Page 46 of Gluttony
“Released what?” Bailey asked. One of these days, someone would start talking, come hell or high water.
Parker blinked at her, only just registering she was there. “What’s she doing here?”
Both Evan and Wyatt answered in unison. “She’s his mate.”
Evan showed Parker the elusive picture on his cell phone. Parker gave her a grim look and then turned to his brothers. “Get us two chairs.”
Within moments, both Parker and Bailey were seated beside Tony. Bailey still grasped his hot, sweaty hand, and he still gripped back. Parker leaned pensively toward Bailey, fingers laced, wrists on his knees.
“What has Tony told you?”
“Nothing!” she gasped. “But I guessed a damn lot. I figured out the rest once I got down here. You’re all the Deadly Seven.”
“And what has he told you about his power?”
Parker hadn’t blinked at Bailey’s revelation. He didn’t seem to care that she knew their secret. “Nothing. He only said he didn’t want me to see him like that. I know it’s something to do with a glowing light, but he keeps hiding it from me.”
Parker rubbed his stubble. “Grace said he’s acting like a transplant patient rejecting the organ. He must suppress what comes naturally.” He met Bailey’s gaze. “He needs to accept what’s happening to him. He needs for you to accept it.”
“What do I have to do with this? I’ve barely learned of his power’s existence!” She rubbed her temple with her free hand. This was all too much.
“Bailey,” Parker said. “You’re Tony’s mate. Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head.
Parker signaled for Evan’s cell. When he got it, he showed Bailey the picture. It was a drawing of Bailey sitting bedside with Tony. This very bed!
He saw her surprise and said, “You’re his mate. It means that out of everyone in the world, you’re the one his body recognized as the perfect antithesis of the sin he battles daily. You’re his balance. The sin we sense is a constant feeling of wrongness in our stomach, but when any of us touch our mate, it goes away. The wrongness in us is reset.”
Parker paused, letting Bailey soak that in for a while. She’d heard the rumor about their sin-sensing. Stories told of them hunting down the worst criminals, eerily knowing of their whereabouts in a way that was too accurate to be anything but supernatural. At first, she’d believed it to be an urban legend they let circulate to put the fear of God into criminals.You can’t hide, we’ll find you. Her mind latched onto the second thing he’d said. Mate. As in soulmate?
Her mind whirled. What was she supposed to do with that?
“You will help him,” Parker decreed when Tony thrashed again.
“When you say jump, does everyone say how high?” She raised a brow.
Outrage flared in Parker’s golden eyes. “If you don’t accept being his mate, he could not only go nuclear right now, but it could happen anytime he’s out of balance. On the street, on set, teaching a bunch of teens at a sobriety house. Only through regular contact with you, can he live a life without wondering if that next bite of food will send him over the edge, or if he drinks too much water and wakes up one morning in a pool of other people’s blood, knowing he’s the one who made the mess, all because someone didn’t want to make the jump.”
Bastard.
She bit her lip and looked at Tony lying helpless and in pain. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“None of us did, yet here we are. You joined the CIA because you wanted to be proactive, not reactive. I’m not saying you have to get married. I’m just saying, here’s your chance to help, so you must.”
“How?”
“He’s trying to stifle his powers.” Parker stood and folded his arms, looking down at his brother’s prone form. “He’s stubborn. Probably the best fighter out of all of us, but he doesn’t believe in himself. He thinks he’s better off pretending to be someone else. You need to convince him differently.”
Parker dimmed the lamplight, and then gestured for his brothers to exit the room. They left her with a ticking time bomb. Who was her soulmate, or rather, she was his.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and stood to see his face better. “Tony? Can you hear me?”
He frowned and turned away.
“Don’t you turn away from me, boy.” She heard her grandmother’s clipped tone coming out of her mouth and cringed, but she couldn’t work with his stubbornness. “I’m here, so you can damn well get used to it.”
When he didn’t respond, she placed her palm on his slick, warm stomach and felt him breathe. In. Out. She did that for some time while her mind ran a million miles per hour. She wanted to help. It’s all she’d ever wanted to do. It’s what sent her into the agency. It’s what kept her there for years on end, even when she felt herself slowly distancing herself from life.
