I wheel myself into the kitchen as Lily is making breakfast. Yes, fucking wheel myself. Because I’m confined to this stupid wheelchair for at least the next three weeks until my leg becomes stronger after all the trauma it suffered.
I fucking hate it. I hate this chair. I hate that I’ve had to move in with Kace and Lily because I can’t get around my own house, and I need help getting in and out of bed. I hate that for a couple days there, my body was so sore that my best friends had to help me get on to the goddamn toilet to take a shit because I refused to have one to those nurses come in every day like I was a fucking invalid.
But you know what I hate the most right now? Myself.
It took a couple days to get my head back in the right place, and also a very intense visit with Blair, who made sure that I was very well aware of just what I was putting in my body. Including the struggles I would have to go through—that he had to go through—in order to get his life back after his long addiction to pain meds.
I listened, my brain is finally able to compute what he was telling me. I knew fucking better, and I knew that he’d had to sit there and watch me for two days, go through exactly what he’d gone through, this time seeing it from the outside. I knew it must have been killing him, and I hate that I’d put him back in that place where he still felt weakness sometimes.
I can’t say it was fun, but from that day, I’d gone pain med free. Actually, it was kinda hellish, but much to my surprise, one person had come through for me who I never would have expected. Apparently, Lily’s best friend Molly is into all this crazy natural and holistic medicine. Shockingly, I found that some of it actually worked. After a few days of hating the fucking world because of the searing pain in my leg and other parts of my body, she’d shoved a couple green pills down my throat and wouldn’t you know, it became almost bearable.
Molly and I have a love-hate relationship that’s hard to describe.
She hates me, I love to remind her why.
But I guess when it comes down to it, we both share one thing, our love for our best friends, who also happen to be a couple. So when push comes to shove, we really are on the same side.
“Hey,” Lily grins as I roll into the kitchen, almost running over her foot with one of my wheels. I’m still getting used to this thing. I’ve been injured before, it’s part of the job, but never this bad. Never to the point where I can’t fucking walk.
“Sorry,” I murmur under my breath as I pull open the fridge and grab a bottle of water.
“Kace had to meet with Jack early, but he said he’d come back about ten to pick you up for the team briefing,” she explains, refusing to look at me, thinking maybe I’ll agree if she plays it off like it’s no big deal.
“No,” I reply simply, placing the water in my lap and twisting myself around before wheeling back out the way I came. “Call him and tell him not to bother.”
“Luca…” she says with a heavy sigh, following along behind me as I head for the already open sliding doors that lead out onto the patio. I have to get up some speed to get over the door tracks, landing on the wood decking with a thump, sending a jolt of pain through my body before I’m able to roll forward toward the outdoor table.
“Will you just hold on for a second,” Lily jabs in annoyance. I can tell she’s standing behind me with her hands on her hips, thinking that the Mom act is going to make me feel bad and give in.
It isn’t.
I let out a loud whistle, and a little golden head peeks out of the kennel that’s across the lawn. Her mouth instantly falls open, her long wet tongue rolling out to the side as her eyes light up and she skids out the door, running full force toward me. She leaps up as she gets to my side, her front paws on the wheel of my chair, her two back legs bouncing up and down off the ground as she tries her hardest to leap up into my lap, with no success.
Lily groans, walking around behind me, and picks Clover up off the ground and places her on my legs. It’s strange you know, because as soon as she’s on me, she suddenly becomes still, more careful, as though Clover knows she could possibly hurt me if she’s too rough. Her wet nose nuzzles at my hand, and for the first time today I smile.
Lily pulls out the chair across the table from me as Clover sniffs, licks and makes herself at home. “You’ve gotta go back sometime,” she states finally.
I risk a glance at her and cringe, quickly looking away. It’s that look of pity that I hate. I’m already frustrated, feeling useless and like a fucking idiot for getting myself into this damn predicament. I don’t need the people whose opinions matter the most looking at me like they feel sorry for me, trying to do everything to help but wipe my damn ass.
I’ve got this far in life on my own, without having to rely on others to get me through. They have no idea that they’re making me feel even more worthless than I already do.
