Page 21

Joey

Leaving my car in the only spot I could find considering that we were still in the middle of Black Friday sale madness, I approached the bastard sitting so damn casually on the park bench just down from where I’d met him yesterday and narrowed my eyes at his complete and utter nonchalance.

It felt surreal that only a mere twenty-four hours had passed since I’d first met the fucker. So much had happened, and there had been so much I’d had to learn that I felt jittery. Like I’d been injected with pure adrenaline, with none of the comforting tastes of caffeine to go along with it.

I wondered if this was how my life was going to go from now on. The thought didn’t completely terrify me if I thought about it in terms of a new job. It was more the fact that this complete asswipe insisted on threatening the people I loved to make me do what he wanted that set my teeth on edge.

And for what?

Getting thrown headfirst into a spy situation with basically no training didn’t really help matters either. Thank fuck I’d watched so many movies growing up so I could draw on those memories to try to keep my wits about me.

I might have been somewhat collected the night prior when I’d spoken to George, but now I was cursing his name, and myself for believing in him.

All that being said, the thing that kept me the most grounded was the vision of my and Callum’s future. Those two sweet little children and my future husband. Judging by how much older Callum and I looked in the phone screen that had reflected our faces back at us, it was highly unlikely that, here in the present, the kids had even been born yet, but I just knew, knew , that they were going to need us. I trusted Callum’s vision enough to get us both to the point in our lives to either adopt or foster them.

I trusted his vision enough to keep me alive.

I’m stronger than I know.

My hands were planted firmly in my jacket pockets. It was chilly out, and I’d added a black woolen scarf, beanie and gloves to my outfit to complement Callum’s old leather jacket that I refused to go anywhere without. Wearing it had become a habit by now and soothed me like nothing else, and I was damned if I was going to go into this godforsaken meeting being uncomfortable.

Plus, my gloves were hiding a little surprise that I was hoping I’d be able to use before the meeting was done.

“You took your time,” the fucker said as I got within speaking distance. He was the epitome of relaxation; one knee crossed over the other and one arm stretched out on the back of the park bench. Instead of the soft gray suit he’d been wearing yesterday, this time he was wearing a dark blue suit with a paler blue, patterned tie that matched his suit’s buttons.

As much as I despised this man, I had to grudgingly admit that he knew how to dress himself.

Fucker.

“Yeah, well, not everyone can just magically appear out of thin air. Some of us need to find a place to park our cars the day after Black Friday while the sales are still roaring along.” I sat down next to him, keeping a good couple of feet between us, and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees so I wouldn’t have to lean back into his outstretched arm and my fingers laced so I wouldn’t fidget too much. “Let’s get this over with. What do you want?”

“Come now, Joey,” he drawled. “We have so much to talk about. Must you be so abrupt?”

Moving no other part of my body, I turned my head and glared at him. “Yes.”

The bastard chuckled before reaching into his inside breast pocket and drew out the jamming instrument he’d used yesterday, flicking a tiny switch on the side and placing it on the bench between us. Once he was happy with it sitting where it was, he rested his hands in his lap. “Tell me about last night. What did you and your stepbrother get up to?”

Rolling my eyes, I sighed, then said in the most monotonous voice I could muster, “We went to the cinemas where we watched a movie. I would say that we enjoyed that movie, however we sucked each other’s tonsils enough that I wouldn’t be able to give you a rundown of the movie’s plot.”

His eyes narrowed, and his lips pressed together so tightly they turned white.

Oh, was he annoyed with me? Wonderful.

I picked up the jammer and toyed with it as I kept talking.

“Not wanting the night to end, we drove out to an abandoned quarry so we could stargaze and make out a bit more,” I said, a little more life in my voice when he sucked his teeth, leaving a sour look on his face before he turned away from me.

As I was playing with the jammer with my shaking, nervous hands, I released the tiny tracker that I’d hidden on the inside of my cuff and pressed it into a discreet corner of the machine, hopefully out of the way enough that it wouldn’t be spotted easily, all while my mind whirred with possibilities.

