Fire & Ice | Soulmate AU 1 |

chapter sixteen

I wake up the next day feeling like I've fallen out of a plane without a parachute. I've been feeling like that for the past week or so, though, so I'm kind of getting used to it.

JD is the one who woke me up, throwing open the guest bedroom door and proclaiming that we're going to take a trip. He wants to go to my cover apartment so we can move all of my stuff out. I've already been issued an official notice by the headquarters in D.C that I need to vacate the property within the next three days, so I might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.

I groan my way through sitting up in bed. "You're gonna have to give me a few," I tell him, swinging my legs around to place my bare feet on the floor.

"You still super fucked up?" he asks, looking me up and down. "You went on the op with us yesterday, though."

"Was a personal matter," I reply, dragging myself to my feet. I sway once I'm actually upright, and he places a stabilizing hand on my shoulder to save me from crumbling to the ground.

"A personal matter?" he parrots back.

"Complicated. You already know everything I want you to."

He pouts slightly. "I barely know anything," he says.

"Exactly." I flash him a dry grin as I regain my own balance enough to stand up straight without help.

We take his Camaro to the apartment and park across the street. It's a reasonably nice neighborhood so thankfully we can take our time. I fumble for the keys to the place with uncoordinated fingers for a second before I'm finally able to get them into the lock.

The apartment is just as empty as I left it. I drag the boxes from the closet out into the hall before disappearing into the bedroom to make sure I'm not forgetting anything important.

JD is standing by the kitchen when I get back out into the main area of the apartment. It takes me a second to realize why he's gone so uncharacteristically silent, but the sight of dried blood on old gauze and bandages makes it clear.

"These are from your arms, right?" he says quietly. "I thought that was from the Rivera guys."

A dry bark jumps out of my mouth.

"It actually technically was," I reply.

"You know, not telling anybody about anything isn't very good for you."

I sigh loudly, squatting gingerly to take a seat on the couch. JD is the closest thing I have to a best friend on the team. Max is cool, sure, but he's more of a mentor than my best buddy. JD is like my League version of Atlas.

"You know that guy we have in custody at the tower right now? Rowan? His father and some of the other members caught us sneaking around when we were hooking up, or whatever. They grabbed me off the street and, long story short, his dad forced him to burn me. Bad."

JD's face contorts into a twist of anger and concern. He isn't the most serious guy, so what happened to me must sound even crazier from the outside than it does from the inside.

"That's really fucked up, Lake," he says seriously. "I'm kind of surprised that you're still jumping through hoops to keep him outta jail."

"He's a good guy, really. This whole thing just got so complicated so fast," I insist, but I don't meet his eyes as I speak.

I still can't look at Rowan without being reminded of what he did. It always takes me a moment to be rational and remember that he really had no choice. I could have easily removed myself from that situation if I really wanted to. Doing that would have given me away in an instant, though, and that's probably just what Alexander was trying to do. I have a lot of things to have nightmares about. The scars on my chest. Getting shot. My mom's brother, Ashton. Rowan burning the flesh from my arms is just another incident that has unfortunately joined the lineup.