I thought about it honestly. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I actually am.”
“You did good in there,” he said.
“I only said one thing.”
“But it was the one thing that mattered to you.” He picked up the folder Diego had left for him. “Come on. Mika’s making lunch.”
“Okay, but can we stop and talk to Wolfe for a minute first?”
He looked at me. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just have something I want to say to him.”
“Okay.” He led me out of the conference room and over to the desk where Caden sat. He waited until Caden looked up and then asked, “Does he have a minute?”
“Yeah, y’all’s meeting is all he had this morning, so just go on in.”
Jackson looked at me. “Do you want me to wait here?”
“No, it’s nothing you can’t hear.”
We walked in, and Wolfe was standing at his window looking out over the downtown area. When he heard us enter, he turned to us. “Is everything okay?”
I took in a deep breath and then voiced my concern. “Wolfe, I don’t even know how to thank you for what you’ve done for me, but this is a lot. I can’t pay you, and I feel horrible that you’re going to have to go all the way to Houston like this. When I insisted on going to the Gala, I didn’t understand what all it would entail, and—”
He raised a hand to stop me. “Noah, first of all, we started this job when Julius was taken, and we see things all the way through. But more importantly, you’re Crowe’s, and Crowe is ours. That makes you one of us, and we protect our own.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I went with something simple. “Thank you, Wolfe.”
Jackson nodded at him, and Wolfe nodded back. It was this weird thing like they’d just had a conversation with no words. Jackson reached for my hand and led me out of the office.
“Well, that was interesting,” I said.
Jackson smiled at me. “I could’ve told you what he would’ve said, but it was good that you heard it from him.”
I followed him across the huge space to the elevator, and as we rode up, I thought about the speech I hadn’t written yet, the people who were going to make sure I got to give it, and the moment I’d stand up in front of a room full of strangers and say out loud what had happened to me.
I thought I might actually be ready in a way I wouldn’t have been before Corvane found me again, because being back here in Vesper reminded me that, while survival mattered, it was the life you lived afterward that was most important.
Chapter eighteen
Crowe
A few days later, I’d spent the morning with Kat and Diego going over what they’d learned about Valen when I headed upstairs to see if Noah wanted to go to lunch. When I entered the apartment, I didn’t see him anywhere, but I heard talking before I reached the bedroom door. He didn’t sound distressed, but he did sound very frustrated. I also heard what sounded like a door opening and closing more times than any door needed to. I assumed it was either Julius or Mika in there with him, so I knocked softly on the door.
“It’s open.”
He was standing in the middle of the bedroom in jeans and a t-shirt with the closet door hanging wide open behind him and an expression on his face that I hadn’t seen before. He lookedgenuinely stressed, but obviously it was about something that wasn’t life-threatening, which I found I was entirely unprepared for.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He gestured at the closet. “I have nothing to wear. Julius brought me some things, but none of it works.”
I looked at the closet. It had clothes in it. Shirts, jeans, and a couple of jackets. The things Julius and Mika had loaned him, supplemented by what he’d brought with him from Houston. It looked like a normal closet to me, which probably meant I was missing something.
“To the Gala,” he clarified, reading my face. “I’m giving a speech, Jackson. In front of people. At a formal event.” He motioned towards the closet. “I don’t have anything.”
“You have all kinds of stuff in there.”
