10. April 10, 2023
Cherry
After Flame left her apartment to say goodbye to TB, Cherry wrestled with her conscience about what the woman had asked her to do.
She wanted to. More than anything.
The moment Demon’s eyes met hers after he accepted Tribe’s proposal, she had felt the pull.
She would have been willing to bet that if anyone had been watching, it would have looked like a volcanic eruption compared to what Waters and Kubrick had experienced when they saw each other for the first time, and that first meeting had been scorching.
Traditional flirtation was not Demon’s style, but they had their own version with each other, and it wasn’t sly innuendos, winking eyes, and smirks.
He threw out witty barbs, and she made snappy comebacks.
He watched her with heat, and she gazed back with storm clouds.
He developed a tic in his cheek when he was working hard not to smile or laugh at her, and she had a nasty eye roll when he managed to one-up her in a conversation or situation.
If people weren’t watching closely, it looked like they didn’t like each other very much or that, at best, they tolerated each other with heavy frustration on both sides.
Not one to lie to herself, as a rule, she acknowledged there was definitely frustration on her side.
Her personal shopping account could attest to that.
In the past six years, she’d worn out way more vibrators than she should have needed to work through said frustration.
And as the office manager of Tribe, she handled all the deadmen’s personal accounts.
She wasn’t sure what Demon’s equivalent for that situation was, but if she had to hazard a guess?
It had to do with how often he purchased new surfboards.
He broke a lot of them. She hadn’t even known it was possible to break a surfboard.
Since her father had disappeared, it had been nothing but work.
Her focus was absolute. Then one dark-haired Irishman entered the building, and suddenly, she had something else vying for her attention.
Her cold, barren workday had heat in it.
The thrill of their verbal sparring had been what made most days of running Tribe from behind the scenes exciting.
So when he had pressed a few times for something more, despite the warmth it gave her that he was interested, the thought of pushing past the current dynamic caused her to break out into a cold sweat.
What if it didn’t work out? Working with him would be unbearable.
It wasn’t as if either of them could quit and go somewhere else.
She’d rather have what they currently had than risk losing it forever.
Reality hit her hard. Demon had a dangerous job.
The team members could, and sometimes had, been captured by others who had murder on their minds.
Steel had been a SEAL until something from his past caused him to break ranks illegally.
Eventually, his actions caused him to be held in several black sites.
While on assignment as a SEAL, someone attacked Waters, resulting in the loss of a kidney.
Several years later, enemies kidnapped his sister and subsequently captured and tortured him in a rescue attempt.
Last year, a near-explosion in a diamond mine nearly killed their former teammate, Nemo.
All the men had suffered bullet wounds, knife wounds, broken bones, and brutal beatings over the course of their work for Tribe. It came with the gig.
Angels above! What if Demon disappeared or died on a project?
Something out of her control had taken the only other people Cherry ever truly loved from her—her mother, her father, Sarah.
She didn’t think she could bear it if it happened again.
Was Flame right? Was it better to have him for as long as she could, even with so many unknowns?
More importantly, would it be better to have him for even the shortest of times than to never have him at all?
She was an idiot. Instead of having a conversation with him about it like an adult, she thoughtlessly gave him an ultimatum—a Herculean labor.
Quit his pain medication, and they could be together.
She’d protected herself from pain because she knew he would never give the medication up, so she was safe from having to follow through.
Unfortunately, she fell in love with him instantly, and one moment of diarrhea of the mouth doomed her to be alone.
At least this way, she’d still be able to see him every day.
Back in September, she thought she’d earned a chance to give in with grace and not look weak.
The day she and Gem had nearly been blown up at that café, and he’d gone all Neanderthal on her, initially, she’d thought it would reset their relationship.
Then all of her secrets came out, and it had driven them apart.
From then on, it felt like her heart hurt a little more every time they saw each other.
Although heated stares and a tic in his jaw persisted, their relationship had changed.
The witty barbs had morphed into grunts, growls, and conversations with himself in Gaelic, which he knew she couldn’t understand.
It felt like she’d lost him anyway. These last seven months of bitter sniping at each other had been soul-crushing.
She hated it. She wanted the fun version of sniping with Demon back.
She wanted to feel her insides get jittery and excited at the thought of seeing him each day.
To compound the problem, she’d been stewing over Demon’s words on the day of the bombing regarding her reckless disregard for their lives.
Some would call him cruel, or at the least callous, in his verbal attack.
Yes, he’d been far more direct than any of the others would have been.
But she knew his purpose had been to impress upon her that she couldn’t go it alone anymore, and she’d forgiven him quickly.
The awkwardness between them was more about her embarrassment at being in the wrong.
It hadn’t been her intention to put them more at risk. She’d just wanted to make sure they didn’t lose focus on what she needed them to do so they could get to the endgame of finding out what happened to her father. However, intentions didn’t matter if the result was damaging to them.
He was right. She had been managing them without allowing them a say, whether in the form of consent to work on her goals or in terms of how to work with them.
He and the rest of the team had every right to be pissed off at her.
Painful didn’t even describe her daily working experience.
How could she even hope for a relationship with Demon when she couldn’t respect his most basic right as her co-worker?
By the time she stood in front of the elevator doors with her luggage, she’d convinced herself to let it go.
