Chapter 9
NINE
LEO
Motorcycles made me nauseous.
I wasn’t sure if it was because Alex was the one driving, or if I wasn’t built to zip through the city on a toy while car horns honked and red lights were run. If I didn’t think so before, now I was sure. Alex had a fucking death wish, and she was taking me into the ground with her.
“Slow down!” I yelled for the eighteenth time.
She didn’t hear me, or pretended not to as she laid on the throttle.
So tiny, and so fucking terrifying. The woman feared absolutely nothing.
I held onto her tighter, some vain attempt at convincing myself that if we crashed, I’d be able to shield her, and save us both.
But fire didn’t usually help situations like that, so I wasn’t sure what I thought I could do.
Do I have a will? After eight years of Hero work, the thought finally popped into my head.
All it took was a madwoman on wheels.
We sat at a red light, the bike rumbling beneath us as Alex kept her gaze fixated ahead.
I took the opportunity to breathe, leaning back from where I’d clung to her.
My hands stayed on her hips, unwilling to let go in case she decided to jerk us forward again.
Her skin was cooler to the touch than mine; even through her tank top—which left her arms and shoulders completely unprotected and at risk for some serious road rash—the chill was almost soothing.
My gaze trailed down her neck, peeking around the black braid she’d tied her hair into.
A small white scar sat below her ear on the left side, right where all Variants got their chips.
I narrowed in on a black mark at the base of her neck, and pushed her braid aside to get a better look, my hands moving on their own.
She waved an arm behind her, batting me away, but I’d already caught a glimpse of the delicate outline of a rose tattoo.
When did she get that?
I didn’t know Alex had tattoos. I didn’t know much about her at all, actually.
Only what I’d observed in the academy, and what Joon had mentioned about her.
Her parents worked hard; they grew up together, and Alex used to cry a lot.
I always thought that detail was weird; she never cried at the academy.
She only fought back, even when she was pounded into dust during training.
I hated to admit it, but she was kind of a badass.
In the academy, I could only fixate on her size, and the way her ability left her completely vulnerable.
She couldn’t be on the field—if she fell asleep, it would be left to her partner to wake her up, or protect her from whatever was around them.
Joon was certain that she could do it, but it always gnawed at me, that feeling of holding my breath every time she entered the arena to spar.
The first time she got hurt, I wanted to vomit.
I’d seen bad injuries, experienced many of them myself, but healers could always help us recover.
Alex had gone in against a Variant that could create spikes from his body; large pikes that shredded flesh.
She hadn’t gotten to him in time, and he impaled her. Seven times.
I’d never seen so much blood before then.
Joon had run for her, and I’d found myself following him.
A healing Variant worked on her for three hours before she came to and slapped a grin on her face with pride for surviving it.
I didn’t want to see her like that again; I didn’t want to watch Joon pace in front of her hospital room every time she got hurt. I didn’t want us to go to her funeral.
That feeling only grew throughout the years. Each time she got beaten up, that feeling in my chest expanded. Joon knew; always watching me, watching her. But the warning remained—stay away from Alex, so she doesn’t get burned.
I hated that it hurt. Alex got her ass handed to her in training battles, just like Joon and I did. But I was meant to keep my distance; I was the one punished. There was only one time that I brought it up, though. One time was all it took for Joon to put me back in my place.
“She gets hurt in training, when we are supposed to hurt each other. It looks bad, it is bad, but it can be healed,” Joon had said.
“You both went after each other that day. Both of you used your abilities out of anger, not necessity. There is a difference between hurting someone out of emotion, and hurting someone because you have to. Your ability is something she wouldn’t survive,”
By the time we reached headquarters, my hair was a frazzled mess, and I was sitting in a pool of self loathing.
I wished I had been nicer to her; maybe then she would have reached out after Joon passed.
I wished we’d found some common ground; maybe I would’ve known more about her Hero work, how important it was.
I wished that I hadn’t lost my temper, and I wished she would talk to me like I wasn’t the enemy.
I wished I didn’t have to be her enemy.
“Not bad, right?” Alex removed her helmet, and a grin spread across her cheeks.
I wanted that smile to stay there, but I didn’t know how to make it happen. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Nope, definitely not the right words.
Her face fell, and she rolled her eyes. “Of course it was.”
“How many tattoos do you have?” I asked quickly, trying to fix it, trying desperately to keep her talking to me.
But she shrugged me off, already waltzing into the tall building made of windows, as if she owned it. “More than you’d think, but you’ll never find them.”
I paused behind her, my face contorting. “Huh?”
She turned back, a smirk on her pink lips as she undid the braid in her hair and tied it up into that classic ponytail. “You can’t see the rest with my clothes on.”
With a last wink, Alex headed inside, and I was left on the street with my jaw on the pavement.
Something tugged in my stomach, and I didn’t want to call it desire.
Alex was Joon’s family—now that he was gone and she’d rejoined the VIA, my mission was to protect her.
I couldn’t act on the thoughts that used to slip into my mind, the ones that would come up and choke me right before I said something fucked up to push them away.
Just play it cool, Leo. Take down the organization and get her out of the VIA. Everything will go back to normal after that.
Right?
“The eight Variants you caught haven’t cracked, and none of them have chips. They’re ghosts to the VIA, and we don’t have anything to leverage against them,” Dahlia sighed as we sat in her office. “I’m hoping you live up to your name, Daydream.”
Alex cocked her head beside me, and I was too fixated on the space between us on the leather couch we sat on. I took up most of the room, and my weight nearly made her slide into me as she sat squeezed against the other side. She latched to the arm of the couch like a lifeline.
It bothered me how much she pulled away.
Was I really that bad? Had I always been the villain in her story?
I’d taken plenty of jabs at her over the years, but she’d done the same to me.
The goal was to keep her at a distance, not to have her loathe me completely. I guess it was easy to hate me, though.
I could hear Joon’s voice in my head now. If you weren’t such an asshole, she’d actually tolerate you. Figure out how to control yourself, and maybe we could make some progress.
I’d managed to incinerate three mock buildings that day and made Alex flip me off after an offhand quip. Joon was never wrong about me—I was the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Where are they being contained right now?” Alex mused, as if I was the last thing on her mind.
My fire wanted to burst out, to consume everything in my frustration. I was more brawn than brains, but I should at least be able to focus on the conversation, focus on our orders. But she was there, smelling like lemons, and I wanted to…what?
You don’t even realize it, do you? Joon’s voice was there again.
I ground my teeth as Reed watched me with that multicolored gaze. A smile crawled over his lips, having the time of his life.
“Nightmyre PD,” he chimed in with a wink in my direction. “There’s a detective who specializes in Variants. He’s got them locked up pretty well. It shouldn’t be an issue if we stop by unannounced.”
Alex beamed. “Are you talking about Gabriel? We’ve worked together before, he definitely won’t mind. I haven’t taken on a PD contract in a while.”
My knee started to bounce as I clenched my jaw; I must have been irritable today. That was all, just… hungry, or something. It was June. June messed with my mind, and I’d skipped lunch. Yep, that was it. That was all.
“Oh yeah? Sweet,” Reed grinned. “We’ll make our way over then. Sound good, Dahlia?”
The older woman nodded once, always cold and expressionless. “Find out what you can from the prisoners. What the organization calls itself, where they’re located, how they’re recruiting Variants. We’ll take anything we can get.”
Alex leaned back, and her shoulder brushed against my arm. My skin pebbled, and I tried not to jolt from her touch.
“Shouldn’t be too hard. Grunts always crack fast,” she hummed.
I started wondering how quickly she would get me to crack, too.