A Heart of Shame

by Kristen Banet

  “I’m not going to fight with you over it,” he mumbled, reaching into the box. She watched him pull out her kukri and admire it. “How much of this has…”

  “That one, once. The twelve-inch daggers are my normal go to. The throwing daggers are for self-defense normally. The rest… just-in-case kind of stuff.”

  “Alright,” Elijah replied, putting the kukri down gently on the table. He slowly unloaded the box, and she let him, knowing he was taking a mental inventory. It was also a way for her to let him see it all, get to know her things.

  “I have a list as well,” she mentioned as he made his way through it all.

  “I’ll make my own and we’ll compare,” he suggested, looking over one of the twelve-inch daggers. “Why do you have such strong enchantments on it? I know they are reinforced and don’t dull as quickly. With regular use, you might have to sharpen these once a year. I do the same to mine but… the reinforcement to the steel…”

  “So that it can cut through nearly anything,” Sawyer informed him.

  “Like concrete,” he whispered. It wasn’t the first time he’d made that comment, the other time being in the bank. This time, she added to it.

  “Like bone,” she said, nearly inaudible. She watched his eyes go a little wide, and he looked over at her quickly.

  “You decapitated one of your… hits.” He kept his voice low. “We had all thought you used a sword.”

  “No,” she said weakly. “I used the kukri.”

  She felt sick saying it, but there it was. She’d never had technique with the blade. Never needed it. She could get in, murder someone, and get out before they ever knew how to fight back. And she always made sure it was gruesome. A warning to others not to fuck with Axel, like he’d wanted. Maybe if they had stopped pissing him off because they were scared of her… Axel would have stopped needing her to kill people.

  “Sawyer,” he murmured.

  The space between them was a steamy mix of her cold magic and his hot. The space around her was cooling down as her temper chilled, as the sight of the weapons, and the memories they brought, scratched at her control over her emotions.

  “We need to talk about something else,” she said blandly. “I get that Quinn is important to everyone here, but if I’m expected to be a teammate and get through the next five years… you need to let me try and build a relationship with him. Not just the friendship but the trust. Don’t ever fuck with me like that again, Elijah.”

  “I felt awful afterward. I still feel awful about what I said.” He sighed, putting the dagger down. He turned to face her fully. “I’ve been fighting for years to make sure the others don’t mess with him too much, to make sure he’s comfortable and happy.”

  “You held him back a little, too,” she accused, a slight harshness to her voice. “He’s a better reader then Vincent and Jasper know. He’s intelligent as shit. We all know that. But you held them back, so they could never push him. Which held him back. Stop. Let him fail sometimes, Elijah. Let him learn how to get past a stumble.”

  “Did that work with the kids?” Elijah growled softly.

  “Yeah, and it’s worked so far with him, too.” She snapped. “In only three fucking days.”

  They stayed silent for a moment. Elijah swallowed, and she watched his throat work from the effort.

  “I’ll step back a little and let it happen,” he mumbled.

  “Trust me not to hurt him,” she murmured, “or any of you.”

  “I never…” He trailed off and looked away from her. “Fuck, Jasper was right.”

  She didn’t ask for clarification on that.

  “Next, don’t ever make fun of my education level,” she hissed. “Not all of us got a sweet, fine life while trying to enter fucking adulthood. I didn’t drop out because I hated it. I didn’t ask for it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Sawyer… I really fucked up that day. I really did. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, feeling a bit guilty over how harsh she’d just been. “I’m going to go. That’s everything I needed to talk to you about.”

  She slid off the table began to walk away.

  “I was homeless at fifteen because my father threw me out,” Elijah whispered. She’d barely heard it. She turned back towards him with a frown. Elijah looked down at his hands. “He’d caught me with another guy, and that… that wasn’t okay with him. Both my parents are non-Magi. Having a Magi son was a blessing and curse for them on that ranch in Texas. They weren’t anti-Magi, but others in our community were. Then I… wasn’t Godly enough. I loved another guy, and my father lost his shit over it. My mother didn’t even try to stand up for me. Bisexual and Magi? It was just too much for them.”

