Chapter 2 - Ado

The punching bag lurches toward the wall on impact with my fist. I hear the links of the heavy iron chain above it creak dangerously, and I know I need to hold back. Only last month I dislodged two other bags from their metal attachments in the ceiling. Aris will demand I train under supervision if I keep this up.

He and I know that of all the guys, I cause him the least hassle by a long shot. It has always been that way. On days like this, awake early to train before some residents of our floor of the pack center have even fallen asleep yet, I find myself looking back upon the days before any of this, before Linnea and Varun and before Aris’ hometown decided it would take him back, before we had anything permanent. The team was happy to live that way, moving where the military told us, living like contractors—hell, I was happy to live that way. There was a sense of youthful camaraderie in those days that we all look back on fondly.

It isn’t as if all that much has changed. My role on the team has stayed solid as stone this whole time, even as everything changes around me; I cling to the surety of it like a rock in the ocean. Since we arrived in Rosecreek, I’ve watched my teammates’ lives break open and apart over and over—and, granted, it mostly ends well, but it never feels like it’s going to until it does. Every month, there’s some new crisis. I pride myself, just a little, on having caused none of them.

My phone buzzes against my leg. I quit pummeling the punching bag as if it insulted my family and pulled it out of my pocket, peering at the screen. It’s the group chat.

ARIS: New hire arrives tomorrow morning, short-term contractor we discussed for Auctioneer case. Intel analyst from an agency in NYC. I’ve been told she’s very good at what she does. Welcoming committee better be immaculate.

I blink at the words. It isn’t often that I miss details like this before they happen. I wonder whether I was absent for that discussion or somehow zoned out.

Before I can think of responding with anything, I see Bigby typing; the only other person I can think might have already been awake.

BIGBY: Rafael, Ado and co. are at the pack center tomorrow?

I switch my phone to sleep mode and turn back to the punching bag. In its shiny surface, lit by the hard white strip lights that crisscross the ceiling of the training center, I see the vague impression of myself reflected back at me. I notice the unhappy curve of my shoulders as they rise and fall, and I register that I’m breathing heavily.

There’s no need to interrogate why. I already know what has set off this sudden unease.

The last intelligence analyst we had—a real one, properly trained, not just Byron or Olivia trying their hacker-hands at a new skill—was Keira. I hadn’t seen Keira in years, not since six or eight months before we landed in Rosecreek.

I still remember her face, the way her nose scrunched up at the top when she smiled wide. I don’t know why. I don’t tend to cling to the memory of people like that. But I remember her as if we only saw each other early this morning, as I clambered out of bed onto the cold floor of my room.

Yes, I still remember how she looked sitting on my bed in the barracks, slim legs folded under her body, grinning. I remember how she looked as a stranger choked the air out of her on enemy turf, too.

I pull my fist back and punch away the vision of myself reflecting back at me. Sometimes, when I think about it too hard, I can feel a phantom pain on the back of my skull. Sometimes, it’s as if I’m back there, waking up in a hospital bed the morning after the raid.

I try not to think of it. Most of the time, I succeed; then, Aris hires some new intel analyst from somewhere, and it’s as if we’re all the same people we were back then.

Sweat drips down my face as I lay into the bag. I hear the chain creak violently above my head.

My phone buzzes again. I flip it out with one hand to read the screen, dodging out of the way of the bag swinging back toward me, the other hand raised in a fist.

ARIS: What did that punching bag ever do to you? I just bought it.

I step back onto the mat behind me, breathing hard.

ADO: Too loud?

ARIS: Only when I’m doing paperwork. As you were.

I like Aris because he is clear about what he wants me to do. Most of the pack have learned to be that way with me. It makes interactions simpler, flattening them somehow.

Keira never told me outright what she wanted. Sometimes, I remember, she would look at me with her sharp, brilliant eyes, and I would wonder what she was thinking. It made me want to ask, but I never did, and then it was too late.

In my mind, I see her opening her mouth as if to speak. Her perfect lips part over her straight, white teeth.

I spin, lashing out my leg, and kick the punching bag hard. With one last defeated wail, the chain attached to the ceiling snaps, and the punching bag punts miserably into the air and hits the bottom of the wall with a smacking sound.

Buzz .

ARIS: Well, that’s the end of that, I guess.

***

I skip breakfast and drink my coffee alone on the roof. The sun rises over Rosecreek, the sky washed with brilliant gold and blue, and I think I can hear laughter drifting out of an open window below me, the laughter of my pack. Everyone’s been in a good mood lately, or, as good a mood as we can be.

Veronica’s labor lasted days, and everyone took shifts sitting in her room, though nobody (and I, least of all) could do much to ease her pain. Percy was apoplectic with worry and frustration. When the baby was born, however, she was healthy and happy, and Veronica was alright too—and that was what mattered; I remember Aris telling Percy the evening she was born. They should all just count themselves lucky that the labor was successful at all.

Linnea had her baby only a week or two after that. Apparently, Olivia is pregnant now, too, expecting in six or seven months. Byron has been fluttering over her as if she’ll disappear or melt away if he stops fussing. It’s embarrassing and endearing at once.

I think of Zane, who has washed in and out like he’s coming with the tide for the last few months, there and then gone. For the first while, I bristled at the disrespect of it—to us, to Aris, to Rosecreek—but it has become normal with time. He still smells roguish, but you can barely detect it anymore. Even I can no longer tell by scent alone whether he is in the building. His stays have been becoming longer. I can tell he and Byron are working things out, too. Slowly but surely, everyone is becoming settled with their new realities.

I think of Keira again, the first and last person I ever loved. I still dream of her most nights, though I’ve gotten good at leaving those memories there when I wake. Even Percy, who has always seemed so youthful, has a mate and a baby now, and here I am, still thinking of a girl I knew in another lifetime, before she was taken, before I failed to get her back. The last I heard, since she got out of there, she’s left the military for private sector security. She would be a stranger now, I tell myself. Still, I feel time moving around me in a wave, impossible to stop.

I am so consumed by my mind that I only hear footsteps when my new companion is five feet away. Bigby approaches and places a fresh coffee in front of me on the railing, between where my arms are resting atop it.

“Aris said you’re moping,” he greets me, sipping from his own mug: ‘WORLD’S BEST DAD,’ it says in blue bubble writing, a gift from last Father’s Day.

We look out over the town together. I don’t tell him I’m fine. I don’t like to engage in conversations like this—it only encourages them to keep happening.

“We need another punching bag for the training room,” I say. “And I’d like us to invest in a new gun for Maisie’s firearms training. I think pistols intimidate her.”

Bigby eyes me. I meet his gaze, but I can feel his gaze on the side of my face.

“Sure,” he says. “We can do that. Have you managed to get Zane in for training?”

“He insists he could hit a target at fifty paces if push came to shove, but he’s only had one lesson.”

Bigby laughs. “What do you think of that?”

I push away from the railing and take my coffee with me.

“Not that good at my job,” I call over my shoulder.