“Maybe we can make it a more regular thing now,” Alec mused.
Olivia and Ethan were in the kitchen, helping the catering team finish off the food preparation. Josh was deep in conversation with Charlie, and Henry and Dot and Tyler were looking at family pictures on the wall.
It was so . . . domestic—and a little foreign to me. Or maybe it was the entire concept of family that was foreign. Maybe that’s why I’d been so nervous in the car. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to be part of a family.
“Sorry I’m late!” Kyo rushed into the room, and Dot practically bounced over to him, giving him a kiss hello that was just on the border of too intimate for a family gathering. He greeted everyone just as the food was ready, and we sat down at the big dining table.
As we ate the amazing food and drank more bottles of the delicious, expensive wine, I relaxed. We may have been a large group, but I knew and was comfortable with each and every person at this table. The conversation flowed as easily as the wine.
By the time we were ready for dessert, we were all wiping tears from our faces as Kyo told a story of how a mobster’s spoiled daughter fell head over heels in lust with Alec when they were infiltrating the operation. She hadn’t even been deterred by the fact that he kept “accidentally” zapping her with pain any time she tried to touch him or go in for a kiss.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep a straight face?” Kyo said between bursts of laughter as Dot leaned her head on his shoulder and completely lost it. “You got this constipated look every time she walked into a room.”
Alec scowled through the whole thing, but I could see his shoulders start to shake and his lips twitch from keeping the laughter in.
After everyone’s giggles subsided, the conversations became a bit more subdued. Ethan leaned forward, draping an arm over the back of my chair and speaking to Tyler on my other side. “Do you think there’ll be time to go to the fish markets in Tokyo? I really want to try some fresh tuna sushi.”
Mr. Takata had been in touch. He’d visited with his grandmother, but the older woman had simply smiled and asked to see me. He was extremely apologetic, but he was stuck between his duty to respect his elders and his newly declared fealty to me.
Now we were trying to find time to plan a trip, but between classes, demanding work schedules, and security concerns, it wasn’t easy.
Tyler shrugged, spinning his empty wine glass on the spot with his dexterous fingers. “Don’t know. We’ll have to play it by ear.”
“Have you not been to Japan?” I asked, my cheeks still a little flushed from the laughter and the wine. “The food is incredible!”
My big guy surprised me by answering silently, with a sad nod of his head. He started playing with the corner of a cloth napkin, his eyes not meeting mine.
I frowned and turned to Tyler, but he was watching his wine glass with a look very similar to Ethan’s. Confused, I searched for answers across the table. Alec’s hands were clasped in front of him, his brows furrowed and his eyes fixed on the table. Next to him, Josh was the only one meeting my gaze, understanding in his eyes, as always, but also sadness.
The whole room had fallen silent, but Josh put me out of my misery. He cleared his throat. “Our parents were killed in Japan. In Tokyo.”
My heart sank. “I am so sorry for bringing it up.”
“You didn’t, baby.” Ethan’s hand went to the back of my neck. “I did.”
“A lot of people died that day.” Henry spoke up from the head of the table. He held Olivia’s hand as she discreetly wiped away a tear. “It was tragic.”
“Yeah, it was all over the news, even here,” Lucian added. “Joyce had just arrived there and then went radio silent. Those were the worst twenty-four hours of my life, thinking I’d lost half my family and both of you too.”
I gasped, my eyes going wide. “Holy shit! I remember this. I was only eight years old, and we were in Tokyo for, like, a day, and then this awful thing happened, and next thing I know we’re on a train out of there. Were you guys all there? Were we mere streets from each other?”
Alec remained silent, his eyes still glued to the table in front of him, but Tyler answered. “We’d crossed the street—the four of us. We were ahead of them and just made the crossing signal, but they had to stop. If they’d called out, made us wait with them . . . or if they’d rushed to catch up with us . . .”
