Page 26 of Day

Chapter Thirteen

Leon

Lilith and I ran over everything that had happened after I broke their door, which according to Phillip, would hopefully be fixed tomorrow. I’d felt bad about it, and his reassurance helped some.

“And then I tackled him to the water! For being an old football star, he went down pretty easily,” Lilith teased, but it was her bringing up me playing football that caught me off guard.  Football was a sore subject with me. I couldn’t see myself talking to her about it, but I also married a stranger, and I never thought I’d do that either.

“Boat’s blown to shit,” I added, knowing now I truly needed a place to stay, and not to hide from my wife.

Lilith was still completely unknown to me. A crazy unknown. But I owed her, after she saved my life. I could talk to her, and start new, not be the asshole I’d been acting like to everyone who had been nothing but kind to me.

I tried not to let the feelings of self-pity win as everyone in the room started talking about Raven’s possible next move.

“Sounds like Leon needs some training, too,” Rose was saying to Draco, and he nodded. Training?

“Oh, this is going to be fun!” Lilith clapped her hands together in excitement.

“I missed something,” I muttered, looking around.  AJ shook his head at me. Okay, I wasn’t paying attention in the last three minutes. Sue me.

“You need to learn to control your powers, and fight. From what you and Lilith said, you almost lost your battle against Emanuel today. He’s trained to fight; you are not. I also don’t think you’ve ever truly unleashed your powers. They will be raw. You’ll need to get to know them more.” He spoke so matter-of-factly, and I wanted to argue that I didn’t need help; it was second nature to me to not accept anyone’s assistance. But what he said was true: I almost died today, because I was too blind and tunnel-visioned to listen to anyone around me. I thought I could take him with my rage fueling me, and almost lost that wager.

“Okay.” Maybe it would help.

If going by the looks on their sort of shocked faces, I don’t think they expected me to agree so easily.

“Turns out almost dying changes your attitude.” I shrugged. Really it had a much deeper effect on me than I was letting on.

Out of all the stares coming my way, I felt Lilith’s the most.  She was doing more than just looking at me on the outside, like everyone else. She was peering into my soul, like she was familiar with it, seeing through my calm change to the man that was freaked out that he almost died today. The man that got shot today. Shot!

She didn’t say anything, but the look in her eyes told me she was not done with me. Verdict was still out on how I felt about that.

“Great. Train Leon, start hero work in the city, and somehow hunt down Emanuel. We’ve got this.” Rose was very optimistic with her assessment of the plan I didn’t realize we had. Must have been talked about in the three minutes I was feeling sorry for breaking their door.

There was a silence, where everyone just sat there.

“Oldies are my favorite for dancing.” Lilith filled the quiet with a random fact about herself.   I simply looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but then again, random was Lilith’s motto it seemed.

A minute passed after her announcement, then Rose joined Lilith in the random fact hour.

“My favorite meal is grilled cheese sandwiches.”

The moment became one to open up to each other, sharing little tidbits about us without going into deep topics.

“When I was born, I had a sixth finger on my right hand.” AJ waved at everyone and you could see the little scar on the side of his hand.

The thought of going around the circle and saying something about ourselves seemed dumb, but when in headquarters, I guess…What the hell, I’ll join.

“My mom almost named me Cleatus. After a singer from the seventies. Thankfully Grandma intervened.” It was something not many knew. Of course Charles did, and he loved to bring it up on many occasions.  The thought reminded me that I needed to call Charles and tell him about the Lily Blue.

“I still don’t understand the big deal about Twitter,” shared Draco, and Rose giggled.

“Old man,” she teased him, and he bent down to give her a kiss that suggested he still had it, for an immortal.

“Even though I know what’s going to happen, I still don’t care to see my sister and her boyfriend making out,” Phillip added quickly, which made everyone bust out into a fit of laughter. That had to be awkward for him.

It had been a long time since I had hung around a group of people like this, and I felt slightly awkward about it. On the boat with the other crab fishermen, I usually kept to myself. They knew I had super strength, after witnessing an accident on the ship, and gave me a wide berth.