Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful Book 3) Page 2

  I can’t. I can’t stop looking at her. I will never want to stop looking at her. And I don’t even know how this happened. I don’t even know how I fell in love with her.

  Am I in love with her? Or is this just our predetermined inevitability?

  Is she just the only girl left? Is she just the default love interest?

  She thinks so, but I know better. That’s not what this is.

  It’s not the job, either.

  Wendy Gale is lying in bed next to me, naked. It’s five am on New Year’s Eve morning and we have made it seven full days in the same place.

  A record.

  We haven’t spent this many consecutive days together since she was in her early teens and I like it.

  The white bed sheet is only half covering her small, lean body. And the curve of her back is calling to me. I trace my finger down her spine and her skin prickles up at my touch. Not in a creepy way, but a shivery way.

  Her reaction is anticipation.

  “Stop. Looking at me.”

  She’s lying on her stomach, her face buried in the pillow, her gorgeous blonde hair spilling over her bare shoulders in unruly waves, so she can’t see me. But she doesn’t need to see me. We have known each other for seventeen years. She was there the day my first life ended and my second one began. She was only five years old, but she was there.

  Wendy turns over and pushes her hair away from her face. “What the hell are you looking at?”

  She’s almost always like this. Snappish and testy. But I don’t mind.

  “You love me,” I say simply. And it comes with a knowing smile.

  She doesn’t smile back. It takes more than a little flirty joke to make her smile, at least on the outside. But I know how she works. I know how she processes things. So her mind is whirling, looking for a comeback.

  “I love nothing,” she says, smug now.

  “Not true.”

  “Why are you being weird?” She props herself up on her elbow and squints with disapproval at the snow glare infiltrating its way through the curtains.

  “Why is it weird? I’m just appreciating you.”

  She makes a face. It’s kinda like a wince and it comes with a crinkled nose. This face is adorable, but it’s not meant to be. And that just makes it even more adorable. “And why are you smiling at me? For fuck’s sake, Nick. Don’t start with me today. I’m not staying here and there’s nothing you can say to change that.”

  I know she’s leaving. I also know she’s right. There aren’t enough words in the universe to change her mind once it’s made up. Besides, until I come up with a better plan, this is just how it has to be.

  I trace my fingertip down her arm and she shivers again. Her hand comes up to push me off.

  But I was anticipating that. My palm collides with hers and then our fingers are laced together. I climb on top of her, my inner thighs gripping her hips just in case she gets edgy. Then I grab both her wrists and pin them high above her head.

  She doesn’t know what to do. She wants to be in a bad mood. She wants to get up, pack up her shit, get in her truck, and leave. She wants to push me away.

  But things are changing and she can feel it. Not only that, she likes it.

  I shake my head at her. “It’s not working anymore, and you know it.”

  This makes her huff. “I’m in control of what works.”

  “Don’t fight it. Just give in.”

  Now she smiles, her eyes drifting down to stare at my mouth. They slowly migrate back up and I can see all the little flecks of color in there. So many blues. But her eyes are not completely blue, not like most of the Zero girls’. Then again, Wendy never was a typical Zero. Her eyes have flecks of light brown and a little bit of gold. They are the exact color of a blackbird egg, speckled and wild.

  Everything about her is speckled and wild.

  “Kiss me, then,” she whispers.

  “Just get it over with?” I laugh. “Not likely. I’m gonna take my fucking time. And you’re gonna like it.”

  That cracks her, because she huffs out an incredulous laugh. But she also wriggles, trying to get free. I’m six foot two and I’ve got sixty pounds on this girl, easy. She’s a tiny thing. Of course, her size has no bearing on her fighting skills. She’s better trained than most professional assassins. Nine times out of ten a guy my size has no chance at all of overpowering Wendy Gale. She’s that dangerous.

  But I’m not most guys. And my danger level is a few notches higher than hers. So all this wriggling gets her is the full weight of my much bigger body resting on top of her chest.

