Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lance
“I’m sorry.” The words feel hollow. I’m sorry I disappointed Alana, but I have zero regrets about Izzy and Drew. I know I fucked up calling Izzy by her real name, but she hasn’t been Nessie in my head for a while now, and Champ feels like a nickname for Drew more than a code name. The kinda name a dad would use. Yep, I’m going to need time to unpack that little truth bomb later.
Reason number 386 it sucks working for your roommate: She knows what I’m thinking before I do. “I am well aware of your personal feelings, but I’m pretty sure your feelings are the reason you’re in this mess. Check your head.”
“Why don’t you fire me and get it over with?” Ten fucking years I’ve been by her side. I make one breach in protocol, and she’s punishing me in the worst possible way.
Alana enunciates every single letter in the words, “I can’t.”
She can’t? Fuck her. “Oh like how you can’t pick a logo because it means this is real.” I wave my hand around her office. “That this is your life. Because deep down you think you’re too good to be babysitting celebrities.”
Her eyes blaze because I hit her where it hurts. And the biggest crime of all? I’m right. Alana speaks five languages, she owns a startup tech company she funded back in college, she has ten billionaires, eight members of Congress, and four world leaders’ numbers in her phone. She’s been privately trained by former KGB, CIA, and a legit spy network. Penny taught her how to hack. Alana could be anything, but no. She chose to be here, and she’s been regretting it ever since.
I brace myself for the attack, the sort of verbal punishment that will slice my soul in half. But it doesn’t come. She sits at her desk, silent for a second. “I’m dying here.” Her voice loses its edge. “I’m drowning in debt, death threats, and insurance bullshit. Plus a fucking manhunt for your girlfriend’s ex. I hired five scouts and a tracker, but Mike Bringsea is slippery and apparently a champion at Hide and Seek.” She hangs her head, shoulders slumped, the only sign of defeat she’ll give. “Why couldn’t you just wait?”
Ouch. That hurt. We’ve seen each other at our lowest. We’ve walked into war zones together. You don’t have a friendship as deep as ours without a few fights. But this one feels different. Because this time I disappointed her.
She doesn’t even meet my eyes when she says, “You’re back on Honey Badger’s team.”
The irony isn’t lost on me at all. She’s sending me back into my old world—glamor, gourmet food, everything I was. And now, I don’t want it. I want to be with Izzy and Drew. I want to be in that world. Isn’t that where I belong?
Months ago I would’ve felt perfectly at home in this three piece custom suit, standing in the foyer of a multimillion dollar house with a Monet on the wall. I think the floors were shipped in from the home of a fallen dictator in one of those super small island countries. But Honey Badger wasn’t the one who installed them. The house came with it, and she wanted to move in without any hassle.
Honey Badger comes down the stairs wearing four-inch stiletto heels. Again. I’ve warned her about a million times not to walk down the stairs in those, but she never listens. She finished her world tour about two weeks ago, spending a few days in Terceira Island to go hiking around the volcano and to be someplace quiet to recharge. She’s been to the Azores six times since Alana went a few years ago. Beauty, nature, and easily forgotten, it’s the exact sort of place Honey Badger needs to be when she’s coming down off of a tour high.
She’s wearing a short dress, shimmery. In fact, everything about her has a glittery glow. “Lance!” She jumps the last two stairs, and in my head I imagine her snapping her ankle and the wrath of shit Alana would give me if anything ever happened to Honey Badger. The singer sticks the landing and throws her arms around me. Very unprofessional, but she’s always been the exception to the rule…well her and Izzy.
“Hey,” I say, returning the hug. “How was the last few months?”
“Fine…but I didn’t get to go to the Pokémon Center.” She pouts as she slides off of me. “It was a security risk or something.”
“One of the guys didn’t get you a Valorpoon? Surely someone on your staff could have picked one up for you.”
She sighs, pushing her hair over her shoulders. “It’s not the same.”
I know.
It sucks she couldn’t do the one thing she enjoys—well, besides meeting fans, performing, and the applause. She really does love touring.
This is the first time I’m seeing her since Alana had me watching the house, rereading protocol manuals, and doing sexual harassment training before I could be with a client.
My phone buzzes against my chest. It’s not my work phone, it’s a burner Specs slipped me so I could talk with Izzy and Drew. It’s only been a few days, but it feels like ten years. Ian and Drew had a math test today, and it’s time for pick up.
Honey Badger curls her lip as her eyes narrow with every buzz of the phone. “Go on, you can answer it.”
I shouldn’t. I am aware of how unprofessional this is. I can’t.
“I won’t tell Alana,” Honey Badger says as she turns her back.
I’m already reaching for the phone and saying, “Thank you,” but she’s half way to the kitchen.
On the fourth vibration I finally pick up, “You wanna talk to the kids?” Specs asks, and it’s exactly what I need.
“Absolutely.”
Four voices chatter at once and yell, “HI, LANCE.”
“How are my favorite monsters doing?”
Maria’s sweet, high-pitched voice cuts through the noise. “Shae has a boyfriend!”
Shae responds with, “No, I have a boy who is a friend and who talks to me. But he is not my boyfriend.” There’s a long pause before, “Please don’t tell my dad.”
I laugh. “And what’s in it for me?”
“Ten billion Glitter Bucks. That’s the currency for the fictional country Maria’s the dictator of.”
Maria squawks at the perceived injustice. “No…I am a queen, and everyone loves me.”