To not act on her feelings. Yes, she was hurting over it, but better now than later.
She was so caught up in her own head, when the doors to the elevator opened, she didn’t realize there was another passenger until she’d stepped inside.
Since he didn’t seem to pay attention to her, instead staring at the floor, she turned and contemplated the door.
When the door closed and started its descent, he spoke. “Maybe you should give yourself a break.”
Cherry turned and looked over her shoulder into the steel-gray eyes of the man who earned his nickname for them alone. “Excuse me?”
He reached out to punch the emergency stop button, causing the elevator to halt its progress and the emergency lighting to go on.
Moving to lean against the back wall, he crossed his arms over his chest, crossed one ankle over the other, and looked up at the ceiling.
He muttered to himself, “Having personal conversations in stopped elevators. Feel like that dude on that show.”
“Gibbs? On NCIS ?”
“The redhead with the sunglasses maneuver?”
“Different show.”
“Whoever the guy is who’s always slapping people on the back of the head.”
“Yeah. That’s Gibbs. He’s either fighting with someone or imparting words of wisdom when he does it. Which is this?”
He pursed his lips, not contemplating the nonmoving numbers above the door. “I just thought maybe instead of beating yourself up like you have been the last few months, you could let it go and move on.”
She turned to face the doors. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s time to admit you fucked up, and… what’s the saying? ‘Build a bridge and get over it’?”
She whirled around on him, knocking over her suitcase with the force of the turn. “If you have something to say, just say it!”
With no show of emotion, he leaned over to pick up her suitcase and right it.
Standing next to her, he pierced her with eyes no target wanted on them.
“Forgive yourself, Cherry. For months, everyone’s been walking on their tiptoes around you.
The truths you laid on us the day of the bombing?
Yeah, we were pissed off. For all of a hot minute.
By the end of the day, we’d forgiven you.
We have said nothing because there’s nothing to say that can change any of it, so it’s better to move forward.
Well, Waters might have some things to say, but that’s a whole other story.
You’re the one holding on to that fuckery, so let it go. ”
She ducked her head. “I don’t think I deserve to. I kept secrets. I’ve put you all at risk. I wasn’t thinking.”
“ Cariňo , we put ourselves at risk every time we go on a project. We know the risks are higher than normal since we signed on. That was driven home clearly when we were told about the final edict. ”
“You don’t feel like I endangered you? I’ve been told my hubris might have caused Sarah’s death. Waters must hate me.”
“Look. It’s not as if we weren’t engaging in behaviors just as risky before Tribe took us in.
For fuck’s sake, I was breaking out of black sites, then getting thrown back in.
If Waters hadn’t rescued me from that Nicaraguan drain, they probably would have shot me on sight when they found me again.
Cherry… if anything, Tribe saved all our lives from our own self-destructive ways. ”
He shrugged. “So you didn’t share what the motivation for forming the company was.
It’s not like any of us, including you, even knew that the Salieri existed, let alone the depth of their depravity.
I don’t know that there’s anyone who could have imagined this in a million years.
As far as you knew, your father’s disappearance could have been a simple kidnapping for ransom that went wrong somehow.
Hell, we still don’t know the motivation for his disappearance, even if we’re pretty certain it had to do with his private investigations. ”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “As far as Waters hating you, if you’re that worried about it, talk to him. Everyone can feel the tension that’s strung even tighter between the two of you. Maybe he’s waiting for you to open that door, if it’s even an issue for him.”
Cherry smiled weakly at him. “Thank you. I owe everyone an apology, so for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I never imagined my choice to keep things secret would have these far-reaching effects.”
“No matter how much we consider our actions and plan for contingencies, there are always things that can still be unexpected. We know that every time we go out. Why would real life be any different?” He reached up to curl his hand around her neck, pulling her forehead to his.
“We’re good, cariňo . You could dig a hole, push me in it, and bury me alive, and we’d still be good. ”
“That was creepily specific.”
The smile and the shrug reappeared. “Probably not less than I deserve. But Cherry… we all have secrets. Tribe doesn’t know everything, even about us. ”
“I know yours,” she whispered. “I’ve been watching. If I see anything about them you need to know, I’ll tell you.”
His pupils flared, and his tan skin paled for the briefest of moments. Watching him shut down the one and only time she had ever seen him show fear was terrifying in itself. “ Gracias .” He kissed her cheek, then added, “I need a favor, cariňo .”
“What?”
“Talk to D too. The two of you are giving me indigestion. I’d call it heartburn, but I think that’s more like what you two have.
” He hit the emergency stop button again to make the elevator continue its journey.
When the doors opened on the third floor, he exited.
Over his shoulder, he called out, “Consider that your metaphorical slap on the back of the head.”
The doors closed, and the elevator stayed put.
She realized she’d never hit the button for floor two when she got on the elevator earlier.
Needing a moment to think, she stood in the unmoving car, contemplating Steel’s words.
The man never talked, but when he did? He tended to unload a lot of shit at once, all of it smart, and it could be overwhelming.
Could she do it? Could she ease her own burdens that easily? Just talk to Waters, and that would be enough to make everything okay again? Seemed too good to be true.
And Demon? Three sentences and now she was rethinking her stance of “let it lie.”