Page 96 of Breaking the Rules
“Take it up with someone who cares. And keep your phone on you.” Waverly said snidely. “Oh, and Brad?”
“What?” he snapped.
“Watch out for our little Russian princess. She’s not too happy about being our guest.” She disconnected the call.
“What the fuck was that?” Xavier demanded.
“What? I improvised a little,” she shrugged. “He’s always underestimated me, and we wanted him off-balance.”
“You’re practically begging him to take a shot at you!” Dante scolded.
“I hate to agree with this terrible man,” Grigory said, pointing in Dante’s direction. “But you seem to have poked a bear who has already proved willing to attack.”
Micah and Malachi weighed in with equally damning opinions, but Anatoli and Chelsea stood firmly in her corner.
“If I had a penis, would you all still be up in arms about this?” Waverly demanded, crossing her arms.
She could tell by Xavier’s expression that she’d at least scored a small point with that. But the victory felt hollow. It was their first test in trusting each other, and they’d both bombed it.
“Let’s all pretend that Waverly does indeed have a penis and realize that she just got this guy to confess to taking Dante out.” Chelsea argued.
“Speaking of taking me out,” Dante began. “What was that bit about washed up stunt men?”
Waverly shot a furtive glance at Xavier. “The one guy seemed oddly familiar to me. I kept seeing him behind the wheel of a speeding car, and it hit me this morning. He was a stunt driver on a movie I did when I was a kid.”
“So Tomasso poaches acting talent for espionage and stunt men for muscle,” Micah mused out loud.
“Can we get back to the part about Waverly going off script?” Xavier muttered.
Chelsea cleared her throat. “Bottom line is, not only can Agent Travers go back to the feds with an attempted kidnapping, but we’ve also got Tomasso on conspiracy to commit murder.”
“On that note, I’ve got some serious convincing to do,” Malachi announced, standing. “Let me know where your team wants this to go down, and we’ll make it happen… somehow,” he said to Xavier. “And you,” he pointed at Waverly. “Don’t poke any more bears.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Chelsea volunteered.
One by one, they all filtered out until Xavier and Waverly were left alone.
“I feel like we both dropped the ball already,” Xavier sighed.
Waverly rested her head on his shoulder. “I should have told you I was going to push Brad.”
“I shouldn’t have jumped on you, especially not in front of the rest of the team.”
“We’re new at this. We’ll get better… right?” she asked. She hoped they would.
“God, I hope so.” Xavier put his arm around her and pulled her back into his side. “When this is over, when the studio’s operations are shut down, what are you going to do?” he asked her. “Is acting enough for you?”
She felt herself freeze up. “You think I should give it up?” This had been the one thing in her life that she’d felt she’d chosen. And now Xavier, a force she never saw as a choice, wanted her to give that up.
“Think about it, Waverly. How else would you continue? Your value as an operative comes from you being a celebrity. You can’t just go work for the FBI or the CIA. They don’t work that way,” he said.
She hadn’t really considered the future beyond finding Dante and now nailing Brad to the wall for his sins. Brad had made her a pawn as so many others had in the past, and it wasn’t something she’d stand for anymore. And then there was Xavier. She was part of an “us” now, and that would mean making decisions together, moving forward together. Could acting be enough for her now that he was back in her life? It hadn’t been before, she remembered.
“What doyouwant to do after this is over?” she asked, turning the question back on him. Her fingers traced a heart pattern on his thigh through his pants.
Invictus allowed Xavier to call his own shots, play by his own rules. But from what she’d gleaned from Chelsea and Micah, it consumed his life.
“Maybe we could try normal?” he suggested.
