One More Day

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “Who says I’m pissed?” I asked. I turned back to the window again.

  “You have that look on your face, like you wouldn’t mind hitting me hard right now.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Aren’t you glad now that I told you this before we did anything you couldn’t come back from?” he asked. I heard him stand. I waited for the sound of his footsteps receding, the door opening and closing, but it didn’t come. Eventually, I turned around to see him still standing there, arms crossed over his chest.

  “If you were Raider… if you were anything like the current Raider, it means you killed people.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  I didn’t answer, and he kept his eyes on me.

  “So…how did you get from there to here?” I asked him. Give me something, please, I silently pled. Convince me that the things I believed about you weren’t all lies.

  He sat down again. “They thought I died. There was a big fight, our team and a bunch of special ops type superheroes. They kicked my ass, shot me up pretty good, and I fell into the bay where we were fighting.” He nodded. “I came to, after I healed enough of my injuries, in this big warehouse. They kept me alive, talked to me, told me shit about my team that I hadn’t known.”

  “Like what? What, was your wife cheating with another of your teammates or something?”

  “That bothers you more than you want to admit. Almost like you’re jealous or something.”

  “Answer,” I snarled.

  “That they were making deals behind my back. All that time, I thought I was in charge. I never really was,” he said. “I got to know them, and the better I got to know them, learned more about them, the more I wanted to be like them, to make sure I never made the same mistakes again. To make sure that I played the game by my own rules and put my trust in the right people.”

  I didn’t answer for quite a while, and he seemed content to wait it out.

  “I think maybe we should call it a night,” I finally said.

  “Is there anything you want to ask me?” he asked, standing up.

  I shook my head.

  “So… what does this mean for us?” he asked quietly.

  I shook my head. “People don’t change that much. And I’ve got plenty of my own crazy to deal with,” I said. “And it seems to me, it’s kind of odd that Raider and the rest of that team are all still out there, running around causing trouble, and no one’s done anything to stop it. You’d think that somebody who knew them as well as you did would have easily been able to step in and stop them, if he wanted to.” I met his eyes then, and he didn’t look away.

  “I’m working on it. Raider’s second-in-command is is a precog. Every time I’ve decided to go after them, she knows, and they move before we can get to them.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty worrisome power to be dealing with. Even more reason to catch them as soon as possible, huh?” I asked, walking past him toward the door. He reached out and gently pulled my arm, making me stop.

  “You were never all in on this hero shit,” he said, freezing me with the intensity of his gaze. “You’re still not. When it comes right down to it, you’re all about you, and that’s fine.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “We’re a lot alike, Jolene,” he said, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “I told you this because I think we have something here worth building on. I want you in my life, working with me. By my side.”

  “I— ”

  “And you can try to shut me out now,” he said. “But I’m not giving up. You’ll remember, once you’re over the shock of what I just told you, how well you and I understand each other. You’ll remember that this StrikeForce shit was never what you wanted. And you’ll be mine.”

  I pulled my hand out of his and stepped away. “See, now that? That right there? That sounds kind of asshole stalkery.”

  He rolled his eyes then pulled his mask back on. “You’re completely over-reacting.”

  “Am I?” Stupid as it was, I wanted him to convince me. I wanted to forget what he’d told me. I wanted to go to him and pretend this conversation had never happened. I wanted him to kiss me again. I wanted to learn every contour of his jaw and neck, memorize the taste of his lips. I wanted it not to matter that he wasn’t everything I’d thought he was, that he hadn’t sounded more than a little stalkery just then.

  But that wasn’t me. Careful is the way I’ve stayed free. The few times I’ve acted stupidly were the only times I got caught, or even came close to getting caught. Nothing about getting involved with Connor was careful, or smart. “I’m glad you told me, though,” I added.

  He let out a short, angry laugh. “Yeah. I bet you are.”

  “Not…I’m glad you think enough of me to be honest with me. That means a lot,” I told him.

  “You think this is over,” he said. “It’s not.”

  “It’s over when I say it’s over, Connor.”

  He took a step toward me, and it took everything in me not to take a step back. “No. It’s over when I say it’s over. And that’s pretty much never going to happen.”

  “I want you to leave now. Let’s go.”

  He didn’t respond for several long moments, then he nodded. “Okay. I have a thing I have to do tomorrow. I’ll probably be gone for a little while again. Which is probably good. It’ll give you time to think and process all of this.”

  “I need to know something.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not doing the super villain thing anymore. Right?”

  “Of course not. I see how small and stupid I was before. I want to save the world. Can you say the same?”

  I stared at him.

  “Deep down, do you actually give a shit about the world, Jolene? Or are you more concerned to trying to tell yourself that you’re a good person? We both know the answer to that.”

  I walked to the door. “Now.” I opened it, and he went through wordlessly. I escorted him back down the elevator, to the lobby, and then out the door, ending up in the courtyard again. It was almost ridiculous how much had changed in less than an hour.

  I stood there waiting for him to walk away, and he stayed, standing close, looking down at me.

