Chapter 9

NINE

brAXTON

A ella's in the kitchen. She's in Miles's clothes, which doesn't bother me as much as I thought. The radio mounted under the cabinets is blaring from some barely audible station. She's dancing as she flips pancakes on the cast iron griddle. I haven't seen anyone use it since Mom.

The static on the radio, blurring in and out of the music, is making my skin fucking crawl, but I fight it so I can keep watching her dance. Moving up from the basement, where my room is, I close the door silently and sit at the table.

I counteract the overstimulation from the static by rolling my neck and toying with the edge of my shirt. The soft fabric grounds and soothes me.

Miles walks in, takes one look at her and one look at me, and rushes for the radio, slapping it off.

She turns and squeaks, tension leaving her when she realizes Miles shut it off, not one of our other Cobras.

"I'm sorry. Was I bothering you with it? I didn't mean to have it so loud; it's only that I couldn't hear the song through the static..."

She follows his line of sight towards me, and I look down.

I hate their stare so fucking much. I hate the feeling that one of my quirks has ruined a moment she was having.

"No, it wasn't bothering me, " Miles says pointedly. While there's no malice in his tone, I wish he'd have said it wasn't bothering us.

She clears her throat, and I know she's looking at me when she speaks. "Well, I didn't mean to be bothersome. I got up earlier than everyone else and thought I'd cook something. My grandma always had the radio going when she cooked, so when I saw this one... I won't do it again. It doesn't seem like it gets a good reception, anyhow."

I look up at Miles, brows furrowed. "It was fine."

"Was it?" he jabs.

He does this: he wants me to accept who I am, so he sometimes forces the uncomfortable factor of moments too far.

I'm too sore to beat his ass over it this morning, so I table it for another day.

"It smells amazing," I add to the conversation as the room feels awkward and heavy.

She's nervous, and he's on edge. The vibes are leaking over to me and making me anxious. The things I do when I'm uncomfortable aren't something I want to partake in this morning .

"Thank you. I hope I got the proportions right; I usually follow a recipe card in my cookbook at home."

We help her finish breakfast, then Miles and I set the table, and Aella plates portions for us.

"Fuck," Miles says after a few moments of awkward silence. "When was the last time we sat here and ate something?"

I laugh, trying to recall the last time. "It was a Sunday, and Mom had on that ridiculous apron we made her in middle school. The one from home economics class? She made hash browns with breakfast, and..." I trail off as I see Aella watching me with her doe eyes wide and full of amusement.

My eyes connect with hers.

"Sorry, I just don't have any memories like that," she admits. "With my grandma, sure. But with my mom? None. Was it magical growing up here?"

Miles and I look at one another in utter disbelief. It is concerning that anyone would look at this place and think it was magical.

Just what has happened to this girl?

"Magic is a stretch," Miles jokes, and I smile.

"Well, I don't think anyone sees their life as magic or whimsy when they're living it. But when you look back, hindsight being what it is, that's when you see it. That's when the warm, fuzzy feelings come into play," she says.

Miles and I eye one another, both laughing again.

Her cheeks heat, and I realize I've made her just as uncomfortable as I was when Miles put me on the spot.

I clear my throat, searching for the right thing to say. Sometimes, I don't always say the right thing. I've learned over the years that there's a delicacy to communication. One that I lack. "Don't you think maybe there's an aspect of the rose-colored glasses effect when you look back at old memories?" I ask.

She narrows her brows as she takes a sip of water. "How so?"

"Well, when you're looking back, most people don't remember how they felt in a moment, right? Feelings are fleeting; only memories are lasting. So, if you remember a memory of cooking with your grandma, right? Let's say that day you didn't feel well, you had a headache, and her loud radio drove you insane. Let's also say she refused to turn it down, right? So the entire morning, while you helped her, you were miserable. But when you look back, you only remember that you helped her. She loved every second, and the food was delicious. You've romanticized a moment in time that brought you sadness."

"Hence, seeing it with rose-colored glasses on," she adds.

I nod, biting a massive mouthful of pancakes off my fork.

"Huh. I've never thought that deeply about it, but you're right. There is a bit of that with memories, isn't there?"

"Oh, he's good for over-analyzing with logic and ruining the magic of many things," Miles says, lifting his brows as he looks away.

I smirk, knowing he's not complaining, only processing some distant memory of him and me for himself.

"Well," Aella says around a mouthful of pancakes, "everyone has their way of thinking. I kind of like a logical brain. I always like meeting people who differ from me and seeing their thoughts. Their perspectives, if you will."

My mouth hangs open. It's not what she'd said. It was the nonchalance with which she said it. She's a genuine person who is comfortable in her skin. In my experience, it's a rarity.

"What?" she asks, looking between us.

Neither of us gets a word edge-wise because the front door bursts open, and Kylo and Sully trudge inside.

"Oh, pancakes, sick!" Kylo says, and Sully rolls his eyes, sitting next to Miles.

