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I arch an eyebrow.

Pepper throws his hands in the air. “The poly-titanium blend was created at Research two years ago. I wanted to provide every Hero with an impenetrable breastplate, but due to regulations and Central’s paper-pushing elders, they wouldn’t let me. They said it was too expensive, said it worked too well, and that the Heroes wouldn’t try as hard if they felt invincible.”

“That’s crap. We’re practically invincible without a fancy suit.”

Pepper leans in. “A lot of things are crap, Maci Might.”

“You wasted this suit.” My eyes fall to the floor. “I’m not a Hero. I probably won’t ever be. You had to know that.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know the future and neither do you.”

He’s right, I guess. Central is wrong though. I don’t think any sort of suit would ever make me think I’m invincible. Pepper said it was invented two years ago, the same time Evan started working in Research. I wonder if he worked on this? I shake my head and focus on more important things.

Pepper is a total genius. Every inch of this suit was designed for me, right down to the drastic color choices. I’ve never seen a black suit before. Heroes don’t wear black.

I must have said that last part aloud because Pepper is beside me in the next moment. “Maci Might wears black,” he says in my ear. He takes a strand of my hair and runs his fingers through it, deliberately making his point. “Maci Might rocks it.”

“You designed a suit that calls out my darkening hair rather than hides it.” I give Pepper a mild stink eye as he stands there looking pleased with himself.

“You can hide what makes you you, or you can embrace it. That’s exactly what I told the examiners too.”

“You did?” The weight of what he’s done for me, what he’s risked by overstepping his authority with the examiners, sinks in. “What did they say?”

He waves a hand through the air. “They told me to screw off.”

Oh.

Well then.

I wasn’t aware of how much hope I had stored up in those few words until his reply made it all burst and float away.

At Pepper’s command, the mannequin shrinks into itself, taking what used to be the shape of my body and conforming it into a cylinder the width of a stripper pole before recessing into the ceiling. My suit crumples to the floor and Pepper folds it into a neat square, crossing the gloves on top of it.

He places it in a plain paper bag, incognito style. “It’s yours. Now I’m afraid I must change the subject and ask for your confidentiality a moment.”

“As if we weren’t already being confidential?” I smile. My fingers can’t stop running over the smooth fabric of my new suit inside the bag.

“Do you know how to keep a secret?” Pepper asks, every fiber of his body writhing in melodramatics as he makes me a latté.

“Of course I know how.”

“But do you actually keep them?” He takes a seat on the barstool near his workbench and then stands right back up again.

I sip my latté and ponder the question. As daughter of the president and sister to a Hero, I am privy to loads of sensitive information that I am not allowed to share. And I never have shared it. So, in that sense, yes, I can keep secrets.

On a much more realistic level, I share my deepest, wildest secrets with Crimson every single day. Max hears all the ones that don’t involve boys or embarrassing female issues.

“Maybe if you tell me the type of secret, I can answer more accurately.”

Pepper watches me, his eyes flickering back and forth between mine. He opens his mouth and then closes it. He erupts into an avalanche of laughter. I jump at the unexpected sound and tighten my grip on my latté. It’s the kind of laugh someone does when confronted with a hilarious joke, something that makes you laugh and then laugh some more as each layer of the joke peels away, sending you even further into hysterics.

I smile awkwardly as if I get the joke too. Pepper wipes his eyes with a handkerchief as his laughs subside into chuckles. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m over. I’m done.”

“You’ll need to elaborate if you expect me to understand,” I say.

“It doesn’t matter if you keep the secret or not.” With a final wipe of his eyes, he folds the handkerchief and slides it back into his coat pocket. “I have something to tell you and you are the first to know.” He sips his latté and sets the cup on the workbench. He takes a stainless flask from the inside pocket of his blazer. “I am retiring.”

I