Josh picked up where Ty left off. “We were thrown to the ground and knocked unconscious, but they all . . .” He cleared his throat again. “I don’t remember it. I was told all of it when I woke up in the hospital, but they were all killed pretty much instantly.”
The room once again descended into tense silence. No one made eye contact with anyone else. Dot and Charlie looked from their parents to Lucian to my guys with just as much curiosity as compassion in their eyes. I had a feeling no one had spoken much about this before, and they probably didn’t know all the details.
Before I could make an awkward attempt at changing the subject, Alec spoke. “It was like all the sound was sucked out of the air, and there was a split second of perfect stillness—everyone paused, knowing something wasn’t right but not knowing what. Then I felt this . . . surge. Like something crawling over my skin but also through me—something intense and powerful. And then the world just . . . exploded. There was fire and shit floating around in the air—like cars and concrete bolsters. Everyone just dropped. Fell to the ground and never got up again. I was thrown down with the others, but I didn’t get knocked out. My cheek was pressed into the concrete.” He lifted a hand to his face absentmindedly, ghosting his fingers over his skin. “And I lay there, and I watched the life drain out of my mother’s eyes.”
Tears pricked at my eyes as my heart broke clean in half for him. For all of them. Images of the last time I’d seen my own mother attacked my mind—her hand slipping out of mine, her terrified yet surprised face. That image would haunt me for the rest of my life. Knowing my guys were dealing with that same pain—that they knew exactly what that felt like—just twisted the knife.
Yet in some perverted way, it also felt good. The fact that all four of them had experienced the same depth of pain and loss I had made me feel even closer to them. It was yet another thing threading us closer together, strengthening our relationship and Bond.
Our Bond . . .
I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth as the tears spilled over, trailing messy, wet paths down my cheeks and over my fingers.
Alec finally broke his stare-off with the table to look at me, Ethan dropped his arm to my shoulders, and Tyler gripped my knee, leaning forward to look into my face.
“Let’s stop talking about it for a while.” For once Josh hadn’t picked up on what was really happening; he assumed the topic of conversation had upset me. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but I was also coming to a realization that made bile rise in the back of my throat.
I shook my head. A sob escaped from between my fingers before I finally forced the words out. “You were all there. And I was there. And your abilities can’t harm each other because of me. And I was there. And . . . and I can transfer Light remotely. But I’m not . . . I don’t remember glowing, but maybe I did. What . . .” I couldn’t hold back another sob, dropping my head into my hands. “What if I did this? What if I killed . . .”
I couldn’t get the word out, couldn’t fully voice that I may have been responsible for the deaths of their parents, not to mention all those other people. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my proximity to them had resulted in a massive transfer of Light that they couldn’t control. What if their abilities going haywire had caused all the destruction . . . and the death?
“Eve. No.” Tyler squeezed my knee. “Think this through. Our abilities can’t harm each other now—now that we have you and the Bond has formed. Before that we were definitely able to hurt each other with our abilities. Trust me.”
“You didn’t do this.” Josh’s hands landed on my shoulders. I h
adn’t even heard him get up. “It’s not likely you were able to glow at such a young age. You said yourself you’d never experienced it before.”
“Yes, but it has happened. Even Lucian”—I gestured in his general direction—“told me I’d glowed once or twice as a kid.”
Lucian piped in, reminding me we were still in a room full of people—people whose family I may very well have killed. “Evelyn, that was nothing like what you can do now. It was a flicker of a glow at best, enough for us to know what you were but not enough to do anything with it.”
“Yeah, but—” My chair was suddenly yanked backward. The guys’ hands disappeared from my knee, shoulder, and neck as I was spun around to face Alec’s furious gaze. He lowered himself to his knees, putting his face level with mine and planting his hands on either side of the chair’s seat.
I stared at him, expecting him to go back to hating me but really just wanting him to take me into his arms. He did neither.
