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The baseball floated in the air an inch before her nose, but the moment she registered what had happened, it dropped. Axel rushed over.
“You saw that, right?” He picked up the ball. “I mean… what the fuck? It stopped in front of your face like it was caught in jelly.” He locked eyes with her. “Did you do that?”
Daisy’s heart halted. She gasped in a breath. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“You wanna see if we can do it again?”
We? He acted like he was on her team. He didn’t even know he was her mate, or the effect he had on her internal sin equilibrium.
“Axel…” She shook her head and stared anywhere but at him. It was one thing for him to know secret things about her family, but actively helping her in this would turn the tide of their relationship. “I don’t know.”
“Hey.” He dipped to catch her eyes. “That’s a good thing, right? If it was you that stopped it, doesn’t it mean you’re becoming like your siblings? You’re leveling up?”
“It means…” She couldn’t let it out, because once she did, then it became real.
His long lashes swept down in a slow blink as he waited for her to continue, and when she couldn’t, he pushed her further.
“Tell me why you were running out the door when I found you?” His brows pinched in concern. “Is it something to do with your powers? Are your family not treating you well? Because if they aren’t, then—”
“How much do you know about us?” she asked. Most Faithful were strategically kept unaware of the grander Syndicate operation. She wasn’t sure how much Axel knew. Toward the end, he must have had more security clearance than most if he had access to her in the prison lab.
“I don’t know much about you except what I’ve put together from being a Faithful. I know more about the replicate system than anything else, and even then, I was kept in the dark about most things. You know what it’s like for the Faithful.”
“So… what do you know about us, specifically?”
“Well, my sister talks incessantly about you all, plus I picked up some things from the Syndicate. You were created in a lab to sense sin. You have powers, except not all of you do. Or—” His brow furrowed as he recollected. “Maybe you do but something happens to unlock them. I know that you each have a special person in your life that balances your sin, and that’s why they were kidnapped. Julius wanted your stem cells to help him fix a problem they have with the replicates. I figured that out after he mumbled something he shouldn’t have in one of his crazy, talking to himself moments. And he kept you from your brothers and sisters for decades.” His eyes locked with her. “You were lied to.”
Hearing him say it like that made Julius’s version of the truth even more fake. It was his fault Gloria set the fire in the first place. It was him who said Daisy’s siblings didn’t want her. He’d made it look like Daisy was dead, so Mary and Flint never came back for her.
She didn’t think Axel knew about the mating bond… specifically theirs. And with the way he looked at her, all stars and hope, she knew she’d end up disappointing him. Or, like he did with his sister, he’d end up doing bad things for her and she couldn’t be the cause of another stain on his heart.
For some explicable reason, his eternal optimism had survived. She couldn’t be the one to finally crush it out. He was a good person at the core. She wasn’t.
“I don’t know if I can give you what you want, Axel.”
He cocked his head, confused, probably at Daisy’s sudden turn of the conversation. “You don’t know what I want.”
“I know I’m not it.”
Something shuttered in his eyes and he stepped back. He picked up a bat to study it. When he finally slid his gaze to her, it was with a look that belied his age. Confidence. Determination. Heat. He pointed the bat at her face and said, “I’m going to enjoy correcting that statement.”
She snatched the bat from him. “I don’t want this.”
He tugged it back. “You don’t know what you want.”
“I know there’s too much pressure,” she blurted. His eyes narrowed. He stared, clearly understanding there was more to this situation than she let on. Each second that ticked by chipped away at her resolve until the rest of her worries tumbled out. “They want me to be like them, but I’m not. I’m not a hero. They expect me to be a savior and I’m not. You saw the kind of work I did for the Syndicate. I’m a bad person, Axel. You don’t need that in your life, trust me.”
“But you’re trying to be good.”
She threw up her hands. “A fat load of good that’s doing. I can’t find their missing mates. The city is falling apart. Your sister is dying. You’re—” she cut herself off before she blew it and said he was her mate. She’d already said too much. “I’m over a decade older than you. It’s clear you want more than friendship.”
“I do,” he admitted.
“But I just ran away from my responsibilities, and now my powers are triggering, and I have no fucking clue what to do.”
He tossed the bat and stalked closer to cup her nape. That simple touch was like a button to release her tension. She had no idea how he did it. Every time he touched her, she melted for him.
“When I was younger,” he said, “my father—meu pai—used to help me with school work. Once, I had a science paper due. I’d studied. I knew the subject, but every time I stared at the blank paper before me, I froze. Meu pai sat me down and said, ‘Não pense no todo. Comece com o que você sabe.’ Don’t think about everything. Start with what you know.”
