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Chapter Ten

Roland

Thank you, Rollo.

My chest feels funny. Okay, cry me a goddamn river. My chest has felt funny for the past month, but right now, back at the COE, I feel it again, changed. Less like a subtle ringing and more like an itch I can’t scratch, concentrated in the place where her breath dampened my T-shirt, right in the divot between my left shoulder and pectoral. She burrowed there deeply as she braced against the cold.

She flew well. Well, better than last time. She was more relaxed in my grasp than I expected her to be, up until she started shivering halfway through the ride. I tried to stay low so she wouldn’t totally freeze in her T-shirt and shorts, but it didn’t help. So I then opted for speed as I carried her to the COE’s private hospital here in the center of the COE compound.

The COE campus is a sort of fortress. A single thirty-story tower sits in the middle of a ring of five lower buildings. Five massive glass balls, they look like the forgotten golf balls of giants, and through four of the glass domes you can see the dark green of tropical plants. In the fifth, the unique roof reflects the buildings and the blue of the sky, airplanes, clouds, and birds that pass overhead, while absorbing the glint of the sun. It was strange watching myself, Vanessa in my arms, as I touched down. I really did look ... like a hero. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. All I knew was that I liked the way Vanessa looked at me.

She’s trying not to look at me now while I make no effort to disguise the fact that I’m staring at her from where I’m standing against the wall. The room is a good size medical suite with a white tiled floor and bile-colored wallpaper.

She’s sitting up on the bed, drinking cranberry juice out of a little box, covered in Band-Aids, her hair looking ... My lip twitch doesn’t go unnoticed, not even by the woman who’s doing everything within her power to not stare back at me.

“What?” she says, a tilt of her head that makes me want to weep. Every single thing she does affects me. My cock is ... being a fucking dick. My chest is itching. I scratch at it.

“You still mad at me?”

She pouts. When she realized toward the end of our flight that I had every intention of taking her to the doctor, she’d protested—albeit feebly. She was shaking so badly, I could barely understand her blathering, largely centered around coffee. I plan to get coffee with her after she’s been cleared, if she still wants that. How could I not? She asked me . Yeah, she’d been in shock. Yeah, her adrenaline had been spiking like crazy. Yeah, she’d been hurt, too, but ... I’d still take it.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Larsen’s okay. She’s gonna let us out of here soon. Then we can get your coffee.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“You want ... to get coffee? For the photo op, I mean?”

“Yeah, baby.” Her cheeks get bright red when I call her that, which makes me want to call her baby a thousand times over. I smirk and, when I glance at her hair again, smile outright.

“What?” she says in a higher pitch this time.

“You, uh ...” I lift my chin. “We’re gonna have to get you a swim cap for next time.”

It takes her a couple seconds to understand what I’m talking about. When she does, her blush spreads. She pats her hair down, but it doesn’t help. Buffeted about during our flight, her hair now sticks out in every direction.

“I ...” Her words die. They often do. I didn’t understand it at first, and then I had Mr. Singkham give me her file. Well, I stole the file because he’s old-school and likes hard copies too. Everything I read pissed me off, until I got to the bit about her finally getting adopted. The Theriot family was only meant to foster her. Not sure how they even got the gig considering they’d stopped fostering a few years earlier, shortly after they had their first biological child. But they did, and when she landed in their laps, they had six months with her before they filed the adoption paperwork. Her file got a lot thinner after that.

I get why she doesn’t like to be touched now, and I’m pissed at myself for having been so forward with her. I get why she doesn’t like to be yelled at and why she doesn’t respond well to anger. I’m gonna work on it. Just need her to have a little patience. I just need to have a little patience.

“Yeah?” I lift an eyebrow and wait. Patience. I mine for it with everything I’ve got.

She looks all over my face; like an explosion, I can feel her everywhere at once. And then she refocuses on my eyes, gaze flitting between them. I wonder what color they are now. My guess is white. My eyes had never changed to that color before we met.

She licks away the droplet of cranberry juice clinging to her bottom lip, and then she asks me the last thing I expect. “There’s going to be a next time?”

My bones lock up, and I struggle to breathe through the fire that pools in my abdomen. Is she ... flirting with me?

I went through a phase as an almost twenty-year-old in college when I leaned into the whole Forty-Eight thing and actually went to bars and out in public and let people try to talk to me. Women flirted with me so obviously, there wasn’t any mistaking their interest. It was fucking boring. And though that phase was short and I haven’t revisited it since, I would have thought that the lessons I learned then would have lingered, but right now ... I’m not sure if she’s flirting with me intentionally or if I’m just being a prick.

I feel my face heat and look away from her, nodding absently at the ugly wallpaper. “Probably. Given your track record.” I’d meant them as a joke, but my words sound harsh.

She doesn’t respond.

Fucking hell. I look back at her and see a full-body shiver come over her again. “You cold?” My eyebrows knot.

She shakes her head, then nods, then shakes her head again and sucks down the rest of her cranberry juice, the tiny straw making gurgling sounds as she finishes the box. “I think it’s still the shock. I haven’t been that clumsy in a while.”

“Mr. Singkham’s boardroom begs to differ.”

Her jaw drops. “You are such a jerk!” She throws her cranberry juice box at me, and it falls far short.

