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“No—I mean, undercover missions,” I said. “And also, yeah—go to clubs.”
“This is the third one,” he said with a nod. “And, no, I don’t go to clubs often. Only when I need to.”
“Why did you tell the Chief that I was not fit for this mission?”
The question escaped me even before I realized I was thinking it. I bit my lip, but it was already too late. Even though I pretended not to notice, I felt his eyes on the side of my face.
“Because we’re dealing with dangerous people here,” he finally said, his voice rough, full of edges.
“I can be dangerous, too, you know.” Maybe not as dangerous as a high fae, but still…
He spun his glass on the smooth marble of the tabletop. Was that what he did—or Noah Bennett?
“More than you know,” I thought he mumbled, but I couldn’t hear very well through the music. “Why did you leave your home, Teddybear?”
It was my turn to stare at him, and his turn to pretend not to notice. A familiar ache took place deep inside my chest, mixed with guilt and shame and regret. I grabbed the glass and this time, took a little sip, too.
I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to tell anyone at all because it was nobody’s business. People had asked me that same question plenty of times in the past. They weren’t used to seeing a pixie living in a big city, all by herself.
But the burden just kept getting heavier and heavier, nearly squashing me underneath it. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was afraid of hearing those words out loud. In my head, they were safe. Secure. Mine. But out there, I no longer had any control of them.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to answer,” Dominic said after a while.
“I really don’t,” I whispered, but I did anyway. “I just…I wanted more. The life I had, the people I knew, the purpose I was given the day I was born…it bothered me.” My voice became dry, so I took another sip of the whiskey. I loved how it burned me on the way down. I loved how it took my mind off my words, until I said them. “This one time, when I was a teenager, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was having trouble breathing. There wasn’t anything wrong with me physically, but I’d had this dream—of myself as an old woman, sitting on the porch of my house, watching the flowers in the field surrounding us, sipping lemonade in silence. And it freaked me out so bad.”
My eyes squeezed shut. The image of myself as a grandmother, with grey hair wrapped in a bun behind my head, a grey dress covering every inch of me, my wrinkled hands shaking, was still perfectly clear in my mind, since the day I’d had that dream almost seven years ago.
“The thought that I’d live my whole life in that same place, do those same things over and over again, marry, have kids, and just wait for the end while I sipped lemonade at sundown every day was my biggest nightmare. I wanted to do so much more, see new places, meet new people, have another purpose, one that had nothing to do with me being a pixie…just a girl trying to make her place in an overcrowded world.” I smiled at the thought. “Of course, it was years before I actually had the guts to admit those things to myself, and years more before I had the courage to actually make a plan and follow it through…but yeah. That’s how it started.”
Dominic nodded and his eyes were on the glass walls ahead, but he didn’t see anything. His mind worked and his jaw clenched, and I wished I could see his face for a second, not the illusion he wore.
“Most people never have the balls to live the lives they want to live,” he finally whispered.
It made me smile. “Was that a compliment, baby?” It sounded like it, and by some miracle, the corners of his lips turned up all the way, giving me the kind of smile he’d only ever given me once, two years ago, in exchange for a button.
“Just an observation,” he mumbled, and his voice was strained, like he was trying to keep himself from laughing.
“So, you’re not going to tell me that my place is with my people? That this world is not for someone as tiny as me? That I shouldn’t be here at all?” Even though I was smiling—impossible not to when he was—the memories still stung. I still remembered.
“If I did, you wouldn’t listen to me, so I’m going to save my breath.” He brought the glass to his lips, and this time, he drank, too.
“Good for you,” I said, chuckling. “If I didn’t listen to my parents, there is nobody out there I’m ever going to listen to.”
Not when it came to the way I wanted to live. Even though I was miserable sometimes in the City and it drove me nuts that I was stuck behind a desk all day, it was still a million times better than anything I ever felt in the place I was born. I had freedom. I had control. It wasn’t easy, but it was all me. And nothing was ever going to change that.
“Tell me about them,” Dominic said, leaning back on the couch, the glass in his hand. He stretched out his other arm behind me, and I leaned back, too. The back of my neck pressed against his forearm. About a million chills ran down my back, but I recovered quickly. I think.
“About my parents?” Despite the fact that he was so close, our legs almost touching, his arm practically around my neck, and my head was filled with the scent of him, I still smiled, and my heart squeezed tightly. God, I missed them so much.
“And about your brothers. About your clan. The house you grew up in,” Dominic said, and he kept playing with his glass, running his finger over the rim, eyes ahead on the glass wall.
“Are you sure you wanna go there? Because there’s a lot of things. A lot,” I warned him with a grin.
Again, the corners of his lips turned up. That was the third smile I’d ever seen on him. Tonight must have been my lucky night.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said with a nod.
So, I told him everything—starting with my first memory of when I was about four years old, dancing in front of the TV to Oops I Did It Again, and how my parents had been spying on me through the window the whole time and how they’d gathered practically the entire clan to come watch me try to dance like Britney Spears. They still teased me about it, every time they remembered. It had ruined my idea of privacy then, and I’d been so mad, so ashamed, I hadn’t left my room for hours. But eventually, the memory became a happy one. A funny one.
