Page 82 of The Outsider

He admired it.

She had said something about him. That he was innately better than her or something because he hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps the way that she had.

But Bix had only done what she’d done because of her own fear. Her own insecurity.

What he had done had been about power.

Those were poles apart. North and south.

Bix had been following her true north. She had just needed to keep herself going. To keep herself alive.

And so she had moments where she dipped and weaved off course just a little bit. East or west. But never completely contrary to what was right.

There were justifications. There were reasons.

The King family had never been on the verge of being down-and-out. The King family had no such excuse. And neither did he.

He and Denver had handled coming to terms with their part in their father’s games in different ways.

But it amounted to the same thing.

They kept themselves on short leashes.

They kept themselves focused on what was right in front of them.

And even if Bix was right in front of him now, he knew she wasn’t anything he could reach out and grab. Not for keeps.

Freedom. That’s what she’d said.

He never wanted freedom. He had to keep himself in chains. But he didn’t want to spoil her moment by talking about any of his nonsense.

“I never dreamed. Not really,” she said. “It was too hard. And then, right at first when I was here I just felt like I was never going to be able to leave who I was behind. But I don’t have to, do I? Because who I amgot me here. She was scrappy. And she was strong. I think I can be grateful to her.”

“You should,” he said. “Because you’re right about that. That’s what got me. From moment one, Bix. You have to know that. I didn’t look at you and see somebody different than you could be. I didn’t look at you and see only potential. I looked at you and saw somebody strong, right then. I looked at you, and I knew they were something. Special. Strong. Spirited. I admire the way that you lied to me, right to my face.”

She laughed. “I still do that. I lie first, don’t I? Captain America.”

His stomach went tight. He climbed up another couple branches, bringing him to eye level with Bix, his elbows rested across a branch about three feet away from hers. They had a healthy amount of space between them, but still, he felt drawn to her. Like there was a magnet between them.

“Sometimes a lie isn’t such a bad thing,” he said.

“When?”

“When it’s constructed to protect something.”

Wasn’t that his whole life? His uniform. It was a lie. In many ways, she hadn’t been wrong about the Captain America thing. He put on a costume every day, trying to make himself into a superhero. But whether or not it was true, he couldn’t say. He wanted it to be. But it was the gaps, the unknowns that got him. His inability to be entirely certain when his father had simply embraced that villainous part of himself. When he had gone completely off the deep end into something that you couldn’t come back from.

Bix would never be that.

She might not have a brick, or at least, she didn’t think so. But she had a compass in her soul. And it didn’t take a genius to see that. At least, not in his estimation.

“Right,” she said softly. “To protect a little pocket of happiness, I suppose. Because if you change things, who knows what will happen?”

Maybe she did mean them. He wanted to change it. He wanted to wreck it. Destroy it. To kiss her until neither of them could breathe.

Because she wasn’t untouchable. She wasn’t a fey, golden creature. She was a woman. Wholly and completely. And she held an indomitable spirit that sparked something in him he had forgotten ever existed.

Something he had forgotten about on purpose.

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