“Everly rang last night to see how you are,” Lily mentions softly, barely above a whisper. My hand stills on Clover’s back, and her eyes peek up at me as if she can sense there’s something wrong.
I’ve spent five fucking days trying to forget about what happened, refusing to let her come around and avoiding stepping foot within The Agency’s walls. After the drugs had worn off, Jack had basically torn me a new asshole, and I fucking felt it. It hurt, almost more than the pain in my leg. God, I’d been a fucking idiot. I’d gone full-on creeper. I’d fucking groped her in front of my team members and my boss.
After Jack’s lecture, I filled in the blanks. I had few memories of those first couple days, but the one I’ll never forget is seeing her standing across the room looking at me in absolute horror, and Blair standing at her back yelling at me. Her cheeks were flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment, and there were tears brimming in her eyes. She was looking at me as if she didn’t really know who I was. And I don’t blame her.
I may be a fucking asshole sometimes, but she makes me want to be better. She’d gotten used to my jokes, to the way I tease her and prod at her to get a reaction, but this was next level. This was borderline assault. And I didn’t fucking care whether I was out of my mind or not, as far as I’m concerned I should have known better. I should have known it was her.
I never wanted to be like them. Those men who came into our home when I was a child and got high with my mom and then considered it their right to take her body for their own. No fucking way. I’d never seen the drugs as an excuse then, why should they be now.
Maybe I thought I managed to escape that shit—my fucked up childhood—with my morals and beliefs in the right place, but now I’m beginning to think that maybe it had impacted me more than I want to ever admit.
I don’t deserve to be around someone as sweet as Everly. I don’t want her to ever have to go through that kind of shit or feel like she isn’t safe, and as far as I’m concerned right now, I failed her in that regard.
“She’s not upset, Luca,” Lily continues when I don’t reply caught up in my memories.
I scoff loudly and shake my head. “You didn’t see her face, Lily. It’s been haunting me for fucking days, the way she looked at me like the monster I am.” Lily’s eyes widen at my words. I feel sick just thinking about it, seeing her eyes flash across my vision. “I was a fucking douche, with a capital D. I couldn’t handle myself, and there’s no way in hell I want to be around her when I can’t even control my body or my mind.”
I’m weak.
My body is broken, and obviously, my mind is so easily swayed by outside influence that I can’t be trusted.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” the deep voice of my best friend rumbles from behind me. Clover’s ears perk up at the sound of her dad, but she quickly settles back in, her tail smacking happily against my thigh. Lily instantly stands up and goes to him as he rounds the table, so he’s in my line of sight.
She gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Please, talk some sense into him,” she pleads as Kace brushes his lips across the top of her hair before she gives him one last squeeze and heads back inside.
Kace takes the seat she’s just vacated and knocks his knuckles on the table. “You look like shit,” he says, never being one to sugar coat it. “You need to get out of this house, and you need to start working on some of the rehab shit that the doctors gave you to do.”
The doctors gave me a huge list of things to do every day as I start to heal. At first, it began with small shit, like lifting the leg up and down a few times and trying to rotate it if I could. They want me to keep it moving as much as possible to avoid any future problems that could arise if I let it sit static—apparently that old saying ‘use it or lose it’ is actually pretty much on point.
“I’ve been doing—”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Kace sneers, rolling his eyes like he already knows I was going to try and talk my way out of this. “You’ve been too busy feeling sorry for yourself to do any of the things the doctors advised you to.”
I narrow my eyes across the table at him, but he just looks at me with a bored expression on his face. Kace has never been intimidated by me, even when we weren’t friends and I joined the team as a new recruit, thinking I was hot shit. I wasn’t, and it was Kace that made me realize that.
It’s why we’re best friends. Because he balances me out, reminds me when to pull my head out of my ass, and reminds me there are people out there who actually give a shit about whether I come back from a mission, dead or alive. So I better fucking fight my damn ass off to make it the latter.
“All right, I haven’t. I’ll start tonight,” I tell him, admitting defeat.
“You can start in the car on the way to The Agency for our team briefing,” he instructs, pushing back from the table and drawing Clover’s attention once again. I grit my teeth. “I already told Lily, I’m not going.”
