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"You okay?" I asked while turning in my seat to face her. The skin on her palms was scratched and an angry shade of red.
"I'm just sore. How much longer?" she croaked while licking her dry lips. I grabbed a water bottle and handed it to her. She unscrewed the cap and took a long gulp. And then another.
I eyed my watch. "About six more hours.” She finished the rest of the water, and I handed her another. It was easy to get dehydrated on these long flights. She also needed to walk around soon. I already dragged her here with bruises and cuts littering her soft skin, I didn’t want to worry about blood clots, too.
“Fuck. This is the longest flight ever,” she groaned while shifting in her seat. She leaned against my shoulder and let out a huff of air. The clothes we found at a gift shop were swallowing her tiny frame, and I once again let my mind become consumed with anxiety. I worried that I should have taken her to a hospital.
There was some small debris in her arm. I managed to pull it out with tweezers on the ride to the airport. Thank fuck my suitcase was still in the SUV when the plane exploded, and I still had cash. I grabbed our fake passports and booked us on the first flight to Sydney. It was probably stupid to chase after Nix after what had happened, but I hoped they thought we were dead. The sooner we found out what we were up against, the better off we were at navigating their threats. I called Gavriel from a street phone to let him know that we were alive and going into hiding. He yelled at me and asked questions about the attacker. I just hoped he didn’t skin me alive once we were back in the States. Though Grace had never admitted this out loud, she was convinced her brother thought of her as an obligation and didn’t truly care. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Gavriel Moretti loved his sister, he just didn’t know how to express it outside of violence and overprotection.
“Do you need more pain medicine?” I asked her. I knew she was bruised to hell. My back got burned slightly, but she was the one shoved to the ground like a rag doll.
“No. I’m fine. I don’t wanna feel groggy when we land.”
Stubborn little thing. I noticed a scratch on her cheek and reached out to stroke it. “You have a surprisingly high pain tolerance, Little One.”
She scrunched up her nose, then rolled her eyes. It was a new nickname, but I liked it. “Yeah, well. Can’t be a Moretti unless you can take a few hits,” she replied. My mood soured. I didn’t like the idea of her takinganyhits.
“You weren’t always a Moretti, no?” I knew the answer already, but I wanted to hear her side of things.
She snuggled closer. “No. I am the bastard child of a mob boss and the forgotten daughter of a prostitute. I didn’t become a Moretti until my brother plucked me out of poverty, polished me up, and made me claim my birthright. Our apartment was a revolving door of skeevy men and drugs. My first words were ‘fuck off,’ and I could throw a fist before I could ride a bike. I know you want to take care of me, Alessandro. You still love Nix. And when you love someone, you do whatever you can to help them. But I’ve been my own advocate since the day I was born. And when we find him, when he relinquishes you of your obligations, I’ll still be alone. I’ll still be my own motherfucking hero. Excluding, of course, when exploding planes are involved. I’m willing to let you save me when psychos decide to send us up in flames,” she teased with an exhale. Grace liked to overcompensate with snappy sarcasm.
I blinked. Aside from her dark humor, I wasn’t expecting her to drop such a powerful monologue, but fuck if it didn’t make me want to wrap her up in a hug and fight off the world. “You’re not alone,” I whispered.
“I’m not?” her challenging question was accompanied by a hard stare. She glared at me, daring me to contradict her.
“You haven’t been alone since Nix asked me to help you escape Santobello. You haven’t been alone since Gavriel found you. You haven’t been alone since Sunshine met you. You are loved, Grace. It might not be what you want or what you are used to, but there is an entire family of people that want to see you happy and thriving.”
A single tear traveled down her cheek, and the crack of vulnerability made me wish that I’d been more tender with her from the start. I was the one keeping her at arm’s length. “I realized I was gay when I was twelve,” I admitted. It seemed fair to share my own story now. Grace had been honest with me from the beginning. It was time to open up. She lifted her head to stare at me as I continued, “I had a friend named Tony. We did everything together. Most of my childhood was spent causing chaos in our neighborhood. I never told him I was gay, but as we got older, it was harder to hide my feelings. When we were seventeen, he came over to watch football, and I stole the remote. We did what guys do, and he wrestled me for it. I got an embarrassing hard-on. He felt my twitching cock against his stomach and just froze. I don’t know why I did it, but I leaned up and I just kissed him.”
