Page 57 of Pucked Around and Found Out

Neither of us moves.

“He told me to get rid of the baby,” I say.

I didn't plan to say it. It arrives from somewhere underneath the clear-headed war-planning version of myself and I let it come because Carnage has seen every other version of me and this one shouldn't be any different.

He doesn't react. He doesn't gasp, flinch or rearrange his expression into something that requires me to manage his feelings alongside my own. He just looks at me and waits.

“On the beach,” I continue. “He said—” I stop. I have to stop for a second. “He said every time he looked at the baby all he'd see was the person who killed his family. He said it was a mistake. A consequence. He said to get rid of it and I⁠—”

I put the mug down before I spill it.

“I slapped him,” I say. “I told him he was a coward. And then I walked away, I kept walking and I did not cry.” I look at the table. “I didn't cry until I called you, and even then it was only for a second.”

“I know,” Carnage says. Quietly.

“He doesn't mean it,” I say. And I believe that. I believe it the same way I believe he couldn't finish what he started in the warehouse, the way the scalpel ended up on the floor. “He means it right now. In this moment, tonight. He means it because meaning it is the only way he knows how to protect himself from it.” I pick the mug back up. “But he doesn't mean it the way he needs to mean it for it to actually be true.”

Carnage is quiet for a moment.

“That is either the most perceptive thing you've said all month,” he says slowly, “or the most dangerous.”

“Probably both.”

“Yeah.” He exhales. “Probably both.”

I look at him across the table. At the lines of exhaustion around his eyes that he's been too stubborn to let show until now, in this quiet kitchen with no one watching. At the hand he's resting flat on the table, which I know is because holding his arm at the wrong angle pulls something in his side that the field dressing and three weeks of allegedly healing haven't fixed yet.

“How bad is it really?” I ask.

A ghost of a smile. “It's manageable.”

“Carnage.”

“It hurts,” he says. Simply. Like the admission costs something but he's paying it. “It hurts and it's slower to heal than it should be and the medic wants me off my feet for another week and I am categorically not doing that.” He meets my eyes. “But it's manageable, Tor. I've had things that weren't manageable. I know the difference.”

I hold his gaze.

There is something in his face when he says that, it’s something old, quiet and very specifically painful that doesn't belong to tonight. Something that predates me, this war, the Denver Kings and all of it. Something he's carried long enough that it's just part of him now, the way certain losses become part of the architecture of a person, load-bearing and invisible until you look closely enough to see where the weight is sitting.

I don't push.

That's the deal between us. He doesn't push on Xaden and I don't push on whatever it is Carnage De Santis keeps in the room he keeps locked. We've respected that boundary from the beginning and I'm not breaking it tonight.

“You should have stayed at the safe house with the girls,” I say instead.

“And you should have stayed at CHU instead of coming back to start a war.” He raises an eyebrow. “We don't always do the sensible thing, do we, darlin'?”

“No,” I admit. “We really don't.”

He reaches across the table and picks up the USB drive. Turns it over in his hands. Looking at it with the particular attention he gives everything he's assessing, not reading it, just feeling the weight of what it represents.

“Fiona Williams,” he says.

“Everything Kellan had on her.” I wrap my hands around the mug again. “She helped Meekan cover up the crash. She brokered the deal between our families to use it against each other. She's been running both sides of this war from behind a badge and waiting for the right moment to collect.”

He sets the drive down.

“And Xaden doesn't know the full picture yet.”