Kace places both his hands on the table and leans down, his eyes staring into mine with an intensity that I don’t often see directed at anyone but the enemy. “You want to play that game, fine. You will be at that briefing. That’s an order, not a request.” His voice is low and deep, leaving no room for fucking arguments, but I’m going to try anyway. Because I’m a stubborn motherfucker.
“And if I don’t?” I query, my hands clenching tightly to the wheelchair, holding back from wanting to punch my best friend in the face.
“If you don’t… then you’re out. You’ll no longer be an agent of the SO7,” he snaps, and it’s like an injection of venom straight to my heart. I know by the tone of his voice that he’s serious, but I know he doesn’t take any kind of pleasure in saying the words.
The SO7 is my fucking life. They’re like my family, and even though I’m wallowing in enough self-pity to drown myself right now, walking away from them is never going to be a fucking option.
“Fine,” I snap. “But only because the SO6 doesn’t sound as good.”
I see the twitch in the corner of Kace’s mouth, but he manages to force a smile back down. I huff. “Lead the way… oh great leader,” I tell him, sweeping my arm out like he’s royalty.
“You’re gonna make this fucking painful aren’t you,” he groans.
My eyes light up, and I smile, and damn does it feel good. “As painful as possible. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
My muscles are tense as I wheel my chair through the halls of the main room of The Agency. Co-workers turn to look at Kace and me, some nod with warm smiles, others quickly turn away, all not knowing what to say.
“We’re expected in Jack’s office now. You okay to make it up the ramp?” Kace asks, and I send him a death glare making him grimace and hold his hands up in surrender. “Okay, just making sure, but… I’m here if you need me.”
He walks off in front of me up the ramp, and I grit my teeth preparing my strength to push myself up the small incline. I’m strong, I know that, but I’ve never had to push myself up a ramp in a wheelchair. This is a whole new experience, and honestly, I just want to turn around and wheel my fucking sorry ass out of here, the fear of rolling back down this ramp and crashing at the bottom is very real and kind of fucking daunting.
I move into position and start wheeling up the incline, it’s tough, and it takes a lot of effort. My muscles are burning as I pant harder for breath. Kace turns at the top of the ramp looking back to me, watching me cautiously for any signs of fatigue. The signs are there, for sure, I’m still weak from my injuries, but Jack’s windows are floor to ceiling, and I know the team is all in there watching me. I’ve never felt more pressure, and it’s eating me alive as I push to get up this motherfucking ramp.
I push harder making it to the top. Kace simply smiles at me as I let out a puff of exhausted air. He grips my shoulder, squeezing once, but says nothing in a show of support, then turns opening the door and walks in, leaving it open for me. I take a deep breath steadying my nerves, wiping the sweat that’s gathered at my temples, before I roll myself through the doors, letting Eli who’s just inside close it behind me.
Eli moves in beside me and rubs his hand into my hair, tussling it about in a noogie making me grunt as he chuckles to himself. “Good to have you back, squirt.”
I shove his hand to push it away from me as the room all chuckle to themselves while I glare at him. “Careful Hulk, I’m getting better with my aim, my wheels are extremely good at crushing toes.”
He chuckles and ducks out from behind me crossing the room. “You have to catch me first.”
“Your time will come, big guy, your time will come,” I jest and he smiles at me with a sly wink, and even though I’m playing it up like I feel fine on the outside on the inside I’m screaming.
I feel her eyes on me. I know she’s behind me at the front with Noah and Jack, her eyes boring holes in my side, but I can’t bear to look at her. The idea of looking at Everly and seeing any kind of sympathy or sadness in her eyes is too much for me to bear, so I simply won’t look at her. My plan right now is to keep my eyes downcast or to look at anyone but her. Avoidance at all cost. She deserves someone far greater than the monster I’m turning out to be.
“Okay, now we’re all finally here, we can discuss what Corporal Riggs and her team found in the hole that was left in the desert. Obviously, because the dome was practically annihilated, and the workers inside tried to destroy all the evidence before the bunker went down, there wasn’t a hell of a lot left for them to find. From the small amount of shit they were able to recover, though, I have to say the evidence is alarming,” Jack announces to the room making me look up, my eyes solely focused on him. Even though I can see the outline of Everly beside him, I train my eyes to stare at him and only him.