" The board reached out. They want to meet, " Sully signs, and Miles and I nod.

We'd both learned ASL to accommodate Sully in our chapter. It had taken a while, and I was learning far quicker than Miles had, but it was worth it. He's an asset as a Cobra. Someone worth the time it had taken to learn how to communicate with him.

"What's happening?" Aella asks, and Sully eyes her with distrust, as is his nature.

"We have a case we're working on, and the client is finally ready to negotiate," Miles says cryptically.

I laugh, but she shrugs as if she doesn't care about what's happening in the world.

Logic is an old foe for me, and I worry she's fitting in here a little too well. Maybe there's an angle she's working on that hasn't revealed itself yet. My guard will remain up with her. Even though the taste of her is still fresh on my tongue as it was when her slickness was gliding over my mouth.

"Can you pull surveillance and maps for where they want to meet?" Miles asks me, handing over an address on the back of one of our business cards. I assume they'd left it at the scene for the board to find the other night.

"I can, yes. Give me a couple of hours."

I clear my plate and head toward the basement when Aella stands. "Can I come? I mean, can I help? I have nothing to do."

"You'll be in the way." It's curt and to the point, and I don't know if I've overstepped with my tone, but she doesn't bristle.

"I won't be."

Miles's eyes meet mine as if to say she'll see your lair.

But something about her doesn't put me on edge. If anything, it feels like she might be the one who can see me. Other than Miles, of course.

Having a woman see me on that level would be entirely different.

"You'd better not be, Bambi, or you'll be punished," I tell her, and something heated blazes in her eyes as she hurries to clean her place.

Miles stands and thanks her for breakfast. "Kylo, clean the kitchen," he commands, and Kylo groans but nods.

Aella eyes him for a moment before following me downstairs.

"Listen," I say, getting to the bottom step and turning toward her, "I don't want to hear a commentary on how I live or how things are down here. And don't move anything. I'll know."

"Okay," she says hesitantly. If she wasn't worried a moment ago, she is now.

I rather like that she is. It means she cares.

Or that she's afraid of me. Both make my blood boil.

She steps into the room, and I flick the lights on. Red illuminates everything as I move over to my desk and power up all my screens.

I swivel in my chair and watch her take me in. Because this room, this massive space, is me .

"The lighting," she starts, and I roll my eyes and turn back around.

"It makes my brain happy," I admit, face turned away from her. It's a strange thing to say, but it's my truth.

"It's kind of soothing, in a way," she says, moving to my side.

Her arm rubs against mine, and it's the first time an abrupt touch hasn't set me on edge. It's confusing for my logical brain to take in.

"There's so much space down here. You stay down here alone?" she asks.

I work my fingers over keys, pulling schematics for the address on the card. It's some abandoned building in the empty portion of Twin Pines' industrial district.

"Yeah, Dad finished the basement for me in my teens. It's my space, where I can go when I need to dig in. "

I wince as I've given her too much information. While my brain is processing what's in front of me, it doesn't have time to filter what I say.

"Dig in?" she asks, her eyes returning to me from where she'd been looking at everything.

"It's what we call it when I lock myself away. It's not like I'm crazy or anything. It's just sometimes I need to..."

"Regulate?" she asks, attempting to help me finish the thought.

"Yes, that's a perfect word for it."

"Makes sense. Shit, if everyone had a space like this, had the intimate inner knowledge of what they need and when they need it, the world might not be such a shit place."

I turn around, her words hitting me dead center for the second time today.

Who is this woman?

For someone who seems to be the same age as me, she's got a depth to her I want to fucking dive into. Which is scary for me because I've never felt this way before.

"Can I?" she asks, standing before the bookcase with her hand hovering over a spine.

I smirk at her. She's asking permission and remembering that I had said not to touch a thing. But books are made to be touched, shared, and read, and I overlooked this when I gave the blanket rule.

But she hadn't. It means something to me she hadn't.

"Go ahead," I tell her, returning to my computer. " There's a lamp on the bedside table. It's what I use when I'm reading."

"Will it bother you?" she asks me, and I close my eyes as something in my chest heats that I don't care to look too far into right now.

"No. Go ahead."

I know she's seen the spanking bench. There are many floggers and toys on shelves and wall hooks. But she hasn't said a word, and for that, I'm grateful because there's no fucking way I can think past imagining her on the bench to get this shit done for Miles. Not a chance in hell.

The lamp clicks on, and silence overtakes me again as she reads while I work.

Every so often, I look over at her. She's consumed in the book in her hands, absently chewing her hair while she reads. I wonder if she realizes she's doing it.

Sharing my space with such an air of comfortability isn't something I've ever thought would happen. Or even could happen.

Slowly, I'm wondering how I'll feel once she's gone. Logically, I know she'll return to the life she's accustomed to the first chance she gets.

But for once, I hope that I'm wrong.

Hope is a big thing for me. It goes against everything in my brain. I let it grow inside me like a beacon of change.