"I need to…" I swallowed the sob that threatened to escape my throat. "Tell you something."
"You keep saying that," she said, bringing my hand to her chest to hold it. "What's wrong, Veyda?"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I choked and covered my face.
"Veyda." She urged my hands away then cupped my cheeks in her warm palms. Her body burned above me, despite my loss of sanity in the moment. "What's going on?" Her pulse slammed in her chest so hard that I could feel it against mine.
The burn of her no longer soothed me, and the closeness caused the overstimulated ache to return to my skin. It hurt like a thousand strokes of a tattoo needle anywhere she touched. I forced myself to bear it, to suffer instead of retreating.
I held her gaze, my resolve gone at that point. There weren't any words for me to say, no sentence I could construct that would make this any easier. Confusion misted her eyes as they flickered over my face as if trying to decode my meltdown. I held my breath and used my thumb and forefinger to swipe the contacts from my eyes. I closed them after, before she could see. Her stomach tensed against me, and she propped herself up, though she didn't recoil yet.
When I opened my eyes, shock paled her face as we lay together under the canopy of her hair. She said nothing at first, as if gazing in astonishment at something she'd never seen before. A shaky hand reached toward my face, though she never stopped gazing into my eyes.
"You're Hybridian," she said, her tone soft at first and laden with wonder.
I nodded, choking on the cries that I couldn't stop.
She continued to stare into my eyes, as if taking in every fraction of space they stole from the fabric of the universe. But when it hit her, when she recognized me, everything began to fold.
Her eyes widened, and tears dripped from her cheeks.
"I'm the Hybridian you hate," I croaked.
The recoil came in an instant. She flew off me, her back slamming into the arm of the sofa on the opposite end. Rage melted over her face, but not like before. It wasn't filled with hate or disdain, only fear and anger of the deepest sort.
I sat up despite the rejection of my shaky limbs. "I'm sorry."
"How could—why did—" She spat, but no phrase penetrated her tears, until she said, "It can't be you."
"It's me. I'm so sorry. It's me." I sobbed openly then, and my hands trembled. The air began to shift around us, like someone powered up a fan on its lowest setting.
Harlow's hair whipped from her face as she stared at me, her hands balled to fists as if she fought the urge to run or strike me. She glanced at the television then back to me, as if the pieces finally connected.
"I fixed it. Like-like you said, I fixed it."
She shook her head then, erupting into a heavy round of sobs as if my admission solidified the first. Her body shot up standing, and she held her hand up to stop me as she moved toward the door. Heavy sobs wracked her body, and she grabbed her purse, a finger pointed in my direction.
"Don't follow me. Don't you dare follow me."
"Harlow, please," I cried, choking on my sobs as I stumbled in my attempt to stand.
"No!" She yanked open the front door and hurried into the hall.
I stopped short when she shouted at me.
"How could you—" She cried so hard that something in me fractured on a level I never thought it could. "Don't follow me."
She didn't storm off, or stomp, or shout. Instead, she turned on her heel, her breath hitching in her throat, and disappeared from view.
My legs crumbled under me, and I covered my head with my arms as my forehead hit my knees. I listened to every step of Harlow's departure, every sob, every heel click, all the way to her car. She cried right through turning over the engine, and her sobs faded with her tires on the pavement.
"Veyda," I heard Nalea call my name, but didn't look up.
Instead, I bolted to the window, and phased through the glass only to dash upward on a whirl of wind, toward the night sky.
Chapter Seven
A week passed after Harlow walked out my door, and then two. All the grandparents returned home, and routine resumed at the house. I began teaching all my classes remotely, and spending most of my time in my room save for quality time with Elara. Audra and Nalea tried as they could to get me to speak to them, but I wouldn't or couldn't; it was difficult to decipher. I stopped wearing my contacts and didn't even bother to listen to the news or ask Nalea about work.
She didn't ask for my help either.
