rescuing?”
I stare at him.
Back to the hard questions, then.
If I say Kade, he might kick my ass on principal.
If I say Artemis… That’s a whole new can of worms that I’m not ready to talk about with him.
“I can’t answer,” I mumble.
He shakes his head and plucks a card from his hand.
He places it down gently, although everything else about him is tense.
When he removes his hand, I groan.
The card is facedown.
I lose.
“Now you’re definitely answering,” Saint says with a hard smile.
“Kade and I have a…” My attention goes to the window.
We’re so high up, the only things at our eye level are other buildings in the financial district.
And beyond, North Falls just over the hill, the main street in that neighborhood creating a faint, distant glow.
“An interesting relationship.”
“So he’s who you’d pick?”
“I’m not saying that.” I meet his gaze.
“I’m saying I just don’t fucking know. It’s complicated.”
“This isn’t a Facebook relationship status question,” Saint snaps.
I laugh. “Okay, asshole. Artemis or Apollo?”
I down the shot waiting for me.
Saint glowers at me.
“Artemis. Apollo would simply murder me if I didn’t save his baby sister.”
“They’re twins,” I point out.
“But he’s a few minutes older.” Saint shrugs.
“I’d save Artemis.”
“Great. You save her, I’ll save Kade, and then we’d be square.”
He mutters something I don’t catch.
I gather the cards and shuffle, then deal again.
He pours more liquid into my glass.
We haven’t taken that many shots, and yet the pull of alcohol is strong.
I haven’t eaten enough today—or, fuck, the last two months—to be drinking this heavily.
I get up and grab the leftover pizza from the fridge, dropping it to the table next to us, and my thoughts inevitably turn to Artemis.
She went to Bow & Arrow after I kissed her.
You were afraid of him, and now you kiss him?
I guess I can’t blame Saint’s cutting question.
I was the cause of her panic attacks.
I broke in here and scared her, but it wasn’t me , it was our past.
The way we met, and…
interacted.
I touch the side of my nose.
You’d never know she broke it when she was fifteen, because I was whisked to an elite private doctor who set it and assured my parents the break would heal straight.
It did, but the memory—and the residual pain—still lingers.
After everything else I signed up for, the last decade of my life, nothing has come close to breaking my nose.
Not the bar fights, or when I graduated to cage fights.
Not when I was deployed and forced into close-quarter combat.
“You fought Kade,” Saint says.
“Did he recognize you?”
I sigh.
I knew the questions would circle back to him.
I point to the shot glass, and Saint dutifully takes it.
He puts his hand flat on the table, steadying himself, and grins.
We’re going to be blasted by the time either of us quit.
“He did after we started, but then it was too late. He likes a fight too much to pull out.”
Saint snickers.
“That’s what she said.”
I eye him.
“You ever fuck Artemis?”
He goes still.
Got you, fucker .
“Once,” he admits.
“You?”
“Once,” I echo.
I don’t want to say it, but the single word just slips out.
It’s a lie, though.
It was more than once.
I stand, brushing off my thighs.
“I need air.”
He nods and leans back in his seat, his eyes already drooping.
“Good. Any more alcohol and I’d need my stomach pumped.”
“Eat the pizza,” I advise.
I take a slice for myself.
It’ll be gone before I hit the elevator.
“Yes, sir,” Saint mumbles.
Sarcastic fucker.
My legs aren’t quite steady.
I can’t stop thinking about the last time I was in Sterling Falls.
The last time I was here haunts me, and coming back was a fucking test.
“You’ll like the city,” my mother said, brushing back my hair.
“It’s different.”
My mouth was dry, my excitement buzzing.
She sat next to me this whole trip, stroking my hair while the train sped toward Emerald Cove.
Not our final destination, it would turn out.
From there, we boarded a ferry to Sterling Falls.
I hadn’t been on a boat like that before, so wide and high.
We’d taken little charter boats before, where I could lean over and dip my fingers into the freezing ocean water.
Or kayaks on the lake.
The ferry was awe-inspiring, but I was confused.
Confused about the trip, about why we didn’t pack a lot.
Confused about my father, who seemed to be impersonating a statue.
He typed on his phone, answered work calls, but otherwise didn’t move.
A black SUV awaited us at the top of the pier in Sterling Falls.
The driver stood to the side with a printed sign.
It was Avery in block letters, and I glanced worriedly at my mother.
While we could—and did—afford certain luxuries, she made it seem like this was a spur-of-the-moment trip.
And yet, there was a driver.
A plan set in place that I knew nothing about.
“Where are we going?” I asked again.
She looped her arm through mine and held me close.
In recent months, my body had sprouted.
I grew six inches in three months.
My joints and muscles pulled tight, my limbs still held an ache.
Like being out in the cold for too long and plunging into a warm bath.
But I towered over her now, the top of her head becoming my new constant viewpoint.
Not my father, though.
He still had an inch on me, and muscles, too.
“This is a rite of passage.” He tucks his phone in his pocket.
He chose the front seat, letting the driver open and close the door for us in the back, instead.
Me first, sliding across the black leather, then my mother.
There were water bottles in the doors, soft classical music playing over the speakers.
“What is?”
He twisted around and gave me a look.
One that said to stop talking, to be quiet.
To just wait .
I hated waiting.
The sun set sometime while we were on the ferry, and it was completely dark by the time we reached a nondescript building.
My parents led the way in.
People opened doors for us, someone offered champagne.
Even to me.
I was sixteen and definitely not allowed to be drinking, but nerves got the better of me.
I took the glass and swallowed all of it down before they could take it away.
I set the empty glass back on the tray and continued, my nerves compounded by the fizz in my belly.
We entered a theater and walked down an aisle, having come out on a particular row.
We couldn’t see who was in the other booths, each U-shaped and high-backed.
They faced away from us, and there were privacy screens on the row above us that blocked them out, too.
If anyone was even in the room with us.
We sat, me on one end, my father on the other.
Mom perched in the middle, seeming torn about who to sidle up to.
“Are we watching a play?” I asked her in a low voice.
She shook her head and gave me a small, secret smile.
“Just tell us who you like, darling. All right?”
The lights dimmed, and my attention was dragged to the now-illuminated stage below.
It was dark when we entered, but the spotlight shone in the center.
Waiting for its star.
The whole theater, from what I could tell, was dark velvets.
The paneled walls, the booths.
It screamed luxury. Gold fastenings and accents.
There was a small table in front of us with a lamp and a box with a button.
It turned on at the same time as the spotlight, glowing red.
It switched to green just as a curtain down at the opposite end of the stage rustled, and a girl appeared.
Tall. Blonde. She wore a bikini and heels, and she walked to the center of the stage.
Turned in a slow circle.
Her bikini bottoms didn’t cover any of her ass.
I…
What?
“Do you like her?” Mom inches closer.
“She’s pretty, but you could do better. It’s all about the spark of attraction.”
I tried to lick my lips, but my mouth was too dry.
My heart was beating too fast.
“I don’t understand.”
She touched my knee.
“You will.”
I slam my fist into the wall, cutting off the memory before it can drown me.
I’m not that person.
I will not go down that road again.
Something moves in my peripheral vision.
I whirl toward it, but I’m too slow.
The shadow becomes a beast, which becomes a person.
A person with a pipe in their hand.
They swing it at my head, and I am too slow to react.
The alcohol in my system thoroughly fucks up my timing.
It smashes into my temple, and that’s it. Lights out.