Catwoman: Soulstealer (DC Icons #3)(71)

“The musical?”

“You know it?”

“I saw the revival on Broadway a few years back.” He shrugged. “Carousel it is.”

“No, no, let’s watch something you want—”

“Backing out of it now that I called your bluff?”

Holly crossed her arms. Luke chuckled, switching over to his streaming service and finding the movie. But as the overture started, he could have sworn he saw her smiling.



* * *



—

There was sand, and blood, and screaming.

His body was on fire, shrapnel turning into claws that dug deep and shredded. Limbs rained, blood sprayed, and he could do nothing while they died and died around him, while the world turned over and his ears hollowed out, and he knew he was never going home, would never see his mom or dad, would never make it home—

“Luke.”

He was going to die here, in this place where he’d come to prove something—to himself, his parents, the world. To prove he wasn’t some spoiled brat, to fill some hole inside himself. Now he was full of countless holes, bleeding out—

“Luke!”

He couldn’t stop it. The blood, the dying. Couldn’t move to help his friends, screaming in pain. Or the ones so still—not screaming at all.

“LUKE!”

The shouting tugged at him, but it was the pain that slammed him home.

His face stung, and he blinked, blinked and gasped for air, trying to reconfigure where he was, in the blue-lit dimness—

“You are in your apartment in Gotham City,” said a steady female voice. “You are alive.”

Luke shook, unable to halt the tremors, the mortification now burning up his face, or the nausea rising up in him—

He ran. Not for the bathroom but for the balcony.

Fresh air. He needed fresh air.

He reached the door when two strong, slim hands grabbed his shirt. Tugged him into a stop. “Luke—”

“Fresh air,” he got out.

Those hands loosened their grip, but remained steady on him. One slid around his waist.

Holly.

Holly Vanderhees.

She brought him to the railing. Let him brace his arms against it, head hanging in the brisk wind, peering toward the drop below as he rallied himself, steadied himself.

“You must have nodded off.” Right. After the movie had ended, he’d switched to regular cable news and she’d stayed to watch, and he’d been so warm and comfortable.

“What can I get you?” Her voice was a low, steady purr. And familiar. That tone. That calm—

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice raw. He must have been screaming. “It’s just the…” He sucked in another lungful, working through his breathing the way the therapist had taught him. “This happens. Since I came home.”

She was so silent that he glanced toward her.

He didn’t find the pity he expected. Or the fear.

Only—surprise. Something else he couldn’t place.

But it was gone with a few blinks. She brushed sweat from his brow with her bare fingers. She did it again on his other temple. Then his cheek. The other one.

Tears.

She said quietly, “I understand. My mother was…abusive.”

The nightmares, the horror, eddied out of his head. “I’m sorry.”

Her mother was dead, he reminded himself. If only so that he didn’t contemplate hunting her down and putting her behind bars.

“I still remember it, too. When she’d come home drunk or high. Sometimes both. I still hear her…rants. Still remember shaking in terror because I knew what was coming.”

Abuse happened at every level of society. Even the highest one. It made him sick to be reminded of this by hearing what Holly had gone through.

“She broke my arm once. When I was ten. And it’s such a stupid cliché, but I told the hospital that I fell while climbing a tree.”

His stomach churned as he glanced at the arm she now touched, like she could still feel that broken bone.

“Did your dad…?” Her parents were both dead; asking was dangerous territory, yet—

“He was never there. Didn’t even know it happened.” He stared at her, and Holly did not look away. “I know what it’s like,” she said quietly. “To have those nightmares.”

Luke swallowed, his heartbeat at last calming, his breath evening out as he focused on Holly and her voice. “We both survived,” he rasped. “We both made it out.”

Again, that flicker of emotion in her eyes that he could not place. “We did,” she replied, her arm brushing against his. That arm that had seen such pain, such ugliness.

He studied their touching arms. The fingers that had so gently wiped the tears from his face. He hooked a finger under her chin, lifting her head to find her eyes upon him.

Luke found himself not caring about who might be watching from the buildings around them, the street far below. He didn’t really care about much at all as he leaned in and kissed her.

Or tried to.

Holly pulled away.

His gut dropped and twisted, his face heating instantly as she recoiled. Rejected him.

Bad breakup, she’d said. And from the grimace he’d seen when they’d danced to that song the other night, she still wasn’t over whoever had broken her heart. “I’m sorry,” she blurted.