On Friday, Nalea returned home from work while I sat with Elara on the sofa. At a month old, she still loved to snuggle on my chest, and I found my only solace when I spent time with her. She didn't care about my eyes or my energy or the wind at my feet. She didn't care that I knocked the dirt out of plants when I walked past or cracked stone when I was too angry. She also didn't care if I spoke to her about how I felt, or didn't feel, respectively. Her happiness and contentment came from her love language of touch and soft singing.
Nalea sat beside me, her tablet in her lap as she showed me a photo of a house. She said nothing, but flicked through the images of the newly built duplex several miles north of where we currently lived. I watched with little interest, then nuzzled Elara after shrugging.
"Veyda, we really need to talk about this."
"We don't."
"We do."
"Just get what you want. I don't care."
"One day you will care again, and when I move you into something you hate, you'll pout at me with those cute purple eyes, and I'll feel bad." She batted her lashes at me.
I smirked and shrugged. "I really don't care where I live or what I live in."
"Fine, but will you at least go see it with us?"
"No."
"You can hold Elara the whole time."
I glanced at her, biting my tongue for a moment then asked, "In the baby carrier backpack thing?"
"Yup," she said, a grin forming on her lips. "The one that holds her in front of you."
"Fine." I stroked Elara's hair. "Her hair is starting to get curly."
"It is." Nalea leaned over to kiss her daughter's cheek. "Audra napping?"
"Yup. She only naps for an hour or two. I put dinner in."
"Having you work from home is the literal best. Did anyone tell you?"
"Everyone else teaches online classes so I might as well. My hold on the traditional is useless at this point. It makes the students miserable most of the time, too. They prefer class in their pajamas while eating buckets of cereal and recording what I say to review before the midterm anyway."
"Understandable." She slipped out of her jacket, then held her hands for Elara. "My turn. Gimme my kid."
I chuckled and relinquished the baby to her. "We better get in as many snuggles as possible before she's awake all the time soon."
"I know." She groaned then kissed Elara all over the place. "I love her so much I can't even breathe sometimes."
"I get that." I smiled while watching her. "Bet it makes bullets and other lethal objects flying at your head much scarier."
"Sure does. Especially now since my partner in anti-crime doesn't want to play anymore." She nudged me with her elbow. "But I'm equally happy she's home with my wife and kid keeping them safe. It's a yin and yang thing."
"I like being home with them." I dropped my head back on the sofa and sighed. "When do we have to go look at the place?"
"Tomorrow afternoon. And if you're a good bestie, you get apple cider and donuts from the pumpkin patch on the way home."
"Yum. I love those things." I smirked and pulled my knees to my chest to rest my head on them.
"I know your heart is broken, Vey, and I'm sorry."
"That doesn't bother me as much as knowing I broke Harlow's heart."
"Try talking to her…"
"She told me not to follow her. I've already broken her trust enough."
"So call her first." Nalea shook her head. "Because the two women I spent the day with a
few weeks ago were happy together. She was so happy with you…"
"I was so happy with her." Admitting it brought a fresh wave of tears to my eyes. "She makes me feel so much. I can't explain it. Every part of me just…I don't know. I've never felt that way, ever. Even when you touch me it hurts now. Everything hurts me."
"Even Elara?"
I shook my head. "Only if she pulls my hair. But everything else hurts. I want to cut my skin open and just take it off. Everything hurts me."
"Honey, you haven't been exercising your abilities at all. It's all building up in like trapped energy or something. At least from my understanding."
"It'll get too strong if I do. I turned the whole house into a tornado when Naomi was here. She thought someone broke in."
"But we cleaned it up and everything was fine."
"I could've hurt Elara. I can't control myself."
"You wouldn't have hurt her or any of us. You literally sent a bunch of napkins and paper products in a tizzy. You didn't throw a couch or something."
