utterly mangled—looking worse, no doubt, in the fluorescent lighting. “No. Boxing. Semipro.”
It was her turn to blink. He hadn’t been attacked, then. “Who won?”
A low, rasping laugh. “I did.”
So the muscles truly weren’t all for show. She didn’t want to imagine the bruises beneath his clothes. Selina swallowed. “Why do you fight?” He had more money than God, and if she hadn’t been near starvation all those years ago, she never would have set foot inside a ring.
“It…helps,” he said, and refused to clarify.
Helps. He’d been in the Marines. Maybe the fighting helped him with whatever he still needed to sort through. She half wondered if Batwing himself had been a soldier, too. If he fought crime for a similar reason.
The elevator reached their floor, silence settling between them.
She’d gone overseas as well. And while Luke had been fighting for this country…she’d been learning how to break it.
Was here to do just that, to destabilize and undermine.
A heavy, hollow weight settled in the pit of her stomach, but she kept her steps slow as they walked out of the elevator. “Can I help you get cleaned up?”
He shook his head, but winced at the movement. “I’m fine.”
She scanned his body—the sweatpants, the jacket that hid his battered body. “Let me get you some ice.”
She’d stolen his car, his painting, lied to his face….It was the least she could do. If he hadn’t been a rich boy, she would have said he was a good man. A rare man.
Luke said, “Thank you.”
And for a heartbeat, she was back in that dirty, dangerous hallway—as he tried and failed to pull out his keys.
His fingers were bloody, swollen. She caught the keys before they could hit the ground, saying nothing as she fitted them into the lock, opened the door, and flicked on the lights.
“Ice pack is in the lowest drawer on the left side of the freezer,” he managed to say before slumping onto his couch, his knuckles smearing blood onto the dark leather.
Selina readied the ice pack, leg protesting with every movement, and brought over some paper towels to wipe up the blood. He leaned back against the cushions, pressing the ice pack to his eye, saying nothing while she dabbed at the leather.
Only when she rose, jaw clenched so tightly to keep in her grunt of pain, did he say, “Why were you out so late?”
“I had a date,” she lied.
He went still. “With whom?”
Props for good grammar. She tossed the bloodied paper towel into the trash under the sink. “I get the feeling that the moment I tell you, you’ll use that Wayne Industries database to look up his records, so…pass.”
“That’s assuming I care enough to do so.”
Well then.
“Feel better,” she said a bit tightly, heading for the door.
“Holly—”
But she was already gone. Even though she hated herself for it, Selina lingered by her own door for a moment longer than necessary, just to see if he’d come after her.
He didn’t.
* * *
—
“Let’s blow up the stage where they’re hosting that kiddie beauty pageant.”
“Jesus Christ, Harley!”
“What? Not while the kids are on it, obviously. But those contests are gross.”
Selina wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here. She’d given Ivy a call to say that tomorrow they were hitting up another target, but instead of agreeing and hanging up, Ivy had invited her over. To hang.
So here she was. Wearing her suit and helmet. In a lab teeming with plants that Ivy had constructed in the mammoth greenhouse adjacent to the abandoned grand hall of Robinson Park.
The entire place was something out of a dream: Trees grew from the floor itself, rising right through the glass ceiling, their thick leaves providing a roof. Paths lined with blooming flowers wended between the dense underbrush of dangling vines, ferns, and trickling streams. A few birds called sleepy good-nights to each other.
Selina could have sworn that some of the zoo animals they’d freed the other week during one of their Merry Band of Misfits adventures now lurked between the trees and oversized roots, eyes gleaming in the dark.
The air was sweet, warm—not quite comforting. The scent of fresh earth all around. A beautiful, if unsettling, place.
A lab-slash-apartment, apparently, from the little open grassy area tucked against a far stone wall that they now sat in, a rare spot of the greenhouse that hadn’t been overwhelmed. Ivy and Harley sprawled on what seemed to be a sofa constructed of velvety moss, Selina perched on what she could have sworn was an oversized