“Evie, I don’t know what the fuck happened that day, but I’m sure as fuck not going to blame an eight-year-old kid. It may’ve taken me a while to get there, but I’m so glad to have you in my life, baby. Please don’t do this to yourself.”
“How can you live with even the possibility that it may’ve been my fault, Alec? How can I live with that? How long before you start looking at me with that derisive, mean look again. I can’t take that again.”
“Evie, please . . .” His thumbs rubbed my hips as his eyes flew about the room, looking for help.
“I really didn’t want to bring this up yet”—Lucian’s resigned yet determined tone drew everyone’s attention—“but we may potentially have some new information on that day.”
I had to turn in my chair to see him properly. He was leaning back in his wheelchair, a worried expression on his face.
“Luce?” Olivia looked confused, but there was no denying the hint of fear in her wide eyes. “What is this about?”
“We don’t have the full picture yet, and I’m technically not meant to reveal this, as it’s classified.” He eyed Dot and her parents—the only people in the room without clearance. “But I can’t let this go on any further. We’ve all suffered enough at that man’s hands.”
Alec’s arms stiffened around me, and I leaned into him, angling my body so I could see Lucian better.
“Evelyn, that was in no way your fault. It was a complete coincidence that you and Joyce were there. In Sweden, where you were staying previously, you were discovered by one of Davis’s men, and your mom had to get you out immediately. She didn’t get in touch until the next day to tell me where you were, and I didn’t receive the message in time to tell her that the others were in Japan on holiday, that she needed to leave immediately. By the time I saw her message and replied, she was already offline.”
“Lucian, what do you know?” To my surprise, Ethan growled the demand, but my big guy was prone to anger when really pushed. I held his hand in both of mine as Lucian got to the point.
“We never knew what happened. The local police got there before we could get any of our people out. They cooperated with us, but we couldn’t find anything definitive. It was only after Thailand that we found some evidence on a hard drive . . . Davis has offices all over the world—that’s not a secret—and he had a building in Tokyo. Apparently he had a lab in the basement levels. Not much on the drive we recovered was salvageable, but there is enough to suggest he was running experiments even then. We have no way to prove it, but the logical conclusion is that whatever he was doing down there went horribly wrong and resulted in the chaos and death above ground.”
“Why haven’t you said anything?” Despite his hard tone, Tyler sounded hurt.
“The techs only just delivered their report two days ago,” Lucian explained. “They’re still trying to get more information from the drive, and we’re nowhere near done going through all that we found in Thailand. He did a good job destroying most of it with the explosions, but we were able to recover a decent amount of evidence. Anyway, I was never planning to keep it from any of you. I’m done keeping secrets from my family.” He gave me a meaningful look. Memories of the night we’d stood on his balcony drinking scotch flickered through my mind. “I just wanted to give the techs another day or two to see if they could find anything more. I didn’t want to bring it up during this evening, but I can’t sit here and watch Evie blame herself for something that was not her fault.”
“Thank you.” I wiped the tears from my cheeks.
Rather than unleash a barrage of questions, the guys had all gone silent and introspective. If they were anything like me when it came to talking about their parents’ deaths, I couldn’t blame them.
After a few tense moments, a chair scraped loudly and Dot stood up.
“How about some dessert?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. The others all murmured their agreement, and Alec and Josh returned to their seats.
“I’ll help you.” Charlie followed Dot into the kitchen.
Henry grabbed the open bottle of wine from the buffet, refilling glasses until it was all gone, then opening another bottle. Dot and Charlie delivered individual servings of tiramisu to everyone, and conversation got back to normal. It wasn’t as lively as earlier, but the heavy emotions had lifted.
I sat back and sipped on my third glass of expensive red, my tiramisu half-eaten. Lucian’s last few words kept repeating in my mind.
I can’t sit here and watch Evie blame herself for something that was not her fault.
No matter how I looked at it, that statement didn’t sit right, didn’t ring true. I wasn’t completely blameless. I couldn’t escape the fact that at least some of this was my fault.
