28. Addie
ADDIE
PIANO PEACE – TASTE
“Coronation day, Ice Queen,” Beck said, throwing the curtains of his bedroom wide. “Let’s go get your crown.”
I grumbled something unintelligible but definitely spite-fuelled and curse-laden in my mind—my mouth just couldn’t wrap around the syllables quick enough to keep up.
He barked a short, sharp laugh, caught between his bed and the window. The bed I was now definitely not spread-eagled and drooling in.
“Not a morning person, huh?”
“Not particularly. At least you didn’t bring the bucket this time.”
I tossed the covers back and swung my legs over the edge, wincing at the slight tug in my belly.
Completely ignoring my captive audience, I wrenched the hem of my borrowed shirt upwards to inspect my skin.
When I uncovered a sea of deep violet and mottled green, I gasped, muttering, “What the fuck?” on a stuttered inhale.
Beck padded closer, appearing no worse for wear for having spent the night on a leather couch at least a foot too small for him.
In fact, he was unfairly perfect—clothes unwrinkled, hair artfully mussed, facial hair neatly trimmed, and was that—yes, the air clinging to his form like a forgotten lover smelled like money.
Like Tom Ford and Creed had a baby. Like citrus and sandalwood drizzled in gold.
I couldn’t put my finger on the exact notes, but gods did I want to sit here and try.
He smelled good enough to eat—and I was seconds from falling out of the bed when that thought popped into my wayward brain.
I would have, too—if not for the gigantic pair of warm, tanned hands that caught me on the way down.
“I’d go down…”
Beck frowned. “What?”
Fuck. My eyes almost fell right out of my stupid head, realising I’d said that last part out loud.
Brain, meet mouth. Horrid time to reacquaint yourselves. Perhaps you should meet my foot instead.
“Nothing,” I blurted. “Just bemoaning my lack of hosiery.” I wriggled my bare toes for show, hoping that would be enough to distract him from the earlier admission.
Beckett glanced down, his frown deepening, then strode over to the dresser on the opposite wall.
He plucked a neatly rolled ball of black socks from the top right drawer and turned, hesitating.
Evidently deciding I was more trouble than I was worth, he knelt beside the bed, silently motioning for my foot.
“I can put my own socks on, Beck. Seriously, I already feel way better than I should today.”
He paused, unballed socks held tightly between his fingers.
A light pink stained his cheeks adorably as he cleared his throat and he rumbled, “That’ll be Nadine’s nanotech.
The effects will wear off by dinner, when you’re due for the next one.
We have a lot to do between now and then, so just let me help you get ready so we can go. ”
“Go?” I echoed dumbly.
“We’re not leaving campus if that’s what you’re asking.”
Dang.
“But we are heading to a part of it you’ve never been to before.”
Interest successfully piqued, I grinned, shoving my right foot in his face. “Hurry up, Alfred, we haven’t got all day!”
“Alfred?” He reared back. “You did not just Batman me.”
“Sue me. I’m a wealth of millennial pop culture references,” I snarked back, shoving my sole remaining bare foot into his hands.
“Maybe I will,” he rumbled, rolling his spare sock up my leg, all the way to my mid-calf. His fingertips lingered there, toeing the line between helpful and dangerous.
Suddenly self-conscious and worried about which bits I had shaved and when, I shifted, pulling my foot back.
Beckett let go—fingers flaring—then grunted and rose with the fluidity of a panther. “Since you have nothing else to wear for the time being, you can borrow this”—he tossed me a black standard-issue hoodie, embroidered with the Academy’s winged emblem.
Nothing personal for the big guy anywhere in this place. My gaze flicked to the bookshelf. Well, almost nothing.
I threw the hoodie on, secretly relishing drowning in his cologne, and followed him out into the kitchen where the other two bodyguards—chaperones?
—waited with forced casualness. Deklan leaned back against the counter, sipping from a sage green mug, while Evander sat at the dining table with one ankle resting across his other knee. “Morning,” he hummed happily.
The aroma of fresh coffee assaulted my senses, and if I’d thought Beck smelled good enough to eat earlier, it had nothing on that same scent combining with the one drink I would absolutely have a torrid love affair with, if remotely possible.
“Can I have some of that, please?”
