Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful)

She shakes her head and steps around me, putting distance between us. I turn too, and that’s when I notice that Wendy is standing on my front stoop, watching us.

I walk past Sasha, leaving her at the end of the driveway, and when I’m twenty feet away I extend my hand to Wendy. “Hey. Come here. I wanna introduce you to someone.”

Wendy’s eyes dart over my shoulder to Sasha, who has followed me down the driveway. “I know who she is. I’ll leave you two alone.”

I grab Wendy’s hand before she can leave. She attempts to pull her hand from mine, but I hold tight and step forward until there is almost no distance between us. “Nothing. Has changed. Understand me?”

I pull back and look her in the eyes. She nods. But she’s uncomfortable now and I hate that. Still, I force myself to smile as I turn back to Sasha. “Sash, this is Wendy. Wendy, Sasha.”

They stare at each other, but neither of them says hello.

Merc appears on the other side of my screen door. Fucking coward. He clears his throat. “Sash. So glad you could come.”

“Is this what you wanted my opinion on?” She flutters a hand in my direction.

“Yes.” Merc nods. “But there’s more to it than that.” His eyes dart to mine. “A lot more, actually.”

Harrison comes up behind us. Another coward. Not that I blame them. If the situation were reversed, I’d have hidden during that confrontation too.

“Fine,” Sasha says. “I’m here. So fuck it. Tell me everything.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - WENDY

The sight of Sasha Cherlin at the top of the air stairs triggers things inside me. Not an urge to kill her, thank God. But in my mind, it’s almost as bad. My breathing becomes erratic and quick. My heart thumps so hard, my ears begin pounding out this rhythm. My eyesight focuses, like it does when I’m on mission and I spot the target for the first time. This reaction has always felt a little… technical to me. Like I’m not really human at all. Like I’m some kind of machine. Of course, that’s not it. Just a fantasy. This focus is not instinct, either. Not entirely. It’s a well-practiced technique taught to me by Chek himself.

The focus comes with tunnel vision. For a split-second I lose all peripheral vision and instead I see only a single spot in front of me.

In my other life, this spot was my target.

But Sasha is not a target so I blink, then blink again, then again, until the focusing stops, and my heart settles, and my breathing is no longer ragged.

This takes about…. two seconds.

“Nice.”

When I look at Merc, he’s not smiling. He appears a little uneasy. “What?” I snap.

“That… reaction.” He nods his head towards the driveway. “To Sasha?” He doesn’t seem too sure, but he continues anyway. “I’ve seen Sydney do it, but she was not… well. Not on your level. Not even close.”

“Sydney,” I mutter. “Channing, right? Daughter of some senator.”

“Yeah. That’s her.”

“She and I are nothing alike.”

“No.” And maybe I don’t really hear it, but I hear it. In his head he’s thinking… Thank God. “She wasn’t nearly as well-trained as you. She’s not blonde, either. No blue eyes.”

“In other words, she’s not crazy and evil.”

“Oh. No.” He kinda chuckles. “That’s not what I meant. She totally has her crazy and evil moments. She was brought up… she would kill me—not literally—if she knew I was talking about her like this. She’s real private. But you get it, right? You get what she is, even if she’s not exactly like you? They did things to her. Terrible things to her. She lost her shit.”

I think about this for a moment. “But you married her, right? You’re still together, right?”

“Oh, fuck yeah. I love her.”

“She doesn’t frighten you?”

“Nah.” Merc says this with a long sigh. “I mean, when she gets pissed at me over normal shit, I kinda like it.” He smiles. “And she’s not like…”

“Go ahead. You can say it. She’s not like me.”

“I mean that in a good way for you. You’re one of those super-soldiers, right? They invested time, and money, and training into you, Wendy. Sydney was an afterthought. So when I say she’s not like you, what I mean is that she’s a lot more vulnerable.”

I ponder this for a moment as I watch Sasha Cherlin make her way down the air steps towards my Nick and he waits for her.

I have imagined this moment ever since I learned what Nick really did that first day we met. I was too young and too new to understand what was happening offshore in Santa Barbara that night. And to be honest, I didn’t really like Nick before I went to live with him and Lauren. When I looked at him back then all I saw were secrets and lies. Of course, I didn’t know anything about his secrets and lies the way I do now, so it always put me off.