“You know, I never liked this as a kid. My mom made it, but I refused. Who would want to eat tomato mac and cheese when there was the basic boxed kind?” Kaidan spoke, not waiting for me to respond, as though he knew I needed the space filled by anything. “The funny thing is, when I moved out, when I joined the Guild—and I did that pretty early—I found I missed it. When she came to visit one time, I asked her to teach me to make it, and I discovered it tasted like home. Something I’d hated for years, it turned out actually mattered to me.” He added shredded cheese by the handful to a wide skillet, the tomato and macaroni already simmering inside. The cheese melted, and he added more as he stirred. He didn’t appear to measure anything, and I had no idea if it was because he’d memorized it from doing it so many times or if he did it all by look and taste.
He finished with pepper that came from a grinder, then served some into two bowls, placing one in front of me. Looking at it didn’t make my stomach rumble, though it might have any other time.
Somehow seeing it only reminded me of the home I didn’t have, the one that had been taken away as a kid.
“You know, my mom used to make this dish that used cold noodles and ice. I hated it, didn’t understand why she couldn’t just cook normal food. You know kids, we want to fit in, to eat what everyone else eats, but my mom would still cook that meal. Even the last time she did it, a couple weeks before The Pitt, I told her it was gross. Now I can’t ever have it again…”
“We could find a recipe?” Kaidan suggested.
“No. I’ve been to restaurants, tried, but it’s never the same. She always said it was something she learned from her mom, from her grandmother, that they did something special. She tried to teach me, but I didn’t want to learn. Now I can’t ever learn, though. It’s gone, all of it.”
I thought about the way she had moved in that kitchen, the tiny one in our tiny apartment, seeming so happy there. It had annoyed me, because we didn’t have the money of some other people, and I was always comparing everything. It had never seemed like enough.
Maybe that was why I’d lost it all, because I hadn’t seen the value in any of it.
And it’s happening again.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I think I should turn in.”
Kaidan pressed his lips into a thin line, clearly unhappy with the choice. He sighed but nodded. “Sure. You can go get into bed. I’m going to stay up for a while.”
“Thanks,” I said, the gratitude empty. It shouldn’t have been—he’d done so much for me over the years—but I just couldn’t muster anything.
I rinsed off in his shower, got into the pajamas I’d brought, then crawled into the bed. I kept my phone clutched in my hand, but I knew it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to call me, not today. Something about the way they’d walked away told me that much.
So I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of any of it. In the end, the part that kept repeating in my head was the one truth I was absolutely sure of.
Shear had held the energy of another guide, which meant that someone else had guided him behind my back. Emergencies happened, sure, times where it was necessary. I knew that I might have to guide other espers if it came right down to it, butthe way the men had reacted, the fact they hadn’t told me about it, it all hung on me.
It couldn’t have been an emergency, and that sort of guiding wasn’t just a casual brush against each other, it wasn’t an area of effect guiding.
Which meant Shear—and the others, given how they had behaved—had been guided by someone else and they’d hidden it. Then, they’d all left on some bullshit lie of a mission.
I didn’t know what it all added up to exactly, but I knew it wasn’t anything good.
It felt like those cold noodles all over again.
Chapter Forty-Two
Ingram
I fucking hated going to headquarters. I’d only had to make the trip a handful of times, and not since our fall from grace. Before that, we’d gotten invited here for photo-ops and to have one person or another kiss our ass.
I’d really hated it back then, too. Carter had always made me put on a fucking suit, and the thing pulled tight in all the wrong ways.
Sure, I’d looked amazing, but that didn’t mean I’d liked the thing.
It was the one benefit coming like this—we didn’t have to dress up, since we weren’t even using the front door.
I stared at Shear, his expression as blank as ever—at least to anyone who didn’t know him. I’d spent enough years with this man to see the uncertainty deeper inside. It might not make it to his face, but in the recesses of his eyes, I spotted it.
“I’m not going to scatter you,” I said, knowing damn well that wasn’t what he worried about. I’d already used my shadow travel to get Carter and Kenyon inside, leaving just Shear here. We’d never done it that way, and in fact until I’d moved Yun, I hadn’t been entirely sure I could.
Shear offered me a look that said he didn’t find my distraction amusing. “What if I shouldn’t be here?”
“What do you mean?”
He dropped his gaze so he stared at the floor. “Mr. Yorn did something to my head. How can you trust me? How canItrust me?”