  “I’ll talk to you soon,” he finally said. I breathed a sigh of relief when he started walking away. “Oh,” he said, stopping and turning around. “You should learn some wrestling moves.”

  I shook my head. “Are you flirting with me now? Seriously?”

  He laughed. “No. I was thinking about what you said earlier about how your reaction time still sucks. You knock them down, disorient them with that first impact, right?” I nodded. “Okay, but you can’t punch ‘em once you’ve got ‘em down. Learn a few good wrestling holds, and as strong as you are nobody’d be able to get away from you.”

  I thought about it. “That might just work.”

  “Course it will.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the tip.”

  He took a breath. “That was given in good faith, Jolene. I hope you understand that you can trust me. Not many people can; I’ll admit that. But I want you to trust me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Connor shook his head, then turned and finally walked away. I walked quickly back into Command. I looked once more out the front doors to make sure he’d actually gone, then I made my way back up to my suite. It was a lot to process. As I rode back up the elevator, my mind just kept spinning. The guy I was pretty sure I was sort of, maybe, starting to fall in love with was a former super villain. He was also determined to keep this going, apparently whether I was sure I wanted him around or not. I’ve read a few romances where the things he’d said to me just now would have come across as sexy and romantic, but this wasn’t like that. I couldn’t explain it. I just knew that I didn’t feel flattered, or sexy, or excited about him at the moment.

  I guessed it was the combination of “hey, I was a really bad super villain!” and “this isn’t over” that had me feeli
ng that way. I just knew I needed to put the brakes on. I needed to stop daydreaming about him all the time. Maybe it would all work out. Maybe he’d somehow convince me that he was who I thought he was, and we’d move forward.

  But I was starting to think that he never was who I’d thought he was.

  I shook my head. “Making all Mama’s mistakes, even though you know better. Pretty smart, Jolene,” I muttered to myself.

  Chapter Three

  After my chat with Connor, all I wanted to do was hide in my bed. Preferably forever. Or, better yet, wake up and find that all of it had been one of my stupid nightmares. I’d fallen into bed for a few hours of fitful sleep, then dragged myself out of bed so Caine and I could do our patrol shift. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and Caine seemed to catch on to that pretty quickly. We did most of our shift in silence, and when we got back to Command, I headed to the elevator without a word.

  “Jo,” Caine called after me, and I turned around.

  “Yeah?”

  He caught up to me. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “Tired. I’m sorry if I was a bitch today.”

  He shrugged. “No more than usual.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. “That could be taken a couple of ways.”

  “It could.”

  I glanced at him again, and he gave me a small smile, just the barest lift of the corner of his mouth. “You’re not a bitch,” he finally said.

  “I probably am sometimes.”

  He shrugged. “I think if you were nice and upbeat all the time you’d get on every damn one of my nerves during our patrol shifts. Do you know who my old patrol partner was?”

  I shook my head.

  “Portia. And she’s very no nonsense now, but she’s also one of those people who thinks mornings are just great and likes to talk the entire way through a shift.”

  “So… she’s pleasant?” I asked. We got to the elevator and I pushed the button to take us down to the bottom floor. I was starving.

  “Yeah.”

  “How awful,” I said as we stepped onto the elevator.

  “You have no idea. Because then I’d have to be nice too, and we both know I’m not exactly Mr. Congeniality.”

  “Is there a point to this?” I asked, and he gave a low laugh.

  “I’m just saying, you’re not a bitch. You’re you. That’s all.”

  I studied him. He kept his dark eyes on the numbers above the doors.

  “Well, you’re not a bitch, either,” I finally said.

  “Thanks. I was worried,” he said wryly.

  “I know it was keeping you up at night.”

  He shook his head and got off on his floor, and I went downstairs and grabbed a quick bite to eat in the cafeteria. I was thinking I might catch a nap after my crappy night’s sleep the night before, while everything was quiet

  I was about to hit the button for the elevator to go back up to my floor when I glanced toward the weight room. It was usually pretty empty — these weren’t exactly gym rat superheroes on our team. Beta was in there, and I’d run into him while working out before. I shrugged and walked into the weight room. I could nap later.

  Probably.

  “Hey, Daystar,” he said, blowing out a puff of breath as he pushed the barbell above him again, doing a bench press.

  “You know you’re supposed to have someone spotting you,” I said.

  “Never had anyone around here other than Caine who set foot in here before. Besides, I don’t think there’s much risk of getting hurt,” he said, lowering the barbell.

  “Still. It hurts like a bitch if it falls on you,” I said. I went and stood near his head, ready to take the barbell if he had any trouble with it. He was lifting a lot. Not as much as I could, but a decent amount for a non-super strength type. His face was flushed, and he was sweating, his short hair sticking up at crazy angles.

  “You ever had that happen?” he asked.

  “Yep. In the first gym I used to go to, where I started lifting. Scared the hell out of me, too. I was sure I was going to die there. I had this bruise across my chest for weeks afterward.”