  “Why are you telling me?” Sawyer asked carefully.

  “I didn’t have a fine life while trying to enter adulthood,” Elijah said with a sad smile. “I’m protective over people because I know what it is to be judged for something you can’t help. I don’t like to see other people get judged or mistreated for something they had little to no control over. I’m sorry that in the effort to protect Quinn that I mistreated you.”

  Sawyer nodded.

  “I’m sorry you went through that,” she whispered.

  “I lived with that guy until I graduated high school. I never had bullies, being the only Magi in my school, so there’s that to be thankful for. Either way,” Elijah waved a hand around, looking sad, “I met Vincent when I joined the IMPO. Everything since then has been him and this team. I found out about who Vincent was and stayed his friend. We found Jasper and Zander, both not fitting well in the IMAS, and brought them over. We all found Quinn and decided to keep him. And now you.” She frowned at him.

  “I lost my temper yesterday, like my father did the day he threw me out. Different reasons, sure, but I shouldn’t have. Your relationship with Quinn is between you and Quinn. It’s not my business…” Elijah trailed off again, and she watched a grin take over his face. “And he didn’t kill you. I was a little afraid of that, too. I don’t want you or him accidentally pushing each other to that point. If there are two Magi on this earth I never want to see in a fight, it’s you and him.”

  “He would wreck me,” Sawyer snorted. “Fact. And I was very afraid he would kill me.”

  “You could outsmart him since your magic is so evasive. He likes people on the ground with him, and you don’t need to be there.” Elijah chuckled. “I saw you vomit when you got out of the woods. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there at one point or another with him.”

  “Oh, that’s good to know,” Sawyer huffed.

  “Vincent still gets a bit green when Quinn’s temper and magic pop off when he’s upset. I think Quinn is just too strong to control it. You do it, too.” Elijah sighed.

  “Mine doesn’t open holes in the earth,” Sawyer reminded him.

  “No, it just gives everyone frostbite,” Elijah teased her. “It’s okay, though. I might need your level of chill to my heat. We should see what it’s like skin to skin. Is this where we get some make up sex? We’re done arguing now, it might be nice.”

  “Make up sex implies we have some sort of relationship.” She chuckled, wagging a finger at him. “We don’t have one of those. And be careful, I might give your dick frostbite. It would save me from a lot of problems.”

  And like that, she and Elijah were good. Laughing as she left him to do inventory over her things, she went back into the sun and soaked it up.

  Now, she could move on. That incident in her life was over with, and she could deal with other things she’d been putting off.

  She sat down at her computer and sighed, plugging in the USB stick to stay off the house internet. It was habit at this point. She put on her headphones, opened Skype, then made the call she’d been avoiding.

  “Sawyer?” Liam’s voice came through.

  “Hey, Liam.” She chuckled. “How have you been?”

  “Good! I thought we weren’t expecting another call fr
om you for another week though…” Liam sounded distracted.

  “You aren’t, but I wanted to try you before I tried calling Charlie… I’ve got some important news.” She sighed.

  “Let me… find somewhere private to go,” Liam said quietly. There were tons of other conversations going on around him and she almost couldn’t hear him. “I’m on campus, but I can go sit in my car.”

  “Alright.”

  She heard beeps and car honks, people having loud conversations. Traffic and construction. New York. The noise of the city. She missed it. She missed it so much.

  “Alright, I’m in my car,” he told her. “What’s going on?”

  “I have a story to tell you,” she disclosed, knowing it was time.

  She explained Atlanta to him, in the least descriptive and least gruesome way she could. The meeting, the bombs, the betrayal, the fight in the hangar bay. The WMC. The deal.

  At the end, there was only silence; a long, heavy silence as she remembered everything and Liam came to terms with everything she told him.

  “They know,” Liam mumbled.