"I literally exploded the bag of flour on the counter…"
"It was opened, and the flour flew all over on the breeze. You didn't explode it. Let's be real, you're not that powerful, Hybridian." She scoffed, and it made me laugh.
"Jerk. But true… Kinda glad though. Wouldn't want to be like my mom in that sense."
"A bad ass Elite Soldier in the Army? Why not?"
"Because she got blown up by an R.P.G. because the enemy thought nothing else could stop her." I pulled the blanket off the back of the sofa and wrapped it around my shoulders. "I'm tired."
"Sadness makes you tired," she said, patting Elara's back while she cooed. She began to stir, and Nalea rested her on her thighs while propping her feet on the table. "Hi, Baby Boo. Look at those pretty eyes."
"They're so pretty. Her eyelashes are so long."
"They are. Like her Mama's. She looks so much like Audra."
"She looks so much like both of you. You just see Audra first because you love her. The eyes though, those belong to Audra."
"Yep. It must've been hard for same-sex couples decades ago to get only sperm from donors and not both share genetics with their kids. Hooray scientific advancement." She lifted Elara's arms while she held on to her thumbs. "Can you say, yay science?"
The baby smiled and kicked her feet faster against Nalea's stomach.
"She likes science already," I said. "Or maybe it's the history and physics onesie I put her in."
"Hmm. Probably. Wait…she's trying to tell me something." Nalea leaned down, her ear close to Elara's face. "She says, 'Call Harlow, Auntie Veyda. Don't be a pooper like me.'"
I smirked and rolled my eyes. "Why? To get my heart broken again?"
"No. Because she might be thinking the same thing. She clearly doesn't hate Hybridians after all the time she spent talking about her interest in Offlanders and non-human species."
"No. She just hates me. And vigilante justice, as she so implied."
"Right. So see? There's hope."
"How is what I just said in anyway hopeful?" I screwed up my face at her.
"It is."
"You were the one who said I shouldn't tell her. And I didn't listen so where are all the I told you so's here?"
"I didn't want you to tell her because I wanted to protect you. I can't always protect you. Just like you can't always protect me."
"Yes, I can," I countered with a huff.
"No, you can't."
"Yes, I can." I frowned at her then, folding my arms over my chest.
"Dude. I'm a human. We can die after falling off the toilet while taking a shit and hitting our heads. We're fragile idiots."
I laughed at that and dropped my head back into the pillows. "Yeah. You are. At least I'm only half fragile idiot."
"Yup." Nalea lifted Elara to her shoulder when she nodded off again and kissed her closed eyelids. "You think Audra will like if I sneak in on her?"
"I think she would. Her alarm is going to go off in five minutes. Why not wake her yourself? Also, why are you asking me?"
"Because she talks to you when she's feeling unsure about her personal things like sex."
"Probably because I can hear it through the walls all the time." I faked a shudder and she flipped me off.
"Liar." She laughed and kissed Elara's cheek before settling her in her swing. "It's not all the time. We keep our funny business to when you're flying away or running in the streets."
"Uh huh. You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?"
"No promises right now, though."
"Good. Go funny business your wife while I enjoy my quality baby time. You cut it short. I still had twenty minutes left." I waved her off as she scuttled into her room.
I reached over to the rocking swing beside the sofa and stroked Elara's foot while contemplating Nalea's words. I missed Harlow, missed her smile, how she spoke so passionately about her work, and missed how she felt when close to me. I didn't like knowing that I hurt her, but I didn't mean to and I wanted her to know that.
With one last glance to the bedroom door, I pulled out my phone and hesitated over her contact information. It was after five, and I knew the museum would be closed. And so, I didn't follow her, but clicked the video call icon beside her name.
It rang three, four times, until the line opened. Harlow's face appeared on screen, but she wasn't looking at me, and she covered her mouth with her hand. She said nothing, though I watched as tears welled in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," was the only thing I could say before my own wave of tears hit. "I'm so sorry."