I laugh. The gong is clanging again. The itching is worse. I inhale and exhale and try to forget the strange terror I felt when I saw her lying on the park pathway covered in blood, an angry mob surrounding her. It took me a couple seconds to realize the mob was made up of kids who were being pretty fucking rad and stepping up in her defense. A few of them showed me pictures and videos of the reporters who had harassed her. I’ve got them memorized. It won’t be hard to find them, and when I do, I’ll incinerate at least a couple of their organs.

They won’t die right away. It’ll be slow. Painful. So many doctors wondering how this could have happened. They’ll write medical reports and scientific papers about it, and most importantly of all, nothing like that’s ever gonna happen to her again because I’m not gonna let her out of my sight. Enough. Kidnap kidnap kidn —no. I’ve got a better idea than that.

“Gonna move my stuff in tomorrow.”

Her eyes get bright, but at the same time, she freezes. “I ... you are?”

I think about asking her if that’s all right with her, but the coward in me won’t. “Yeah.”

“Okay. There’s just ... I ... there’s just one thing.”

“Whatever it is, it’s fine.”

“Okay, but I should tell you ...”

“Ms. Theriot—Vanessa, can I call you Vanessa?” Dr. Larsen busts into the room. I’m familiar enough with her to be comfortable with her looking Nessa over. She’s been my doc the past month, making me do stupid physicals but making the stupid a little less annoying by being a weirdo. She’s an older white woman with graying blond hair that looks as crazy as Nessa’s does now, even without having been buffeted about by the wind.

“Um, yes. Vanessa’s great. Thanks, Dr.—”

“You can call me Emily. I’m happy to say that you don’t have a concussion. Your scans came back clean. You don’t have any fractures either, but that is a pretty bad sprain you have in your ankle, and I’m going to give you a note requiring you to work from home for the next week.” My chest is tingling. I’m starting to like this doctor.

“Stay off your feet. This is a grade 2 sprain, not a minor one that would improve with a little stretching and rest. I’ll give you a wrap you need to wear consistently for two weeks. Even if you’re feeling better, don’t take off the wrap.” She shakes a structured black wrap at Vanessa, and I smirk at the angry look that crosses Nessa’s face.

“I can’t be off my feet for that long.”

“Well, then, I think my surgeons may have a little extra time. Let’s cut it off and get you an implant, and you can sprint on out of here with your new bionic leg. What do you think?”

Vanessa frowns, her brow sinking low. I cover my mouth, but my ensuing laughter is mixed with the strange reverberations of my lungs and chest. In the past month, I’ve heard myself audibly release what sounds like low thunder or a cat’s purr for the first time in my life—at least, in my living memory.

Dr. Larsen must hear it, too, because she turns around and gives me a look I know well. “Is that you ?”

“Yeah.”

She scratches her bangs, and they stand up away from her forehead. “You didn’t tell me you had this ability in our first meeting.”

“I didn’t know I had it in our first meeting.”

“You didn’t tell me about this ability in our last meeting either.”

To that I just shrug rather than lie outright. Dr. Larsen comes over to me and places her stethoscope on my chest. The sound dies.

“Is he okay?” Vanessa says, doing what Dr. Larsen just expressly told her not to do by trying to edge off the bed and place her feet on the floor. She looks concerned, but my irritation with her burns hotter.

“Don’t move. Get back in bed,” I snap.

She freezes with a large-eyed stare and, strangely, without protest, obeys. Dr. Larsen gives a good nod to Nessa over her shoulder, but it’s clear she’s distracted. “You’re making the sound again,” she tells me right before she presses the whole side of her face against my sternum and holds my arms when I try to back away. “This is incredible. What muscles are you activating to make this sound?” she asks.

I shake my head and frown, feeling uncomfortable telling her that this is Nessa’s doing in front of Nessa herself. “I’m not aware when I’m about to make the sound and don’t know how I’m making it.”

“You’ve made it your whole life? There’s nothing about it in the reports.”

“No. It’s a recent thing.”

“Like your eyes? Did the two start around the same time, about a month ago?”

“Goodbye, Emily. Is Vanessa free to go?” I say, pushing past her with some force to reach Vanessa’s bedside. I take the brace, shove it in the pocket of my hoodie, and then slip my arms around her while she stares up at me with pinched eyebrows. “I’m gonna lift you now.”

“I can walk.”

“No, you can’t. Or did you lose your hearing in the fall?” I pick her up and hold her firmly against my chest. I like the weight of her there. It feels right. I notice, much to my surprise, that the sound of the rumbling in my chest is getting louder.

Nessa scowls up at me. “I need to go to the office to get my things.”

“Someone will bring them to you.”

“What about coffee?” Her voice dips.

I look down at her and hate my body’s physiological response to having her up against me like this. She’s injured, but somehow that just makes the sensation worse. She’s softness and vulnerability all laid bare, and I just want to do dark and terrible things.

I grunt and head to the door, ignoring my blood pumping and my chest burning and Dr. Larsen entirely. “We’ll make a stop. See ya, Doc.”

“Don’t think you’re getting out of this scot-free. I’m scheduling you an appointment for tomorrow!”

“Make it next week. I’ve got a date tomorrow with a bunch of kids in a skate park!”