  “They know,” she confirmed. “Liam, I won’t be coming back to New York. Not for a long time… maybe, not ever.”

  “Sawyer,” Liam gasped, “don’t say that! We need you here, we need you to come back, we nee—”

  “No, Liam, you don’t. But I want to be there,” she cut him off. “You all have everything I could ever give you. And… eventually the WMC is going to release my picture, my face, and attach my name to it for the public. It’s only a matter of time. It would be so dangerous for me to go back up there.”

  “Is that all?” Liam asked. “Is that really all you wanted to say? That you’ll probably never come back?”

  “Yes,” Sawyer whispered. It was a truth she’d been avoiding. “Unless the WMC or the IMPO calls me up there for something… I don’t think I can go back. I’m going to get a paycheck doing this… I’ll send all of it to you guys. I’ll keep the gym afloat and keep your apartment going, until I know you’re ready—”

  “I don’t want your money, Sawyer!” Liam roared into the phone. “I want my friend back here! You’re my family!”

  Tears came to her eyes.

  “And if you think I’m okay with you being a coward and never coming home, even in five years, then I’m not sure I want you to come back. That’s not the Sawyer I know,” Liam growled. And then he hung up on her.

  She dropped her head into her hands and cried for a moment. Then she started her second phone call.

  “Charlie,” she greeted him the moment he answered.

  “Sawyer,” Charlie grunted happily. “How you been? Calling a little early, I see.”

  “Yeah,” Sawyer huffed. “Look…”

  “I already know,” Charlie told her gently, and Sawyer froze. “About the thing in Atlanta and the… deal you made. I found out a few days ago.”

  “How?” Sawyer asked carefully, narrowing her eyes at the black screen on her computer. She’d used Skype to call their cellphones, not make video calls. Now she wished she could see his face.

  “One of the guys, Z… Zander, that’s it. He called me and let me know. He knew about our previous phone call, and he’d seemed a bit amused by it. Jasper was on the line, too.”

  Sawyer cursed. “I just told Liam, and he’s furious at me. Charlie, you know…” Sawyer cursed to herself again.

  “Liam is a nineteen-year-old boy who’s not nearly as mature as you probably were at that age. He’s only had me and you for years. Yes, Sawyer, I understand why you might feel like it’s not safe to come back to New York when this is all over.” Charlie groaned, and she heard him fall onto their couch. His couch. That apartment wasn’t hers anymore… she didn’t live there. “Give him time. Do you know when the WMC is going public?”

  “No idea.” She sighed. “They will, though.”

  “Of course,” Charlie huffed. “Though, they haven’t gone public about catching Axel yet, either. They are holding on to a lot right now. It’s not like them. Normally they let every Magi in the world know that they are always watching, and no one can escape their reach.”

  “It’s amazing we as a people can keep secrets from the non-Magi as well as we do.” Sawyer chuckled. “Yeah… I give it six months, tops.”

  “Same,” Charlie laughed. She heard the doorbell to their apartment over the gym go off. “Look… that’s a date…”

  “Go, you weren’t expecting me to call.” Sawyer sighed. “Talk to Liam for me? He’s not a Magi, he doesn’t know—”

  “I’ll handle it,” Charlie grunted in reply. “Shit, he stays here half the time, anyway. Talk to you in a week, Sawyer?”

  “Definitely.” She chuckled. “Have fun, old man.”

  “Planning on it,” he said with a bit of perverted, old man humor. She gagged and hung up on him as he laughed. Gross.

  She leaned back in her chair and began playing around on the web while she still had it connected. She dove into the Dark Web and began looking around.

  Any news about her?

  It took her three clicks to find out that yes, there was definitely news about her.

  Someone in the criminal underground obviously had a connection in either the WMC or the IMPO. There was a chat blowing up over the rumor that she was alive, that she was there when Axel went down, and that she may have completely switched sides. So that much wasn’t out yet.

  “Sawyer!”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin as Zander strolled into the room with a grin. Jasper was right behind him, with a stern, straight expression on his face.

