Supervillainess (Part One) (7 page)

“Do you know how delusional that
sounds?”

“How else do you explain me reading your
father’s mind last night?”

“All I saw was two lunatics smoking
marijuana on the rooftop,” he returned.

“If you’d stop drugging me, I could show
you!”

He ignored her.

She watched his long fingers work as he
cleaned her wounds and re-bandaged them. “Why are you helping me?”
she asked, genuinely puzzled as to his motivations.

“Because you’re hurt and need help,” he
replied. It sounded either like a rehearsed line or one he had
repeated often.

“No, really. Why are you
helping
me
? My
father would probably kill you for it.”

Kimber met her gaze, his movement pausing.
“Because no one deserves to suffer.”

Reader absorbed the surprisingly insightful
words. Could he know their impact? Did he somehow sense she was
hurting inside as well as out? How was it possible for anyone to
care for a stranger, when she had only ever been close to her
brother?

“But if that were true, suffering wouldn’t
exist,” she reasoned.

The doctor’s gaze grew haunted. “It’s meant
to teach us a lesson.”

“What’s the lesson?”

“Depends on the person. You have to figure
it out for yourself. For me, it was that no one else deserves to
suffer.” He forced a smile. His eyes slid back to bandaging her,
though she sensed the darkness inside him remained.

She dwelt on the idea, uncertain why she
wanted or needed to find deeper meaning in what had happened. The
idea her brother had simply betrayed her was too dissatisfying for
her to accept. “My lesson must be never to trust anyone,” she
said.

“Maybe. Or maybe your
suffering led you directly to someone who wants to help people who
are hurting,” he replied. “Maybe your lesson is you
can
trust
people.”

“But I already know that’s not true, so it
has to be something else.”

He glanced at her. “That’s kind of sad,” he
murmured.

“It’s practical.”

Kimber didn’t reply. He cut the gauze he had
wound around her midsection.

“You seem good at your job,” she
observed.

“I am.”

“I could always use a physician on
staff.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You’re offering me a
job?”

“Yeah.”

“Would this job be in your evil lair?”

“It’s more of a compound than lair, but
yes,” she answered.

“And you pay in what? Supervillain bucks I
can only use at the gift shop?”

“You aren’t taking me seriously,” she said
with a scowl.

“I’m not even sure you’re sane.”

“Do you talk to all your patients like
this?”

“Only the ones who get my paralyzed father
high, destroy my carpet and fuck up any chance I have to make
amends with my ex-fiancée,” he replied. He finished bandaging her
midsection.

“Ah.” Reader rested back on the futon. “You
didn’t know she’d moved on. That’s why you’re pissed.”

Kimber’s hands paused as he unwrapped her
arm, and he met her gaze. He appeared ready to speak, stopped
himself, and then went ahead. “How did you know she was seeing
someone else?”

“Villains –”

He held up his hand. “Don’t start that
shit.”

“It was obvious. She looked guilty.”

“You just met her. How could you tell, when
I’ve known her for years and didn’t notice?”

“Because you
have
known her for
years,” Reader responded. “You see what you want or expect to based
on your experience with her. I have no fore-knowledge, so I saw
what was there.”

He studied her. “Oddly profound.”

“Supervillains aren’t stupid, Doc. You can’t
lead an army of evil ninjas, if you can’t read people.”

“I agree. I learned that playing football,
only without the ninjas.”

“It helps to have a backup skill, too, in
case your superpower gets taken out.”

Kimber chuckled. “Okay. Have you ever been
treated for a psychological illness?”

“I’m not the crazy one here, Doc,” she said
and rolled her eyes. “It’s clear you have a problem seeing what’s
in front of you.”

“And you need an anti-psychotic. A very
strong one.”

“Everyone knows supervillains exist.” Reader
grunted as he tested the stitches in her side. “Ow!”

“My bad. I was trying to move your skin out
of the way with my superpowers. Turns out I don’t have any.”