Was it the stepbrother thing that was making him uncomfortable? Or the gay thing? Either way, I was rather enjoying making him uncomfortable. Let’s double down and see how much I could truly torment him. “Then we went back to his place where we fucked like horny teenagers until we passed out from exhaustion,” I said, still playing with the jammer, even though the tracker was now in place. “Which took a while, because I’m literally a horny teenager, so I’m really only doing what my body is demanding of me. You know, Callum does this thing where his cock thrusts deep inside me and swivels just that tiny little bit so his cockhead can rub against my prostate and—”

“Fucking disgusting,” he spat, interrupting my delicious memory of last night. It was a shame, actually, as I was thoroughly enjoying reliving the moment. He snatched the jammer from me and slammed it down on the bench between us again.

I watched it bounce a little with raised eyebrows. “You sure you want to treat it like that? Isn’t it like some sort of fragile piece of technology or something?”

Much to my delight, he purposely ignored the jammer and growled at me. “Shut up.”

This taunting thing was fun .

“Why?” I asked, smirking cheekily. “I thought you wanted information. That’s why you approached me, isn’t it? For information? I’m only giving you what you asked for.”

“Yes, but not that sort of information. Christ.” A disgusted sneer appeared on his face.

Tilting my head to one side, I tried to look as na?ve as I could, given the circumstances. “What exactly are you so opposed to hearing about? Just so I know what to avoid in the future, you know. Is it the step sibling thing?”

His expression didn’t really change.

“Or is it the gay thing?”

His nose scrunched with revulsion before he could stop it.

“Ah,” I said, nodding in sympathetic understanding. “You don’t enjoy hearing about men fucking each other.”

I paused long enough for him to glare at me. “That’s enough.”

“Your loss, really,” I continued, ignoring his attempt to silence me. “There’s honestly nothing better than getting your hole wrecked by a thick, slick cock—”

“I said, that’s enough!” he interrupted loudly, his torso leaning forward as if to threaten me before he caught what he was doing. He coughed once and looked around before he settled back into the bench, swiping his gloved hand down his front. “Facts. I just want facts.”

“Well, I’d say it’s a fact that Callum is a fucking machine in the sack,” I muttered obnoxiously under my breath, earning myself one final, indignant snarl, before I held my hands up in surrender. “Alright, alright. I shall refrain from elaborating on Callum’s and my sexual escapades, lest I alarm your delicate sensibilities.”

I considered it a win when he rolled his eyes and looked away from me again. So, it was with alarm and a fair amount of regret when my high at winning a point against this dickhead was destroyed by the next words out of his mouth:

“Did George enjoy the movie as well?”

My jaw snapped shut, and the smirk I’d been sporting dropped instantly from my face.

“Oh, you didn’t think I knew about that, did you?” he asked, a smirk of his own appearing. “I have eyes everywhere, Joey. You’d do well to remember that.”

I really wanted to ask if that was the case, why the fuck did he insist on being such a pain in my ass, but I didn’t. This wasn’t only a fact-finding mission for him, but for me as well. I needed information just as much as he did.

“George is Callum’s uncle,” I said quietly, lying through my teeth and making shit up on the fly. “They wanted to catch up and talk about a shared Christmas gift for Erin. Callum asked if I’d be okay with them chatting before the movie, and I said it’d be fine.”

There. That sounded somewhat believable.

Right?

“Is that what they told you?” he asked in a snide, condescending tone. “Huh.”

A tense silence dropped over us as he waited for me to ask him to elaborate, while I stubbornly refused to say anything at all.

Eventually, he sighed and rolled his eyes again. The young, obnoxious side of me mentally pumped my fist into the air at winning another point against this prick, while my more adult side reminded me that forcing a quiet exterior would be a better option than angrily punching him in the face.

“George is Callum’s boss,” he said sedately, picking at a piece of invisible lint on his pant leg. “They work for a clandestine cell in the US that is known to be actively and subversively conspiring against the Office of the President.”

I felt my eyebrows rise as I slowly blinked in astonishment.

What.

The Fuck.

Memories flickered through my brain of things I’d been told over the past few days…

Callum telling me about how George had seen me getting approached by a US government official.