  “I fucking knew it!” He laughed. “I knew you were somehow using the internet, and I just didn’t know when or how. Figured you would have snuck one of those damn little things in here.” He leaned over her desk and pointed at the USB stick. She went to grab it, but he yanked it first. “You know Jasper and I are in charge of the electronics here, right? That includes the internet. You’d been here too long without ever using your computer, and I just knew you couldn’t handle it. I just had to catch you.”

  “He’s gloating,” Jasper groaned out, crutching closer. “We set up a thing, it caught your signal. We saw your Skype usage. We’ve been waiting for you to try again.”

  Sawyer sighed heavily and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, staring at the beams. She didn’t really have anything to say about that.

  “You can use our internet, you know,” Jasper said as Zander continued laugh, holding her USB. “Well, now you can.”

  “Your internet is also trackable. I was in the Dark Web. You don’t want those people tracking the ISP here,” she reminded him, slamming her laptop shut. “On top of that, maybe I want my personal calls to remain private.”

  “Not anymore.” Zander chuckled. “Sawyer, you’re a member of the team. You’ll use our shit. We make sure that shit is okay. Too bad, baby doll.” He flashed her a dangerous grin and she ground her teeth.

  “And stay off the Dark Web,” Jasper hissed. “I don’t even want to know what you were doing on it, but you can’t play that line anymore. No wandering around dark corners of the internet where your old clients hired you. It looks bad.”

  “Fine,” she hissed softly. “I was just… seeing what people had to say.”

  “About?” Jasper asked, frowning at her.

  “Me,” she whispered, looking at her closed laptop. “They haven’t yet connected me, Sawyer and Shadow together, but they know I’m alive now. They know I was a part of the Axel capture and that I may have switched sides.”

  “It was going to leak, eventually,” Jasper reminded her. “Stay off the Dark Web. Use our internet. No more sneaking around for any reason.”

  She nodded, watching Zander snap the USB in half with a grin. Fucking asshole.

  “Is this the only reason you two came to bother me?” she asked, looking between them.

  “We… wanted to talk about us,” Jasper mumbled, suddenly bashful.

  Sawyer n
early cursed. She wasn’t ready for that.

  “Yeah, no,” Sawyer huffed, standing up. “Do we have a new punching bag in the gym?”

  “Sawyer,” Zander groaned. He grabbed her arm and she let him pull her close to his body. They were flush against each other, chest to chest. She worked to control her heart rate so she could handle what was next. “We need to talk about us…” His voice was a bit husky, and she narrowed her eyes on his lips. He was pulling out the playboy to get what he wanted. And if she hadn’t been expecting it, she might have fallen for it. He was oh-so-good at it; disarming a woman to get what he wanted. It was almost scary.

  “We said we would talk about it after Axel,” Jasper continued. “It’s after Axel. Then you got involved in the thing with Elijah. But it’s something we need to address. I mean we…”

  She heaved a sighed and pushed Zander away gently. She looked at Jasper and shook her head, ending his little speech.

  “I’m not ready for this,” she told him. “I’m just not, you two. He’s been away behind bars for a week. I’m still trying to find my place here and catch up. I’ve barely even touched anything I’m supposed to study to be an agent. So, I’m asking you nicely. Please do not force this right now.”

  “There’s a new punching bag in the gym,” Zander murmured over her shoulder. He must have taken the hint. Jasper looked a bit hurt, but she couldn’t handle it right now. She wasn’t here to do this. She was here because she wanted to stay out of prison and make up for what she had done.

  She was there to prove she could earn the gift they’d given her. She didn’t deserve it, but she would earn it.

  She left them there, standing in her room. Sadly, she couldn’t leave the ball of feelings around her heart in there with them. The anger at losing her privacy on the web, the spike of lust from Zander’s attempt to sway her, the unresolved romantic feelings driven by teenage hormones that apparently just never went away, or the tiny, sharp prick of guilt that she was attracted to another man as well as them—they all were still wrapped around her heart.