Page 66 of One Step After Another

Sort of.

In details, mostly.

The experience was a whole other matter. He could sympathize and apologize, but he would never truly know what that had been like for Penny. The horrors of it affected him because he wasn’t an unfeeling monster, but it was also a reality that hadn’t been his own.

“Not really,” he replied, “not like you do. No one will ever know the things you know because only you lived that life.”

“Wrong,” she whispered. “There are thousands of girls out there just like me. And little boys, too. You put one bastard down that hurts these kids, and three more get smarter about the way they do business, Luca. Because that’s what it is. A multi-billion-dollar-a-year business. Children are the product they sell. And they’re treated like it, too. They don’t see little kids with broken souls. They just see something they want to fuck.”

How should someone reply to that?

Luca didn’t have the first clue.

“But yeah,” Penny said, chewing on her bottom lip and offering a hesitant smile, “I’m also scared of flying because I don’t like being thousands of feet in the air inside a tin can.”

“Helpless.”

Her blue eyes flicked away.

Not for long.

“You don’t like being helpless,” he said when her gaze found him again. “And so you’ve done almost everything you can to make sure that never happens again.”

Penny waved two fingers almost dismissively. “And yet, here I am being exactly that.”

“Because you’re on a plane?”

“No,” she muttered, “because they’re going to fuck everything up.”

“Who—The League?”

“Everybody.” Penny looked away, her hands clutching to the armrests of the white leather seats when the plane jumped from a bit of turbulence. Seeing her knuckles whiten the tighter she gripped the seat, Luca reached over to unlock one of her hands with his own. Wordlessly, he wove their fingers, keeping their palms tight, so she could at least have some sense of support. He didn’t acknowledge the way her hand trembled in his. Lower, she added, “And anyone else who gets in my way.”

Did that include him?

If that was the case, then Luca wasn’t sure how to settle the things he wanted and needed from Penny with hers.

Was he helping?

Or hurting?

Luca didn’t ask.

Couldn’t.

He feared the answer.