Callum saying that he and George were private investigators. That they worked for the US government.

Callum trying to protect me from partnering with him on George’s team. Saying it would be too dangerous.

I’d already figured out that the government official that they’d referred to was this guy, but had I ever actually stopped and asked either of them to show me their government ID? This idiot hadn’t shown me his government ID either, but if it boiled down to who I believed and trusted the most out of everyone in this whole sordid mess, it was Callum I trusted with my life.

His vision, the one he’d somehow shared with me, showed me how much love there was between us. How much I loved him in the future and had cleared up any lingering doubts in my mind about how I felt about him now.

If nothing else, his decision to walk away from me four years ago showed what sort of moral standard he lived for.

He was an honorable man.

Far, far more honorable than this homophobic fuckwit sitting next to me on a random park bench in a parking lot, who had threatened me and my family just to get his way.

I couldn’t see Callum working for a conspiracy group. This guy, though? Yeah. I could definitely see this guy doing that.

“I work for a government organization that has been tasked with bringing that cell down,” he continued, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t responded to his bombshell.

I was starting to wonder if he just liked to hear himself talk.

“That’s why I approached you, Joey,” he said, his eyes trying to look sympathetic but failing. There was a glint of icy arrogance that he couldn’t shake. “You’re our in to get these superpowered freaks shut down for good.”

The look of disbelief on my face had more to do with him daring to call my boyfriend a freak than anything else, but he, thankfully, misinterpreted it as confusion about him using the term superpowered .

“You didn’t know?” he scoffed, his fingers fidgeting slightly in his lap. “I can see how little trust there is between you and Callum.”

Instantly, I locked my feelings down. My instant anger at him assuming Callum and I kept anything from each other wasn’t important. I mean, Callum had bent the truth a little at the start of all of this, but he’d kept nothing from me once I asked him to elaborate on something. He wanted me to know everything but knew it’d take time to bring me fully up to speed.

No. The only important thing here was getting information from this little fucker.

Give me knowledge, nut job. I’m a motherfucking sponge.

It was only because I was watching him so carefully that I saw his eyes skip down to my neck before he suddenly reached forward and flicked at my scarf, before settling back in his seat like nothing had happened. “Sorry. You had a spider. It looked dangerous.”

Leaning as far back as I could, I tried to breathe slowly and steadily to keep my nerves from spiking out of control. This was the first time he’d gotten close enough to touch me, and I didn’t like it.

I also knew just as much as he did that there had been no spider. His little act was all about planting a bug on me.

It annoyed me that I needed to leave it there. Maybe Callum could get a read off it later or they had a scryer in their team who could trace this fucker with it.

“They’re freaks of nature, Joey,” he continued, thankfully assuming that I was leaning back because of the spider rather than my apprehension about letting him anywhere near me. “Did you know George can see the future? And Callum can read your thoughts if he’s touching you?”

I did what any rational person would do when faced with such an outrageous statement: I frowned at him in a hopefully convincing mixture of confusion and disbelief.

My mind whirred away in the background as he kept giving me information. Our assumption that he knew about Callum’s powers was right. This was why he’d made such an effort not to touch either me or Callum in the past, which made him reacting to a spider hilarious. Surely, he’d know Callum would read it when he got his hands on it. Right?

But it also thankfully proved that he didn’t know about Callum’s seer ability. Callum’s secret was safe.

“Even your stepmother is a freak. Did you know that?” he asked condescendingly. “That’s how Callum got his power.”

Okay, that was interesting. He knew about Erin. She’d stopped working with George years ago after she’d met Dad. She shouldn’t be on this fucker’s radar as anything other than being Callum’s mom, but she was.

He chuckled and shook his head sadly. “I can see that you don’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t have believed me either, but I swear to you, it’s the truth, Joey. They’re all abominations. They shouldn’t exist. This is why their group is so dangerous. They’re able to do things us regular humans can’t. That’s why the people I work for, the humans I work for, work so tirelessly to stop them.” He uncrossed his knees and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Imagine if they bred with each other. Imagine what sort of horror would be unleashed if their powers ever combined. The world would be thrown into chaos.”

