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“Umm, no. He did — other things.”
“Gross,” Memphis said and picked up her whole plate to take it with her back down the hall to her room. “Call Indy. Let me know when he’s here. I’m going to start tracing.”
“You got it, boss,” Utah said and watched her until she disappeared around the corner at the end of the hallway. He didn’t move again until we heard her door close.
“That’s cute. Jersey started calling her boss lady.”
“Bossy lady feels more appropriate right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
trista
I spent most of that day hiding in Jersey’s garage while Kyle paced around nervously to watch every move that this body work person made around Persephone to inspect the damage from the bullets. Memphis was on edge and very clearly didn’t have any interest in company today. I couldn’t blame her. What we wanted to achieve was sitting squarely on her shoulders, and it felt pretty fucking impossible right now.
“You’re probably making him uncomfortable,” I said to Kyle when he made another nervous lap around the car.
“He should be uncomfortable,” Kyle said. “You know what Van would do to all three of us if he screwed up?”
“I know what he’d do to me,” I said. “But it’s probably nothing like what he’d do to you two.”
Kyle paused to look at me on his next lap after that statement.
“Do I even want to know?” He asked.
“I slashed all four tires when I tried to get away from him once,” I said. “Left Jersey handcuffed to a bed. And ran.”
I laughed when his jaw nearly unhinged as it fell open.
“How are you even alive?” He asked. “God, you must be the lay of a fucking lifetime.”
“I think I just needed to be delivered alive if he wanted to get paid the full amount for me,” I said, a little surprised at how much that upset me to say out loud. Kyle came to sit next to me.
“I think we probably both know that’s not true,” he said quietly. “And I don’t even know you.”
“But you know him,” I said and nodded.
“Van has some — issues,” he said.
“That’s a nice way to word it.”
“Some crazy PTSD stuff from what we had to do, something even worse from what happened with his family,” he said. “But he’s always had this thing about him. This caretaker, protector, whatever you might call it, thing. I think he’s younger than me, and he still took it upon himself to take care of me.”
“By letting you stay here?” I asked.
“No, I mean when we served,” he said. I watched him swallow hard, and he started to squeeze his hands into fists just to release them and ball them up again. Dandy appeared out of absolutely nowhere to sit right at his feet and his left hand went straight to her head.
“We were in —,” he paused and smiled. “Well, let’s just say that we were in an unnamed, unfriendly city. We had this name for Van, because he did the nickname thing and he also had this weird as fuck anxiety reaction when things got intense. Somebody started calling him Serk, because he went berserk when he got overwhelmed. It was scary, but as long as it was aimed in the right direction, it kept us all alive more than once. He was in that messed up headspace and running between buildings under fire. He ran right over a grenade without ever seeing it. I shoved his ass as hard as I could and tried to kick it away. The blast seemed to miss him for the most part, but I was still close enough to catch it. I don’t really remember it from my own point of view. A couple of guys told me about it afterward.”
“This all sounds like he owes you,” I interrupted. “Not the other way around.”
“Yeah, it fucked me up good,” he said and rolled up the left leg of his jeans to show me skin that had very clearly been burned and looked like it had been physically chewed on by an animal. He showed me similar marks that went all the way up the left side of his body, across his ribs.
“Van came right back for me,” he said. “Something snapped him out of the Serk zone, the other guys called it. He went full-blown mom lifting a car off their baby mode instead, dug me out of the blast rubble, carried me to the next building. Forced his way inside, killed whoever was in there to make sure it was empty. Stayed there with me while the other guys carried on. We still had a job to do, and it still needed finishing. But I obviously wouldn’t be any help in getting it done. They left most of the medical supplies with Van, wished him luck, and went on their way. No hard feelings about it because that’s just how it went. Van should’ve gone with them. To this day, I don’t really know how he got us out of there. The things he would’ve had to do…” his words trailed off right alongside his mind. I reached out and squeezed his right hand, because something in me told me that I needed to. I couldn’t say any actual words. I had a pretty messed up life, but I’d never had to do or see the kinds of things that he’d experienced.
“I remember weird pieces of it,” he said quietly. “Sometimes bits of it come back like a movie scene, but it plays out in my mind like a dream rather than something that actually happened. And I’ve never worked up the nerve to ask him what was real and what wasn’t about those memories. It’s cowardly, I know. I’m the reason that he would’ve had to do some of those fucked up things just to keep us alive and keep moving. I know it added to the shit that he already struggles with in his own head.”
“I don’t imagine he’d blame you for any of that,” I said quietly.