A single tear slid down her cheek, but still, she said nothing. I sniffled, and eventually, she glanced at me, her eyes laden with nothing but sadness and hurt. All the anger seemed to leave her.
"You lied to me," she croaked, her voice a harsh rasp as if she spent the day yelling.
"I tried to tell you so many times." I swiped at my cheeks.
She drew in a shaky breath as tears leapt from her lashes. "I know," she said, which surprised me a bit. "I know you did."
"I'm sorry I didn't."
She nodded, but looked away from the screen again, resting her chin on her hand like before. Her eyes watched something in the background, but I couldn't see what she looked at. We hung there in silence, only interrupted by sniffles now and then.
The timer on the call edged towards five minutes, then six, neither of us saying anything. She tucked her hair behind her ear, then looked at me again. She brushed the tears from her cheeks, her breath quavering. A damp spot appeared on the pillow beside my cheek, and I dabbed my eyes on my sleeve.
"What's that ticking sound?" she asked, her voice soft.
"Elara's swing." I angled the phone to show her the sleeping baby beside me.
A small smile tugged the corner of her mouth. "She's so sweet."
"Yeah. I love her so much."
Harlow's smile remained for a bit when I turned the phone back to me. Again, she touched her hair then dropped her chin on her hand.
"Can we talk in person?" I asked, when her gaze lowered to whatever was in front of her on her desk.
"I don't know."
"Can we try?"
She shrugged and nodded at the same time.
"Where can I meet you then?"
"You know where," she said, her brow narrowing slightly.
"Okay." I sat up suddenly with the invitation. "Okay."
She nodded, and then ended the call abruptly.
Nalea and Audra opened the bedroom door, both of them wearing guilty faces that they tried to force into casual smiles.
"I know you two were listening." I tugged the blanket off me then bent down to kiss Elara's forehead. "Lasagna should be done in fifteen. I'll be back later."
"Behave yourself, Hybridian." Nalea pointed at me as I hurried off to my room to change. The two of them now joining Elara to look after her in the swing chair that she shouldn't sleep in for long.
I smirked and flipped
her off before closing the door.
***
It took me less than five minutes to change into my black-on-black Protector gear and make it to the museum. Without contacts and with a respirator, I would meet Harlow in the same place and in the same state as when we first met. If I read her correctly, that's what she hinted at anyway.
I moved through the dark museum, avoiding all the cameras, until I entered the room where the Imogen Cunningham portraits hung on display. Surprise greeted me, however, when I arrived to find every single item facing backward. Only wooden backs of frames, rears of easels, and upended display cases filled the room. I turned in a circle, utter shock settling in when I processed the sight. A room that comforted me on many occasions now turned upside down wasn't what I expected to encounter.
Harlow's sharp heels clicked with every step as she approached from down the hall. Gone were her attempts at stealth or her unique ability to catch me while distracted. She made no move to disguise her anger or the ferocity she carried with her. I stood beside the spot where my favorite portrait used to hang. The light shining off the white rear side of it did little to assist me in the shadows. I remained there, waiting for Harlow to appear, and when she did, her presence stole my breath.
She burned hot, her heart pounding at double the speed of her steps. The intensity of her set off every surveillance sense I managed to keep under wraps. I could nearly taste her rage, but worse, her sadness. A soft click of a gun cocking preceded her before she swung around the corner, holding it outstretched. Only the faintest hint of surprise lifted her brows when she found me exactly where she expected me to be.
"Tell me what I said to you on the phone seven minutes ago," she demanded. "Now."
"To meet you here." My distorted voice annoyed me more than it should.
"What did I bring to your house two weeks ago?"
"What—I—"
"What did I bring to your house?" Her finger moved from its safety position to hold the trigger.
"M-mint chip brownies," I stammered, taking a step toward her. "Harlow, it's me. Did you think it wasn't?"
Jawbreaker (Four Point Universe Book 14) Page 10