I blinked, trying to get my thoughts in order without showing my feelings to him. He hadn’t come right out and said it explicitly, but it sounded awfully like he knew about how the families kept from mixing their lines. Maybe not why they did so but enough that they did it at all.

George had been right when he’d been terrified at the thought of Callum’s seer ability becoming well known. It would be catastrophic. I could easily see nut jobs like the one sitting next to me sliding all too easily from wanting to simply dismantling and probably jailing a clandestine cell conspiring against the President to wanting to kill all the freaks with superpowers .

“They think they’re gods, you know that?” he asked, not waiting for a response before he continued, “But they’re not infallible. Even with as much as George can see, he can’t get a read on me or the people I work with.” He visibly preened, a smug smile lurking on his face as he idly toyed with a stray thread on his pants. “Even when I left a present with his golden protégé, Callum. Pretty poor form for someone who likes to boast that he can see everything.” He chuckled and shook his head, looking down at the ground in front of us. “Delusional bastard.”

Even though I knew exactly what he was referring to, because Callum had told me about the polaroid that had been left for him one morning, I frowned like I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. “What present?”

“Callum hasn’t told you why he left New York yet? Shame.” He chuckled a little louder and raised his eyes to the sky. “Doesn’t matter. Not yet, at least. George is the primary target. He’s the most dangerous one, having knowledge of the future. No-one should have that much power. Callum’s weak in comparison. He only reads the past and present.”

Gritting my teeth so I didn’t lose my cool at him calling my Callum weak , I tried to focus on what was more important. “You know this all sounds delusional, right?”

He stilled, his face still aimed at the heavens, before he slowly shook his head and sighed. “I told them you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Told who? The people you work with?”

“Mm.” He sighed again and brought his clear, icy-blue eyes to meet mine. “Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

My eyes widened. I really didn’t like the sound of that.

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, Joey,” he said calmly. Too calmly. “I only want information. The people I work with, they only want information. You obviously don’t know these freaks; not like we do. But if you do the right thing and tell me what they’re doing, you’d be saving the country from annihilation. They’re all power-hungry freaks and want nothing more than to get into the White House. If you report on them now to us, that all stops.”

Pressing my lips together, I stared at him with narrowed eyes. Did he honestly think I’d turn on my boyfriend? My stepmother? Even after everything he’d done over the past twenty-four hours? After all the threats? “Why should I trust you? You come to me, threatening my family, my father, if I don’t do what you say. That doesn’t really scream trustworthy , does it?”

He chuckled, his eyes almost closing in genuine amusement. “Oh, you sweet summer child. Would you have listened to me or done anything I’d asked if I’d been nice?”

My teeth ground together as I stared at him murderously. “Who says I’d do anything for you? You’re fucking delusional, dude. What’s stopping me from just reporting you to the cops?”

Immediately, the amusement dropped from his face. “Good luck with that. You don’t even know my name.”

Damn it, he did have me there.

“And you’d do best to remember that I know where your father works, Joey. And lives. And does his weekly grocery shopping.”

I didn’t know why I thought this was the opportune moment to call his bluff, but I said, “Yeah, right. Like I’d believe that. Nothing you’ve said today proves to me you know anything about anyone other than me, and even there, I have my doubts.”

The bastard smirked. “Cresthelm Tower, sixty-eight Fletcher Lane, and Trader Joe’s in Holbeck.”

Supremely glad that I was still sitting down, I felt myself go dizzy. He was right. On all three.

He leaned forward, just enough to be threatening. “Do what I tell you, Joey. Otherwise, your father might find himself in possession of a poisoned pie.” He relaxed back, one arm reaching over the back of the park bench once more, while the other rested comfortably in his lap. “Like I said yesterday, all you need to do is date Callum. Get close to his Uncle George .” He rolled his eyes as he finger-quoted. “Then report back to me. That’s not so hard, is it?”

I tried to swallow, but my throat had lost all its moisture. “How do I call you?” I croaked. “I don’t have your name, like you said. Or your number.”