“Do you know where she’s gone?” Axel blurts out as he stands from his seat in the corner of the room. I turn to look at him, his eyes drift to me briefly as he winces, looking down to the floor like he’s ashamed he might stare at me. My stomach sinks knowing he must feel guilty for me being in this state.
I was angry at him for a moment. It was his girl we were going after. It was him I was saving when I got hit by the pillar, so technically this wheelchair is because of him. But laying the blame on him? Yeah, that won’t fix my hip. It won’t mend the wounds on my face, and it won’t exorcize the demons from my mind. Blaming him won’t fix anything. And Axel blaming himself won’t make him a better Operative. What it will do is impede his judgment. He needs to forgive himself.
Jack exhales shaking his head and looks to Noah who rubs the back of his neck. “Her whereabouts right now is… sketchy at best. We know she’s with Hendrix. He’s traceable. But we haven’t had a ping on him just yet. We’ve had our feelers out everywhere, and as soon as something comes up, Axel, we’ll be on it. I promise you.”
Axel exhales slumping back into his chair as Jack looks to Everly and nods. I’m not sure what she does, as I look down to my lap to avoid eye contact, but she clears her throat and my muscles tense as I know I’m now going to have to listen to her talking. I can’t not listen to what she has to say, but I can not look at her.
“So what Riggs found in the bunker is some scary stuff.” Her voice is weak, she sounds tired, but the thing that surprises me the most is how much I’ve missed her voice. I close my eyes fighting the urge to look up and just stare at her. I can’t. I’m not good for her. “There was evidence of biohazardous engineering in the science lab. Weird testing of animals. They were formulating, experimenting, coming up with fluids and gasses, of which, the functionality we’re not entirely sure. But what we do know is that it’s for the Syndicate so we can be sure it’s for warfare purposes. We think they’re using chemists to build chemical diseases and possibly antidotes. We also think this was a test lab, where they did the research and basic studies. The actual manufacturing lab has to be somewhere else, because if they were creating diseases in the bunker in the Mexican desert and it blew up, then we would have heard about the leak by now.”
My eyes open at her words and my body tenses.
This is not good. Not good at all.
Shit like this, so close to American soil. Fuck, this stuff can’t be weaponized and sold to the highest bidder. Imagine a virus, unknown to the world, being put in a bomb and then released in a capital city with millions of people. There could be an epidemic. This shit is a very real threat, and if we don’t stop this branch of the Syndicate, America… hell, the world could be screwed. And Kenzi could be a part of it all.
The room is quiet for a long few seconds before Tanner blows out a heavy breath, drawing the attention of the room. “So this is bad,” she says as if she needs confirmation. None of us do, though, we all know exactly what this could mean. I personally don’t want or need anyone else to drill it home.
Jack clears his throat. “This is basically as bad as it gets,” he confirms, his voice a bland monotone. “We need to figure out where we’re going to go from here…” With my thoughts running wild and concentrating hard on ignoring Everly from across the room, I don’t hear the door to Jack’s office swing open.
“You’re not going to be doing anything from here,” a gruff voice says, drawing all the eyes from within the room. I know him, and instantly my gut sinks, and I sit a little straighter.
“Edward,” Jack addresses him with a frown, one that told me he wasn’t expecting any visitors, let alone, the head of the damn Board. Kace moves in beside me, his body tense as if he’s preparing for a fight.
Edward stands at the head of the room, his gray hair slicked back, the color almost a perfect match to his flawlessly pressed suit. He stands toe to toe with Jack, a stern look on his face that tells me for whatever reason he’s here, it’s serious.
Jack doesn’t back down.
He pushes his shoulders back, stealing his spine as if preparing himself for the blow that’s about to come.
“You’re off the case,” Edward announces simply, finality in his voice.
Jack narrows his eyes at the older man.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” Kace spits, taking a step forward.
My eyes move across the room to Axel as he pushes his body out of the armchair he’s in, watching Edward with a fierce glare that means at any second he could blow, and good ol’ Ed’s going to wear the brunt of his anger.
