Star Wars is? That’s just wrong.” She grabs my hand and pulls me down the hall. “Come on, Martian Girl. We’re fixing this shit right now.”
My heart buoys. I feel lighter than I have in days. Even the cloud of Spider’s absence and the dread of his return feels less dark.
“Emma. A word,” a voice behind me growls.
I stop with Monica at the door to her room and look over my shoulder, feeling as if the happy balloon in my belly has just been deflated.
Dragon stalks toward us. With every step he takes, my stomach knots tighter.
With the single exception of the day I called him when Cap was shot, the president has never actually had a real conversation with me. He’s usually only grunted a few words, and always to Spider, never to me directly. Being near him always makes me uneasy, and the scowl he’s wearing tells me this isn’t apt to be a pleasant chat.
“Uh…” I drop my shoulders lamely, jerking a nod.
He stops in front of us, and the way his electric blue eyes flick sharply to Monica doesn’t make me feel any better.
“I’ll be in in a sec,” I tell her.
She disappears into the room, looking as if she’s leaving me in a dark wood alone with a wolf. The door shuts, giving us privacy.
“I heard about what happened with Gary at the hospital.” His tone is flat and cool and gives away nothing.
“Sir?” I squeak, since I don’t know what else to say, feeling heat spread over me.
“What you did was incredibly stupid,” he says, and the sharpness in his tone takes me aback.
Anger bolts through me, and yet I can’t get the words out. My eyes refuse to lift from the floor, and my face is extremely hot. I screw up my courage and force myself to look up into his uncommonly handsome, hard face.
“Sir, what did you expect—”
He puts up his hand, and I hate that I silence at once. I’m starting to see why some of the guys go quiet and immediately vacate seats close to him when he shows up. His eyes trap mine like those of a raptor’s, and everything about him screams of the kind of command that makes any of the pastors seem like cowards. He’s incredibly intimidating.
His hand lowers as soon as I go silent. “Ben and Penny are alive because of what you did.” The flatness of his voice doesn’t fit his words.
I swallow hard, unsure of what’s happening here. “Sir?”
“The club will not forget what you did,” he goes on, and his voice is oddly quiet now. “I will not forget it.”
At a loss for what to say, I just stare at him. I have a feeling this isn’t the kind of thing a woman hears from him often, and there’s a tick in his jaw that tells me he doesn’t like saying it.
The words are eerily like Mort’s.
“That’s all,” he says stiffly, nodding for me to go on my merry way.
“Yes, sir,” I say, completely baffled. I turn to enter Monica’s room.
“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” he adds over his shoulder on the way to the barroom.
It’s as if he started to let me off a very sharp hook, and then dug it right back in. I have no idea where I stand with him, and I have a sneaking suspicion that’s exactly how he likes it.
If I was confused before, this statement leaves me staring at his huge back for a long time.
As soon as the door to Monica’s room is closed behind me, I lean against it, feeling as if my knees are going to buckle. Monica sits on the edge of her bed, staring at me with her mouth hanging open. Obviously, she heard every word.
“Okay, what the heck just happened?” I ask shakily.
“I’m not sure.” Monica taps her lips with the edge of a Blue-Ray case she’s holding. The back of the case displays an image of a man with a very old hairstyle, dark clothes, and a strange sword that seems to be glowing, held in a battle stance. Her voice is hushed. “But let me tell you something about Dragon, Emma. He has been president for over five years, and never once have I heard him thank a woman for anything.”
“But he didn’t thank me.”
She nods, her eyes twinkling. “From Prez? That was as close to a thank you as one of us can get.”