27. Addie
ADDIE
PARAMORE – FOR A PESSIMIST, I’M PRETTY OPTIMISTIC
I came to without opening my eyes, knowing inherently that I was no longer in the medlab. I was somewhere warm, somewhere cosy, somewhere that smelled like pancakes and expensive cologne.
I moaned, and my mouth filled with saliva the longer I lay unmoving and not eating delicious breakfast-dessert.
“Does it hurt?” a familiar voice murmured from somewhere close by, low and smooth.
I cracked one eye open, jerking back at the startling realisation that a set of hazel eyes was fixed on me from way too far inside my personal space bubble.
But the action tugged on something sharp in my lower abdomen, slamming me with the awareness that I was now sans one faulty uterus and in someone else’s bed recovering from major surgery.
“Shit, sorry, my bad,” Pearce said, wincing. “How can I help?”
“By backing the fuck up and fetching me some ibuprofen or something,” I rasped.
“You got it, Deadly. I’ll get you some water too.”
“Don’t call me that.”
But he ignored the demand in lieu of humming a familiar song. One I hadn’t heard in literal years. Not since I snuck into a stadium they were playing at and watched Hayley headbang along to the music like she’d never have back problems to worry about.
Pearce shifted from humming to all-out singing, and suddenly the apartment went from a humble abode to a concert hall.
He belted out the lyrics of For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic with a skill that would absolutely make the band proud, and I was forced to once again shift my perspective on one of my three captors.
Unwilling to bed-thieve any longer, I tossed back the covers and slowly found my feet.
I wriggled my toes as a wave of pain lanced my belly, bemoaning the fact that I’d lost my socks somewhere along the way, and had somehow acquired an oversized band shirt in my sleep.
It was black and disgustingly soft—the kind of soft that spoke to years of regular wear—bearing an elegantly interlinked V and A right above my heart.
“Venom Arcade,” I mused, testing the words beneath the logo aloud, and finding I quite liked the taste of them rolling off my tongue one after the other.
Pearce danced around the kitchen, oblivious. He collected things and put together a plate of food, all while I watched from the doorway, sceptical yet highly amused.
Not that I’d let him know it.
Not until he’d paid me back in an equal level of mortification like he’d subjected me to the last time I was here.
And maybe not until I’d sabotaged his career as well.
Pearce whirled around, using a spatula as a makeshift microphone—surprisingly on key—freezing mid-lyric when he finally noticed me watching. He pointed the utensil at my chest accusingly. “Not a word.”
I fought back a grin. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
His shoulders dropped in stark relief, the tension leaving him.
“You get a whole sentence.”
His eyes shot to mine, panic lingering within those hazel depths.
“I don’t know how the fuck you found out, Pearce,” I began, wincing when adjusting my posture tugged at whatever stitches I now possessed, “but you just sang a surprisingly impressive rendition of a song off my favourite album of all time, in a way that Hayley herself would be proud of, and what’s worse is I don’t even think you were singing singing, but more just mucking-around-in-the-kitchen singing. ”
He shrugged casually, in a way that told me he knew exactly what I was talking about and that yes, he absolutely could do better than that in a different setting.
Bastard.
I’d always wanted to be good at that. Maybe then I’d be on a stage somewhere, not hiding in the shadows waiting to kill the people who were.
“Here, take this,” Pearce said, handing me a heat pack he’d had the forethought to warm up. “And stop calling me Pearce.”
“Fine. Thanks for this, Donkey.”
Deklan—because I couldn’t refer to him as an animated ass in my head—gaped. Then, realising he could catch a whole host of flies in that mouth, slammed his jaw shut with an audible clack. The muscles in his cheeks worked as he chewed on my favoured substitution.
“I’ll have you know that movie won an Academy Award, Adelaide Sinclair. It is a classic. The absolute best the early noughties had to offer,” he harrumphed, looking for all the world like he was a second away from toddler-esque foot stomping.
I snorted. “You’d know all about naughties, wouldn’t you, Sir?” A smirk played at the corner of my lips—matching the one in the corner of his.
“What did I tell you, Deadly?” he drawled, stepping closer.
“That the use of the word Sir in that context was a kink.” I bit my lip to stop the smile from spreading.
“Correct.” He stepped closer again, now a foot away.
Leaning in to whisper in my ear, he said, “But not one of mine.” He pulled back with a wink, then turned his back and led the way through to the couch.
“Come on, hotshot. Time to see if you can back up those real life skills with ones of the digital variety.”