  She sighs. Not in frustration, but in annoyance. “I can get out of this, ya know.”

  “So get out of this,” I challenge back.

  She huffs again. “Why do you always have to turn it into a confrontation? Why can’t you just ask for sex, like a normal guy?”

  “Normal guy? What do you know about having sex with normal men?” I mean for it to come out easy, like a joke, but it’s got an edge.

  “Mmm. What’s that I hear? Jealousy?”

  I pause to think about my answer. Am I jealous? Oh, hell yes, I am. But there’s no good reason for it. She’s not sleeping with anyone else but me. She’s never slept with anyone else but me. “Sure,” I say. “I’m jealous. But you’re mine, Wendy. You know you’re mine.”

  She sighs. Closes her eyes. Relaxes her body. Gives in. “Fine. Let’s fuck.”

  My laugh is a guffaw this time and I roll off of her, settling at her side. She leans her body into mine and then we’re wrapped up together. We fit in all the right ways, my arm around her, her cheek on my chest, my thigh between her legs.

  I love this girl.

  And this submissive thing she does? This giving-in thing? That shit just makes me sigh and close my eyes.

  “Fuck you.” Wendy laughs. “You’re not going back to sleep. You woke me up, let’s do this.”

  I don’t answer her right away because I’m suddenly thinking about… things. All the things. All the fights we’ve been in—not between us, but real fights with other people. All the times I’ve saved her, all the times she’s saved me, all the sex, all the kisses, all the love. And all the mornings after when we had to go our separate ways.

  “Do you have any idea what I would do for you, Wendy?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. Her body goes still. It takes her about ten seconds to find the right words. And they are simple ones. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to thank me, Wen.” I play with her hair because I love her hair. “I don’t need anything in return for this. But I would literally blow up the entire fucking planet to save you.”

  “That’s diabolical.”

  “Yep.” I nod in agreement. “And I don’t care. I’ve lost—” I pause here to reconsider my words. “We have lost so much, ya know?” I shake my head. “Never again. I will never let them get you.”

  She props herself up on her elbow and smiles down at me. It’s a real fucking Wendy Gale smile. Not the kind that says, I’m gonna kill you now. And not the kind that says, You just underestimated me, motherfucker. And that will be the last mistake you ever get to make, either.

  No. It’s a genuine I-love-you-back smile.

  And that means it’s a sad smile too. This part of her has always broken my heart. Because to Wendy, happiness and sadness are the same thing. Because she cannot be happy or appreciate anything she has without first thinking about what she had to do to get it.

  She sighs. “You’re the one hunting me, Nick. Don’t you think that’s kind of ironic?”

  “What the hell? That came out of nowhere.”

  “Come on. Are you, or are you not, making plans with Nathan St. James to kill the Zero girls?”

  “Those aren’t Zeroes. They’re Zero two-point-oh. They need to go.”

  “You say this like”—she pauses, lets out a breath—“like they’re different than me.”

  “They are.”

  “They’re
not, Nick.”

  “So what? They’re dangerous.”

  “I’m dangerous. You’re dangerous.”

  “Why are we even talking about this now? I thought we were having morning goodbye sex?”

  “Yeah, well, you took too long. Got all sentimental and shit. You should’ve just got on with it and then we wouldn’t be having this argument right now. We’d be moaning with ecstasy.”

  I reach for her, but she pushes my hand off. And it’s a serious push. Not playing. “Come on.”

  “No. I’ve put this conversation off for too long. Why am I different? And if you don’t have an answer for me, then that’s a problem, Nick.”

  “Wendy—”

  “Don’t.” She puts up a hand. “Do you have plans to kill Sasha?”

  “What? What the fuck? What kind of question is that?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

  “Thought? Thought what?”

  “She’s a Zero too.” Wendy throws the cool white sheet off our bodies and gets out of bed.

  “Where the fuck are you going? We’re having sex here.”

  “No,” she says, pulling on her jeans. “We’re not.”