The two girls go back and forth about the definition of a dictator. I smile so much my facial muscles strain under the sudden use. Drew yells over them, “Lance, the worst thing happened!”
My heart stops. If something truly bad happened, someone would have told me, right? Right? “What’s wrong?”
“Ian and I have to perform our wax museum on Family Day. In front of everyone!”
Oh, okay. Oh, no. There’s torture, and there’s this fresh hell. “I’m so sorry, Champ.”
The next voice sounds strained. “Will you be there?” Ian. That’s the longest sentence I’ve heard from him in English.
My heart shatters into ten billion pieces all over the imported tile floor.
Maria pipes in. “Where did you go? Are you mad at us?” Her voice cracks.
I drag my hand down my face. This is the worst. “No, I’m not mad at you. I had to switch jobs.”
Shae answers with more confidence than she should. “He got in trouble for kissing Drew’s mom. But my sister says Aunt Izzy is hot, and he should go for it.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Lance has got to go, bye.” Thank you, Specs. Sliding my phone back into my inner pocket, I head into Honey Badger’s kitchen.
Where I find her spider-monkey crawling on the counter to get to the top shelf of the cabinets. A fucking heart attack, that’s what she’s going to give me. And she’s still in the damn heels. I grab her by the waist with one arm, but she fights me, “I can get it!” There’s a blue bowl just out of her grasp.
I don’t let go until her toes are on the ground. “Jesus! Is this the sort of shit you were doing while I wasn’t around?”
“No, it’s the sort of shit I’ve been doing all my life.” It should be noted that without shoes, Honey Badger clocks in at five foot one and a hundred fifteen pounds. She’s been scaling her cabinets for years. Hell, I’d seen her do it myself. But since watching the kids, I see threats in places that I never did before.
I grab the bowl, and it clangs on the counter. “Be careful, Alana’s already pissed at me. I don’t know what she’ll do if you get hurt on my watch.”
Honey Badger smirks and crosses her arms, pushing her hip to one side. “No, I think she’d be more pissed if you try to fuck me.”
It would almost be funny, except it isn’t at all. “I’d be dead, and no one would find the body.” I have no doubt Alana has ways to inflict a painful demise and destroy the corpse.
She brushes past me to peruse the fridge. She basically sticks her whole body in there but emerges with arms full of vegetables. Honey Badger flutters around her kitchen, getting a cutting board and knife. “Go wash the vegetables.”
“Not in my job description.” But I do as I’m told because I guess food safety does fall under the umbrella of protection. I start off with the lettuce.
She waves the knife in my direction. “Seems like you’re doing a lot of things not in your job description.” Grabbing the leafy greens from me, she starts chopping. “So, tell me about this girl you’re willing to risk your life, career, and only stable relationship for.”
Yikes, I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Is Izzy worth losing all that? I figured my career could be over, and sure messing around with a Mafia princess has its own sets of dangers. And I figured Alana would be pissed, but she’d get over it.
But maybe not. We haven’t spoken except through company emails, and she’s given me the silent treatment at home.
My mind flashes on images of both Drew and Izzy. “Well, she’s smart, albeit a little obsessed with Bigfoot. She loves cake, The Knights of the Night, and her kid. Her favorite dinosaur is a flamingo, and when I’m around her, I feel lighter. Like I’m constantly worried something will happen to her—more than the usual—but for the first time, I see my future, and I want it with her.”
Honey Badger has moved on to chopping peppers, and she puts a pathetic amount in the bowl. One pepper does not make a salad. “I’ve never heard you say that before. Although I have my concerns that she doesn’t know what a dinosaur is.” She moves on to the avocado, pausing for a second. “Oh, dinosaurs evolved into birds, got it.” She stabs the pitwith the knife and gives me a heart attack…images of her slicing her hand and an emergency room visit flash through my head. How is it that this tiny singer is more stressful than a woman and her ten-year-old son who’ve got a literal psychopath after them? “Do you have any pictures of her?”
I’m about to argue that taking pictures of clients would be highly unprofessional, but I have like ten on my phone. I show her a picture I took of us at the wedding, five hours before I changed our relationship forever. Honey Badger glances down, pinches the screen to zoom in on Izzy, and her face softens. “Yeah, I can see why you like her.” There’s a moment of silence as she finishes making the salad. “I get why Alana says Izzy is ‘okay.’”
“Just ‘okay?’” I huff.
She hands me a fork before dumping an unhealthy amount of dressing into the bowl. Stabbing a piece of lettuce she says, “That’s the highest endorsement I’ve ever heard Alana say. She loves me, and she quote ‘finds me mildly amusing.’ She loves you too and thinks you’re ‘not a complete bag of shit.’”
Sinking my fork into the lackluster salad, I say, “You know, ‘not a bag a shit’ leaves a lot of room. I’m everything above a bag of shit.”
“And everything below it.” Her shoulders shake in a little victory dance. Not sure when she picked that up, but it seems to be a recent addition to her personality. She takes a big bite of salad and covers her mouth with her hand. “Did you think about me while you were away?”
“Sure.”
“As much as you think about the Roman Empire?”
I push the salad away and jolt back. “The Romans changed human history…of course I think about them more. You sing songs about guys going down on you in a limo. There’s no freaking comparison.”
She smirks and grabs the bowl as she heads out to the patio. “Welcome home, Lance.”
Home. Three months ago this was my home. Now it feels like a place to stay.