Banging the Superhero (15 page)

"Call Wendy, have her come back to the house with Lael. I'll talk to him."

Draco rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "You think he'll open up to you and not to me?"

"Yep."

Ace moved past him to leave the room.

Draco passed him. "Why?"

"Because you're perfect. Even when you screw up, you always know the perfect way to fix things. Lael recognizes that in me he has found someone who is just pretending to have it together. I'm more screwed up than he is so he'll tell me things he'd never tell you."

* * * * *

Ace stepped out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his waist. He looked at himself in the mirror. It was time. He always knew the day would come. He could tell himself it had nothing to do with Alice and the fact that she'd always hated it. But he made it a point not to lie to himself whenever possible.

He didn't want to see her.
He didn't
.

So much for not lying to himself. He grinned at his reflection. All things eventually came to an end.

He pulled on his sweatpants and walked into his bedroom, not surprised to find Lael sitting on his bed. Ace had heard his brother come into the bedroom earlier.

Lael jumped when Ace entered. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Mostly, thanks to you."

"Yeah, well." Lael's cheeks got red. "You'd do the same for me."

"I would. In a heartbeat."

"I know."

"Want to talk about what killing Zee was like?"

"No." Lael's face got firm and shut down, like Draco's could do. "I know I'm supposed to have deep feelings about this, and that it's supposed to be life-altering.

Maybe I'm suppressing it, like Wendy keeps saying, but the truth is that bitch was going to kill you
—had killed you—
and I moved without thinking. I don't know why obsessing about it now is—"

Ace cut him off at the pass. "I'm not saying obsess. I'm saying discuss."

"Have you ever done it?" Lael asked. "Ended someone's life?"

"Twice, and I intended to kill Zee."

Lael stared him straight in the eyes. "Did
you
want to talk about it?"

Ace stopped to consider what his brother asked him. Should he lie? Crap, he wasn't cut out for this big brothering pseudo-parenting stuff. "Shit, no I didn't want to talk about it. I still don't."

"Me neither."

"Just because I don't—"

Lael shook his head. "Ace, enough."

Ace closed his mouth. He regarded Lael. His younger brother wasn't grown up yet, but damn if he didn't look like an adult today. Ace wasn't the kid's father. No, Ace's own dad had done all the damage in that department. The best he could be was an attentive older sibling.

"I'm here if you want to."

"If I suddenly want to talk about that, I'm sure Draco will find me a psychiatrist."

Ace laughed as he nodded. "That's true."

"What else did you want? Did you have Draco send me in here to talk about that or was it something else?"

Ace grinned. It wasn't often he got to do something that would surprise everybody. "I need you to help me cut my hair."

Lael tipped his head. "Did you just ask me to help you cut your hair?"

"I did."

Without waiting for Lael's response, Ace walked into the bathroom.

"How much are we taking off?"

Ace sat on the side of the bathtub. "All of it. I want you to go at it with the sheers and then I'll shave it the rest of the way."

Lael rolled his eyes in another distinctly Draco move. "Don't you ever do anything halfway? You had the longest hair in the world, now you have to have none at all?"

Was that true? Did he always do everything to the extreme? He supposed that sounded right. He didn't do half-measured anything, and that included Alice. He'd loved her. Even though it was so fast, too fast some might say, to feel that way. He wasn't sure he'd ever stop loving her.

And she'd told him she loved him too. She hadn't meant it. How could she have?

How could she have gone from what she said the night before to loving him? It had been the stress of the situation. She'd worried one of them was going to die and she'd wanted to make what little they'd had between them "okay" beforehand.

After that, he'd thrown himself in front of the laser for her. Right before he died, he felt such relief knowing Alice would be okay. Even as he worried about who would stop Zee—

"Woo-hoo, where you'd go?"

Ace focused on Lael. "I was thinking about Alice."

"The girl really does love you, you know."

"This conversation is not happening. I cannot, will not, discuss my love life—or lack thereof—with my sixteen-year-old brother."