  I get out of bed too, pull a pair of sweats up my legs. Because she’s about to escape and even though I knew she was going to leave me today, I’m not ready for it. Especially if we’re fighting. “What did I do? What’s your fucking problem?”

  She’s already got her t-shirt on. Her feet slip into her boots as she scans the bedroom for her purse.

  “Wendy,” I say, walking towards her. “What—” I grab her arm, but she shoots me a look. It’s a dangerous look, so I let go. “What did I do? You want me to stop hunting those girls? Fine. Let’s talk about it.”

  She finds her purse, hikes it up on her shoulder, and turns to me. “You won’t stop. You’ve been doing this my whole life. That’s not a throwaway expression, either. You have literally been hunting down girls like me for twenty-one years.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “No? When did you kill the first one? Hm? When, Nick?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Think. I need an answer.”

  “Why? Do I go around asking you when you made your first kill?”

  “When?” Her face is dead serious. She is going to walk out of here no matter what I say. But if she walks out angry, she will stay angry. Wendy Gale knows how to hold a grudge like nobody’s business. And I didn’t call her here to make her angry. I have a job for us. A long one with the sweetest prize at the end. And if she walks out now, she won’t even get to hear my plan.

  So I tell her. “I was ten.” She takes a step back, like she was not expecting that answer. “But it’s not what you think. It was me or her. It was a hunt, Wendy. Trust me, I didn’t choose to be on that island that night. My father made sure I was. And in the end, it was either me or her.”

  Wendy just stares at me. And this new silence quickly fills the room and creates a chasm of distance between us. Finally, she says, “What was her name?”

  “Her name?” My words come out incredulous. “I don’t fucking know her name. It was twenty-seven years ago.”

  “Twenty-seven years ago. Do you hear yourself? I’m twenty-one, Nick. You’ve been hunting these girls for so long, you wouldn’t even know how to stop.”

  I take a moment. Breathe. Calm myself. “Question for you.”

  “Shoot.” She tips her chin up, letting me know her word choice is deliberate.

  “What do you think we should do with them? Just let them… breed? Let this whole Company shit perpetuate for a few more generations? Let it get all out of control again?”

  “Is it in control now?”

  This is a trap question. And I don’t want to say what I’m about to say, but it has to be said. “We lost a lot of people, Wendy. A lot of people gave their lives to get us to this moment.”

  She pushes both middle fingers up to my face. “Fuck you.”

  “Do you want to make all those sacrifices meaningless? We are winning. We’ve practically won for all intents and purposes. They scurried away like cockroaches and now they’re hiding in the floorboards. But that’s only because we’re shining light on them. We’re still diligent. If we turn the lights off, Wen, what happens then? Hm? What do cockroaches do when you turn the lights off?”

  “So when do you stop?”

  “We stop when they’re gone.”

  “What about us?”

  “What about us?”

  “We’re them. So I’m confused. How is it that you and me, we get to come out the other end alive yet they all have to die?”

  “We’re the good guys, that’s why.”

  She snorts. “That’s hilarious. There are no good guys. I’m pretty sure you’re the one who told me that when I was a kid, actually. We’re not the good guys, Nick. And they’re not the bad guys.”

  I just stare at her for a moment, trying to see it from her perspective. “Who are you trying to save?”

  “What?”

  “Who are you worried about? That’s what this is, right? You’ve got a friend still stuck inside. Just tell me who they are, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I don’t have a friend inside. I’m speaking in general terms. I’m a Zero. You’re a Zero. We’re people, Nick. And so are they. People who did not ask to be born. People who had no choice in who they are.”

  “That’s the point, Wendy. They don’t know any better. They think—”

  “They think this is normal?” Wendy asks. She shakes her head at me. “That’s so fucking stupid. You think hunting them is normal. You don’t lose a single wink of sleep at night over this shit, do you? Don’t you see it? You’re no better than them.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “You’re worse,” she continues. “Because you’re a failed Zero. You, and James, and Santos, and Vincent.”