She glared at him, not amused by his smug
denial.

“Your brother’s offering ten million for
whoever turns you in,” Kimber continued.

“Hmm. That’s it?” she asked.

“Ten million is a lot when you have
no-million.”

She eyed him. “You considering it?”

“You tell me. You can read minds.”

“Not when you drug me.”

“I didn’t.”

Reader glared at him. He didn’t appear to be
lying, but she had never met someone whose mind she couldn’t read,
so he had to be.

“They’re going door to door, too,” he said.
“Showing your picture and asking if anyone has seen you.”

She tensed and swiped his hands away. “What
did you tell them?”

“Let me do my job,” he said with a warning
look and pushed her back down onto the futon. “I didn’t tell them
anything.”

“You live in a place like this and would
turn down ten million dollars?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my apartment,”
he said, bristling.

“Wait, who came to your door? Did he look
like me?”

Kimber pressed a new bandage to the deep
knife wound in her side. “Not really. He was my height and
scarred.”

Not Thunder,
she thought with some relief. “When was
this?”

“An hour ago.”

Reader glanced towards the window. It was
possible her brother’s henchman hadn’t suspected Kimber was lying.
None of Thunder’s men could read minds, though several – including
her brother – were experts at reading signs of deception in
people.

Then again, Kimber was a terrible liar.

She tested her body. With some
dissatisfaction, she realized how right the doctor was about her
condition.

“Do you have a gun in the house?” she
asked.

“God no. If I did, I’d never reveal its
location to someone in need of intensive, extended psychiatric
counseling,” he replied.

“I’ll have to make do with what I can
find.”

Kimber didn’t reply.

She relaxed back, content to let him fix
her, so she could fight off the men her brother was bound to send
after sunset. “Hey, why didn’t you turn me in?” she asked
curiously. “You don’t like me, and it’d be the fastest way to get
rid of me.”

“Because you need to heal.”

“That’s it? No plans to ransom me back to my
father or sell me to an arch-nemesis?”

“I’m a doctor. It’s kind of what I do,” he
replied.

“Sort of.”

He finished up and leaned back. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“You’re overcompensating for something,” she
replied. “There were some naked pics of you and Suzanne in your
box, so I know it’s not –”

“Jesus!” He rose. “Do you ever turn off? Or
have any sense of personal boundaries?”

Reader rested her head
against the pillow. He was agitated again, this time at her. She
had hit a nerve without understanding what it was he was hiding,
because he
was
hiding something. The tension between his ex and him, the
hints his father supplied, the fact he had thrown all past
accomplishments and remnants of his personal life into a box and
vehemently taped it up before moving to the worst apartment in the
world … when combined with his statement about suffering and the
shadow in his gaze, everything became clearer.

Kimber wiped his mouth, and his gaze dropped
briefly to something under the bed before he shifted away, towards
the boxes. He knelt in front of the box containing his past.

Reader studied him intently for the first
time. She had noticed his muscular form and handsomeness at first
sight, but this time, she saw the hollows under his eyes that could
only be caused by extended periods without sleep and the tightness
of the skin around his lips. The good doctor had no smile lines. He
spoke of helping people – but he wasn’t happy.

The doctor, however dedicated he was to his
job, hadn’t recovered from what hurt him. He was punishing himself
for some reason – and taking care of her was part of his
self-torture. Maybe turning down the ten million dollars and lying
to her brother’s henchmen were also attempts to make himself suffer
more.

Kimber hadn’t suffered and then learned his
lesson and moved on. He was still in pain and had been for quite
some time. Three years, if his father’s timeline were accurate.

Reader sat up and reached out for her lunch.
She took a bite in silence.

“You aren’t going to make fun of my food
again?” Kimber asked without looking at her.

“I’ve eaten worse.”

He was holding the scrapbook in his hands
but hadn’t opened it.

