"Why do I have to wake up?" I asked, rubbing at my eyes, heavy still with sleep.
"Because you've been sleeping for about twelve hours," he told me, making my eyes open fully, my head swiveling to check the alarm clock on my nightstand.
Twelve hours?
How was that possible?
"She said something about how you have to call JB still."
"Shit," I hissed, pushing myself up in the bed, finding him sitting there in just his pajama pants, making another whimper move out of me.
"Cam got donuts," he told me, making me feel mildly less miserable at the thought of fresh coffee. "And since I am not five anymore - and donuts for breakfast don't quite cut it - I made scrambled eggs. You've got to be hungry."
I was.
Starving.
"I am going to call JB, take a quick shower, then come out. Save some eggs for me."
"Sure, mami," he said, hopping up.
Mami.
That was driving me crazy.
It shouldn't have been.
The word - endearment - always kind of rubbed me the wrong way before. But something about the way he said it, yeah, it was stoking the already raging wildfire of need within me.
Enough so that after calling JB who sounded like some white boy trying too hard to sound like a gangsta, I got in the shower and let my hands travel, let them try to take care of the aching need so it didn't keep distracting me all day. The last thing I needed when going to meet another contact was a body that only wanted to jump Roderick.
"Cam, you don't have to go," I insisted a few minutes later after telling everyone about the meet that night. To that, he growled at me, lifting a stubborn brow. And when Camden was in a stubborn mood, there was no talking him out of anything.
"I will hold down the fort, no worries," Astrid declared, saving me from having to tell her I wanted her to hang back. I hated having to tell her that she needed to stay home, that she was a bit of a liability in some ways, on some jobs. It wasn't her fault. She just didn't quite have the instincts, didn't have the reflexes, didn't know how to read a situation quite the way Cam and I did. And hopefully Roderick as well.
It was a bit difficult, in a way, to picture him pulling a gun and squeezing a trigger. Sure, I knew he had done it once before. But he was a child of a turbulent home, trying to protect his mom and little sisters.
He was just so laid back, easy with a smile, quick with the silver tongue.
"Ew stop," Astrid declared, swatting his hand when Roderick tried to scoop eggs onto her plate beside her vanilla frosted donut.
"Astrid hates eggs. And that commercial for charity that spells 'cars' wrong," I told him. "And Cam hates avocados. And pop music. And the sound of hair dryers," I added, nodding to the toast he had spread with avocado.
"What about you, Livvy?"
"What about me?"
"What do you hate?"
"Raisons. Banana chips. Dr. Pepper. Assholes who don't know how to use their turn signals. People who wear mom jeans ironically. Women who don't believe other women."
"What?" he asked, shaking his head.
"Go ahead," Astrid said, shrugging, taking her plate back to the living room. "He's practically family now," she added, making my smile tease up a bit.
"I told Astrid about what happened with Eman within a week or so of her coming to live with us. It was four years of living with us day and night, telling us all about her life with a junkie mom, on and off the streets all her life, when we were out to eat. She just... flipped shit. Ran out of there. There was a guy at the restaurant. Her mom's old boyfriend. Who used to molest her when she was nine. It took her four years of living with us day and night, working with us day and night, never spending more than a few minutes away from us to trust us with that information, that story, that part of her. So it pisses me the fuck off when women don't believe other women when they tell them their truth just because time has passed, because they didn't tell them right away, because they didn't put up billboards telling the world about the worst time of their life. Because it is rare that any of us don't have one of those stories. And the privileged few who don't shouldn't disbelieve the vast majority who do. I hate false sisterhood."
"You would love the chicks in Navesink Bank," Roderick said, shaking his head a bit. "The girls club is this badass group of chicks. You would fit right in."
"Lo, I would imagine, is a member."
"Founding member if you will. And Jstorm, Alex, a whole slew of others. As each Henchmen settles down, there is a new member of the girls club."