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“Don’t you think I know that?” Dad snapped. “But it was the only thing I could think of to do, because she wasn’t going to stop. No matter how hurt she got, no matter how many times she came home bloodied and bruised.”
Nick curled his hands into fists, a headache pulsing behind his right eye. He tried to focus on his father, but it felt as if his vision was frenetic, jumping, always jumping. “Do you know what it did to me?” Nick said, voice cracking. “When I got the call that you were in the hospital? That you’d been hurt when an entirebuildingcollapsed on top of you? It killed me. It killed me because I thought you were gone and I was going to be alone. That you left me, just like she did.”
Dad hung his head. “I’m fine, Nick. I’m okay. I’m always going to be okay. I’m always going to come home to you.”
“You can’t promise that,” Nick said. “No one can. You go out there every single day, and there are people who don’t give two shits about your stupid promises.” Dad took a step toward him. “Don’t. No. Don’t come near me. You stay right where you are.”
Dad fisted his hair. “That’s not fair, Nick. I have ajobto do.”
“So did she,” Nick said coldly. “Yeah, it scared you, but she did it anyway—not because she didn’t love you, but because she knew it was the right thing to do.”
“I know,” Dad spat. “Believe me, I know that better than anybody.”
“Do you?” Nick asked. “Because she eventually stopped, didn’t she? You must have worn her down until she couldn’t—”
“She stopped because she found out she was pregnant with you.”
The lightbulb above them flared. Dad looked up, eyes wide and spooked. Nick ignored it, staring at his father. “What?”
“You,” Dad said in a low voice. “We lived in a shitty apartment on the East Side, a hole with faulty wiring and never enough hot water for a shower. But it was ours, and we didn’t care. We were out of school and making the most of our lives. I was a cop, and she was a lawyer during the day and Guardian at night.” He began to pace, the cracked linoleum creaking under his feet. “I came home late one night. I expected her to be gone already. There was this group of people—we didn’t know who they were. They were robbing banks all over the city, but it wasn’t about protecting banks. People were getting hurt, and she couldn’t stand for that. She never could. She’d been getting close to figuring it out, and I thought she’d be on their trail. She wasn’t. She was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up at me as I walked in, and she was crying. I thought someone had died.”
Nick swayed back and forth, his heart in his throat.
“I rushed over to her,” Dad continued, still looking up at the light. “I asked her what was wrong—just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it, I swear I’ll fix it. It took me a bit to see that while shewascrying, she was also laughing. And when she looked up at me, she smiled and said that she’d taken three different pregnancy tests, and all of them showed the same thing. You, Nicky. They showed you.” He lowered his gaze to Nick. “Eight weeks. She was eight weeks pregnant with you. You weren’t planned. You weren’t something we’d done on purpose, butoh, there was this light in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. You changed everything for us, Nick.”
“She stopped because of me?” Nick asked dully.
“She didn’t want to take the chance,” Dad said, “that something could happen to you while she was acting as Guardian. She said that at least for the length of the pregnancy, she wouldn’t go out anymore. It hurt her, even though she tried to hide it. But I never made that choice for her. I never told her she couldn’t still be Guardian.”
“I bet you didn’t try and stop her,” Nick said bitterly.
“You’re damn right I didn’t,” Dad snarled. “Because I wanted to be selfish. I wanted us to be more important to her than other people. If that makes me the asshole, fine. I accept that. But I won’t apologize for it.”
“It didn’t matter though, did it?” Nick said. “Because they still found her. Eventually. It wasn’t random, was it? Who are they? Did you lie to me about them too?”
“They don’t matter,” Dad said. “They’re locked up, Nicky, and they won’t ever be getting out. They can’t hurt anyone again.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word on that?”
“It’s the truth. It’s over, Nick. It’s been over for a long time. But that’s the reason for all of this, okay? That’s the reason we—I—made the decisions that I did. You … it was little things, at first. You were a kid, just a baby, and I’d come to your crib, and the mobile—this cheap plastic thing the guys at the precinct chipped in for—would be spinning, even though it was turned off. You were kicking your legs and watching it as it turned and turned and turned. We didn’t know that what she could do was genetic. We knewnothingabout Extraordinaries because there was no one to ask.”
“You knew,” Nick whispered, “even then?”
Dad hung his head, slumping in on himself. “We didn’t know what was going on. But the older you got, the more things … happened around you. Stuffed animals floating in midair. Your little toy cars racing around the room. Your blocks, little wooden blocks with numbers and letters painted on them, would spell out words even before you could spell. They’d say things likeDADDYandMOMMYandLOVEandHOMEand she was so scared for you, Nick. We both were. We knew what she’d been through, knew there were people out there who, if they knew who she was, would stop at nothing to destroy everything she loved.”
“What did you do?” Nick asked, and the bulb began to blink slowly, light and dark, light and dark. The pain in Nick’s head lessened slightly, but it was agoodache, agoodpain.
“We went to the only person we thought we could trust. The only person who knew what she could do.”
“Burke,” Nick said. “Simon Burke.”
Dad nodded, looking at the floor. “You were … four, maybe five. We told him that we were worried that her abilities had passedon to you. That we wanted to—not stop it, but suppress it, if we could.” He held up his hand as Nick started to sputter angrily. “You were diagnosed with ADHD, Nicky. Do you have any idea what could have happened, since you had ADHD”—he exhaled explosively—“and telekinesis? We didn’t make the decisions we did to stop you from being who you are but to try to keep you safe until the time was right. When we could help you figure things out.”
“I’m sixteen years old,” Nick said. “When the hell were you planning on—”
“You’re still a minor,” Dad snapped. “I don’t care if you’re sixorsixteen, you’re a kid. You should be focusing on school and boys and thinking about what comes next, not worrying about exploding shit with your mind.”
“I can do both,” Nick retorted. “Ihavebeen doing both. What were you thinking when you found out about Owen and Seth? That I was going to walk away from everything? That I wasn’t going to get involved? If that’s what you thought, then you don’t know me at all.”