Lael laughed. "I get it. Okay. I'm good enough to shave your head but not to talk about Alice."

"You got it, kid."

* * * * *

Ace stared at himself in the mirror. He'd done it. He'd buzzed off his hair.

He hardly recognized himself. Rubbing the back of his neck startled him. He could actually do that. His cheekbones looked higher, his eyes more probing. Sighing, he hoped he'd made the right choice. It was time for changes. He had to get his life in order, the adrenaline under control, and he had to decide what he was going to do about work.

He didn't want to be Batman. He wanted to be whoever he was supposed to be.

Somehow, he didn't think that included endless references to fictional comic book characters.

Alice
.

He closed his eyes. Now that was someone it did no good aching for. She wasn't going to happen. Not ever.

He walked out of his room and moved through the hall, feeling very empowered to get rid of the bullshit that had been clogging up his life. He rounded the corner, ascended the stairs, and knocked on Draco's home office door. Without waiting for Draco's response, he entered, catching his brother on the phone.

"Yes, Senator, I understand . . . ." Draco stared at him as he continued with his phone conversation, his eyes widening in shock. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to call you back. Something has happened."

Draco hung up the phone and stood. "Are you having some kind of breakdown?"

"It was time, past time really."

"I'll agree with the needing a haircut part. I just didn't expect you to make yourself all but bald."

Ace shrugged. "As Lael pointed out, I never do anything in half measures."

"Smart kid, our brother."

"I was thinking that I could go back to inventing. I could make things, like I used to before you opened Powers, but I could do it for Powers. I could invent things that would be useful for the company. Some of the other Superheroes might have things they could do too."

Draco sat back down. "I think that sounds like a good idea."

Ace blinked. Had it been that easy? "You do?"

"Yes. I know you're not into the adventure like I am. You like it, but you like other stuff too. Make it happen."

Ace smiled, feeling more positive than he had about work in a long while. One more thing remained for him to fix and it wouldn't be as easy. Steeling his back for the assault of words he expected, he went downstairs to the basement to use his personal work phone.

Picking it up, he waited until Michelle answered on the other end.

"I heard you were very ill." She didn't sound sorry.

"Hi, Michelle." When she didn't respond in turn he continued. "I owe you an apology."

"You do?" She sounded genuinely surprised, which he took as a good sign.

"I do. When I pursued you for an intimate relationship, I didn't stop to think that you might have real feelings for me."

"Well, aren't you presumptuous?"

"In this case, I'm just being honest, and I think we're past the point of speaking half truths to one another."

She sighed. "Okay."

"I get that I hurt you really, really bad."

"You did."

He needed to continue, to make this right, if he could. "I never stop to think of other people's feelings, not when it comes to sex, and I was raised better than that."

"So what are you saying? You used me?"

He played with the phone cord. "In a word: yes. That night I used you because I knew that you wanted me and I wanted to have sex with you."

"What happens now? I know I haven't been behaving exactly pleasantly at work."

"No, you haven't, but as of right now, we wipe the slate clean. You're a good Handler, you're good at your job, and I'm taking on some new responsibilities. I could use help, if you want to be happy at work again."

There was a long pause. Really, he knew it could go other either way.

"I want to keep working at Powers and to have a positive working relationship again."

"That's good, Michelle. I'll talk to you soon."

He hung up the phone. Leaning his head against the wall, he resisted calling Alice. It was too hard. That relationship wouldn't be mended with one conversation and admitting he was a prick who didn't deserve her . . . . No, his instinct on this matter had to be correct. They shouldn't be together.

* * * * *

Ace sat on the floor, staring across at the "teacher" Draco had mentioned to Ace.

Kevin
swore he could teach Ace how to relax and control how his body functioned.

"As Superheroes, we are well-functioning machines."

Kevin spoke with a thick southern accent to match his cowboy hat and his cowboy boots over his denim pants and colored shirt. The only thing slightly off kilter about Kev's whole look was the carrot-red hair. It hung long and shaggy, sticking out from under the hat. On someone else, it would be goofy. On Kevin, somehow, it worked.