“Hm,” he said, amusement leaching into his voice again. “You can call me the Agent. That would be simplest, I think.” He continued to pick at the stray thread on his trouser leg. “And I have your number, Joey. I’m always watching. Don’t worry about needing to call me. I know when I’ll be able to contact you.”

Resigned, I closed my eyes and nodded. I wanted this shitshow of a meeting over so I could go home and make sure my dad was okay.

“Good,” he said happily. “Take Callum out to dinner tonight. And I wouldn’t complain if you invited George along.” I opened my eyes in time to see him stand up, right his jacket, and pick up the jamming device. “I’ll be in touch.”

He turned around, only to knock into two of the most stunningly attractive men I’d ever seen that were walking past, hand in hand. Neither he nor I had seen or heard them approach, not like the groups of harried mothers with babies in strollers or small groups of teenagers that had been passing us throughout our meeting. A dirty look crossed the Agent’s face when he registered the pair were a couple rather than simply friends, but he said, “Excuse me.”

“Oh, aren’t you simply darling?” the tall one with curly blond hair crooned, stumbling to a stop at the Agent’s blunt words then looking him up and down with curiosity. “Oh, look, babe. Look at the cut of his suit! Isn’t it magnificent?” He ran a finger down the left lapel of the Agent’s suit jacket, which, much to my amusement, made the fucker cringe and try to take a step backwards. With a wry grin, the blond followed him step for step, not allowing the contact to break.

The one with messy brown hair crowded in next to the blond, so he could feel the right lapel. “Oh, wow! You’re right. What is this? Wool, right?” Being much shorter than both men around him, he blinked up at the Agent with wide, angelic eyes and a pleasant smile.

“Um,” the Agent stuttered, still trying to step away from the men pawing at his suit jacket. “Yeah. Sure.”

I barely had time to cover my mouth before I snickered out loud at how uncomfortable the pair were making him.

“How marvelous!” the blond exclaimed before his eyes narrowed at the top of the Agent’s head. “Oh, careful.” Quicker than my eye could see, his hand shot out and seemed to smack at the side of the Agent’s head.

The Agent reared back from the strike, his hand coming up to stop any more unwanted touches. “Ow! What the fuck?”

“Sorry.” With his hand loosely fisted against his torso, the blond simply smiled serenely at him, not worried by the sudden change in the Agent’s temperament at all. “You had a spider. It looked dangerous.”

My eyes widened at the blond’s words. They were the exact ones the Agent had said to me earlier.

The Agent realized the same time I did and fell back even further; his jaw dropped in horror. “What…? How?!”

This time the strange but beautiful men let him go; the serene smile on the blond’s face turning serious while the brunet’s hand fell easily away from the Agent’s lapel, his pleasant smile becoming remarkably cold and eerie as he tilted his head to the side and stared unblinkingly into the Agent’s eyes.

All the color in the Agent’s face drained in an instant, and without another word, he tore his eyes away from the brunet and fled like his ass was on fire.

We all watched him run through the parked cars until he was a speck in the distance, swallowed from sight by other shoppers. Only once I couldn’t see him anymore did I turn to the two magnificent men still standing in front of me.

Letting out a deep breath, the brunet shook his arms like he was releasing a bunch of nervous tension. “That was fun,” he said, his voice completely different from how it sounded earlier. Where before he’d sounded like the stereotypical gay twink model, now he sounded like an everyday white-collar worker, more at ease and entirely natural. There’d been no hint of an accent when he’d spoken to the Agent, but now there was a tiny inflection of something to his words, like he’d shed the facade he’d had on so he could fully relax. He turned on his heel, first to grin cheekily at his blond colleague, still standing in front of us with his fist against his chest, then to me, still sitting on the edge of the park bench wondering what the fuck had just happened. Laughing, he clapped his hands together, then patted his colleague on the shoulder as he happily skipped past him and over to the park bench to take a seat next to me on my left. He looked lovingly at his friend before he said, “We really should get out more, my love.”

