“Dre!”
“We’re fine!” he called back. “This is our job!”…
I sucked in a hard gulp of air and Wren lifted her hand.
“What the hell, Wren?”
She pursed her lips. “Sometimes, when I touch people, I see things. Sometimes, those things are shared. Sometimes, I’m just bombarded by images and possibilities.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Thing is, Paige, those shareable moments and visions only happen with people who are important to me.”
She unfolded her legs and slipped off the bed. “I’m not going to get much further with you, Vanagloria. Bastian will be in later, and he’ll have some paperwork that Lincoln needs you to sign.”
Methodically she started to put her things away, paper into files, files into folders, folders into bags.
“You’re staying with us when you get out,” she stated. “No arguing. We have everything set up for you and the baby. You don’t have another place to go, and we have the safest place of all.”
Putting on her coat and slipping her bag over her shoulder she walked back to me, and put a hand on my cheek. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, Paige, and if I could change it all for you, I would.”
She kissed my forehead, and I had thought that it was going to be just a cold, over the top gesture that didn’t mean shit to either of us.
Instead, though, the press of warm lips on my cool, wrecked skin made something inside me tumble sideways and back again. It burrowed deep down, and rattled things loose I had no idea were there. It warmed me, and warned me, and welcomed me.
It told me that Wren was a true friend. Maybe a sister of the heart. The first person I’d ever met who truly wanted nothing more from me than to just be me.
The tears, from both eyes, trickled down.
Sister, friend, lover, or something that none of those captured—I had someone who loved me.
Bastian wheeled me through the door.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “This agency is my baby. I’ve missed nearly two weeks here and everything is a mess. I need to be here and cleanup.”
“Why don’t you hire an assistant?”
“If you haven’t noticed, Bastian, my budget isn’t exactly huge.” I gestured broadly to the office, which was one front room, where I kept the desk and chairs, and a back room with a couch and files. That was it. And it was not cheap.
“Just ask— ouch!”
Unrepentant, I stared at him. “Do not finish that sentence.”
“Did you have to wheel over my damn foot?” He pulled it up and rubbed at the top of it.
“Don’t finish the sentence.” I repeated myself. “I am not asking anything from anyone.”
“Pride,” he grumbled.
“Lust,” I grumbled back.
We both cracked up laughing as he pushed the door closed. I still felt a little…shell shocked by everything that I had learned in the past ten days. Not the least of which who Wren really was, and who I was.
After they had laid everything out, I realized what I had been seeing things on people, and why it was getting stronger. Simply being around these men, and Wren, was opening something up inside me.
When I gasped at someone in the orthopedist’s waiting room, Fischer had to explain that I was seeing the sins on people. It was part and parcel of being one of the sins myself.
And boy howdy did my brain not want to hear that at first. But the strength of their convictions finally made me start to believe they were right.
Then, the guys let me in on their Scooby Gang.
I looked at all the paperwork Lincoln and Fischer had laid out around me, and grinned.
“You really did this?”
“We’re in the process of it,” Linc said.
Fischer tapped another folder. “We have more, too. It’s probably better to do it this way since the last three times we had to incite justice—”
Bastian coughed, covering up a laugh.
“—we wound up with murder.”
Lincoln laughed this time. “This is way more fun. If they have victims of their sins, we get to clear them from the blast zone while we set up the dynamite for the sinner.”
“And this is only for the really bad ones.”
Fischer pulled out a picture of a woman, and lifted his eyebrows. “Check her out. Don’t try to stop the vision, it’ll come in in a second. Pictures take just a moment.”
Even though I’d kind of known what to expect, when the image shifted, I squealed and dropped the photo.
She was hideous. Utterly grotesque.
Even crazier was that the personifications of the sins on her were moving like I was reading The Daily Quibbler.
I’d really begun to believe everything Wren had said that day in the hospital. Watching her and her men work together was amazing. They were all in sync, and the house ran perfectly. It was a lively home, with Ellie, Ben, and the twins. They made me happy.
Ben was just thriving now that he was in the house. He had a privacy curtain on his door and as soon as he woke up each morning, he cheerfully tied it back and sat in the doorway for a few minutes. It was like his own little meditation, and it couldn’t have been cuter.
Tim and Tabitha—Bits as she insisted—loved having him there and they would often just chase each other around the house.
Ellie was the doting older sister who was easily annoyed, but not really.
I discovered the hard way that Wren wasn’t kidding about loving all three of her men. I was sure she didn’t see me in the hall, but I stayed still just in case.
She and Fischer were hot together, and it was a hell of a thing to accidentally stumble up on. Worse, I caught her and Lincoln in the laundry room the next day, and Bastian locking the door on the way into the library the day after.
There was only one kind of research going on there.
For all that, though, they really didn’t have a problem with me being there. Occasionally I’d remember how close I’d come to screwing all of it up for them, but they didn’t care. The household had what it wanted and needed and didn’t even flinch with the addition of another person.
I’d still been away from the agency too long. I had another week in the chair before Doctor Goodrun was going to let me on to crutches. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
Bastian sat in the chair and pulled out his laptop. “I have plenty of stuff I can catch up on here, so just let me know if you want me to get anything, or leave, or whatever. I’m agreeable to almost everything.”
“Almost?” I quirked an eyebrow.
“Almost.” He nodded. “I’m not very good at art and you don’t want to trust me with your laundry.”
Shaking my head, I started sorting the piles on the desk.
I felt…good. Living around Wren, the guys, and the kids did something to me. I had never felt so welcome, or cared for in my life. In just two weeks they had all started to really change me, and unwind me. I had always been coiled so tight around Alain that I was ready to pop. I had to prioritize him over everything—and when Ben stuck his head in to show me his art from school the day before, he’d seen my computer on and apologized. When Wren came home from a truly shit day at CHoP, she listened to me bitch about the fact I couldn’t get my pants on before she said a word. If anyone got a drink from the kitchen, they’d pass me one if I was in sight.