And that doesn’t trivialize it, believe me, because seeing Perry run toward me, her face scrunched in the sheer desire to reach me, did something to my soul. It grabbed at me, clawed at me, made me realize just how damn empty I’d been without her by my side, even if for a short while. It made me realize I needed to do everything I could to ensure that would never happen again.
“Dex,” she cried out again and in an instant she was in my arms and she was safe and I was safe and the rest of the world could go to hell for all I cared.
I held her close to me as she sobbed into my chest. I wanted to calm her down but at the same time I wasn’t doing so well either. The more she shook in my arms, the more worried I became.
“Hey, baby,” I whispered into the top of her head. “You’re here, I’m here.”
Right?
She half mumbled, half cried something into my chest and I had to pull back to give her some room to talk. I smoothed the hair behind her ears, imploring her to look at me. She eventually did even though the tears wouldn’t stop running down her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her softly. I hated seeing her cry more than anything.
She grimaced and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “You don’t know?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much, kiddo. Last thing I remember was being in Portland, upstairs, editing. Next thing I know I’m on the Brooklyn Bridge, talking to a hipster. Apparently, I’ve missed some shit between points A and B.”
She frowned, studying my face, and squeezed my hand hard. “That’s really all you remember? You don’t remember your brother?”
Michael. Again, his face flashed through my mind, as clear as day. Why it struck the fear of god in me, I don’t know.
I paused. “I don’t think so?”
“Lord, Dex, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Maximus said as he walked over to us.
“Good, cuz the sight of you makes my eyes sore,” I said right back but I couldn’t help but grin at him. I looked at Ada who had somehow already devoured the hot dog and was staring at me with questioning eyes. “Little Fifteen. Fancy meeting you in the Big Apple. Can one of you jokers please inform me of what the fuck is going on here?”
“He says he doesn’t remember anything,” Perry said to them.
I wrapped my arm protectively around her waist and pulled her closer to me. “I’m assuming some major shit went down or somehow the teleporter was invented without me knowing it.”
I don’t know why I thought they’d find that amusing but all three of them stared at me gravely. My shackles went up. “Okay, seriously. I don’t know what happened. Can one of you please indulge me?”
Surprisingly it was Ada who spoke up. “You were upstairs. I was working out. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, the sound of that scary athletic chick’s voice pounding into my head. “A workout video with the hot but crazy one with the big jaw.”
“Yes,” she said with a raise of her brow. I just then noticed how tired Ada looked. She’d always bordered on that because of her fascination with a metric ton of eyeliner but there was something different about her. The exhaustion made her seems eons older than she was, like she’d seen a lot recently.
She continued. “Then there was a knock at the front door. Do you remember that?”
I tugged at my hat while I tried to think, my other arm tightening around the small of Perry’s waist. I thought she’d relax into me but she felt just as tense as I did. “I don’t think so.” Did I remember a knock at the door? It was hard to say if my memory was true or I was just conjuring up what it would have sounded like.
“Do you know who it was?” she asked.
I shook my head even though every part of me wanted to say Michael, it was Michael.
“It was your brother.”
I nodded. Hearing it didn’t make it seem more real but it also didn’t feel like a lie. It just didn’t make any sense – that was the real problem I was having with it. Why would my brother show up now after all these years? How did he know where to find me?
“What did he want?” I asked.
She glared off into the distance and crossed her arms. “You, obviously. He did some weird shit to my head and the next thing I remember, Perry was shaking me awake.”
“And you were gone,” Perry filled in quietly. “You left in the Highlander, with him.”
“Willingly?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We don’t know, we’ve been trying to figure that out. But Ada said you knew something was wrong. That once you saw him, you told her to run, to get out of there, to go and get me. You knew he was bad news.”