Page 64 of Hell In A Handbasket
“Little bit.”
“I’m not accustomed to feeling lame. And I’m never whimsical or mushy or weird, except with my husband. He’s my safe space. He’s who I can be vulnerable around.”
“And yet, here you are.” I roll my lip between my teeth and watch as her lips wrinkle into worried lines. “You’re being vulnerable now.”
“I’d prefer to slam my head against a brick wall. I rely on my reputation as a hard-ass. It makes me untouchable. But now you know who I am beneath.”
“Gooey and awkward and weird?”
“With very few people in the world.” Her eyes sling back to the phone, right as Ellie swipes Felix’s wallet straight out of his back pocket and disappears into the shadows. And though he turns, curious about what may have been nothing more than a change in the air surrounding him, he’s clueless to the fact that he’s been burgled.
Grand larceny.
“I love my sister, Mayet. I would kill for her in a heartbeat. I keep her near, because I need to know she’s safe. And Troy was my soldier long before he was hers, but even if I wanted him off my team now, I wouldn’t send him away.”
“Lock him down,” I acknowledge. “Same theory as keeping your enemy close.”
“I love my family. My husband and my daughters. I love Kane and Jess and the girls. I love Laine and Ang and Spence and Abby and Jen and Corey. I keep these people in my circle because Ilovethem. Because I want toprotectthem. It’s exactly what you do, too.”
“Aubree,” I sigh. “Tim. Felix and Christabelle. Micah and Tiia. Even Cato.”
She snorts. “Even Cato. But then there’s you. And though I hate to sound so lame, Godddd…” She tilts her head back and groans. “Ihateto sound so lame. But I guess kinship is another word for family. It’s another word for sister.”
My heart thunders a million beats a minute, slamming fresh blood through my veins and with it, adrenaline that leaves my fingertips tingling. But surprise turns to warm contentment faster than I could have ever predicted. Shock turns to pleasure. Leaning to the side, I tap her shoulder with mine. “You consider me a sister, Soph?”
“Shut up.”
“All this because you love me?”
“Don’t sound so smug about it.” She closes her eyes and brings her head down again. “It’s different from how I feel about Ellie. Different from how I feel about Jess and Jen and Laine and the rest of them.” Drawing a long breath, she fills her lungs and expands her chest. Then, flickering her eyes open, she glances across and locks on to mine. “We were born as these innocent, completelyotherpeople. But circumstances changed us. The world hardened us, and the people we surround ourselves with sometimes consider ustoohard.Toounfeeling. Too driven toward this mission we’ve set for ourselves.”
“What are the chances we’d meet in New York, huh? I was already who I was. You were who you were. Weappearedto be regular, upstanding citizens.”
“You ever heard the termtwin flame?”
She waits for my response, though I have none to give. So when I press my lips closed, she continues.
“We were lucky, Chief. We found our soulmates. In a world of more than eight billion people, I found Jay. You found Archer. These aren’t temporary relationships. They’re not the type that’ll fizzle out someday. They’re permanent, all the way to the grave.”
Not too soon. Not for another eighty years, at least.
“But we also found our twin flames.”
“You think so?”
“In a world of eight billion people,wemeet. You and me. We have the same drive. The same mission, and though we don’t relish taking a life, the lives we save make it worth it a thousand times over. I dunno…” Shy, she pushes up straight, crossing her feet at the ankles and glancing down at her phone screen. “If that sounds weird to you, then whatever. Pretend I said nothing, and go back to being mad if you want.”
Amused, I sit taller too, leaning forward and turning my head back so I can meet her eyes. “My husbandhatesthat I know you.”
She twists her lips. Oddly, charmingly defensive. “I’m not a likable person.”
“I think he hates it because he knows we’re the same. He’s terrified of this twin mission, this need we have to make bad things better. To defend those who can’t defend themselves. And of course, this shit is kinda risky.”
She snorts. “Sometimes.”
I see her, in my mind, in that club Jay spoke of. A dancer wrapped around a monster’s back, with her blade at his throat and a hope—a prayer—that that wasn’t the night she would be bested.
“Archer is scared I’ll get hurt, and he knows keeping me away from you will likely keep me a little further away from that mission.”