Grace winced. “How’d he take it?”
“Bad. It was sloppy and wet and ridiculous. Tony let it happen for half of a second, but then he shoved me off and kicked my ass. He called me some nasty names and left. Then, he told my adoptive parents. Lori and Richard were chronically religious, so they kicked me out. I went to a transitional facility for a few more months until college started. Then I found the vigilante hacker group. They gave me a scholarship of sorts. I worked for them in exchange for tuition for college. At the time, it seemed like a fair trade-off. But then things sort of spiraled when I joined Santobello’s ranks.”
She knew all about my time with Santobello. I didn’t need to go into the horrors of what I’d experienced there. “Nix was in that vigilante group, right?” she asked.
“He was. They were an army of homeless and orphan teens, and the leader trained us how to hack. I finally felt like I had a home. I finally felt like I could be myself. I met Nix, and I guess you could say the rest is history.”
Grace grabbed my hand. “What happened between you two?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” I asked her. “It’s a long story.”
She let out a sigh. “We’ve got nothing but time. Besides, don’t you think it’s time we had this conversation? We’ve both known how each other feels about Nix, but we never discussed what happened. It’s okay to talk about it.”
It wasn’t okay, though. It hurt to think about, let alone say out loud. “I loved him,” I choked out. The admission felt damning. “But he lovedeveryone. I couldn’t share—wouldn’t share. We had a really difficult breakup. We were young and stupid. I don’t know. I never really got over him. There was this girl, Elizabeth, that Nix wanted to bring into our relationship. I tried so fucking hard to love her, to want her. I thought it would make Nix stay if I did. But it didn’t feel right. Nix was happy for a little while, but she wasn’t enough.Iwasn’t enough, so Nix eventually left.” I let out a puff of air and tried to rein in my emotions. “Elizabeth was heartbroken, and I tried to comfort her. She thought we were more than we really were. I was ashamed to admit that my feelings for her were forced at best. I went along with it because I felt bad for her. She wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted to forget Nix. But Santobello killed her. It was my fault. She died because ofme.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine going through that,” Grace replied with a sympathetic frown. It was painful to think about. Elizabeth was innocent in all of this. Maybe she would still be alive if I had just been true to myself. I was trying to please Nix by letting her in, but we all lost in the end. I couldn’t share Nix because it wasn’t in my DNA. I’d never had someone I cared about enough or evenlikedenough to share him with. “Poor Elizabeth. Was Nix your first?”
I laughed. “Yeah. You know what I love about Nix?” Grace flinched, and I realized I saidloveinstead ofloved.
“What do you love about him?” she asked.
I clenched my fist while responding. “Until I met him, it felt like I was just floating through life. He stuck to his convictions. He made decisions easily. He was this powerful presence. He lived and spoke without shame. He just completely owned who he was.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Grace asked. “His loyalty was the first thing I noticed about him. I was jealous of Sunshine in the beginning. Everyone is hopelessly devoted to her, but Nix took it to another level. He didn’t project his personal experience and preferences onto her. He understood that she was her own person and trusted her to do what she needed to do. Their friendship was something I wanted for myself. And Nix was just this strong, unapologetic man. He made me feel safe and protected. He made me feel cherished.”
“I want you to feel safe with me,” I admitted. This trip had taught me a lot about my feelings for Grace. I cared about her. I cared about her a lot more than I was previously willing to admit. If anything happened to Grace, I didn’t think I would be able to cope. I’d miss her honesty. I’d miss her snark. I’d miss the way she made me feel comfortable in my skin and capable of taking on the world. I’d miss the way she teased me, too. I guess at the end of the day, I’d miss my best friend. Grace and I were lonely people who found one another.
“I do,” she replied. “It's not the same as with Nix, but I know you’re always there. Even if you don’t want to be.”
