Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(31) Wrong

It was wrong that I couldn’t go to my apartment, no matter how much my fatigue told me that it was time to sleep, that I needed rest for the days ahead. I knew that I needed the sleep and that it was only logical that I get some when I can, but the thought of going back to the apartment made me sick to my stomach. I knew somewhere in the back of mind that Rian would be waiting up for me, waiting for me to get home, and it made me want to go back to the rooftop with Jonathon and crawl back into his arms and forget all about the secret life I lived.

If only it would ever be that easy.

The moment I breezed through the doors in the lobby, I knew he was waiting. I walked slowly through the room and crossed to the stairs, climbing it at a slow pace that almost pained me, but it felt like I was moving underwater. I held my breath as I made it to the top, as I turned to face the front door with my key in hand, but I was already drowning.

Just as I thought he would be, he was standing in the front room, pacing. And he was angry.

Rian Blackwell didn’t show anger like most people did, at least not at first. He stopped pacing when I walked through the door and just turned to look at me, his face blank. His hands were loose at his side and he wasn’t tensed. There were no emotions in his eyes, not even the anxiousness he must have felt to inspire his pacing. I closed the door and locked it, took off my jacket and hung it up, all without looking at him.

“Where have you been?” he asked me slowly, his voice drawing out lazily. I looked up at him slowly, almost afraid to meet his eyes.

There was nothing to be afraid of in them. Unless you were afraid of seeing nothing.

“I was at Jonathon’s,” I replied to him, shrugging lamely. “He called me and asked me to come over.”

His eyes flashed. “At three in the morning?”

I hadn’t had many partners. I would freely admit that. I had once, and our mission only lasted for about three days, so we didn’t really get to know one another. I wasn’t much of a social butterfly, what with knowing little to ten of my classmates from Helford Academy for various reasons. So when I left in the middle of the morning hours, I wasn’t used to people wondering where I had gone.

And I surely wasn’t used to the investigation of my whereabouts being moody and unpredictable.

I blinked, focusing on Rian’s face. He looked like he was in control but I knew that there was a storm raging underneath of it all, flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder shaking the world around him, winds howling and screaming like the souls of the damned. I could see it in his eyes how much he wanted to pretend like none of this was touching him. As if he hardly even noticed that I had been gone.

It was unsettling to know that he had been waiting up. To know that someone cared.

“Well, yeah,” I replied lamely. “He’s the target. He calls, I go.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I wished I could take them back and lock them up in the recesses of my mind.

I didn’t want to act like I only thought of Jonathon as the target, as if he wasn’t even a person. And I didn’t want to seem like I was being used by him, like I was something cheap. I didn’t want to sound like a pet when I said that he calls and I go to him. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was his slave.

As I expected, it hit the wrong string with Rian. I thought I saw his hands start to shake, but when I looked again they were tense and steady.

“Is that the kind of arrangement you two have?” he asked me, and if I didn’t know better than I would have assumed that he was laughing. “I think I’ve had the wrong perspective on this entire deal, Alastair.”