Page 43 of My Vigilante Valentine

“There was an accident. Back when I was in the Marines,” he started, like he was narrating someone else’s story in that low timber I so enjoyed. “Something went wrong on a mission, and at first, everyone thought I was dead. Obviously, I wasn’t. But… it changed me.”

I waited patiently for more, but inside? I felt like a squirrel trying to ignore a pile of sparkly acorns.

“You’ve seen it already,” he continued. “What it did to me. The reflexes. My strength. Speed.”

He said it like he was listing ingredients for an apple pie recipe and not why half the city thought The Blade was a vampire, and the other simply thought he was a hoax.

My eyes went wide, having my own miniSay it, Bellamoment. “So, it’s true? You’re like a real-life superhero, and it’s all… real?”

He snorted, but there was a bitter edge to it. “You’re asking that after witnessing it more than once?”

“Thrice, but who’s counting?”

His lips twitched.

“Was this some kind of Captain America super-soldier experiment?”

Shaking his head, he let out a sigh. “Not on our part. I don’t wanna bore you with the details?—”

“Do you even know me?” I cut in dryly.

He slowly lowered his eyelids. “Fine, Ican’tgo into the details, but what I can tell you is that our mission was to stop a terrorist group from making super-soldiers of their own. Things went…”

“Sideways?” I guessed.

And when his smirk hit, I felt it in my toes. “Yeah.”

But then I frowned, hating where my mind landed next. “And you were, what? The collateral damage?”

“Something like that,” he murmured, leaning his head against the wall of boxes before closing his eyes. “There was an explosion at the factory, and oddly enough, I wasn’t fast enough.”

Not fast enough.

The visceral images caused by that one sentence had my hand floating to my chest, rubbing at the sharp pang that had coiled there.

I opened my mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to say somethingnotcompletely useless.

But before I could, Jax let out a rough exhale and pushed off the boxes, rolling his shoulders like he could shake off the memories.

“They’d medically separated me from the military before any of the effects of the serum showed up. Otherwise, I wonder if they would’ve kept me in some lab, ya know?”

I flinched. “Like, tostudyyou?”

He didn’t answer, just cleared his throat with a shrug. “I get that all of this makes me a freak. Even if the military hadn’tseparated me, I wouldn’t have been able to stay in once my—Well, once I started to be able to move like I do.”

Tilting my head, I shot him a quick smile. “You really don’t talk about this much, do you?”

His brow furrowed in confusion.

“You can say it, ya know.” When he didn’t seem to get where I was going, I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “Powers.”

He shuddered. “Not calling them that.”

“Fight it all you want, but you’ve got powers, buddy, and you’re basically a walking Marvel movie. I’m here for it.”

I had him. I knew I did.

One second, he’d looked all down and depressed, but the next?

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