He took a sip of his beer and thought back to the few times he’d been there. “That’s how my mom talked me into going for a visit. She told me I’d meet movie stars like Pamela Anderson, who I was enjoying regularly in Baywatch reruns. Didn’t happen though.”
Sophie laughed. He liked the sound of her laugh.
“Actually, I think Mom and Pam know each other. Mom was on Baywatch once. The Hoff saved her from drowning.”
“No kidding.”
She nodded. “It’s true. Mom wanted to act, but she’s not really that good at it. Stick her in a bikini and it doesn’t matter though.”
“Why do you want to act?”
Her smile faded and she toyed with a chip. He wished she’d eat it instead of playing with it. It was as if she was arguing with herself over every single bite. She hadn’t done that with the MRE, probably because it had been nearly twenty-four hours since she’d had anything besides a few crackers. But she had done it with the soup and grilled cheese.
“It’s just something I always wanted to do.”
He didn’t believe her for a second. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Come on, Sophie. Spill it.”
She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. “What’s it matter?”
He started to reach for her arm to give it a squeeze, but something stopped him. “It matters.”
“Fine…” She sighed. “I used to pretend to be someone else when I was growing up. I hated being fat, hated being made fun of—so I pretended I was someone prettier or more interesting. A princess, a movie star, an orphan—didn’t matter so long as I wasn’t me. It felt good to get lost inside another life, so I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I want to pretend to be someone else.”
He didn’t know what to say. He’d thought her life so fucking perfect. Resented her for it. And here she was tearing his theories apart. Making him feel sorry for her. He could tell her she was perfect as she was, but he’d already done that once. He could tell her that Tyler and her mother were fucking fools for making her feel less than important, but he’d already done that too.
“Are you pretending now?”
She turned her head on the back of the couch and fixed him with those remarkable eyes. “I’m always pretending, Chase. I’ve been pretending for so long that I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“So stop pretending. There’s no movie script that can compare to what’s going on in your life right now. You’re on the run with a handsome and brilliant dude who makes Rambo look like an amateur—that’s me if you didn’t know—”
She laughed and he kept going, trying to be serious though he wanted to laugh too.
“And there’s an evil Russian trying to track us down. We’re on the run, desperate, hiding out in a hovel—”
She snorted. “This is not a hovel. It’s a very nice little house.”
“Fine, hiding out in a very nice little house. Waiting for daybreak. Subsisting on potato chips and beer—anything could happen, anything… But we’re the good guys, Sophie, and the good guys always win.”
She was smiling as she gazed at him. He liked that. “Do they really?”
He thought of all the mudholes, all the rotten missions in all the war-torn places he’d been, and he knew it wasn’t true. Sometimes the good guys didn’t win. Sometimes the good guys got killed. He’d seen it happen more than once. Marco and Jim—God, that was a long time ago now, and he still remembered it like it was yesterday. They’d lost Marco and Jim, and they’d gotten Sam “Knight Rider” McKnight and Garrett “Iceman” Spencer in their places. Time moved on, people came and went, and justice didn’t always prevail.
He wasn’t telling her that, however.
“Yeah,” he said softly, holding her gaze. “They do.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. It’s my job.”
She was silent for a while, watching the TV as he flipped through the channels. There was nothing on, but he kept going. Finally he settled on a hockey game rerun.
“I’m sorry that I made you feel bad when we were kids,” she said.
He turned his head to look at her. Her face was in profile, the light from the TV illuminating her skin.
“You didn’t know. It’s not your fault.”
She met his gaze then. “Do you really mean that, or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
He blew out a breath. “No, I mean it. It was easy to blame you for having everything I didn’t… but the truth is that Tyler chose to abandon my mom and me. It was nothing to do with you. Hell, he married Justine years after we were both born, so there’s that too.”