“I mean, I didn’twantto reject you. I like you, but I had to be logical.”
She leaned over his back, doing something to the wound. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to create a baby that you planned to abandon. That’s the one thing I respect about you right now.”
Well, at least she respected something. “I was only thinking about Junior, the chosen one, not myself. Most men would’ve acted differently. I’m telling you this because you haven’t had much experience.”
“And because you’re drunk. But it’s nice to know you had the chosen one’s best interest at heart. I’m sure you’ll be a good father someday.”
She was probably being sarcastic about that. He couldn’t tell. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter. “I’m not going to be a father. I’m going to be one of those officers who dies on the job. That’s always been my goal.”
She gently tugged on the wound. “That’s a horrible goal. Maybe you should get a different job.”
He didn’t comment about that, just shut his eyes and took deep breaths. She continued to touch his back. After a while, she put a new bandage on and began wiping the excess iodine off. He wished he wasn’t so numb. He would’ve liked to feel her fingers gliding over his skin.
“One,” he said.
“One what?”
“One woman. You asked how many. It was only Kitra.” Somehow, he needed Charity to understand. “We were secretly engaged.”
Charity returned things to the first aid kit. “Why secretly?”
Enzo sat up and stretched his neck. “Because we were nineteen. Our parents thought we should wait. They thought we had our whole lives ahead of us.” Enzo laughed, but the soundheld no humor. “She was at the governor’s house with our fathers when the terrorists attacked. They all died.”
Charity gasped, and her blue eyes widened. “I’m so sorry.”
Just talking about the event made Enzo feel like he’d stepped back through the years. He was there with the sirens wailing. Dust dimmed the streetlights, choking the air and making it hard to breathe. In the distance, small fires lit piles of rubble.
He tried to get past police barricades while helmeted officers barked at him to stay back, to return home. It didn’t matter how many times Enzo told them he had to get through.
There’s nothing you can do, they kept telling him.
The words had repeated in his mind for weeks like a mantra, like an accusation.
“I should’ve been with her that night,” he said. “But I was studying for a stupid, worthless college exam.”
Charity’s eyes turned sympathetic, and she put a hand on his arm. She couldn’t help offering comfort even though she hated him now. “It’s a good thing you weren’t there. I’m sure those who died were glad you weren’t.”
“I might have been able to save her.”
Charity shook her head. “You couldn’t have. If that had been possible, her father would’ve saved her.”
Enzo rubbed his forehead and tried to erase the pictures that always formed in his mind of Kitra, trapped and broken, under the rubble. Who knew how long she’d been alive, suffering, before they pulled her body from the wreckage. And none of it should’ve happened. None of it.
“Since I couldn’t protect Kitra, and I couldn’t die with her, I became a special ops officer. The Empowereds will keep destroying things until they’re stopped.” Charity needed to understand that. She needed to know what was at stake.
She withdrew her hand from Enzo’s arm, and her voice lost its warmth. “My father has only ever helped people. If you’d taken any time to get to know him, you’d realize that.”
Enzo reached for his shirt and gingerly put it on. The movement caused a pinch of pain in his back. The opiate was wearing off. “If that’s the case, why hasn’t he offered to use his powers to help the government? Why not help the entire country?”
“Because that’s not how psychic powers work. You can’t tell the visions what to show you. They show you…” she broke off, swallowed, and pressed her lips together. She thought she’d said too much.
He wasn’t going to let the subject drop. “They show a psychic how to get either money or power. I’m guessing your father falls into the power category. If psychics ever wanted to solve crimes or protect the country, I might feel differently. But somehow, none of them want to do that. Can you really blame me for hunting them?”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “My father doesn’t want money or power. He’s only trying to live his life and keep his family safe.”
Enzo laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He pulled the edges of his shirt together and shoved the first button into its hole. “Your father left you alone with a trained enemy combatant for two weeks. No man who wanted to see his daughter alive again would do that. I don’t know what he was thinking of, but it wasn’t your safety.
“That makes me dislike him on your behalf, and it frustrates me beyond measure that you can’t see what he’s like. He just sacrificed your life.”