I hadn’t set out to hurt anyone, hadn’t asked to be born this way, with this much Light and connected to such powerful Variants. I would never intentionally hurt anyone.
But at the end of the day, Davis was doing all this precisely because of what I was. He lied, manipulated, and tortured people in his dogged mission to figure out how my Light worked—so he could exploit it for money and power. He’d driven my mother and me from our home and family, from our Vital Bonds. He’d practically started a war between Variants and humans in an attempt to gain more power.
As I sat at the table with my new family, I looked at each one of them. We’d all lost people because of him.
I had two choices.
I could down another bottle of wine, wallow in my self-flagellating misery, and fall deeper into depression.
Or I could fight. I could do whatever I could to show that, despite the fact that my glowing Light could be dangerous, it could be good too. Even though I couldn’t fully understand it yet, I firmly believed my glowing was a tool. It would only be a negative destructive force if I chose to use it that way.
I couldn’t fight Davis with guns and abilities and secrets—Alec, Tyler, and Lucian had that covered. But I could do what I did best: figure out the puzzle. I had to get to the bottom of why I glowed, and I couldn’t do it on my own.
It was time to reach out to some of the people who claimed to be able to glow as I did. It was time to put my mind to figuring this shit out.
“We need to go to Japan,” I announced.
Tyler stopped midsentence to turn to me. His cheeks were a little rosy; the wine was probably getting to him. “Sorry?”
I cleared my throat and raised my voice. “We need to go to Japan. I need to speak to Mr. Takata’s grandmother myself. And, Charlie, I need help determining which of those messages I’ve been receiving are legit and safe to reply to.”
“Done.” Charlie nodded, not hesitating or questioning me at all. Most likely he’d secretly already started looking into it.
When I looked across the table, Josh had a little smirk pulling at the corner of his lips, his knowing eyes full of pride.
Twenty-One
As usual I lost track of time at the library. It was nearly dusk when I emerged, but when I checked my phone, I was relie
ved to see I hadn’t missed any calls—Tyler must still be in his office working late.
My security detail for the day was a young guy with brown hair and a baby face. He’d reluctantly told me his name early in the day and then resisted any further attempts at conversation, insisting on remaining one step behind me wherever I went. That’s exactly what he continued to do as I turned my steps toward the admin building.
I hefted my heavy bag higher on my shoulder. The agent didn’t offer to help carry anything, and checking out that last book had probably been a mistake. With a statistics assignment due just before we took off for Japan next week, I wouldn’t have time to read about the emergence of technology-related Variant abilities anyway. My yawn turned into a groan and my steps slowed. Despite the sun setting, the temperature remained high and sticky. At least with summer in full swing, there weren’t as many people on campus. I’d almost had the library to myself.
The lights lining the leafy walking path came on. Dusk was beginning to cast a quiet gray light over everything, throwing twisted shadows from the tall trees.
As I made my way past the cafeteria—which was lit up brightly, bustling with students having their dinner—a couple came out, swinging their own bags over their shoulders. I flashed them a polite smile, but they were caught up in their conversation and didn’t see me.
The most direct way to the admin building was down another tree-lined path that cut through the grounds and weaved behind some of the residence halls. Readjusting my bag yet again, I threw the agent a withering look. He just stared at me, his face completely blank.
A few feet along the path, I noticed the couple from the cafeteria heading in the same direction. I could hear their chatter, the occasional light laugh. I looked over my shoulder, making sure they had enough room to pass us if they wanted to.
I made eye contact with the girl and gave her another smile. She was wearing a cute scarf with French Bulldogs all over it and a flowy dress. This time, there was no question she saw my smile, but she still didn’t return it. She just watched me with a slight frown as the guy continued to speak to her, his voice low. I faced forward and wrapped both hands around the strap of my bag.
Vivid Avowed (The Evelyn Maynard Trilogy Book 3) Page 24