His speech about machines got Ace's attention.

"You're saying I need to tune up my parts?"

"I'm saying you need to be more aware of how they work. There should be signals you're making too much adrenaline even before you do it. Maybe your hands sweat or your eyeballs twitch. I'm not sure. In my case, my nose itches."

"What happens once I identify my particular response?"

"Then we stop the response, thereby cutting off the adrenaline. This is called biofeedback."

Normally, Ace would scoff at the idea. He wasn't into Yoga. He didn't meditate.

But if Kevin, the Superhero who didn't act like a Superhero but pretended he was a regular guy, had somehow managed to use this technique to stop growing to seven feet tall and bulking out every time he got angry, then who was Ace to argue?

He was willing to try anything if it meant he could control his problem.

Anything to not be so out of control again.

And besides, he needed something to focus on besides how much he'd missed Alice over the last two weeks. Even though that was all he seemed able to think about.

He hoped this wasn't a permanent problem.

He closed his eyes to focus. Alice's smiling face filled his mind.

Chapter Twelve

Alice kept her back straight as she walked, she hoped confidently, into Powers, Inc. The psychologist she had visited for the last month had helped her to see things more clearly. She had self-sabotaged any chance she had to find happiness with Ace because she was so certain he'd hurt her. If she ended things before they ever got too far, then she never had to be vulnerable enough to let anyone get the chance to cause her pain.

The background of all of this, her father's death, her mother's coldness, and her uncle's tremendous betrayal, would take months, maybe years, to clear up. Yet, somehow knowing what she'd done and understanding why she'd done it, had freed her. She felt confident if she had to beg or to plead, she would get Ace back.

Of course, a tiny part of her wanted him to simply see her and fall to his knees, declaring his undying love. She'd settle, however, for dinner and seeing the light in his eyes when he looked at her. She'd kill to hold him in her arms just one more time.

Moving to the receptionist, who looked busy doing her nails, Alice waited for a moment for the woman to acknowledge her.

"Can I help you?" The woman paused—then screamed. "Oh my god,
you're
Alice Styles."

Alice smiled her camera grin and leaned against the woman's counter. "I need to see Ace Hudson."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No." She tapped her fingers lightly on the counter, listening to the click, click radiate through the hall. "I'm hoping he'll see me anyway. I'm a former client."

"One second."

The receptionist clicked on her keyboard, while Alice waited, pretending to be interested in the ornate light fixture attached to the ceiling of the entranceway. She couldn't be sure, but she thought it looked like a pseudo-contemporary miniature version of a space ship. Now why on earth would they have that?

"Ms. Styles . . . ."

She turned her attention back to the woman behind the counter. "Yes?"

"I'm afraid that Mr. Hudson's Handler is reporting that he is not in the building at the moment."

"He's not?"

She heard the catch in her voice and hated it. There was no reason to get upset. If it didn't happen right this second, she would see him another time. She couldn't let herself get worked up.

"No. She says he's not expected in at all today. But you can see Draco Powers, if you wish."

She did not wish. Maybe her feelings were unreasonable, but she couldn't get over her anger toward him for escorting her from the room during Ace's time of need.

She suspected Ace's domineering brother would do anything possible to keep her away from him. What business was it of Draco's? She and Ace loved each other.

A sickening thought came to her mind. Maybe Ace was here, but had said he didn't want to see her. He did need her, even if he didn't currently want to acknowledge it.

"Thank you anyway."

Smiling, she walked from the building and put back on her sunglasses. It was a bright day. Staring up at the sky, she looked to see if she could see Ace's blond hair floating above her somewhere in the city.

She sighed. No such luck. In fact, she hadn't spotted him—not once—since she'd been forcibly removed from his sight. Biting her lip, she wondered if she'd made a mistake not seeing Draco. She could have at least asked him if Ace was okay. Maybe he couldn't fly anymore. Maybe he was holed up at home, still sick.