He waited until I found a comfortable position on the leather surface—cross-legged and kind of curled in on myself—then handed me the plate of food. “But first, eat.”
Never one to look a gift pancake in the mouth, I dug in. Forgoing the offered cutlery and ignoring Deklan’s little snickers at my voracity, I managed to shove three chocolate chip pancakes, two hard-boiled eggs, and a strip of bacon into my mouth before my stomach rebelled.
“Where are the others? And who said you were allowed to sing and cook?” I asked around a mouthful of the last pancake.
Deklan laughed softly, swapping the plate with a controller and taking the former back to the kitchen.
“Van is packing up his desk”—he shot me a pointed look—“and Beck is in a meeting with the Commander. Both will be back any minute now, then I’ll have to share you.
” He pouted, racking the freshly washed dish and coming back over to the couch.
He sat beside me, seeing as I’d parked my ass right in the middle, but moved so slowly it was almost comical.
“Also, nobody said I could sing and cook. Beck prepared it before he left, figuring you’d be hungry when you woke. Our little Sleeping Deadly was apparently anaemic, borderline malnourished, and possessed a uterus three times the size of what one is supposed to be.”
“Huh,” I murmured. “Well, you can blame Blackwing’s dietary offerings for that middle part, but the other two are entirely genetic.”
He blinked, leaning back. “Huh.”
“Now before you get all soppy and sombre about it, just know that I was looking into this exact surgery before the Academy nabbed me off the streets of London.”
“Huh… Press A,” he murmured, smoothly dropping the subject.
“Just so you’re aware, videogames tend to make me angry.”
He barked a startled laugh. “Whatever for?”
“I’ve never been able to get my brain and my fingers to team up long enough to get good at it. I usually—” I was cut off by a series of snickers.
“Your mind seemed to like my fingers,” Deklan chuckled darkly.
“An experience that will never happen again,” I said sweetly, pressing a button on the controller that plunged us headlong into some first-person shooter game.
“Cheater,” he teased. “Though by the looks of that”—he nodded at the right half of the screen, where my character was spinning in circles because I couldn’t work out the damn joysticks—“you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“Rude,” I muttered, earning another round of sniggers.
The apartment door banged open a few minutes later, and the other two amigos wandered in—Beckett, with arms laden with paper grocery bags, and Evander, with an office box presumably filled with capture sheets and an empty whisky bottle.
“Jesus fuck, who’s on the right-hand side?” Evander griped. “It’s making me feel sick just looking at it.”
“Then don’t look at it,” I grumbled. “Or better yet, teach me how to kick his ass properly.”
“With pleasure,” he drawled, throwing himself down onto the couch to my right.
I hissed as a sharp burst of pain tore through my abdomen, and the men on either side of me flinched, inciting a second wave. The sound of something crinkly and heavy thudded to the floor somewhere in the background, then Beckett was in my face demanding answers.
“Which one of these two morons hurt you?”
“Neither—”
“Don’t lie to me, Adelaide. You were fine a second ago.”
“Define fine.”
“Not hissing in pain.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then yes, by that definition, I was fine.”
“So who was it?”
“I plead the fifth.”
He rolled his eyes. “We don’t have that here. And you’re British, anyway.” He leaned in closer, bracketing me in with his arms. “Who?”
“What?”
“Who?”
I snickered, immediately regretting it and clutched at my belly again. “What are you, an owl?”
“Not my bird classification, no,” he grumbled, unamused. “I suggest you stop avoiding the question.”
I glanced at his wrist—to where the faded black silhouette of his ranking was permanently inked on his skin, in the exact same place as mine.
Then dropped my gaze to my lap—to the wrist I hadn’t thought to inspect, or the tiny, clear dressing I was struggling to look at.
Instead of the eagle I’d fought so hard for, a tiny black swallow winked up at me.
Scrunching my face to offset the sudden urge to cry, I flipped my hand over and started tapping my thighs. A melody whirled through my mind, one that both soothed and saddened me, and I leaned into it. I imagined I was pressing shiny keys, and that I was the one making the music linger in the air.
“Adelaide,” Beckett said, though his voice sounded far off.
“It was me,” Evander admitted, equally distant.
Ignoring their bickering voices, I drifted further into the tranquillity of my go-to sad song. Moonlight Sonata flew beneath my fingertips on my imaginary piano until I was done, and only then did I open my eyes to three concerned stares who had apparently waited for me to finish.
“What?”
Beckett frowned. “You vanished.”
Deklan nodded. “No response until just now.”