“Want me to tell you what happens?” she
asked dryly.

“You shouldn’t go through someone else’s
personal belongings.”

Ignoring him, Reader lay down again to focus
on healing. She gazed at the ceiling. “Once upon a time, two crazy
teens stumbled across the Milkshake of Destiny and, thinking it
would bind them to one another for all time, took a very dangerous
sip. They had no way of knowing their destiny was to tear each
other’s hearts out with such violence, no milkshake would ever
taste the same.”

Kimber laughed. “I can’t tell if you’re
trying to make me feel better or are completely deranged.”

“It’s true, isn’t it? You can’t drink a
milkshake without feeling sad?”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because it would make me sad,” she replied.
“I looked through all your stuff. That was your first date, and the
photos from your anniversaries all involved milkshakes.”

“Villains feel sorrow?”

“Villains feel everything,” she said.

“What would a villain have to be sad
about?”

“My brother trying to kill me.”

Kimber was quiet.

“We’re competitors, but I don’t want him
dead,” she said. “He’s my brother. It was us against our father
growing up. He was all I had, and I was all he had.”

“That’s rough.”

“Yeah.” She released a deep breath. “Now I
have to kill him.”

“Not necessarily. You could talk to him.
Remind him about your shared history and how you’re family,” Kimber
suggested.

“True. I could torture him until he
remembers.”

Muttering something about anti-psychotic
medication again, Kimber replaced the scrapbook into the box. “For
what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

Reader twisted her head to see him. His gaze
was warm, another indication she had been right. He understood
suffering, because he was hurting, too. The strange connection was
more powerful than she expected. It made her insides squirm, and
her pulse race.

“Do you have any sort of superpower?” she
asked.

“If I did, I could have avoided some pretty
ugly situations in my past.”

“Like the reason you’re suffering?”

He nodded.

“Did someone try to kill you, too?” she
asked.

“Not exactly,” the doctor asked.

“Steal your plans for city domination?”

“No.”

“Set your secret lair in Chicago on
fire?”

“Nope.”

Reader was quiet, thoughtful.

“Any more guesses?” Kimber asked.

“I’ve never spent much time around normal
people. I don’t know what would cause you to suffer,” she
admitted.

“Never?”

“No. But if you need a ninja army for
revenge, you can borrow some of mine.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He was
smiling.

She said nothing and gazed at him, more
curious about this stranger than anyone she had ever met. Handsome,
smart, kind and understanding, the doctor was the last kind of
person she ever thought she’d want to know more about.

The quiet stretched on between them,
increasing the unusual interest in him she experienced. This felt a
little like they were destined to meet, just as she was destined to
take her father’s place.

“Get some rest.” As if he, too, experienced
the strange vibe between them, Kimber rose and went to the door.
“Yell if you need anything. I’ll leave the door cracked.”

Reader returned her gaze to
the ceiling, not liking the warm sensation sliding through her. It
was not attraction or lust but something deeper, a feeling of
understanding someone she didn’t want to understand. If she didn’t
know better, she might consider the idea she actually believed the
doctor to be … well,
good
.

She reached under the bed to identify the
object he had glanced at more than once during their discussion. A
bottle of painkillers was the first item her fingertips grazed,
followed by the first aid kit.

Reader picked up the pills. The bottle was
old with a prescription dated about two and a half years ago. She
squinted to make out the faded, cracked writing on the side.

“Morphine,” she read. “Prescribed for Kimber
Wellington.”

She dwelt on the label, which provided no
real insight into why he needed the drug in the first place. It was
full of white pills. Had he suffered a football injury? Been in a
car accident? She couldn’t think of any other benign injuries
likely to be sustained by someone like him.

Replacing it, she patted down the bandages
on her abdomen and stared at the ceiling. She needed to be healed
by yesterday. Impatient but uncertain what else to do, Reader took
the doctor’s advice for once and closed her eyes to rest.