Edward turns his eyes to Kace, who’s standing just in front of me, his clenched fists directly in my line of sight. The tension in the room is palpable. I finally catch a glance of Everly, her eyes wide as she surveys the rising emotions filling the room. My stomach churns, I should go to her, I can tell she isn’t used to an environment like this. The stress levels are at an all-time high, and there’s promise of violence in the air.
We’re the best team this Agency has. Nobody comes close to doing what we’re capable of. Each of us brings our own skill set, and each one vital to making the wheels turn. To hear these words, to be told that we’re being stripped of a case, one this fucking important, it’s like being punched with knuckle dusters in the fucking balls.
Just as I’m about to wheel my chair forward, Noah places his hand on Everly’s shoulder pulling her back, before taking a step in front of her, protecting her. My mind knows that he’s trying to keep her from the rising tension in the room, but I release a heavy breath, almost thankful he’s done it because I was ready to give up this whole keeping away from her bullshit within this moment and go over there to hold her.
So in reality, Noah’s actually protecting her from me.
Someone needs to.
“You guys not only screwed up the damn mission, I came to hear that you have some kind of personal attachment to Hendrix’s second-in-charge slash girlfriend,” Edward continues, the man with balls of steel, staring Axel down as my teammate is almost frothing at the mouth to get his hands on the old asshole. Edward’s words have us all stunned, though, and even Axel falls back a step, Eli catching him with a hand on his back for support.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Axel demands as he finds his footing and his voice.
“What I mean is, not only are they a couple, but she’s in charge of their biochemical labs and engineers that Garrick Gibbs has on his payroll,” Edward explains.
“That’s a fucking lie,” Axel screams launching his body forward. “Take that back, asshole.”
Kace manages to step in, hitting Axel’s body with his shoulder like a linebacker and forcing him backward.
“It’s true,” Noah countered, my eyes widening as I look over at him. He’s watching Axel fight against Kace, Noah’s eyes are full of sorrow and regret. “Everly and I found all the evidence. I’m sorry, man, but Kenzi… she has a lot more power than we thought.”
“And she left with them willingly,” Tanner adds, looking over at Axel, her shoulders slumped as if it pains her to admit the truth. “She could have come to us. Honestly, she had time to run—”
“Shut the hell up,” Axel spits. “All of you… Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I know her, she’s not like that.”
I clear my throat, not wanting to antagonize him any further, but hoping he might be able to see reason and not escalate this any further, where it ends up with him not only being banned from the case but from the entire Agency.
“You knew her,” I reply, his body stilling and his eyes only moving over to me. “Bro, it’s been almost nine years. Think about how much you’ve changed in that time. The things you’ve had to do to survive that haunt you…” I pause, watching as my words sink in.
Kace manages to take a breath, easing up, as Axel stops fighting back.
I continue, knowing that I have his attention now and that he’s hearing me. “Imagine what she’s been through, man. Imagine what she’s had to do to survive. You may not want to think about it, but she’s not the same girl you once knew.”
I watch as the fight leaves his body and he falls backward, stumbling to keep his feet. “So what? I just give up on her. I let her rot with the enemy?” he asks, his voice weak and confused with a hitch in his words.
“No,” I assure him, knowing that all the eyes in the room are on me. I may not always be the serious one or the one that has something intelligent to say, but I still give a shit about my team, and if that means dropping the sarcasm for a few minutes to help Axel get his head around this shit then so be it. “You don’t give up on her. You don’t let her rot. But you change your game plan because you need to realize this might not be an easy search and rescue anymore. This might be more like… an intervention.”
The room is quiet, all eyes focused on me. I usually like the attention, but in this damn wheelchair, I wish everyone would look away.
I risk a look over at Everly—big mistake.
She’s forced her way around Noah’s protective stance, her eyes glimmering in the light as she stares at me with a soft smile. It instantly warms my chest, the heat radiating outward and burning through my body like a wildfire. She’s looking at me as if I were some magnificent armored soldier on a white steed, whose words have swept in and saved the day. Unfortunately for me, I’m just a class clown with a jacked up leg riding a wheelchair. I’m who she wants me to be.
When the room has finally settled, Edward opens his fat fucking mouth and speaks again. “I’m putting another team on the mission. You’re all too close, too involved, and like we found out from the last failed mission…” his eyes focus in on Axel before moving to me and settling on my leg, “… you can’t seem to keep your emotions in check when it comes to this girl.”