“Yes, it’s been far too long, hasn’t it?” the still serious blond responded distractedly before he finally dragged his eyes away from where the Agent had run off to, only to meet the brunet’s gaze and smile broadly. Just like his friend, his speech patterns had changed. Where once there was no accent, now there was a hint of one that I couldn’t place, no matter how hard I thought about it. As I watched, his body visibly relaxed as well, somehow growing slightly taller as each limb lost its tension. His hand at his chest dropped, but the fist didn’t loosen.

As if he could feel my eyes on him, the blond reluctantly dragged his eyes from his partner’s and turned enough to give me a cheeky grin. “Hello there,” he said easily, stepping forward to kneel on one knee in front of me. “It appears that I have something you’ll need tonight.”

Beyond confused, I felt my eyebrows bunch up. “What?” It sounded like I was asking what he had for me, but in reality, I was actually asking what the hell was going on.

Like he knew what I was thinking, he chuckled, his eyes sparkling with amusement. With the hand that wasn’t still in a fist, he slowly reached forward for one of my hands and turned it over. Carefully, he opened his fist above my open palm and several strands of hair fell onto the black glove I was still wearing, catching in the woolen pilling.

They were the same color as the Agent’s hair.

“Why…?” I trailed off, wondering if it wouldn’t just be simpler to go with the flow after such a mind fuck of a day. My other hand was picked up gently by the brunet sitting next to me, forcing my puzzled attention away from the blond.

His slate-colored eyes bore into mine as he enveloped my hand in both of his, patting it twice before he settled. “Sometimes it’s best not to think too hard about it. Sometimes you just need to let things play out and not wonder about why.”

“Or about how,” the blond continued, easing my glove off and turning it inside out so the hair he’d plucked from the Agent’s head wouldn’t be lost. He balled the glove up and placed it back in my palm and curled my fingers over it until I held it secure. “There. This will get you what you need.”

I stared at my glove, then raised my eyes to look first at the brunet to my left, then the blond in front of me.

Vibrant light blue eyes met mine in understanding, so vibrant that they nearly glowed.

“Who are you?” I asked in fascination, my words barely audible. There was something about these men that had me awestruck. I wasn’t the type to fawn over beautiful people, but these two had me reconsidering that fact.

The blond grinned cheekily at me and winked as he stood up. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me?” I tilted my head up and back to keep sight of his eyes. I felt the brunet pat my hand once more before he, too, stood and leaned against the blond’s shoulder.

“Go on, give him a hint,” the brunet said, standing on his tiptoes to kiss the blond on the corner of his lips. “He’s been open and accepting of it all so far.”

The blond kept his calculating eyes locked on mine as he turned his head to the brunet, his hand lifting to thread his fingers through his partner’s long brown locks and drawing him in to kiss him more fully on the lips.

Unable to look away as the kiss turned filthy, I felt a blush creep up my cheeks. It was only a kiss, but it honestly felt like I was watching live-action porn, where one participant was staring at the viewer to see how uncomfortable they could make them. My pants tightened at the free show, but all I could think about was Callum.

The brunet moaned once in delight at the heated kiss, then again in slight disappointment when the blond pulled away. Sighing contentedly, he wound his arm around the blond’s waist and leaned into him, a look of pure adoration on his face as he gazed at his lover. “Please?”

Finally, the blond broke my eye contact to peer down at the brunet, smiling warmly before he chastely pressed their lips together quickly. “Only because his heart is pure.”

The brunet rocked on his toes as a wide smile grew over his face. “I told you it would be.” Holding him close, he clutched at the blond’s shirt and preened as he looked back over his shoulder at me. “I knew you would be.”

My eyebrows raised at their antics and their words. What the ever-loving fuck was going on?

The blond chuckled again, once more making me wonder if he could hear my thoughts. “When you give them the hair tonight, tell George that Polo and Cinthy say hi.”

I blinked. What?

No, seriously.

What??

Holding tight to the blond, the brunet laughed at my expression. “Bye, Joey. We’ll see you and Callum again, I’m sure.”

I blinked once more, and they were gone.

Twisting in my seat, I looked everywhere, but they’d vanished, like they’d never been standing in front of me at all.

The only evidence of them that remained was the bunched-up glove that I still gripped in my hand tightly.

Still turned inside out.

Still presumably holding the Agent’s hair.