Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(94)

Chapter 19


Well, he’d gone for a walk, just like he’d said, last night. In the cold. With his brain on fire. Had to stop a few feet out the door and go back to fetch his coat and cat. Yoink didn’t much like the snow, but she wasn’t willing to let him out of her sight. For once she didn’t complain, though, just followed. He walked fast, head down, hands deep in his pockets.

Stuck to the shoveled path between the condo units. Walked. Besieged with feeling.

A baby. Theirs. Gone. For a while just the knowledge, that she’d existed, or even almost did, and he hadn’t gotten a chance to know her…well, the weight was too much. Thoughts like that could crush a man flat.

He felt like he’d been tied up and now some giant supernatural prize fighter was taking shots at him. Whump, right in the gut. He firmed his muscles up to endure it, but the blow hit hard. Wet pricked his eyes. He shoved a harsh breath out. Get out of your own brain, you dumb fuck. What, everything gotta be about you? This world’s on fire, and here you are, nose in navel.

Fact was, none of this was about him. He wasn’t the only one who hurt.

That time must’ve been hellish on Angela. She’d been raised all her life to believe that a strong woman did not define herself by her relationships but by her accomplishments. It was a weak woman, a disposable woman, who was only somebody else’s wife, only somebody else’s mother. That wasn’t and had never been her fate. She was meant for better things.

He’d listened when she wove her guilty secrets in the dark, how much she adored fairy tales and bad romantic poetry and pretty dresses and stolen kisses: all things that did not progress her career path. Unworthy things and shameful wants.

She had wanted that baby. He knew it clear as daylight. And he mourned the might-have-been and all her pain.

It must’ve torn her in two, seeing a possibility play out in her mind’s eye and then having fucking Zeke Medina tell her she couldn’t have none of it. That she needed to “get her shit together.” Eyes on. Focus. Solve for X. That she needed to wipe the bad wants off her soul and become his little bespoke political weapon. Alone, though, or on her own. He couldn’t even imagine how abandoned she must have felt, buried by responsibility and with no structure to hold it up. That’s what mentors were for, parents and partners, too, but none of hers stepped up.

He shouldn’t have left her, no matter what she said, sure as hell not right then. But nineteen, right? They hadn’t either of them been fully done yet.

If Angela Neko had grown up to be a killer, and she had, some others shared responsibility for that. Some others needed punishing. He sagged beneath the prize fighter’s onslaught, knowing he deserved all he got. By the time he got down to the road, though, he knew he couldn’t just keep thinking. Thoughts didn’t fix nuthin’. Some action was required here. He tapped his com, and Mari pinged back, and he requested a voice chat rather than text.

“Hey, Doc,” she came on through the com. “You okay? And your scary little senator?”

“I’m…” Not okay. Whump. “How’s the family? How are you?”

“I’m fucking pissed is what I am,” she said, still wet-voiced. Her twang rode her hard, a testament to the tumult she must be going through.

“Your auntie Boo…?”

“Yeah, she’s probably gone. Thanks for the rats and stuff. Yer cat’s keeping us updated better than the goddamn GNN. But there’s something else. Kellen…shit, this isn’t a good way to do it, but hang on to something, honey. Mama Adele took a turn. Delayed bleeding on the brain, and nobody knew. We lost her right at dawn.”

Whump. Hardest yet, too close to his heart. How long could he stand up? He stopped walking, right there in the middle of the road, with snow seeping through the old leather soles of his boots. He wanted to sit down, right there in the slush, and give up. Let the giant pound him into the earth, stop thinking and caring and feeling anything.

But that wasn’t him. And he could not.

“How’s Heron taking it?” he asked Mari.

And Fan. She was gonna be out of her mind. Every cell in his body yearned to get on a landjet and go to them, right now. Screw the government, screw the president, screw all of them.

Except…Angela. She needed him still, now more than she had in a long time. He knew she wouldn’t hold it against him if he ran. Practical Angela, she’d see the logic. But they’d moved way beyond logic, into that wild world of trust. He belonged to her now, and he was man enough to know what that meant. This time, if she was gonna go into the fire, he was fucking going with her.

“Oh, I’ve got Heron,” Mari said. “And Fan. And Garrett. And Chloe. We all lean on each other, and somehow, we all keep standing. Even my asshole dad can be a comfort when he really puts his mind to it. We’re…talking stuff out. How ’bout you? What you need, Doc?”

“A gun, I think.” He’d returned the one she’d given him before he’d left for Texas. He hadn’t thought he’d ever want to use something like that. He’d considered himself tested back on that sub, considered himself a victor over vengeance. Had been real proud of himself. For the restraint. Discipline. But that was yesterday, and today looked a mite different.

“You ever even used one?” Mari asked.