  “You probably cracked something,” he grunted.

  “Probably,” I agreed.

  “You didn’t go to the doctor?”

  “Yeah, right. Tell my mother I hurt myself lifting weights at the gym where they trained boxers? She would have had a conniption fit.”

  He chuffed out a short laugh, and I held my hand out as he settled the bar on the stand. He sat up, grabbed a towel, and wiped some of the sweat from his face. “Daystar, I — ”

  “Why do you still call me that? You know what my actual name is,” I pointed out.

  He gave me a small smile. “Because we all call each other by our code names. It’s a habit and now it’s weird actually knowing someone’s name.” He stuck his hand out toward me. “David Fendrath,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Jolene Faraday. Which you already knew,” I reminded him. We shook hands, and I motioned for him to get up so I could do a set. I added some weight to the bar, and he grimaced.

  “Seriously?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m totally confident of my manhood,” he muttered as he watched me add more. “Mostly,” he added.

  I laughed and settled myself onto the bench. He stood near my head, where I’d been standing for him. This reminded me of the camaraderie I’d found at my old gym. Most of the guys there either teased me, flirted with me, or aggressively suggested that I find a “lady gym” to work out at. But the few who were decent to me had been a lot like Beta…. David. It was going to be hard to remember to call him that. We’d talk, or not talk, and it was all fine.

  “It hurts just looking at that,” he said as I lifted a second time. I glanced at his face to see him watching the bar, tense, ready to grab it.

  “You know, if I drop it, I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Still. It’ll hurt. Uh. Right? I mean, you feel pain.”

  “I do,” I said, straightened my arms to lift it again. I did a couple more, then settled it on the stand and sat up.

  “So, Jenson and I have been working on going through those files she found. She’s still sure Alpha was up to something. We’ve found a few files that had extra levels of encryption on them, and I was able to crack a couple of them after a while.”

  “Anything important?”

  He shook his head. “Mostly scouting reports on people he wanted on the team. Including you.”

  I nodded.

  “We’re going to keep looking. I don’t know what she thinks she saw or heard, but Jenson’s positive there’s more out there and that he was up to something bad.”

  “He’s your cousin, right?”

  He nodded.

  “So you know him. Do you think he was up to more?”

  He sat beside me and shrugged. “We were never close, you know? I mean, you’ve dealt with him. He’s an asshole of the highest order. He always has been.”

  “Yet he brought you on here,” I pointed out.

  “He always got a kick out of bossing the rest of the family around. And his dad was the rich one in our family and he never let anyone forget it. Everything had to be at their house, on their schedule.”

  “And you all went along with that?”

  He let out a short laugh. “Our grandma was a formidable woman. Any sign of infighting, any sign of schism between any of us, and we’d hear about it. For the most part, it wasn’t a big deal. Some people just like making everyone around them feel less, somehow, and he and his dad were both like that.”

  “What about his mom?”

  He shrugged. “They didn’t talk about her. I was always under the impression that she took off on them shortly after he was born.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while. “But there’s more. You actively fought against him with us. That’s not just normal family bullshit.”

  He grabbed a pair of dumb bells and started doing curls. He wa
s silent for a bit, and I was starting to think he wouldn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t even know why he’d done it.

  “When we were ten, a stray cat got hit by a car in front of us. We were in his front yard playing. We saw it happen. I had nightmares about it for weeks afterward. I’m a cat person,” he added, and I smiled. “Anyway. We saw it happen, and he laughed. Just cracked up, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. And when he saw how upset I was, he went into the street, picked up the body, and started making it dance. Laughing the whole time,” he said. He met my eyes. “I’d like to say that he changed. That he grew out of that kind of lack of empathy. I thought he had. We weren’t in contact for several years, not until we both ended up with powers. And I thought he was different. He started this. I thought it was for all the right reasons. He was putting his money to use for something good.”

  I could see the self-disgust on his face, that he’d been involved. That he hadn’t done anything to change the way things were done. That he hadn’t seen what was happening right under this nose. “I didn’t know that he had Caine and Toxxin collared that whole time.” Caine, Toxxin, and a few other prisoners under Alphas’s reign had been dampened, wearing thin metal “collars” that interfered with the ability to access their powers. He’d done the same thing to me. The difference was that I had always been dampened, whereas Caine and Toxxin’s collars had been a threat, a way to easily control them if they looked like they were about to do anything other than what Alpha wanted.

  “I didn’t know he was doing that shit until you,” he said quietly, meeting my eyes. “And then when I started cracking some of those files…” he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jolene.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t know,” I said. “You were nice to me my first day here. I would have been really pissed off if the whole asshole thing had been something that ran in the family.”

  He laughed a little. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “Well. I don’t think anyone knew what to do. Even those who did know what he was doing, you know? I mean, Jenson sort of knew and she didn’t do anything about it. Portia knew. I don’t think there’s a protocol for what a superhero team should do when they realize their leader is the type of thing they’re supposed to be fighting.”