As much as I feel every single one of us bite our tongues, desperate to argue, he’s right. When it comes to Kenzi, Axel is all over the fucking place. He made shitty decisions, and he didn’t put the safety of his team first. And that right there is our golden rule.
Jack sighs, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut. We’re all looking to him to maybe fight for us, convince Edward to let us take another shot at this, but I can already tell from the look on his face, he knows it’s a battle that isn’t worth fighting for.
“The other team, they’re still going to take this on? Get in there, take out Gibbs’ operation and get Kenzi out?” Jack asks, finally opening his eyes and looking to Edward for an answer.
Edward nods. “The mission will still go ahead, and they will be given strict instructions to do whatever possible to bring her in,” he confirms.
It doesn’t make me feel much better, though. Not only are another team taking on a mission that should be ours to finish now we’ve already started it. But the way Edward spoke was not as though he wanted to bring Kenzi back to Axel, but that she was the enemy here, and bringing her in meant interrogation, isolation and God only knows what else they’ll do to her to try and get the information that they need.
Axel’s body slumps down into a chair and Eli places a supportive hand on his shoulder, while Kace stands in front of him, his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t know Kenzi has turned,” Kace protests with confidence.
“And you don’t know she hasn’t,” Edward strikes back.
“All right, that’s enough,” Jack cuts in, stepping forward, so he’s in the center of the room. “Fine, we hand over the case. The SO7 is out,” he answers with regret. “But Everly, she isn’t part of the SO7, and she has the information and the skillset you need and that you won’t find anywhere else in The Agency. So she stays in.”
Edward looks over his shoulder to where Everly is standing, her eyes wide. She opens her mouth, then closes it again as if she wants to argue or refuse, but Jack quickly hits her with a look that tells her to be quiet. The muscles in her throat move as she swallows the obvious lump inside. Her smooth skin is flushed, the stress of the situation making her blood rush, tinting her skin a pale pink. I want to reach out and touch, my fingertips aching to brush across it knowing it will feel like silk.
She licks her lips, and I’m suddenly wondering how long it would take me to wheel my fucking way through this gray-haired asshole, taking out his knees in the process, and pull her into my lap.
“Fine, she stays,” Edward agrees finally, before dismissing us all as he turns his back to the room and walks straight out the door, pulling it closed with an anticlimactic click.
Everly instantly turns her gaze on to Jack. “I don’t want to stay on the case if the team isn’t on it. I don’t know these other people, Jack. How am I meant to—”
“You’re going to do it because we need you in there,” Jack demands, his eyes watching the door, his voice low. “We all know that the SO7 is the superior team for the job. We know whoever else he puts on this is gonna fuck it up, and we also know they will not be cautious when it comes to Kenzi’s safety. To them, she’s the enemy. If push comes to shove, they will treat her like one.”
I know what he’s doing now. It’s not because Everly is the best, although I know that she’s up there and can easily give Noah a run for his money, no, it’s because Jack needs a man on the inside. He isn’t about to let them go at this like a seek and destroy mission. Kenzi means something to Axel. Fuck, she means everything to Axel. And while he may have let his heart get in the way of his head on the last mission, that feeling stood firm.
The SO7 isn’t just a team. We are a fucking family. We feel each other’s pain, and we fight for each of us to be happy, to protect the people we each care about. None of us are going to let some cocky assholes go in and try to bring these people down and risk Kenzi’s life. She matters to Axel, so she matters to us. Whether she’s bad or good is irrelevant at this point.
Everly clears her throat. “Well, when you put it like that.” She lifts her chin, a sparkle in her eyes before she looks to Axel, meeting his gaze. The tension that had been between them before gone and I can see a new found respect as he looks back at her.
She’s going to stand her ground.
Jack may have said she isn’t part of this team, but she’s about to go out there and do whatever she can to make sure we know every little bit of information that’s passed through. She’s going to risk getting kicked out of here, risk her dreams of following in her father’s legacy, so she can support us. She couldn’t be more a part of this team, and as I watch her eyes light up with a devious excitement, pride swells in my chest.
She will fit in just fine.