My mouth filled with saliva at the thought. It had been a very long eighteen months caffeine-free as a self-confessed coffeeholic.
Dek’s brows rose and one disappeared beneath his side-swept fringe. “Do my ears deceive me?” he mocked. “Or did our Sleeping Deadly just use the P word?”
“No, she definitely did,” Van answered, grinning. “Although I’m not loving that nickname, dude.”
“Nor am I,” I mumbled, reaching for Deklan’s mug.
He snatched it back, tutting, then procured a hot pink travel mug from the bench behind him. “Yours is to go.”
I almost swooned right then and there. Wist-filled and grateful, I breathed, “Is it too soon to say I love you?”
“Decidedly. But I’ll take it anyway.” He winked, ignoring Van’s scoff and Beck’s eyeroll.
“And on that note, time to roll, Ice Queen.”
Beck opened the apartment door, sweeping his hand to indicate ladies first.
I shoved my feet into my boots that someone had placed neatly by the door, without even bothering to tie the laces, and stomped out into the dimly lit hallway. Beckett closed the door behind us, then fell into step beside me, glancing out the corner of his eye every few seconds.
“What? Do I have something on my face?”
“No. It’s just…” He trailed off, chewing on the words he actually wanted to say. “You seem to be adjusting remarkably well to all this.”
I shrugged. “It’s the meds—they’re making everything much easier.”
“I wasn’t referring to the surgery, although that’s remarkable, too.” His forehead wrinkled. “I mean, accepting the fact that you’re a Swallow and your best friend got the assignment you wanted—”
“If you think I’m the type of person to begrudge my friends their successes, then you don’t have me pegged very well at all, Sir.
” I took a deep breath, waiting for the elevator to reach the fourth floor, and didn’t continue until we were sealed within the cabin.
“I’ve been dealt some pretty shitty cards in this lifetime. What’s one more?”
Instead of pressing the button for the ground floor, Beck clicked the one marked B. His emerald eyes dropped from mine as the cabin descended to the basement level, neither of us saying another word until after the doors opened with a crystalline ding.
Without waiting, he grabbed my hand, laced his fingers through mine, and led the way into a fluorescent-lit garage. I knew without doubt that I was standing in the very same basement, housing the very same unmarked white van that first brought me here. Was I finally leaving?
But instead of swinging left towards the rows upon rows of vans, trucks, bikes, and cars, Beckett guided me right—into a brightly lit lobby, with a plastic-faced, fake-smiled woman seated behind the counter.
“Good morning, Agent Beckett,” she greeted, flashing her perfect teeth at him, even while the potplant behind her withered. “Is this her?” Her chin dipped in my direction, though she did not otherwise deign to acknowledge me.
“Yes,” he growled. “This is my asset, Agent Sinclair. I will be accompanying her into all appointments under strict orders not to let her out of my sight.”
The blonde’s tight face attempted a frown, but due to her forehead being frozen in place, all she could accomplish was a slight twitch of her perfect brows. “That’s not protocol.”
Beck’s jaw slanted. His fingers tightened around mine. “Commander Varco’s orders, Greta.”
Greta blanched and quickly tapped a series of keys on her keyboard, fake nails clacking incessantly. “Right. First up is hair with Gina, then resets with Marie, Pyotr’s application tutorial third, and finally a wardrobe fitting with Stanley.”
Beck tugged me down the hall to the right of Greta’s pale pink and white marble desk. Startled, she called after us, “Third door on the right!”
He grunted a vague assent, then barged into the room she mentioned without so much as a knock. Inside, outfitted in elegant black, white, and gold cohesion, was a full-sized salon.
I blinked rapidly, taking it all in—but most especially the short-statured woman in the centre of the room, completely unfazed by Beckett’s lack of manners.
The woman, who I assumed was the aforementioned Gina, glanced first at Beck, her face softening for half a heartbeat, before she turned her gaze—piercing and unapologetic—on me.
She looked first not at my face, but at the mess attached to my scalp.
Every split end and every tangled knot was another tallymark against me before I ever even opened my mouth.
“Beckett, darling—I know Blackwing focuses on honing skill over appearance, but would it kill you to lend this girl a hairbrush?” Her hawkish eyes flicked again to my waist-length tangles, one dark brow rising in judgement. “Although I do think she might be beyond that.”