  “Vincent wasn’t a Zero.”

  “You men”—she clarifies by pointing her finger at me—“you men were the problem. And we were the answer.”

  I don’t even know what to say to this. I can’t really argue with her because this is all true. All the male Zeroes in the initial program went insane. Only James really made it out. Adam and I don’t count. We were both pulled early enough. And Vincent was never in the program. He was being groomed for politics. But Santos… he was the poster child for what a male Zero was. Even he knew he needed to die.

  “You all went insane during the Zero training.” Wendy is still talking. “Us girls? We’re the ones who can handle it.”

  Now I’m starting to get pissed. “What do you want, Wendy? You want me to quit? You want me to leave them alone?”

  “You already leave some of them alone. You’re picking and choosing, Nick. So let me ask you again. Are you gonna kill Sasha?”

  “Don’t be a fucking bitch. I’m never going to kill Sasha.”

  “And she’s the worst of them.”

  I laugh. “No, Wendy. She’s not.”

  “Who is then?” She tips her chin up again. “Hm? Who is? Indie? Angelica? Avery? Daphne? Lily? Hannah? Me?” There is only one girl left that she knows I care about. Only one girl left that I will not kill and for a moment I don’t think she’ll say it, but she does. “Lauren? How are we different?”

  “You guys are…” But I pause here to gather my thoughts.

  “We’re not, Nick. We’re not different.”

  “So you want me to stop. Just let them all breed like crazy. Let whoever’s in charge of them take over the world again with creepy blonde assassins?”

  At the word ‘creepy,’ she cringes. Creepy Wendy, that’s what everyone calls her. Not to her face, of course. And it’s not even deliberate. ‘Creepy’ is just the correct word for these beautiful blonde killers. You can’t look them in the eyes and not see it. There is something deeply wrong with them.

  And Wendy is not different in that respect. She’s wrong though. Sasha was never even in the running for be
ing the worst of them.

  “No, Nick. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you can’t just pick and choose.”

  “Yeah. I can. When you win the war, you make the rules. We won. I make the rules.” Wendy might not be the worst of them, either. But she’s in the running, and she knows this.

  “You’re not even in charge, Nick. Not for real.” I start to laugh, but she keeps going. “Adam is. You think you’re in charge because half the Company thinks you’re dead and the other half just wants you to keep pretending that you are. They want you to stay on the road forever so they never have to think about you again.”

  “Damn, you’re mean this morning. Can I get you a cup of coffee, Wendy?”

  “You’re not in charge,” she says again. “Adam is.”

  For a moment, I don’t understand where she’s going with this. But it’s a willful misunderstanding. Because I know exactly what she’s saying. We stare at each other, and it’s a real standoff. I shake my head. “I know you have a thing against Sasha”—she guffaws—“but you need to stay the fuck away from her. Do you hear me, Wendy?”

  Her smile says so many things. But it’s not a sad one, so it’s not a real smile. “What happened to ‘do you have any idea what I would do for you?’”

  For a moment I’m speechless again. But if I don’t say something she will turn and leave and that’s not how this inevitable separation will begin. And then, before I even realize what’s happening, she’s out of the bedroom and walking towards the front door. “Stay the fuck away from her, Wendy.”

  She whirls around, laughs. “Sasha. I always knew it. But now I have proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “I’m just a stand-in, aren’t I? That’s all I’ve ever been. Ever since that day on the beach in Santa Barbara, that’s all I’ve ever been to you, wasn’t it?”

  “You’re being fucking stupid. You were five years old. I didn’t even know you. I didn’t even like you.”

  She grabs her coat and flips me off. “Fuck you, Nick. Stay the hell away from me or I will show you just how dangerous us Zero girls can really be.”

  It always ends with a threat.

  “You didn’t even hear my proposal,” I yell after her. “I have a plan for us!”

  But she’s already in her truck. Already starting the engine.