Beck, instead of grunting something unintelligible or snappish at Gina, surprised me entirely by laughing at her.
Correction: with her.
Gina’s expression melted when my ogrish companion stepped forward and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. She quickly batted him away with blush-stained cheeks. “Alright then, so this one gets the VIP treatment, does she?”
“She does indeed.” Beck shot me a small but genuine smile over his shoulder. “I don’t care how you make it happen, G, but Addie gets to keep her hair. Same colour, same length, just do something simple with this one.”
G rolled her eyes playfully but crossed the room in tiny, heel-clacking strides. She circled me like a shark, clicking her tongue as she made her way back around to my front.
“Well, then—Addie, is it?”
“Yes ma’am,” I mumbled.
Before I even knew what hit me, Gina clipped the bottom of my chin with her comb, shocking me into a stupor.
“Stand straight, enunciate, and if you know what’s good for you, don’t refer to me as ma’am ever again.
Or you might find that my scissors can get a little snip-happy.
” She raised the other brow in emphasis.
“Yes m—” My eyes bugged, catching myself at the last possible second. “Yes, my lady?”
Gina’s lips twitched as she tried and failed not to laugh. Instead, she threw her head back and howled—revealing a bewildered Beckett behind her.
After a few seconds of uproarious laughter, Gina patted my arm and said, “Oh, I can see why you like her, Beckett. Come this way, dear, and let’s get this mess fixed up.”
Gina led me to the nearest chair—an obnoxiously designed but ridiculously comfortable black-and-gold leather stool—propped in front of a floor-length, gold-rimmed mirror. She met my gaze in the glass, still smirking, and began working her way through the tangles.
“How are my other two favourites?” She tossed the question over her shoulder to where Beck now waited lounging on a tiny sofa to the right of the door. He looked ridiculous—like a Ken doll in a tiny Barbie Dreamhouse.
“Is Van still growing out his hair?”
“No, I think he’s content to follow orders and leave it as is,” Beck answered, chuckling softly.
Gina beamed. “Oh, good, so that brain of his does know when to listen to those who know more than him.” She leaned in, conspiratorially whispering in my left ear, “The last time I saw that boy, he’d decided to grow out those beautiful caramel locks purely for the purpose of tying them back into a manbun!
” Aghast, she pulled a face I couldn't help but giggle at.
“As for Deklan, well. He still insists on box-dyeing his hair black and messing up every style I try to fix for him.”
“A travesty, honestly.”
She tapped the top of my head with her comb. “I don’t know you well enough to know if you’re being snide or not, but in giving you the benefit of the doubt, you’re right. It is a travesty. He has the most beautiful, rich, chocolate-brown hair.”
A soft smile graced my lips. “He must have ditched the box dye then, because I’ve only known him to have chocolate-brown hair.”
Gina dropped the section she was working on to clap—excitement made audible.
She continued to prattle on about things I didn’t care to listen to for an hour, holding an entire conversation by herself.
The whole while, I scrutinised her—trying to place who she reminded me of.
It was on the tip of my tongue… someone I knew well, yet not at all…
someone irritatingly familiar, yet not close enough to know overly much about.
I glanced over at Beck, who was pretending to read a lifestyle magazine, but was really staring at us over the top edge of its pages—its upside-down cover was a dead giveaway if his sparkling irises weren’t.
I couldn’t see his mouth, but the lines surrounding those smouldering eyes wrinkled in a way that suggested a peaceful kind of joy I’d never seen etched across his features before.
For some reason, it unsettled me, and I twisted back around just as Gina announced she’d finished. And it was then—when she made that proud declaration, tacking the word darling onto the end—that I successfully placed her.
Gina was a real-life Edna Mode.
Stifling a giggle, I examined her handiwork in that fancy mirror.
It had been a very long time since I’d been able to catch my reflection in anything but stained glass windows and the screens of dying laptops.
Staring hard, I barely recognised the woman who peered back. She was harder and colder than any version I’d met before—but I knew that sparkle of joy still existed somewhere within her ironclad exterior. At least until Blackwing extinguished that tiny glimmer too.